Season 6, Episode 2- The Polar Bears of World War 1

The Detroit History Podcast

A group of soldiers from metro Detroit and Michigan boarded a trip ship bound for war-torn Europe during the closing months of World War I. Instead, they were diverted to Russia, just south of the Arctic Circle. They battled the Bolsheviks, who had just deposed Russia’s Czar. They fought in temperatures as low as 40-below zero, and continued fighting even after World War I came to an end in November 1918. Mike Grobbel, grandson of one of the members of the “Polar Bear Expedition,” tells their story. And George Baier recreates their mutiny.