A nasty little war

The untold history of the Western invasion of Soviet Russia – and the tragedy it created. In the closing months of WW1, with the world exhausted by a long, brutal war, 15 nations cobbled together an army of nearly 200,000 men and embarked on one of the most extraordinary and ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. The Intervention in Russia’s civil war was spearheaded by Britain, her colonial forces and allies. It was designed to stop the Bolsheviks in their tracks, reinstate conservative regimes in the Russian Empire and ensure that Germany did not fill the power vacuum which the Russian Revolution had created. 18 months later – after a long and bloody conflict between the Reds and the Whites, the execution of the former tsar and his family, and brutal famine – the British, American and French forces marched out again, surrendering to the unstoppable force of Soviet power.