The War of the Pacific (Not World War II) Is the Conflict You Never Heard Of

Peter Suciu

Security,

Dust your history book off.

Throughout the Cold War the United States feared an invasion from the Soviet Union. No invasion ever came, but perhaps the Soviet Union’s fears of a U.S. invasion were justified. That's because the United States did actually occupy part of Russia earlier in the twentieth century!

While technically not an invasion, the American military intervention at Archangel, Russia earned the nickname "Polar Bear Expedition" and it was actually to prevent the German advance and to help reopen the Eastern Front following Communist Russia's acceptance of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Instead of fighting the Germans, however, the American soldiers found themselves fighting Bolshevik forces.

The British and French had feared that the spread of communism and sought to aid the White Russians, the forces that remained loyal to the Czarist cause, while in the process continuing the fight from the east. The British also wanted to keep stockpiles of war materials from falling into the hands of either the Russian Red Army or the Germans but also wanted to rescue the Czech Legion, a unit of pro-Allied soldiers that was cut off by the Russian Civil War.

President Woodrow Wilson agreed to send American units but insisted they remain neutral to Russia's internal quarrels. 

It was during the summer of 1918 that the U.S. Army’s 85th Division, made up primarily of men from Michigan and Wisconsin, was sent to England for preparations to be sent to France to fight alongside the French and British forces on the Western Front. However, some five thousand troops from the division, mostly from the 339th Infantry along with troops from support units including 310th Engineers, the 337th Field Hospital, and the 337th Ambulance Company, were issued with Russian Mosin-Nagent rifles and equipment and sent to Archangel, a Russian port city six hundred miles north of Moscow. The reasoning for being issued the Russian rifles was that there were significant stockpiles of ammunition awaiting the force in the Russian ports! 

By the time the Americans arrived in northern Russia in September, Germany was on its final legs. The Polar Bears also quickly realized their mission objectives were impossible. The Bolshevik’s Red Army had seized the supplies at Archangel and it was too far from the former eastern front lines to engage the Germans. Instead the American Commander, Col. George E. Stewart, caved to pressure from the British and headed to aid to the White Russians.

American forces marched south, and while they successfully assaulted the Bolsheviks in November—by which the Germans had agreed to an armistice essentially ending World War I—the Allied forces were forced to endure a harsh Russian winter. Many in the U.S. government were deeply opposed to the American presence in Russia.

Senator Hiram Johnson, a progressive Republican from California, in a speech on December 12, 1918, said, “I do not know our policy, and I know no other man who knows our policy.”

Matters were made worse in January 1919 when the Bolshevik launched an offensive against the American troops, which attracted attention in newspapers back at home. Public opinion turned against the action quickly and in a way that would seem eerily similar fifty years later during the Vietnam War.

With no clear goal or objective, the Polar Bears finally were withdrawn the next spring. The campaign went down in the annals of history as futile, costing the lives of some several hundreds of Americans with absolutely nothing to show for it—except perhaps resentment and mistrust by Red Army, which eventually was victorious in the Russian Civil War, leading to the creation of the Soviet Union. 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikipedia.