Bloody Baron-wank TL?

I wanna do a TL where the Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg manages to unify Russia, China (at least some parts of it) and Mongolia creating a vast dominion covering the northern half of Eurasia in which he is supreme ruler.

The initial idea for a POD is that Grigory Semyonov, his superior before going to Mongolia in 1920 dies sometime around 1918 or '19 making the Baron, chief warlord of the relatively small Transbaikal region. With this position, he inherits a small army of bandits and cossacks and Japanese support. Later when the Far Eastern Republic comes along, he is "asked" by the Japanese to merge his small Transbaikal fiefdom into the new entity, relinquishing his warlord status and rule over it, joining instead the FER.'s army as Major General or some such rank. He launches a coup that topples President Krasnoshchyokov and he installs himself as the new ruler of the FER.

With the Baron as leader of the FER, joining with Soviet Russia which the OTL leaders of the FER did willingly is out of the question. He instead tries to strengthen ties with the Japanese and even presents them with an attractive offer to invade Mongolia. He will use Japanese support until the point where he becomes self suficient and powerful enough to pursue his own agenda.

Is the POD plausible and can it lead to the desired outcome of the Baron's mega empire? Thoughts and suggestions?

I'd say he was too insane to pull it off. He'd lose power in a coup sooner or later.

LordInsane said:

I'd say he was too insane to pull it off. He'd lose power in a coup sooner or later.

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Hitler, Lenin & Stalin were all insane to some extent but nobody called them that because their actions were justified through an ideology. The Baron had a set of interesting ideas that could have been an ideology but he never organized them into one. If he does that, all he has to do is propagate it amongst his people and there you go.

And the chance of a coup happening is just as likely as a coup not happening and with firm Japanese support, any coup against him would have a much lesser chance of succeeding. There was actually an initially successful secessionist coup in the FER, but it was quickly overturned by the Japanese.

Hamburger said:

Hitler, Lenin & Stalin were all insane to some extent but nobody called them that because their actions were justified through an ideology. The Baron had a set of interesting ideas that could have been an ideology but he never organized them into one. If he does that, all he has to do is propagate it amongst his people and there you go.

And the chance of a coup happening is just as likely as a coup not happening and with firm Japanese support, any coup against him would have a much lesser chance of succeeding. There was actually an initially successful secessionist coup in the FER, but it was quickly overturned by the Japanese.

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The problem is that Stalin was an alarmist paranoid, Hitler a charismatic schizophrenic and Lenin, well, more obsessed than crazy. None of them were a stark raving lunatic. Some sorts of madness lend themselves better to ruling a country than others.

Admiral Canaris said:

The problem is that Stalin was an alarmist paranoid, Hitler a charismatic schizophrenic and Lenin, well, more obsessed than crazy. None of them were a stark raving lunatic. Some sorts of madness lend themselves better to ruling a country than others.

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Mongolia did pretty well under his brief rule. Sure his army terrorized the population and Jews and Chinese were hanged in public but at the same time, he introduced paper currency, built bridges, arranged a public transport system and even put up a library containing religious texts and schools that taught kids Buddhist ethics. This was the peacetime Baron von Sternberg.

Remember, he fell because of a Bolshevik incursion into Mongolia not due to any internal reasons like his own people revolting or economic collapse.

Hamburger said:

Mongolia did pretty well under his brief rule. Sure his army terrorized the population and Jews and Chinese were hanged in public but at the same time, he introduced paper currency, built bridges, arranged a public transport system and even put up a library containing religious texts and schools that taught kids Buddhist ethics. This was the peacetime Baron von Sternberg.

Remember, he fell because of a Bolshevik incursion into Mongolia not due to any internal reasons like his own people revolting or economic collapse.

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Well, it's hard to find objective sources on the topic (for that matter, any reliable sources at all). I'd somehow gotten the impression that he was a rampant maniac, though the small number of sources I have found lacked much detail and may have been biased.

He could at most take over Mongolia than maybe a little bit of Russia and than Outer Mongolia

Hamburger said:

Mongolia did pretty well under his brief rule. Sure his army terrorized the population and Jews and Chinese were hanged in public but at the same time, he introduced paper currency, built bridges, arranged a public transport system and even put up a library containing religious texts and schools that taught kids Buddhist ethics. This was the peacetime Baron von Sternberg.

Remember, he fell because of a Bolshevik incursion into Mongolia not due to any internal reasons like his own people revolting or economic collapse.

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You know, somehow I can't rationalize the introduction of paper money as improving Mongolia while people are being hung in the public square. Maybe that's just me, though.