THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE DYNASTY

The spark that would light the fire and subsequently burn the Romanovs' shaky throne to the ground was the Great War, which started in August 1914. The purpose here is not to go into the causes of the Great War, the subject which has already occupied volume after volume of Russian history, but to discuss the cause of the start of hostilities as the same relates to the action of Nicholas II and then the effect that the war itself had on Nicholas II and the dynasty. Fate played an unhappy trick on the world in 1914 with respect to the rulers of Russia, Germany, Austria, and England. Three were absolute monarchies and the fourth a constitutional monarchy. Three of the then monarchs had succeeded their fathers, all of whom would have taken every opportunity to avoid a general European war. Nicholas's father, Alexander III, was well known for his adversity to any kind of armed conflict. Alexander III would have exercised every bit of his forceful personality and ability to avoid the conflict. In the same way, Kaiser Wilhelm II, also an absolute monarch, succeeded his father, Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm, who was indoctrinated in the art of liberal educated ruling by both his wife, Princess Victoria of Britain, and her father, the German born Albert, Prince Consort and husband of Queen Victoria of Britain. Kaiser Wilhelm II's father died after only 99 days on the throne from a terrible cancer of the throat. Nicholas II's father died at the early age of 49 and, therefore, would easily have been on the throne in 1914 had he lived. The constitutional monarch, George V of England, had, of course, no absolute power, as did his other two first cousins, the Kaiser and the Tsar, but an abler, more experienced monarch might have been able to calm the passions that arose in July 1914. Had his diplomatic father, the suave Edward VII, still been on the throne, he doubtless would have had more effect on events than did George V. Edward VII died at the age of 70, only four years before the start of the Great War, so he would, had he lived a long life, easily have been on the throne in 1914. Combining these three, perhaps the worst fateful reality was that the fourth throne, Austria-Hungary, was occupied by an absolute monarch, Franz Joseph, who having ruled for 60 years, had long outlived his expectancy on the throne. The Austro-Hungarian government and its general staff knew that Franz Joseph was effectively a dead weight on the top of the crumbling pyramid of the empire. His nephew and heir, Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination helped ignite the war, although not popular, was somewhat more liberal than Franz Joseph and at least would have entered into the deliberations and could not have been less helpful to the cause of peace than Franz Joseph. Thus, the three men on the thrones of Europe who could have helped prevent the catastrophe were dead, and followed by their three less effective sons, while the one emperor who failed to take any constructive action to forestall the catastrophe lived on and on.

There was a reason the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's death resulted in the chaos it did. After Austrian threats against Serbia, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave Austria Germany's promised military support, to which Nicholas responded by giving Serbia Russia's backing. The Kaiser and Nicholas both contributed to the incendiary atmosphere by mobilizing their troops along the common border. Nicholas, partly in the control of his general staff, and the Kaiser, partly in the control of his general staff, nevertheless exercised what little independent judgment they used in an unwise manner. Orders by either one to their general staffs could have obtained a delay which, if it did not prevent the war, certainly would not have allowed it to f lame into action in the first week of August 1914. Nicholas, as always indecisive and in agreement with the last strong opinion he received, put Russia on a wartime footing. The Kaiser, always egotistic, belligerent, and unintelligent, cooperated in the mistake and, therefore, he and Nicholas together sent their peoples and armies into a collision which would destroy them both.

The tragedy of the war was not only the slaughter of millions of soldiers and innocent civilians but the disasters it brought to many of the ruling families, including the Hohenzollerns of Germany, the Hapsburgs of Austria, and the Romanovs of Russia. Nicholas's fate was the swiftest, primarily because the war was an internal disaster for Russia. At the start of the war, Nicholas enjoyed perhaps his greatest popularity when people patriotically rallied behind the Tsar, who vowed to rid Russian soil of the foreign troops. A great surge of nationalism enveloped Nicholas in August of 1914. By the end of 1914, the patriotic fervor had largely disappeared. The country learned that the government and the senior military officers were noted primarily for inefficiency, inability, and corruption. The Russian army was not ready to fight a twentieth century war. It consisted of huge masses of manpower which were thrown wave after wave against the enemy. During the campaigns on the eastern front of 1914, the Russian army went into action with railroads that couldn't supply them, rifles unworkable or without cartridges, artillery pieces with shells of the wrong caliber, and some men armed with sticks and pitchforks. The Russian military tactics often consisted of rushing huge lines of soldiers against entrenched German machine gun battalions. German officers later told of having required their men to go out in front of the machine guns and clear away the Russian corpses as they became stacked so high that the machine guns did not have a clear field of fire. Five months after the start of the war, at the end of December 1914, the Russian military had suffered one million casualties.

Although at this point public blame rested primarily with the cabinet and the military, some of the shock, horror, and disappointment invariably spilled over on the Tsar. Nicholas perhaps might have been able to avoid some of the repercussions had not he made what must be one of the most disastrous decisions of his reign when he assumed personal command of the army in September 1915, discharging his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas, known as Nicholasha, who had been commander in chief of the Russian forces and whose commanding physical stature occasioned great respect. Though not a military strategist on the order of some of the Great War generals, Nicholasha, nevertheless, was respected by the army and was an imposing figure and a bulwark to his troops, none of which fit the definition of Tsar Nicholas II as commander in chief. Further, by the time Nicholas assumed the command, only military disasters awaited, with the exception of the...