The Race to Save the Romanovs

by Helen Rappaport

  * * *

  In his list of ten points relating to the matter, Wilhelm made numerous angry observations: why had the Danish king taken the step of contacting him direct in the spring of 1917 about the plight of the Romanovs, rather than acting in concert with the British king? Was it because the Danes sensed that the ‘desultory treatment of this urgent question’ by the British government would get them nowhere? Did news of the growing resistance to the Tsar’s asylum in England prompt fears that any rescue ‘was being jeopardised’ and that it would be more effective to address their appeals to the German emperor direct?69 Why had Copenhagen not shared the details of the negotiations between London and Petrograd – of which the Danes’ ambassador, Scavenius, was well aware – with the Kaiser? And why had the Danes not told the British about the military and naval arrangements that he, Wilhelm, was willing to make for effecting a safe evacuation of the Romanovs? Wilhelm had, he claimed, ‘expressed his readiness to co-operate with London for the rescue of the Tsar and his family’, but neutral Denmark had not transmitted this information to London. Was Sir George Buchanan not informed of Wilhelm’s generous offer?70 And why had it not been properly acknowledged? He was not just affronted that he had not been consulted, but was furious that ‘no steps were taken to ask Copenhagen to express the British Government’s grateful appreciation to the German Chancellor at this offer’.71

  Reading these notes, one’s immediate sense is that this is as much about Wilhelm’s fragile ego and his imperial sense of honour as it is about his desire to help his relatives. He expected the world to fall at his feet and acknowledge the nobility of his gesture, but instead he had been ignored. Why had his initiative been rejected? Was he deluding himself or was Wilhelm right to ask the question, made in his final point, no. 10:

  If the British people had … learnt of the offer of cooperation on the part of the German Emperor for the rescue of the Tsar, would they not out of the spirit of chivalry toward their ally have encouraged their Government to rescue the Tsar and his family?72

  Alas, Wilhelm’s mind was stuck in a mythical age of Teutonic heroism; such a ‘spirit of chivalry’ did not exist in the real world, and certainly not in wartime. Nor was anyone interested in responding to his obsessive attention-seeking.

  * * *

  But that is not the end of the Burg Hohenzollern documents; the file contains another lengthy annotation by the Kaiser, again in pencil, but this time in German. It comes at the end of a letter sent to him on 14 March 1931 by an émigré Russian journalist, Anatoly Gutman, at the end of which the Kaiser added his own impassioned observations. Quotations from this do not appear in the Waters published account, suggesting that Waters either was not privy to this exchange when writing his book (which seems unlikely given his close friendship with the Kaiser) or that he chose not to use it.

  Does this explain the absence of evidence that Summers and Mangold interpreted as evidence of absence?

  * * *

  At the time, Gutman – who wrote under the pseudonym Anatol Gan and was resident in Berlin – was working on a book about the murder of the Romanovs (which appears never to have been published) and asked the Kaiser for clarification on several points relating to his knowledge of the negotiations in the spring of 1917. Wilhelm responded that he was kept informed by his then Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg,* who told him of appeals that he had received from the Danish king via Stockholm. In response, Wilhelm had agreed that if the Imperial Family were to be evacuated by sea:

  The fleet in the Baltic and in the North Sea would secretly have to be informed of this at once, so that the ship – also eventually under a British or Danish flag – could be escorted. I would give the order as soon as the route was certain.73

  In the event of an evacuation by land, Wilhelm was ready to order a ‘brief ceasefire with opposing Russian troops’ in that section of the Eastern Front where the Tsar’s handover would take place. Nicholas would be brought ceremoniously through ‘the lines of his mutinous army’ to the German ones, where he would be allowed to pass with dignity, ‘among salutes due to a sovereign’. What is more, Wilhelm would ‘personally travel to the location and monitor the handover and receive the Imperial Family with all due honour’. ‘I was willing to be of assistance to the Tsar in any way – any dignified way,’ he insisted. But until the very day this happened ‘everything was to remain secret’.74

  Wilhelm goes on in these notes to claim that ‘after some considerable time’ Bethmann informed him that he had ‘favourably discussed a journey via Scandinavia with the Kerensky government [my italics], which seemed not unwilling to allow the Tsar to leave the country’. Wilhelm insisted to Kerensky, via Bethmann, that he ‘be informed of the chosen route as soon as possible to make the preparations’, to which Kerensky responded that he ‘would do everything to facilitate and support the departure of the Tsar’, placing a special train at his disposal; ‘for the presence of the Tsar was a serious impediment for him [my italics].’75

  The Germans were still awaiting further news from Kerensky when suddenly the announcement came: ‘The British had invited the Tsar to come to England and would take care of his departure.’76 The German rescue offer was stymied.

  * * *

  This till now unknown account by Wilhelm raises important questions. If true, it implies, first, that Kerensky was playing both governments – British and German – at the same time over the Romanov evacuation/ asylum; and, second, that the British, perhaps having got wind of the German plan for an evacuation, had rushed to gain a political advantage and pre-empt them, by making their telegram offer of 23 March. It also begs a final important question: if the British and Germans could have temporarily buried their political differences and acted in concert in March 1917, might this have been the best and only chance of a safe passage for the family?

  * * *

  ‘What an abyss of personal and political infamy this reveals,’ concluded Wilhelm in his notes to Gutman’s letter, ‘to consign an ally and friend to a certain death so that his chivalrous cousin – even though his opponent – should not be allowed to perform an act of chivalrous service that might possibly have had political disadvantages for England after the war.’77

  In the end, this entire story comes down to politics, expediency and strategy – not to mention the wounds to the Kaiser’s monumental ego – and not to any genuine humanitarian concerns.

  If Kerensky did indeed conduct secret negotiations with the Germans in the spring of 1917 to evacuate the Romanovs, no further surviving evidence has come to light, any more than there is proof that the British offer to bring the Tsar and his family out of Russia was a cynical attempt to score points over a hated enemy.

  Was it all the workings of the Kaiser’s deluded mind, or could there be some truth in this claim? The record, as in so many other aspects of this perplexing and tortuous story, is silent.

  Postscript

  ‘Nobody’s Fault’?

  Whatever the degree of responsibility of the King of Great Britain, the Kaiser of Germany and their various European royal relatives in the terrible fate of their Russian cousins, there is no doubt that the murder of the Romanovs at Ekaterinburg in 1918 was a pivotal event in the long history of European monarchy. It dealt a body blow to an institution that had persisted against the odds, through centuries of revolution, acts of terrorism and the constant threat of republicanism. The Great War that set its stamp on the twentieth century, destroying so many of these seemingly inviolable monarchies, proved that their days were numbered. In the post-war years they would all have to adapt as constitutional monarchies or be forced from power.

  Undoubtedly the most profoundly hostile threat to this old order had come from Bolshevism and its manifestations then threatening elsewhere in Europe. The murder of the Romanovs ‘helped produce an intense, almost visceral hatred’ among the European aristocracy for this new political scourge, for this was an ideology that sought the total annihilation of their kind.1 The ris
e of communism in its wake signalled to monarchies everywhere that the ‘divine right’ of kings and royal personal diplomacy, of the kind promoted by King Edward VII, was a thing of the past. Their continuation would only be possible with the consent of the people over whom they had dominion. Socialism and democracy were the new watchwords everywhere, and monarchs now had to resist their own inbred autocratic instincts and modernise.

  In November 1918, the Dutch monarchy fought off overthrow by the extreme left and in 1920 gave asylum to the deposed Kaiser; in Sweden, by 1919 King Gustav had been forced to capitulate to a centre-left administration; after a political crisis at Easter 1920, Christian X of Denmark conceded to abandoning his use of constitutional prerogatives; having survived the traumas of occupation in World War I, the Belgian king Albert I sought to unite the French and Flemish halves of his country as King of all Belgians; and in Norway, the consistently pragmatic King Haakon accepted the need for change, declaring in 1927: ‘I am also King of the Communists.’2 In April 1931, however, after a republican and socialist landslide in municipal elections, there was no hope of compromise for King Alfonso of Spain. Holed up with his family at the Escorial Palace in Madrid with an intimidating mob massing outside, waving their red flags and screaming ‘Death to the King! … We want the head of a son!’, Alfonso was terrified that a repetition of the fate of his Romanov relatives would be visited upon his own family. Although he did not formally abdicate, he had no option but to flee the country.3 A second Spanish Republic was proclaimed, and Alfonso eventually took refuge in Rome.

  Having seen their fellow royals come crashing down across Europe, and undoubtedly haunted by the murder of their Russian relatives, King George and Queen Mary were among the first monarchs to recognise the need for a dramatic refashioning of their public image. The republican contagion inspired by revolution in Russia had threatened to sweep them aside, and they knew it was essential that they won and retained the hearts of the British working classes. It was necessary also to defuse the threat of republicanism within the Labour Party itself, by promoting the legitimacy of the monarchy as a hands-on partnership with the people. In the post-war world, George V and Queen Mary shrewdly set out to entrench their more personal style of monarchy at the centre of national life, a trend that was continued by their son George VI and has probably reached its apotheosis in the reign of their granddaughter, Elizabeth II.4

  * * *

  In 1855–7, when writing his ‘J’accuse’-style novel Little Dorrit – a fierce indictment of government accountability and responsibility – Charles Dickens gave it the working title Nobody’s Fault. It was an ironic reflection on the complacency of officialdom and the passing of responsibility from one department to another during the debacle of the Crimean conflict of 1854–6, and of society’s collective guilt towards the downtrodden poor. The miseries of war and all it brought with it were ‘Nobody’s fault’. One might apply the same remark retrospectively to the collective guilt of the European monarchs and governments in the fate of the Romanovs. For in truth, their murders were Everybody’s – and Nobody’s – Fault.

  A persistent theme in the many accounts of the Romanovs in 1917–18 is the desire – if not compulsion – to apportion blame, often based on incomplete or faulty evidence. Some of the political participants in their own lifetimes were mindful of exonerating themselves while they still had the chance. Sir George Buchanan did his best to defend his position in 1922, hamstrung though he was by the Official Secrets Act. ‘The failure to rescue [the Imperial Family] did not lie at Lloyd George’s door,’ his secretary A. J. Sylvester assured the former Prime Minister’s son in 1983.5*

  In contrast to his fellow monarchs – King George, King Alfonso, King Haakon and King Christian – who kept their own counsel and never made any public statements, the Kaiser loudly protested his own purity of intent. Wilhelm’s conscience was clear: ‘I did all that was humanly possible … The blood of the unhappy Tsar is not at my door; not on my hands,’ he insisted to General Wallscourt Waters in 1935.6 What written records may or may not have existed in their private archives to enlighten us have either been destroyed or are still –100 years later – off-limits.

  Perhaps we should leave it to the Russian people themselves to best convey the continuing burden of guilt that they carry. When the Romanov remains were first discovered in the Koptyaki Forest outside Ekaterinburg and excavated in 1991, huge crowds made their way out to the site, in what seemed a spontaneous ‘collective act of penitence’. ‘This is the place where the suffering of the Russian people began,’ remarked the Archbishop of Ekaterinburg. Seven years later, President Boris Yeltsin – no doubt atoning for having ordered the demolition of the Ipatiev House in 1977 – made a significant speech on the subject. This came on 18 July 1998, when the remains of the Imperial Family (though without those of the still-missing Maria and Alexey) were buried at a high-profile ceremony at the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg, in front of an impressive gathering of surviving Romanovs. Now was the time, Yeltsin declared, for the Russian nation to acknowledge that ‘we all bear responsibility for the historical memory of the nation’. ‘The Yekaterinburg massacre’ was, he went on, ‘one of the most shameful episodes’ in Russian history. ‘Those who committed this crime are as guilty as are those who approved of it for decades. We are all guilty.’7

  Ultimately, the Russian people also bear a share of responsibility for what happened. It is a burden of which they are profoundly aware, as testified by the huge influx of pilgrims into Ekaterinburg every July. It can also be seen, more poignantly, in the posters of Nicholas II that are erected across Ekaterinburg during those July Days of pilgrimage and remembrance, which bear the words: Prosti menya, moi Gosudar! Forgive me, my Emperor.8

  * * *

  Having sought out and analysed as much surviving evidence as possible on the Romanov murders in the course of writing this book, one thought in particular persists and it is a crucial one, with which we all need to come to terms. As the Daily Telegraph noted as early as 1921: ‘It remains … to be proved, whether Nikolas II desired to leave Russia.’9

  If they had actually been presented with a real and viable evacuation or escape plan, what would the Romanovs have done?

  In the spring of 1917 they might have been prevailed upon to accept the offer of a temporary refuge in England for the duration of the war, although no doubt with a grudging regret. In 1934, writing from Lausanne to the Russian diplomat Nicholas de Basily, Pierre Gilliard had no doubt that the Romanovs had had no regrets about not being sent to England.* ‘The Empress in particular repeated to me on several occasions that it would have been an intolerable torture for her and especially the Emperor to live as deposed monarchs in London,’ he told de Basily.10

  The fantasy that Alexandra in particular seemed to have nursed was of a liberation that would have allowed them to remain in Russia – hidden away somewhere remote, until a possible White victory facilitated a restoration of the monarchy. Right up until July 1918, she and Nicholas might well have responded positively to rescue by loyal Russian monarchists. But whatever the manner of their liberation, it had to be bloodless. They were absolutely insistent on that, which in itself made rescue virtually impossible. It is clear that during their imprisonment at Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg the entire Imperial Family recoiled in horror at the prospect of anyone being killed or injured as a result of any rescue. And they showed great concern, always, about having to leave their loyal servants behind to face the consequences of their escape.

  Would the family ever have countenanced being freed, if it meant being forced to abandon their beloved Russia for ever? This seems highly unlikely; Alexandra told Gilliard they would have been utterly ‘desolate’ to have had to do so; and the children also said as much to him many times when he was with them at Tobolsk.11 To leave Russia would have been an act of betrayal of Mother Russia and a final acceptance of the irrevocable destruction of their world. They would not have been able to reconcile leavi
ng with their devoutly Russian Orthodox consciences.

  Looking at the sequence of events today, one cannot help thinking this: if only Alexandra had acted quickly and decisively and had got her children out to safety immediately after the revolution had broken in Petrograd, no matter how sick they were. The bitter truth is that there was one – and only one – real window of opportunity for escape and that was before Nicholas abdicated on 15 March 1917. Till that moment, as Tsaritsa, she still had the power to do something, before the net tightened around them all at the Alexander Palace.

  Ultimately – and whether or not we are Romanov sympathisers or detractors – there is one enduring, painful truth, which is that Russia’s last Imperial Family almost certainly would have refused to leave Russia under any circumstances, preferring to die together in the country they loved. By July 1918 they were reconciled to their fate; they had each other and that was all that mattered. Whatever the future held for them, whatever the suffering, it had to be shared – together, and in Russia. Ekaterinburg was their Calvary.

  As their reply of 11 June 1918 to the second ‘officer letter’ stated so plaintively:

  Nous ne voulons et ne pouvons pas FUIRE …

  We do not want to and cannot ESCAPE …12

  The last family wedding attended by Queen Victoria, Coburg 1894. Victoria, centre, with her eldest daughter the Dowager Empress of Prussia. Left, the Young Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and immediately behind him Tsarevich Nicholas of Russia and his fiancée Princess Alexandra of Hesse and By Rhine.

  Nine reigning European monarchs at the 1910 funeral of King Edward VII. Back, L–R: Haakon VII of Norway; Ferdinand of the Bulgarians; Manuel II of Portugal; Wilhelm II of Germany; George I of Greece and Albert I of the Belgians. Front, L–R: Alfonso XIII of Spain; George V of the United Kingdom and Frederick VIII of Denmark.