The United States is surrounded by two oceans and two countries. History has shown that the oceans did more damage than the neighbors. New sales markets and periods of easy money forced businessmen before
involve the army.
Let's remember why and when the US attacked Russia.
More than 13,000 American soldiers fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, and about 400 of them died on the frozen Arctic and Siberian battlefields in an ill-planned attempt to change the outcome of that conflict.
To assist the Russian army in its ill-fated conflict with the German Empire, the Allied Powers sent a significant amount of weapons through the Arctic ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. And when Lenin began to withdraw Russia from the First World War, the European powers wanted to make sure that weapons and ammunition did not fall into the hands of the Red Army … and if they also helped the White Guards defeat the Communists, it would be great.
Paris and London persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to contribute to the multinational mission and send at least one army brigade to Russia. The American Consul in Arkhangelsk warned that any intervention was fraught with inevitable aggravation, and the White Army was unlikely to prevail. As a result, Wilson decided to send two separate expeditions for these purposes.
The American Expeditionary Force in Northern Russia (ANREF) consisted of 5,000 troops from the 339th regiment from Michigan, as well as engineering and auxiliary troops of the 85th Infantry Division. Soldiers recalled from the Western Front were issued with Russian Mosin rifles with a sliding bolt (model 1891), since there were plenty of cartridges for this type of weapon.
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American mortars.
In December 1917, the Entente allies decided to divide Russia into zones of influence. A few months later, the first detachments of interventionists began to appear in the Russian North and the Far East. Among them were members of the US Army. The expediency of the occupation With regard to Russia, the Americans had their own far-reaching plans.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, American business intensified in our country. For example, the future US President Herbert Hoover bought up oil production in Siberia and the Urals.
During World War I, imports of goods from the United States grew almost 20 times, while exports of Russian products to the United States fell sharply. The October Revolution and the outbreak of the Civil War led to the fact that among the American political elite, voices began to be heard in favor of the occupation of part of the territory of Russia.
For example, Senator George Poindexter from Mississippi declared that the Russian state no longer exists, since its strength has been completely undermined. Other congressmen called for taking advantage of the situation and taking control of Siberia with its fields, pastures and minerals. The Northern Campaign In June 1918, 100 US Army soldiers, along with members of the British Expeditionary Force, landed in Murmansk.
In September of the same year, the Americans sent 5.5 thousand soldiers to Arkhangelsk. The command of the Americans was carried out by Lieutenant Colonel George Stewart. The total number of United States units in the Russian North was about six thousand people. In the fall of 1918, the interventionists launched an offensive on parts of the Red Army. The operation was named "Polar Bear". The occupation forces advanced southward, deep into the Arkhangelsk province along the Northern Dvina River, hoping then to turn towards Vologda.
They intended to unite with the white armies of Nikolai Yudenich and Alexander Kolchak. The counter-offensive of the Red Army in the Shenkursk district of the Arkhangelsk province at the end of January 1919 ended in disaster for the Americans. The blow of the Sixth Army led to the fact that the soldiers of the US Army in the amount of 500 people were surrounded and only thanks to the White Guards who knew the area were not captured, leaving the location of the British troops.
The Shenkur operation showed that the Soviet troops had learned to win. Starting from three distant points in three converging directions, the detachments approached Shenkursk at the same time, which predetermined the fall of the city. The troops marched through the snow-covered wooded area, breaking 185 - 250 km - knee-deep in snow, dragging the guns.
But the success was strategic - tactically, the operation was not brought to the end: the enemy's manpower left and managed to gain a foothold in prepared positions. And the operation was interrupted.
Shenkur's lesson was not in vain. The allied forces evacuated in 4 months, realizing the futility of further struggle, and the troops of the 6th Army and their commanders learned a little, and a year later brilliantly performed an even more complex operation that required even greater flexibility of maneuver, no longer in the narrow space of the Shenkur combat area, but on the entire thousand-kilometer stretch of the Northern Front - by eliminating it.
The Red Army got 12 American guns, a large amount of food, ammunition and uniforms. After the failure at Shenkursk, the US Expeditionary Force was withdrawn to the rear, and then evacuated to its homeland. In the "Polar Bear" expedition, the losses of the Americans amounted to 167 people killed, 29 servicemen were missing, 12 were taken prisoner. There were about a hundred wounded. According to other data, 110 people died directly in the hostilities, 70 died from diseases, primarily the Spanish flu flu, others from frostbite.
The Shenkur operation was a page of glory for the troops of the 6th Army, which in difficult conditions, being almost on a par with the enemy in the fortified city, were able to solve the task. But due to poor training and inexperienced command personnel, they were unable to capture the surrounded enemy.
Americans on guard of the Trans-Siberian Railway
An even more unusual goal was faced by the American expeditionary force "Siberia", namely to help in the withdrawal of friendly Czech soldiers.
In 1917, the Russian army created a 40,000-strong Czechoslovak Legion of Czechs and Slovaks, striving for the independence of their peoples from Austria-Hungary. When the Bolsheviks decided to end the war with Germany, the Czechs began to negotiate their transportation by train to Vladivostok, in order to then leave for their homeland by sea. However, in May 1918, Leon Trotsky issued a decree disarming the legion, whose echelons controlled the Trans-Siberian Railway along its entire length. But the members of the legion rebelled.
Wilson sympathized with the Czechs. In addition, Vladivostok had a lot of readily available military equipment, and the seventy-two thousandth Japanese army, which was considered an allied one, rampaged throughout the region in pursuit of the rich resources of Siberia. In August 1918, the President of the United States dispatched a second tactical group under the command of Major General William Graves; it consisted of 7,900 troops, mainly from the 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments and the 8th Division. Graves was told to guard the highway and remain neutral, and the secretary of state told him, "You're going to walk on balls filled with dynamite."
Far East
American troops numbering about nine thousand people landed in Vladivostok in August 1918. The commander of the expeditionary force, General William Graves, said that the US military would not interfere in the fight between the reds and whites.
Indeed, the American corps in the Far East practically did not participate in hostilities. Nevertheless, it is known about his clashes with the red partisans. One of the most notable battles took place in June 1919 near the village of Romanovka. The Bolsheviks led by Yakov Tryapitsyn attacked the interventionists and killed more than 20 American soldiers.
US military personnel were completely withdrawn from the Far East by April 1920. During their 19-month stay, the Americans lost 189 soldiers. The total number of US casualties in manpower during the intervention in Russia amounted to about 400 people.
Most of the dead were then sent home. In 1929, the remains of an additional 86 American soldiers were returned to the United States. The last several dozen dead found peace at home in 1934 - after the establishment of official diplomatic relations between Moscow and Washington.
The Soviet Union later cited U. S. intervention as another example of an invasion from the West, listing America as a historic enemy along with France, Germany, Sweden, and Poland. And these were the first signs that Russia and the United States would be doomed to constant interference in each other's affairs.
By the way, for Fallout fans and for those who do not know about the plans of our American "friends"
In the United States, there were plans for a nuclear strike against the USSR back in September 1945. September 15, 1945 - less than two weeks after the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II, as well as a little more than a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - American Major General Loris Norstead sent top-secret documents to General Leslie Groves, in which the target map first appeared for American nuclear bombing on the territory of the USSR (the possibility of bombing Chinese Manchuria, then occupied by Soviet troops, was also considered). Against their ally in the fight against Hitler, the Americans wanted to use "at least" 123 bombs, and "optimal" 466. Among the priority targets were Moscow, Baku, Novosibirsk, Gorky, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Kuibyshev, Kazan, Saratov, Molotov, Magnitogorsk, Grozny, Novokuznetsk and Nizhny Tagil.
In the directive of the Joint Defense Planning Committee No. 432 / d of December 14, 1945, a plan was painted called "Peancer" (Pincers). In it, 20 main cities and industrial centers of the USSR were planned for atomic bombing, on which 196 atomic bombs were supposed to be dropped. This plan was followed by a number of others with no less frightening names: "Hot Day", "Incinerating Heat", "Shake Up", etc.
Historian Michael Sherry's book Preparing for the Next War, describing US wartime plans, says that despite official claims that the US would not strike first, staff planners directly insisted on the concept of a first preemptive strike. The same book indicates that the USSR was not an immediate threat to the Americans, but only a potential enemy:
The Soviet Union does not pose an immediate threat, the command of the armed forces acknowledged. Its economy and human resources were depleted by the war … Consequently, in the next few years the USSR will focus its efforts on rebuilding … Soviet capabilities, regardless of what they thought about the intentions of the Russians, seemed sufficient reason to consider the USSR as a potential enemy.
The fact that the USSR in those years did not pose a direct threat to the United States in military terms, however, did not prevent the Americans from preparing plans for nuclear bombing of Soviet cities.
1946 "Totality" plan
In 1946, during the Iranian crisis, the headquarters of the American General Dwight D. Eisenhower (the future president of the United States) developed the "Totality" plan, which provided for dropping 20-30 atomic bombs on 20 Soviet cities: Moscow, Gorky, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk (Novokuznetsk), Grozny, Irkutsk and Yaroslavl.