Pavel Mikhailovich Bermondt-Awaloff

Pavel Mikhailovich Bermondt-Avalov

Pawel Mikhailovich Bermondt-Awalow ( Russian Павел Михайлович Бермондт-Авалов ; born March 4, 1877 in Tbilisi in the Russian Empire ; † January 27, 1974 in New York City , USA ) was a Russian adventurer, officer in World War I and from July to November 1919 Commander of the so-called West Russian Liberation Army in the Russian Civil War .

Life

Bermondt-Awalow's origin, title of nobility and military career are partly unsecured. Much is based on his own statements and is doubtful. Until October 6, 1919, when he ordered the attack on Riga , he was called Bermondt. On October 9, 1919, he called himself Prince Bermondt-Awalow for the first time. As he later claimed, he was the biological son of the Georgian Prince Mikhail Antonovich Avalov (Mikhail Avalishvili), his mother's first husband. The name Bermondt comes from his mother's second husband. At the intercession of his biological father, he assumed the Russified name Avalov and the title of prince in 1919.

In the army of the Russian Empire, Bermondt took part in the Russo-Japanese War . According to his own statements, he was promoted to colonel during the First World War. In 1918 he raised white troops in Ukraine . With the fall of the Hetman state , he was first imprisoned, then came to Germany and joined the Russian monarchist groups active there. He organized a small force in the POW camp in Salzwedel , which he named "Korps Graf Keller" after the murdered leader of the white movement Fyodor Arturowitsch Keller . At the beginning of June 1919, the approximately 300-strong unit moved to Courland . He refused the order of his nominal superior Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich to move to Estonia.

With the support of General Rüdiger von der Goltz and through the election of a West Russian government in Berlin, Bermondt was commissioned in July 1919 as the successor to Prince Anatol Pavlovich Lieven with the leadership of the West Russian Liberation Army. In Mitau Residing, let Bermondt lavish parties to celebrate and agreed the acquisition of German Free Corps, which eventually accounted for 80% of its force. In total, the troops are said to have made up around 50,000 soldiers, 40,000 German and German-Baltic men and around 10,000 Russians. The transfer of the Germans was supposed to enable the Freikorps to remain in the Baltic States after the German government and the Entente states (USA, Great Britain, France) had recalled the troops. In consultation with General Marsh, the chief of staff of the British Military Mission, Bermondt's units in the fight against the Red Army were transferred to the Daugavpils section of the front .

When the German government canceled the further financing of the army on September 30, 1919, Bermondt appointed himself Governor General of Western Russia with his own civil administration. In Germany the so-called Bermondt money was illegally printed; The former state forests of Courland served as cover . He was among other things also by an obscure branch of the Order of St. John and by JP Morgan jun. financially supported.

In his book Meine Sendung in Finland und im Baltikum , Rüdiger von der Goltz describes the objectives of the Bermondt Corps as follows: Since the German troops were to be withdrawn from Courland and the Entente did not tolerate German interventions in Russia, a corps of volunteers under Russian leadership should be fight against the Bolsheviks. Bermondt was considered to be pro-German and anti-Bolshevik. That is why he was entrusted with the leadership of this corps.

During the fighting in November 1919, his troops were defeated by the Latvian army. After the defeat at Riga in November 1919, Bermondt initially moved to Denmark, promoted himself to major general and then lived in Germany.

From 1933 after the National Socialists came to power , he was chairman of a Russian National Socialist movement that was dissolved in 1939 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact . After a period of imprisonment, Bermondt was expelled from Germany. He first moved to Belgrade , but went to the United States in 1941.

Others

• In 1919 Bermondt-Avalov donated a commemorative medal for the fighters of the Western Russian Liberation Army. The medal was made of bronze and was awarded between 1919 and 1921.

Awards

• Russian Order of Saint George , twice
• Order of St. Vladimir with swords

Works

• In the fight against Bolshevism. Memories of General Prince Awaloff. Commander-in-chief of the German-Russian Western Army , Glückstadt, Hamburg: JJ Augustin , 1925.

Web links

• Pawel Michailowitsch Bermondt-Awaloff in the online version of the files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic
• Biography (russian)

literature

• Kurt von Braatz: Prince Anatol Pawlowitsch Lieven . Chr.Belser, Stuttgart 1926.
• Representations from the post-war battles of German troops and Freikorps. Vol. 3: The fighting in the Baltic States after the second capture of Riga. June to December 1919 , Berlin 1938.
• Michael Kellogg: The Russian roots of Nazism: white émigrés and the making of National Socialism 1917–1945. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, ISBN 0-521-84512-2 (p. 100).
• Wilhelm Lenz : The German Reich policy, the Bermondt company and the Baltic Germans 1918/1919 . In: Boris Meissner , Dietrich André Loeber , Detlef Henning (eds.): The German ethnic group in Latvia during the interwar period and current issues of German-Latvian relations . Bibliotheca Baltica, Tallinn 2000, ISBN 9985-800-21-4 , pp. 15-39.
• Paluszyński Tomasz, Walka o niepodległość Łotwy 1914–1921 , Warszawa 1999.
• Paluszyński Tomasz, Walka o niepodległość Estonii 1914–1920 , Poznań 2007.
• Rüdiger von der Goltz: My broadcast in Finland and the Baltic States . Publisher K F. Koehler, Leipzig 1920.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ according to his own statement in his book "In the fight against Bolshevism" he was born in 1884.
2. ^ The fighting in the Baltic States after the second capture of Riga (1938).
3. ^ Wilhelm Lenz: The German Reich Policy, the Bermondt Company and the Baltic Germans 1918/1919 . In: Boris Meissner , Dietrich André Loeber , Detlef Henning (eds.): The German ethnic group in Latvia during the interwar period and current issues of German-Latvian relations . Bibliotheca Baltica, Tallinn 2000, ISBN 9985-800-21-4 , pp. 15–39, here pp. 28–29.
4. ^ Jobst Knigge: Continuity of German War Aims in the Baltic States. The German Baltic Policy 1918/19 and the Continuity Problem, Hamburg 2003.
5. ^ Wilhelm Lenz: The German Reich Policy, the Bermondt Company and the Baltic Germans 1918/1919 . In: Boris Meissner , Dietrich André Loeber , Detlef Henning (eds.): The German ethnic group in Latvia during the interwar period and current issues of German-Latvian relations . Bibliotheca Baltica, Tallinn 2000, ISBN 9985-800-21-4 , pp. 15–39, here p. 34.
6. ^ Wilhelm Lenz: The German Reich Policy, the Bermondt Company and the Baltic Germans 1918/1919 . In: Boris Meissner , Dietrich André Loeber , Detlef Henning (eds.): The German ethnic group in Latvia during the interwar period and current issues of German-Latvian relations . Bibliotheca Baltica, Tallinn 2000, ISBN 9985-800-21-4 , pp. 15–39, here p. 36.
7. ↑ The baltic campaign of the Knights of Malta ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English). 
8. ↑ From the chapter “The Origin of the Bermondt Corps”, p. 225: “Securing the higher command was all the more important as I planned the establishment of the Bermondt Corps especially in the event that the German troops were on command the government of the Entente had to evacuate the former Russian heritage. Since the German soldiers did not want to return home, but they could not stay as settlers if they had not prevailed against the then reluctant Ulmanis government by force, all that remained was for them to enter Russian service. If a Russian-German army was formed here in the Baltic States, which advanced from the west via Dünaburg to Vitebsk-Wileijka, while Kolchak and Denikin attacked the Bolsheviks from the east and south, the evacuation of the VI. Reserve corps no longer critical for East Prussia either. The offensive into the interior of Russia, which the German government did not permit, could finally be carried out. One could hope, with the completion of the Bolshevik rule in Russia, to put an end to the constant influence of the German Bolsheviks by Russian money and Russian propaganda and to kill the internal Bolshevism in Germany, the hydra of the German revolution, which was constantly eating more and more to the left To crush your head. "
9. ↑ Commemorative medal of the Russian Volunteer Western Army with picture  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
10. ↑ http://www.hermann-historica.de/auktion/hhm48.pl?f=NR&c=33416&t=temartic_2_D&db=kat48_2.txt  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .