Although this last aim was not realized (and would have profited little if it had been) the Czechs performed a service of inestimable consequence to the Allies by acting in conjunction with the Anti-Bolshevik Siberian troops, and with the small Allied Eastern Expedition of Great Britain, Japan and the United States, in holding the Trans-Siberian open from Omsk to the coast, so preventing the transportation of many thousands of German prisoners back to Germany. When the Archangel fiasco was brought to a close they withdrew to their own country in October, 1919. And, reviewing the whole unproductive Russian effort in retrospect, the Czechs came closest towards a realization of the mythical "Eastern Front," for, while they could not engage in aggressive action, they did much by negative methods, denying Germany great numbers of returning soldiers that might have been welded into a considerable effective combat force for the Western theatres of war had they been free to enter their country from the Eastern frontier.
The hopelessness of a junction between the Archangel Expedition and the Czechs became certain at the beginning of the northern campaign, and General Poole was advised by the British War Intelligence that Gaida had been driven back in Samara five hundred miles from Viatka and could advance no farther before the commencement of winter.
Still the optimistic Allied Staff clung tenaciously to the belief that all the Anti-Bolshevik Russians could be joined, the Czechs, the Cossacks that General Denekin had organized between the northern Caucasus and the sea of Azov, and a group of loyal officers of the Imperial Army with General Korniloff along the Don. It was within the Allied range of possibilities that all these scattered groups might join the British, French and Americans on the Siberian railway, and after the Staff was thoroughly committed to an offensive campaign, there arose the hope of cooperation from the friendly Russian forces in Siberia. On 18th September, 1918, at Ufa, there was a meeting of representatives from the Governments of Archangel, Eastern and Western Siberia, Samara and Vologda, which purported to form a Central government of all Russia, and to restore the Constituent Assembly.
On 25th October, this group moved to Omsk, created Admiral Kolchak Military Dictator 18th November, and proposed to raise a strong armed force to purge Russia of Bolshevism for all time.
The Allied governments were quick to recognize this Omsk group as the de facto government of Russia.
It was hoped that the armies of Admiral Kolchak could get in communication with the Allied Forces working down from the Arctic.
This, then, was the culmination of the first stage of the campaign: There was to be a junction of the Americans, French and British from the North; Czecho-Slovaks, and the armies of Kolchak from the East; Korniloff and Denekin from the South. Tens of thousands of patriotic Russians were to join the colors of these armies, converging somewhere on the Trans-Siberian, between Perm and Vologda; from Vologda the way would be unopposed to Petrograd, and from Petrograd the Allied-Russian legions would move on and reconstruct the Eastern front, threatening Germany from the northeast!
There was nothing lacking in the imagination of the plans of the Allied High Command, whatever else might be said about them.
The Northern Expedition with great combative esprit set forth vigorously to traverse Archangel the whole length of the province by river and railway with two "Columns" which were even to penetrate well into Vologda Province. Starting from Archangel, the Dvina river and the Vologda railway rapidly diverged east and west, so that at the first point of contact with the enemy, the two main bodies of the invader were seventy-five miles apart; and if their object, i.e., to reach the Trans-Siberian had been realized, they would have been four hundred miles apart on that railway.
There was no wire communication between these Allied Railway and River Forces, and of course liaison over the lateral terrain impassable swamp in fall, and a field of deep floundering snow in winter, was impossible.