James Palmer, The Bloody White Baron, The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia

James Palmer, The Bloody White Baron, The Extraordinary
          Story of the Russian Nobleman who Became the Last Khan of
          Mongolia
          (New York: Basic Books, 2009 ((London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2008)), ISBN-
          13: 978-0-465-01448-4. 273 pgs. with index and 2 maps).

          Dr. Alicia J. Campi│Burke, Virginia USA

92
              The American printing of The Bloody White Baron, a biography of Roman Nikolai
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          Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, attracted much attention by being very favorably
          reviewed by The New York Times and making its Bestseller List in 2009. James Palmer, a
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          young travel writer based in Beijing, already had received glowing reviews in the popular
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          press of the United Kingdom. Knowing this background, this reviewer approached the
          work with anticipation, since a new biography of the much loathed yet fascinating Baron
          is important to Mongolian Studies, especially in the post-communist era. It seems likely
          that there still are not yet utilized old archival materials in Mongolia, Russia, Japan, the
          United States, and China which can shed greater light on this intriguing character beyond
          the Soviet-influenced ones that exist. However, this book will greatly disappoint the
          scholar of Mongolian history because it has serious shortcomings as an historical study.
          Rather, it is full of histrionics and hyperbole which account for its literary success among
          non-specialists, but will make Mongolists cringe. Yet, if in the end the book inspires a new
          generation of researchers to look deeper into the myths and legends surrounding Baron
          Ungern-Sternberg, then its publication will be worthwhile.
              The book actually does not contain much original research, but instead Palmer in the
          main piggybacked off the classic old accounts on Ungern-Sternberg by the Polish writer
          Ferdinand Ossendowski in Beasts, Men, and Gods (1922) and the Baron’s Russian compatriot
          in arms Dimitri Alioshin (Asian Odyssey, 1941), as well as the 2005 work of Jamie Bisher
          (White Terror) on Ataman Semenov and the White Armies in Siberia. While Palmer cites
          the National State Archives of Mongolia in his bibliography, it appears he did not actually

work there with any sources on Ungern-Sternberg. Rather, he utilized the brief comments
from the new research in reliable Baabar’s History of Mongolia (1999). Furthermore,
Palmer’s footnote references to U.S. National Archives’ military intelligence materials
are of such poor quality that his sources are unrecognizable. This reviewer has worked
extensively in the U.S. National Archives which are rich in Mongolian-related resources,
so it is quite clear that the author has not examined systematically the available consular,
military attaché, and embassy records.
     Palmer’s most valuable contribution to study of the viscerally anti-Bolshevik White
Russian Baron stems from the fact that he has meticulously combed the modern Russian
research of Evgenii Belov in Baron Ungern fon Shternberg: biografia, ideologiia, voennye pokhody
1920-1921 (Moscow 2003); Leonid Iuzefovich in Samoderzhets pustyni: fenomen sud’by barona          93
R.F. Ungern-Shternberga (Moscow 1993); and especially S. L. Kuzmin’s Baron Ungern v

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dokumentakh I memuarakh (Moscow 2004) that have produced newly discovered Soviet-
era commentaries. Palmer also includes other Ungern-Sternberg letters and diary entries
from the State Archive of the Russian Navy, State Archive of the Russian Federation, and
Russian State Military Archive. His English translations from these materials thus bring
to light much new information, usually derogatory, that may be unknown to scholars,
including this reviewer, who do not regularly work with the Russian language. However,
this means that Palmer’s major resources are very biased, and it must be at least considered
that these old Bolshevik records survived because they perpetuated the theory of the
evilness of the “mad” Baron. This is why we need a fresh search for contemporaneous
reporting on Ungern-Sternberg from sources other than the Bolshevik archives. Such
sources may confirm the same verdict on the notorious White Russian leader, but this work
of Palmer has not succeeded in looking at the kinds of sources which need to be plumbed
in order for a final evaluation to be drawn.
     Today not many Mongols or westerners know the details of the life of Ungern-
Sternberg beyond a generally negative image of bloody murderer and leader of a White
Army (anti-Bolshevik) rag-tag army that briefly dislodged the Chinese warlord “Little
Hsu” from his brutal occupation of old Urga (today’s Ulaanbaatar) in 1921, and then a
few months later was driven out of Mongolia by the revolutionary Mongols under the
leadership of Sukebaatar combined with Russian Bolshevik soldiers. The ‘Bloody Baron’
must be mentioned by communist historical sources in order for the ‘glory’ of the 1921

Mongolian communist revolution to be revealed. This then is the fundamental dilemma
          historians face when researching Ungern-Sternberg. He must be resolutely evil and/or
          mad as the counterpoint to the righteousness of the July revolution. Palmer’s work follows
          and validates this accepted storyline, rather than re-examining it.
               The author bases his view of Ungern-Sternberg around a few themes which he repeats
          very repetitively throughout the text: 1) The Baron was violently anti-Bolshevik, anti-
          Semitic, and anti-democratic to the core. 2) He was pro-Tsarist yet saw salvation for Russia
          and the Asiatic world through Mongolian imperial revival. 3) He was fanatically religious
          and superstitious, practicing Russian Orthodox, Tibetan-style Buddhist, and shamanistic
          rites. 4) And above all, he was very mentally unstable, hostile towards women, perhaps

94        homosexual, sadistically cruel beyond belief, while also totally mesmerizing and
          charismatic to his multi-national troops.
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               None of the above themes is new in concept, although Palmer does bring unique
          nuances which at times overwhelm. A major example is the place religious views are
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          given in the narrative of Ungern-Sternberg’s life. He accuses the White Russian armies
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          in general and Baltic Germans like Ungern-Sternberg of helping “drip the poison of Jew-
          hatred all over Europe” (97) and even inspiring Nazi theorists. While (incomprehensibly)
          maintaining that the Baron “was both racially and religiously tolerant,” (95) a Lutheran,
          and self-admitted mystic fascinated with Buddhism, Palmer emphasizes that Ungern-
          Sternberg’s well-documented anti-Jewish attitudes were beyond those typical of his
          time and class. But the writer’s self-chosen descriptive rhetoric to make his point is very
          inflammatory and often unsourced to the writings of the Baron or his compatriots, which
          risks readers questioning Palmer’s own attitudes towards the Jews. One example among
          many is: “For Ungern, however, the Jews were not merely tainted, but actively evil.
          Like many others, he was convinced that the driving force behind the Bolsheviks was
          essentially Jewish. They were constantly striving to corrupt society. Their evil could not
          be contained, but had to be eradicated, down to the roots. The revolution had been caused
          not only by their actions, but by their mere corrupting presence; they were the ‘sinners of
          the revolution.’” (98)
               Such hyperinflated “analysis” also is extended to the author ’s description of
          Mongolian Buddhism. Mongolian animal sacrifices are term “holocausts” and “hecatombs
          of livestock being offered to the blood-hungry gods.” (61) Palmer adds to the hysterical

tone by throwing in unrelated personal observations about Mongolian offerings being
“payoffs to various malevolent spirits in a divine protection racket” (60) and of a creepy
visit to a Hong Kong snake-god temple. (61) He does not incorporate the analysis of
reputable sources on Bon shamanism or Mongolian Buddhism, but at times exaggerates
like a Christian missionary from 200 years ago with a chilling anti-Buddhist flavor: “The
bloody iconography of Mongolian deities grew out of this ancient legacy. Buddhist
theologians, particularly those trying to promote the religion in the West, have manfully
tried to co-opt the corpses and skulls and bloodstained weapons into images of peace and
salvation. Their efforts – ‘The corpse being trampled beneath his feet represents the death
of the material world’— are unconvincing.” (62)
    Such toxic religious observations only make Palmer’s analysis of Ungern-Sternberg’s        95
own religious fervor confusing and at times weak. On the one hand, the author believes

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that to the Baron the “awful forms of the divine” are frightening and alien, yet attractive
and mysterious, “the echoes of the peasant beliefs of his homeland, the skulls and swords
and corpses that call his urge to battle and the twisted and mangled bodies that tantalize
his sadism.” Such beliefs caused him “to remake Urga in the image of [Buddhist] hell…
and ten years later, Ungern will learn of his doom – and will do his best to take the rest
of the country with him.” (67) He surrounded himself with soothsayers and shamans
and planned his personal and military actions according to their predictions. Thus, the
reader is told that Ungern-Sternberg’s renowned cruelty towards his troops was more
than military discipline, but “also a necessary part of the spiritual purification of the
degenerate, revolutionary world.     Deserters and revolutionaries were not just human
criminals, they were on the wrong side of a Manichean struggle between good and
evil... they were demons….” (142) Although Palmer notes that some of his sources, such
as Ossendowski, claim that the Baron was a devout Buddhist, the author believes that
Ungern-Sternberg was only “deeply curious about Buddhism, in a half-superstitious, half-
philosophical way,” (185) and cites a quote of the Baron in which he maintained that he
was a believer in [Christian] God and the Gospels, although highly tolerant of Muslims.
The author never resolves the issue of Ungern-Sternberg’s religion. Rather, Palmer feels
the White Russian leader believed in everything sinister: “He was a believer in protective
charms, divinations, the efficiency of alternative medicine and, possibly, reincarnation,
but considered it perfectly feasible to hold all those beliefs and still think of oneself as

Christian, if some way outside the mainstream….he could combine the roles of Christian
          crusader and Buddhist wrathful protector without difficulty.” (188-189).
              Because of the absence of footnoted sources for several of Palmer’s declarations
          about the Baron, there are many contradictions in his analysis. One example is how other
          contemporaries viewed the special superpowers of Ungern-Sternberg, which he may not
          have proclaimed for himself but nevertheless did not reject. Palmer admits that there was
          no official Mongolian recognition of Ungern-Sternberg as an incarnate god (164), yet in
          another place in the text states “Ungern himself was declared to be a reincarnation of the
          Fifth Bogd Gegen” (162) by the Eighth and last Bogd Gegen. Moreover, Palmer writes that
          contemporary Russian accounts stated that the Mongolians believed that he was the “God

96        of War” and even dedicated temple services to him. (144) There is the statement one page
          later (145) that one unnamed witness confidently identified Ungern as “Tsagan Burkhan”
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          (“white god” or “white Buddha”). Further confusion is added by Palmer’s speculation
          that Russian officers might have misheard or misunderstood Mongolian terms for Ungern-
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          Sternberg, such as mixing the Mongol word bogd for sacred or holy with bog, the Russian
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          word for god, so that ‘holy warrior’ became ‘God of War.’ (145)
              Another unsubstantiated theory presented is that there was a “bizarre cult” among
          the Oirat Mongols of Russia fifteen years before the Baron’s emergence which mentioned
          a rider dressed in white, riding a white horse called Ak-Burkhan (also meaning ‘white
          god’). Followers of this cult were violently anti-Christian and anti-Russian, but fought on
          the White side in the civil war. Palmer postulates that “Ungern, a ‘white’ fighter who was
          famous for his white horse, and who fought both the Russians and the Chinese, would
          have been the perfect fulfillment of such messianic expectations.” (146) The final dramatic
          touch at the end of the biography is the account that Palmer had a chance encounter at a
          dinner in Ulaanbaatar and met a Mongolian woman who claimed that in her family Baron
          Ungern was considered a god! Her family had pieces of his clothing and hair, which were
          supposed to have magical powers, and the family worshipped him as a personal protector.
          (246-247) This last statement is most astonishing, but certainly warrants additional
          investigation by Mongolists.
              The first half of Palmer’s book is devoted to young Ungern-Sternberg and his early
          training as a White Russian compatriot of Ataman Semenov in Siberia in the pre-1920
          period. Born in Graz, Austria in 1885 to a mentally ill Estonian father of German extraction

and a German aristocratic mother, Ungern-Sternberg was a child of divorce. When his
mother remarried, he moved with her as a young boy to Tallinn, Estonia. Although he
had no real Russian ancestry, the young aristocrat was especially devoted to the Russian
Tsar. His family was proudly Baltic German and lived in a manor house with Estonian
peasant serfs working the lands. His ancestors came from a military tradition dating back
to the Crusaders and included a false claim to a privateer grandfather who converted
to Buddhism and served under an Indian prince against the British. Palmer suggests
that Ungern-Sternberg’s own mental instability may have stemmed both from genetic
predisposition and a difficult childhood, because his stepfather was never mentioned by
Ungern-Sternberg in his own papers and from comments of exiled friends of the lad’s
parents. The author tends to favor a lot of pseudo-psychoanalyzing: “By the time he went        97
to school he was a strong-willed young man, tall and athletic, unwilling to bend to school

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rules or obey teachers he saw as inferiors. He was naturally intelligent, but his grades
were atrocious. In class he was obstinate and violent; I [Palmer] imagine him not to have
been a bully as such, but, as his later behavior suggests, rather one of those pupils of whom
even the bullies are afraid, the kind who violate the unwritten rules of childhood fights,
whom nobody wants to sit near, and who cannot be trusted with compasses or scissors.”
(19)
       Ungern-Sternberg left naval school in 1904 to volunteer as an ordinary soldier in the
Russo-Japanese war. His service in Manchuria was his first exposure to the Far East and
Japanese military prowess. Not long after his return home, the Estonian peasantry rioted
in the 1905 revolution against the Tsar and his own childhood manor house was destroyed.
The author believes that this incident cemented Ungern-Sternberg’s prejudice against
the peasants as “feral animals.” The young man was appalled by the breakdown of civil
order, according to Palmer, because imperial rule was the natural order of things: “The
monarchical system was very dear to Ungern; it was the centerpiece of the hierarchies
that governed his world. The Russian monarchy, however, was the most sacred of all,
blessed, like Russia, by God himself.” (25) The Baron thought revolutionary activities were
controlled by Jews and intellectuals, not stemming from genuine social grievances.
       In 1906 Ungern-Sternberg enrolled in a military academy in St. Petersburg and also
began his study of Buddhism, occultism, and Western philosophy and religion. Such
studies, the author claims, often were embraced by Russian reactionaries or fervent

nationalists, and Palmer speculates without firm foundation that Ungern-Sternberg must
          have been influenced by the neo-esoteric Buddhism of Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy, the
          books of the Russian mystic and philosopher Konstantin Leontiev, known as the ‘Russian
          Nietzsche,’ and the German concern about the rise of the ‘Yellow Peril.’ At the same time,
          Palmer notes that there was a 19th century ‘pan-Mongolism’ movement in Russia which
          searched for the origins of Russian customs and folk beliefs, and that the young soldier
          would have been exposed to the view of the Mongols as the enemy, but still “something
          heroic and wild, a romantic part of the Russians’ self-image and yearning.” (32)
              Steeped in this convoluted intellectual environment, Ungern-Sternberg after
          graduation chose to join a Zabaikal (Transbaikal) Cossack regiment stationed near

98        Manchuria to resume his military service. The book’s highly picturesque description of
          this regiment is a good illustration of Palmer’s overblown yet fluid writing style: “The
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          Cossacks were a strange collection of peoples, the descendants of outlaws and exiles
          who, four hundred years beforehand, had fled civilized life in Poland, Lithuania and
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          Russia to carve out their own living on the steppe. They had ‘gone Mongol’, turning from
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          townspeople and peasants into bandits and freebooters, forming patriarchal, violent,
          free-spirited kingdoms of their own. The Russians had gradually absorbed them into the
          empire, but had always allowed them to keep their own territories and drafted them for
          military service not head-count, as with most Russians, but in whole regiments, albeit with
          Russian commanders.” (33)
              From this basically factual description Palmer then explodes into more fanciful prose
          which he ties to Russian writers such as Tolstoy and Gogol: “Russians, in particular, saw
          in them an alternative to the stifling, controlled lives they led in the cities…[and] wrote
          novels or stories portraying Cossacks as dashing, heroic bandits. Not themselves ‘Russian’,
          they remained a fundamental part of an idea of ‘Russia’, a half-civilised barrier between
          Westernised Russia and the East. In many ways they were the acceptable version of the
          Mongols, decently Slavic rather than Asian, and nominally Christian.” (34) However,
          Palmer admits that all of the above description is not correct when referring to Ungern-
          Sternberg’s own regiment, which was composed of 12 percent Buddhist Buriat Mongols,
          and only one quarter the size of the Don Cossacks. Instead, such facts are thrown together
          with speculation that the young Baron was particularly interested in the Buriats and their
          “simple, appealing and pure” lifestyle. (34-35) But what lifestyle is Palmer discussing? A

few pages later into the biography, he quotes from Ossendowski’s description of Ungern-
Sternberg’s creation of a new Order of Military Buddhists which was to be celibate yet
have limitless use of alcohol, hasheesh, and opium. (37-38) The author dismisses this story
as fanciful, yet his detailed vivid account revels in the retelling of a mistruth. This then is
Palmer’s style—he mixes fact and speculation, wild stories and bits of historical truth in a
constant flow of words that overwhelm the reader and jump from topic and place so it is
difficult to know where to focus or to critique.
    In 1913 the Baron asked for a discharge and rode home through Mongolia. This
period is described in Chapter Three, which is entitled “Suspended Between Heaven
and Hell,” and is almost entirely a figment of Palmer’s vivid but at times inaccurate
imagination. Ungern-Sternberg supposedly visited with Mongol herdsmen “with a barrel              99
of fermented mare’s milk by the door and the family sleeping on cushions inside” (42),

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likely impossible sights since fermented mare’s milk is kept in leather bags and Mongols
sleep on iron beds. Equally unlikely was the image of the lone young soldier, a traveler
never without company, happening to ride past Turkic pre-Mongolian ruins and destroyed
monasteries from Ming or early Qing dynasty invasions on his way to the Mongolian
capital! (43) Palmer wrongly calls the Russian consulate in Urga “the sole foreign
enclave” in Mongolia and gives a peculiar description of a tsam dance with wooden
instead of paper maché masks. (45) Other facts and timelines are jumbled too with
Palmer’s retelling of the history of Manchu Chinese control of south and north Mongolia
(inner and outer). Colonization policies in Inner Mongolia are not distinguished from
those of Outer Mongolia, stories from World War II for some reason are used to explain
Mongolian cruelty, and Tibetan-style customs confused with Chinese: “…the ceremonial
trappings and nomenclature adopted by the new Mongolian court mimicked the customs
of the Chinese emperors; not only an unprecedented impertinence but a clear sign, in the
language of dynastic mandate understood by both courts, of an assertion of sovereignty
over Mongolia and all the previous Mongolian territories of the Chinese Empire.” (52)
    This chapter also examines the characteristics of Mongolian Buddhism and its leader,
the last Living Buddha. Palmer’s attitudes towards Mongolian religion are very biased:
“It is likely that most Mongolians did not live in the state of spiritual paranoia that a cold
reading of their belief system might indicate.” (64) He paints a harsh but basically accurate
portrayal of the last Bogd Khan, and even credits him with great intelligence and charm

despite his notorious reputation. There is only a paragraph or so of actual material in the
           27-page chapter on Ungern-Sternberg’s first time in Mongolia, such as when he attached
           himself to the Khobdo (Khovd) western guard studying Mongol language and Buddhism.
           Palmer alludes to officers who met him during this period, but does not give his source.
           Rather, the author fabricates a possible contact of the Baron with Dambijantsan also known
           as the Ja Lama, who lived in the region. Again the author’s penchant to repeat outlandish
           and ghoulish stories without any attribution comes to the forefront when he mentions
           “plausible” accounts of the Ja Lama ripping out the hearts of Chinese victims and lining
           his ger with skins of his enemies! Actually the litany of such stories about Mongolian
           Buddhists and their desire for bloody sacrifices seems to be included to excite the

100        uninformed reader rather than to examine the issue scientifically. The chapter’s final pages
           are devoted a discussion of the legends surrounding Buddhist Shambhala, often equated
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           to Shangri-La, and the tale that the King of the World would burst forth from Shambhala
           at the head of a conquering army to bring the world to the true faith through the sword.
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           This, of course, is mentioned in an attempt to unite Palmer’s exaggerated psychic vision of
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           Ungern-Sternberg to the messiah king: “Imagine, then, Ungergn, had bent in supplication,
           in the Choijin Temple in Urga, contemplating the lurid images of the gods. Above him
           are severed heads and flayed skins, desecrated corpses blossoming into gardens of blood,
           eyeballs dangling from sockets, bones poking from mangled limbs….He is duly afraid, as
           are the pilgrims milling around him, of the awful forms of the divine. It is frightening and
           alien to him, but also attractive, the hint of mysterious powers, the echoes of the peasant
           beliefs of his homeland, the skulls and swords and corpses that call to his urge to battle
           and the twisted and mangled bodies that tantalize his sadism.” (67)
               Ungern-Sternberg had only a year at home before he returned to military action with
           the coming of World War I. Palmer dramatizes this event as the watershed in the Baron’s
           life: “Before it broke out he was a hopeless drunk” and an upper-class “loser”, while at its
           end “he was a hero; the character traits that had hampered his pre-war career—brutality,
           impulsiveness, coarseness—had become his greatest assets.” (69) This then is the key to
           understanding Palmer’s point of view regarding Ungern-Sternberg—open admiration yet
           horror over his unbridled, astonishing heroism, which was attributed to “blind luck, partly
           to an almost suicidal absence of fear.” (70) From 1914 to 1916 the Baron fought in East
           Prussia, Galicia and the Carpathian mountains and acquired his very visible long forehead

scar. He was discovered drunk on duty in a Ukrainian city and put in jail two months.
Afterwards, he transferred to Vladivostok and fatefully linked up with White Russian
leader Grigori Michaelovich Semenov, who became his close friend, mentor, and military
commander, although actually five years younger. Both men desired military success,
were strongly anti-Bolshevik, had a love for Mongolia, were interested in Central Asian
peoples, and “became convinced that the salvation of the Russian state lay in recruitment
among the native peoples of the East.” (78) However, Palmer sees Semenov as merely
loyal to the Russian vision of empire rather than the Russian Tsar while “Ungern was a
pronounced monarchist.” (79)
    With Bolshevik victories in 1917, Ungern-Sternberg’s family fled abroad to America
and Germany, and contact with them was lost. Semenov and Ungern-Sternberg turned               101
to the cause of recruiting Mongol Buriats to bolster their anti-Bolshevik forces in the

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Transbaikal. Palmer successfully traces the small-scale military operations of Ungern-
Sternberg over the next two years, as he and his White compatriots skirmished in Russian
territory and Manchuria: “He was required to act as go-between to different White
factions, shame armchair generals into making real contributions, negotiate with the
Japanese, and ensure that the Chinese officials stayed at least neutral, if not friendly,
towards the Whites.” (86) This frustrating work brought him into contact with Fushenge
of the Karachen Mongols and the growing power of Japanese intelligence. In 1918
these efforts were successful in driving the Red Bolsheviks out of Transbaikal. Ungern-
Sternberg was made commander of Dauria and Semenov made him a major-general. It
is in this position that Palmer intemperately ties the Baron to speculation that the soldier
had a special bond with wolves: “Sometimes, the stories [unspecified by Palmer] had it,
he would harness them to his sleigh and ride through town, whipping them on as they
howled in terror. He was supposed to walk out in the hills on his own in the evening,
striding like a grim pagan god through a landscape of wolf-gnawed bones. He suited this
carrion country all too well.” (91) This was the period that Ungern-Sternberg acquired
the reputation for bloody-thirsty, even insane tactics, because he administered Dauria
as his private medieval domain. He raged against his enemies and his own men, and
even allowed his subordinates such as Ataman Kalmikov to flay and torture prisoners.
Yet, in addition to military drilling and training, he demanded his officers learn the
Mongolian language and personally supervised their examinations. He often dressed in

Mongolian hat and gown, telling a foreign correspondent that to do so pleased them: “I
           highly appreciate the Mongolian people and over several years had the opportunity to be
           convinced of their honesty and fidelity.” (99)
               During his years in Dauria at some point Ungern-Sternberg gave up drinking
           entirely and seems to have replaced that vice with opium smoking. However, the book’s
           author praises his simple lifestyle, his financial honesty, and asceticism, particularly in
           comparison to the lavishness of Semenov. He suggests Ungern-Sternberg was homosexual
           uninterested in love or sex, but then has difficulty explaining why he married a Chinese
           woman in August of 1919. The Baron’s slavish devotion to the former “deeply stupid”
           Tsar Nikolas II and “retarded” Taisho emperor is ridiculed, and Palmer unconvincingly

102        maintains that Ungern-Sternberg was opposed to Semenov’s pan-Mongolian congresses.
           As the military situation for the Whites deteriorated in the fall of 1919, Ungern-Sternberg
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           murdered greater numbers of Bolsheviks. Prisoners were sent to him in “death trains” to
           be processed in torture chambers and then left in the open to rot. “On these hills, where
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           everywhere were rolling skulls, skeletons, and decaying body parts, Baron Ungern used to
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           like to go to rest.” (113—quoting Belov’s biography) This sentence is followed by Palmer’s
           strange comment—“Perhaps it reminded him of the Mongolian temples.” In any case,
           by April 1920 an unnamed American source is cited as reporting two thousand Chinese
           prisoners were killed in two weeks and Dauria was known as “the gallows of Siberia.” (114)
               The final quarter of the book details the last year of Ungern-Sternberg’s life, which
           was consumed by his Mongolian campaigns. Many of these 70 pages are meandering
           historical ramblings by Palmer in order to put the slim pile of facts he does include into
           some context, with additional material from Russian contemporaneous sources such as
           Dmitri P. Pershin. But the fact that the biographer did not utilize the varied and easily
           accessible accounts of western travelers (Frans August Larson) and American officials such
           as U.S. Consul General Charles Eberhardt and Vice Consul Samuel Sokobin, who were
           in and out of Urga during this period and had access to eyewitness accounts to the final
           days of the occupation of Chinese General Hsu Shu-cheng, Ungern-Sternberg’s conquest
           of the city, and the final triumph of Mongol-Soviet forces does not speak well of the
           seriousness of the American archival analysis. Palmer is not very critical of Little Hsu’s
           brutal occupation of Urga, but rather emphasizes that the Mongolian Bogd Khan and the
           Buddhist establishment were angered by Chinese greediness and behavior, including

putting the Bogd Khan under house arrest, and so secretly and not so secretly cooperated
with Ungern-Sternberg. (126) He writes without citing any corroborating sources that “To
the Chinese he [Ungern-Sternberg] was a mysterious and terrifying enemy…[whose] fierce
attack seemed to come out of nowhere. To the Mongols he was now the chief symbol of
anti-Chinese resistance….he was near-invulnerable.       He had seemed to be everywhere
during the battle, but had never been wounded. Mongolians saw the marks of karma
everywhere and somebody with such formidable luck was clearly not entirely of this
world.” (135)
    Palmer’s account of the battle for Urga relies on Russian sources such as Pershin,
the journal Sovetskaya Sibir’s September 1921 accounts from Ungern-Sternberg’s trial,
and an unnamed American intelligence source relying of German-American merchant A.              103
M. Guptill’s eyewitness account from March 30, 1921. However, the author’s style goes

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much further and is full of high drama and psychological musings: “Some of the attackers
seemed to gleam unnaturally and to have distorted, terrifying faces; the Chinese must
have been uncertain in their last moments, whether their assailants were men or gods.” (153)
And, “The Baron was equally carried away by the fervour of the attack, riding on his white
horse between the trenches and pressing his troops forward over the wire. He inspired
others to take suicidal risks; perhaps their fear of him outweighed their fear of the enemy.”
(154) In addition, “The Baron’s soldiers had spent a desperate winter struggling to live
off an alien landscape, and the last time any of them had been in a city was a year or more
ago. They were veterans of two of the most brutalizing wars in history, they were led by a
madman, and they had very little prospect for the future. They went berserk, indulging in
orgies of rape, torture and murder.” (155)
    The book’s description of the several weeks of occupation of Urga by Ungern-
Sternberg’s forces indicates why Mongols may have more favorable memories of the Baron
than western and communist-inspired histories lead one to believe. In addition to freeing
the Bodg Khan from his imprisonment, the White Russian general was very solicitous of
the Mongol population. Any soldier caught attacking Mongols was punished, sometimes
executed. Looting after the first three days was rigidly forbidden. Palmer claims that the
Baron was viewed as a “savior and Buddhist hero, his reputation as a living god spread
throughout Mongolia.” (169) When the Bogd Khan returned in triumph to Urga to be re-
installed on his throne, he presented Ungern-Sternberg with a variety of titles and honors

as well as publicly praised him as: “a meritorious person for restoring our independence
           and the State of Mongolia….He destroyed evil and, if we consider his army regime and
           command, it is truly rigorous.” (162)
               The author writes of the revival of commerce by foreigners of all nationalities,
           including Chinese, during the brief period of his control, because he understood the
           Chinese merchants and bankers especially were vital to the city. Although Chinese were
           murdered in the battle aftermath, it appears the White army mainly attacked Bolshevik
           sympathizers and Jewish residents—young or old, male or female, with minimal protest
           from Mongolian officialdom. In fact, a point which contradicts the reports of the general’s
           brutal attitude towards Chinese is the fact that Ungern-Sternberg did permit the nearly

104        2000 captured Chinese soldiers to become a new regiment in his army.
               Palmer does not convincingly explain how the Baron and the Bogd Khan understood
  《蒙藏季刊》

           their relationship. This problem is mirrored by the author’s failure to logically present
           Ungern-Sternberg’s view of his mentor and commander, Semenov. In both relationships it
 ‧
 第二十卷

           appears that the “Mad Baron” was in a secondary position—not challenging the dominant
  第一期

           role of the other party. But if this interpretation is correct, then how did he evolving view
           of his own place in the politics of his time? It is generally held from contemporaneous
           Bolshevik accounts that Ungern-Sternberg was seeking to establish his own empire in the
           Mongolian region, but what was his political vision? Palmer does not really examine the
           contradictions found in the old Soviet records. He accepts the fact that the Baron respected
           the Bogd Khan’s authority in Mongolia and reports the city liberator continued his ascetic
           habits by living in a ger in the Maimaichen area of the capital, where he conducted
           business nearby. Did Ungern-Sternberg actually establish a rival “government” or is the
           view that he wished to establish a new Mongolian empire based at Urga with him as the
           new Chinggis Khan more a figment of the imagination of the Bolsheviks and the later
           biographers inspired by them? The author wanders beyond the Baron’s interest in a pan-
           Asian movement into a peculiar discussion of a possible desire to restore the Qing dynasty.
           While he complains that Ungern-Sternberg was ignorant about the nature of his planned
           new state, it seems that in fact it is Palmer who is fantasizing: “One of the elements of
           Ungern’s plan that is most striking with hindsight is how close it was to the Japanese
           blueprint for expansion into Asia during the 1930s and 40s.” (191)
               Ungern-Sternberg led his troops out of Urga on May 21 to strike Red Bolshevik

forces to the north, and this decision led to his defeat and capture. The reasons behind
this tactical maneuver are mingled with long passages from his military colleague,
Ossendowski, about the Baron’s desire to create a new Order for Russia newly redevoted
to the Tsar. We do know that Ungern-Sternberg’s main force moved towards Kiatkha
and fighting with the Red Calvary and Mongolian forces began on June 11th. The White
Russian army fled after two days, permitting a combined force of Bolshevik Russians and
Mongols to take the poorly defended city of Urga on July 11. The final days of Ungern-
Sternberg are painted Hollywood-style by Palmer: “With this final defeat, Ungern shed
any trace of civilization.” (217) It is recounted that he looked the reincarnation of a
prehistoric ape man with a naked chest. Palmer discusses where the Baron possibly hid or
threw away his stash of confiscated gold. Utilizing Bolshevik sources, the author recounts    105
the final hours of Ungern-Sternberg’s freedom—there was a bungled mutiny by his own

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troops and final capture by Mongols under Sundui Gun. These pages and the subsequent
records from the Baron’s trial in Siberia are among the best in the book. What is not
really explained is why the Soviets respectively treated their prisoner without torture and
permitted him total leeway to defend himself. After his atrocities were related to the five
man tribunal of judges, who agreed that Ungern-Sternberg was mentally ill, they sent him
to be executed.
    The biography concludes with an uneven epilogue that includes vignettes from
Palmer’s experiences in today’s Ulaanbaatar, comparisons of Red Guards in Tibet to the
confiscations and executions in Mongolia in the 1930s, a description of the 1939 Khalkhin
Gol battle, and accounts of cooperation between surviving White Russian leaders and the
Japanese. The author judges Ungern-Sternberg’s odd legacy as a precursor to Nazism and
what he calls “eliminationist anti-Semitism.” (243) He even finds the figure of the Baron
in literature and comic books. However, fundamentally, Palmer sees Ungern-Sternberg
as “Mongolia’s saviour” from 20th century Chinese domination and immigration. The
Bloody White Baron notes that “Even in death, Ungern disappeared into myth.” (232) It
is unfortunate that this new, eagerly anticipated biography of Baron Ungern-Sternberg is
more interested in sensationalizing the myth rather than examining it.
    The book includes a poorly referenced bibliography and useful index, in addition to
chapter footnotes. The two maps are helpful to the reader.