9. The American intervention in Siberia
When the Russian government under Vladimir Lenin ended Russian involvement in World War I a body of Allied troops from Czechoslovakia which had been serving as a unit of the Imperial Russian Army was promised free passage to Vladivostok by Lenin. Instead the unit became trapped in Siberia, beset by Red Army troops. One of the stated goals of the North Russia intervention was the reaching of the Czech units, which were collectively known as the Czechoslovak Legion, to allow them to rejoin the Allies in the fight against the Central Powers. The collapse of the Germans on the Western Front and the end of hostilities removed that imperative from the western Allies.
Nonetheless, President Wilson had made freeing the Legion one of the stated aims of the United States when he ordered the military intervention in Russia, and besides attempting to achieve it through the Polar Bear Expedition he ordered another expedition to Siberia through the port of Vladivostok, the Pacific terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. He supported that aim with another stated goal, that of protecting the large amount of military and medical supplies which had been shipped to Vladivostok by the United States for the use of Imperial Russia from being seized by the Red Army. Beginning in August 1918 American troops began landing in the Russian port, eventually swelling in number to about 8,000 men, where they joined a contingent of British, Japanese, Russian, Italian, and French forces.