Chapter XV: The Red Kaiser

When Yakovlev failed to remove the Tsarevich from Tobolsk and to “convert” the Tsar, he disappointed Mirbach more than he disappointed Sverdlov.

The Jews feared the Russians, but the Germans wanted to use them. The Red Tsar planned to exterminate the Romanovs, but the Red Kaiser proposed to reinstate Nicholas.

For a time their respective schemes assumed divergent courses; in the end, Wilhelm’s agents realised that they could not dissociate themselves from the Red Tsar, and it was the latter’s plan that prevailed. But, morally as well as practically, the German hand which had brought the Jew murderers into Russia controlled and directed the assassins’ work. Only when Berlin realised that the Romanovs were irrevocably on the side of the Entente did they release the hands of the murderers.

The proposal that Yakovlev brought to Tobolsk was much more insidious than the Tsar understood it to be. Nicholas was not only to endorse the peace concluded at Brest; he was to seize the reins of power with the help of German bayonets and to give his only son to be a lawful Tsar under German tutelage.

This meant the intervention of Russia in the war again, but on the German side. The Red Kaiser and his staff did not trust their Red agents any more.

While Yakovlev went to Tobolsk as envoy extraordinary of the Tsik (but in reality of the German G.H.Q.) the official representative of Germany to the Soviet Government, with which she was in treaty and in virtual alliance, was summoning a secret conference of Anti-Soviet Russians to arrange for the advent of the “new government” desired by Ludendorff.

It was a very pretty scheme, quite on German lines. But it failed at every point. The Germans once more had shown a total incapacity to understand human nature. Nicholas scorned the base overtures; the Russian _intelligentsia_ displayed, on this occasion, a sound understanding of their duties and interests.[15] The illness of Alexis was another obstacle, though in itself it made no difference.

Sverdlov was not disturbed by Yakovlev’s failure to bring Nicholas and Alexis to Moscow. He had his agents everywhere. While Soloviev acted as watch-dog over the captives of Tobolsk so that no stranger to German plans should spirit them away, innumerable Red Solovievs hemmed the captives in. The common herd of the Soviets knew nothing, of course. The strings were cunningly, discreetly pulled from Moscow according to the best methods of Potsdam and the Wilhelmstrasse.

No sooner had Yakovlev started on the terrible rush of 160 miles over bogs and rivers running deep water over breaking ice to Tiumen than the Jewish conclave in Ekaterinburg received its orders--to stop the travellers at all costs. Omsk was at once “stampeded” by the false statement that Yakovlev was trying to arrange a rescue. Yakovlev was really seeking to escape the North Ural net by taking the south Ural route. He did not have to go through Omsk at all, but to change from the Perm on to the Samara line. There was no escaping out of the country by that route then. It could lead only to Moscow. Nevertheless, this train was turned back to Ekaterinburg. Sverdlov did not really want the Romanovs to go further. He could not afford to quarrel openly with his former paymasters, but he was probably shrewd enough and sufficiently well informed to suspect their secret designs.

The talk of a trial in Moscow did not begin till much later, when Moscow rumour reported the Tsar as already defunct, and solely as an antidote to those rumours, as they threatened to upset the plan of murder.

Sakovich, formerly surgeon in a hussar regiment and ex-ultra-monarchist, appertained to the Ural Regional Sovdep as Komisar of Health. He deposed afterwards that he had overheard Goloshchekin, Safarov and Voikov discussing with Beloborodov the alternative of wrecking the train with Nicholas Romanov or of “arranging” an accident. In the former case, the responsibility would be placed on “counter-revolutionaries” trying to effect a rescue. He did not listen to all the details as it did not concern his department. But the Jews did not have to carry out the plan then. The Germans were still in favour of the survival of Nicholas. The idea was utilised some months later at Alapaevsk. I have a copy of the message sent afterwards to Moscow and Petrograd in which the murderers seriously describe the “rescue” staged by them after the murder as having been the cause of the grand ducal “disappearance.”

The Romanovs were suffered to live. A German mission (ostensibly Red Cross) came to Ekaterinburg at the end of May to ascertain all about the life of the “residents of Ipatiev’s house,” as the Imperial prisoners were officially styled. These spies went straight to Berlin with their report. The Red Kaiser knew full well what torments were being endured by those whom he had professed to cherish, who after all were his kith and kin. He could have saved them at any time. But ... they would not be saved by him....

Mirbach’s death did not, perhaps, introduce any modification of the plan of slaughter. He was assassinated one week before the event. The Bolsheviks declared that his death was an act of provocation committed by their Socialist opponents and gravely resolved that they must not quarrel with Germany, because that would only be playing into the hands of the assassins. This solemn farce had a deeper meaning.

During the summer of that year the Siberian anti-Bolshevist units began to grow in numbers and strength. The Germans had themselves foolishly promoted this reaction by arresting the departure of the Czechs and compelling them to fight. A Siberian Army was quickly springing into existence. It might drive the Red Tsar out of Moscow and thus, instead of an ally or agent there, the Red Kaiser would find himself confronted by a hostile Russia. The war was slowly dragging to its fateful end; every battalion counted. The Entente knew what the assistance of Russia meant, so the Entente went to the aid of the Czechs and Siberians.

Ludendorff does justice to this tragic dilemma in his book of “War Memories” “...the Entente, realising that they could not work with a Government which looked for support to Germany, took action against Bolshevism, and instead of sending these troops (the Czechs) to France, held them up along the Siberian railway on the frontier between Russia and Siberia, in order to fight the Government in Moscow. In addition to this, by garrisoning the railway, the Entente prevented the return of our prisoners of war from Siberia. This was unquestionably a serious loss to us.” (Vol. II, p. 654.)

The holding up of the Czechs was Ludendorff’s own work. He is ashamed to admit it, and puts the cart before the horse in pleading that the Entente displayed such far-sighted activity. Moreover, it was precisely the German-Magyar prisoners of war who, rallying to the appeal of their Kaisers, stopped the departure of the Czechs. Ludendorff is too modest. But his statement makes one point crystal-clear: that in the German view the plan to get rid of the played-out Red Tsar, to put a subservient White Tsar in his place, had to be dropped. The Red Tsar might be useful yet. As Dr. Ritzler had remarked: “The Bolsheviks are still necessary.”

The usefulness of the Bolsheviks was to be twofold: (1) to defend the German front in Russia; (2) to prevent the White Tsar from joining the Russian forces of the Entente.

This being the story of the Tsar’s murder, we are concerned chiefly with the second part of Yankel Sverdlov’s German programme. How was it to be carried out, so that there should be no possible mistake? Obviously, there was only one way--through death’s dark portals. To bring the Tsar or the Tsarevich to Moscow would involve risks. The Jews were in a fright; telegrams discovered in Ekaterinburg show that they trusted none of the Russians in their employ. That is why the Romanovs remained in Ekaterinburg.

Four days before Mirbach’s assassination, consequently while the Red Tsar had his daily audiences with the representative of the Red Kaiser, Goloshchekin was already in Moscow, had discussed the murder with Sverdlov, and had telegraphed to Beloborodov to send another member of the Conclave to Moscow.

The Germans approved the murder; there can be no doubt on this point. The position held by Mirbach in Moscow, his daily reports from the members of the Red Inquisition, which naturally had the closest connection with the arrangements for the murder, such as the sending to Ekaterinburg of the ten Magyar-German “Letts” as executioners, are conclusive evidences. The Red Tsar and the Red Kaiser were in accord.

But it was absolutely essential that no Russians should be left inside the house where the Romanovs were to die. Whether the Germans assented to the wholesale slaughter that took place remains in doubt. By that time Mirbach had gone to his last account, and the bloodthirstiness of the Jewish murderers perhaps exceeded the German design, and therein may be found a good reason for the report of the “safety” of the family, but the Red Kaiser cannot escape responsibility for the whole crime, any more than can the Red Tsar who planned it and the Soviet _régime_ that rendered such a crime possible.

Here is a translation of the original typewritten telegram found in the archives of the Telegraph Office in Ekaterinburg and included in the _dossier_:

“MOSCOW.

“_To President of_ TSIK SVERDLOV _for_ GOLOSHCHEKIN.

“Syromolotov has just gone for organisation of affair in accordance
with directions of Centre. Apprehensions unfounded stop Avdeiev
superseded, his assistant Moshkin arrested. Yurovsky replaces
Avdeiev. Interior guard all relieved replaced by others. stop.
4558.

“BELOBORODOV.”

Below the text in black ink is marked the date: “4/VII” and further, in ink of the same colour: “Telegram received,” after which in black pencil is the signature: “Komisar To ...” (the rest of the name illegible), this representative of the Soviet being in charge of the telegraph office and endorsing all official messages as they were handed in for transmission.

This message needs no explanation. It is a full and crushing confirmation of all that has preceded: Fear of the Russians; preparation of the murder; direction of the plan from Moscow; and eagerness of the local Jews to anticipate the signal for the butchery. The horrible servility of the dummy president Beloborodov is disclosed in all its nakedness. He hastens to assure his Jewish masters that their “apprehensions” are “unfounded.” The German-Magyars who had done their best to carry out the Red Kaiser’s behest to capture Siberia and to crush any hope of Russia’s military revival, they were now called in to consummate the Red Kaiser’s plan by murdering the Tsar.

For all that has been stated in these chapters there is unimpeachable authority. There is the _dossier_. And there is the overwhelming corroboration of the horrible realities that have converted a large part of Europe into a charnel, Russia into a pest-house and the rest of the world into a hot-bed of unrest.

And pre-eminent among the Doers of Evil, murderers and despoilers, has been the Red Kaiser.

When, in 1915, he wrote to the Tsar, asking him to recall the days when they were friends, and Nicholas, mindful of the bitter lessons that friendship had entailed, replied that those days must forever be forgotten, Wilhelm of Hohenzollern started the machinery that was to sweep out of existence the Tsardom and Russia, and the hapless Romanovs.

In the autumn of 1915 there assembled in Vienna the representatives of the German and Austrian General-Staffs to discuss a plan for the promotion of a revolutionary movement in Russia. It was then that all the outlines of the “Russian” revolution were laid down; it was at this meeting that the leading actors in the Red tragedy were chosen: the Lenins and the Sverdlovs and the host of Jewish wreckers, who spent the interval between their engagement and their appearance on the Russian stage in the calm of Swiss resorts, studying and rehearsing their parts.

The money that financed the “Russian” revolution was German money, and--I say it on the strongest evidence which can be corroborated in the German secret archives--YANKEL SVERDLOV RECEIVED A SALARY FROM THE GERMANS TILL NOVEMBER 7, 1917, when, becoming Red Tsar of All the Russias, he had at his disposal loot unimaginable.

And thus it came to pass that the Germans who slew the Tsar and the Jews who organised, aided and abetted the murder each left his mark upon the walls of Ipatiev’s house.