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.
CHAPTER XVI
EPILOGUE
Many hundreds of relics were collected in and around Ekaterinburg by the law, and more particularly by the military, officers of the White government. The larger number had no value as clues. They were personal belongings—jewelry, clothing, linen—that had been stolen before and after the murder. By Admiral Kolchak’s orders, this property was taken to Vladivostok by General Diterichs in February, 1919, and sent to the Tsar’s sister the Grand Duchess Xenia as next-of-kin.
Those of the Romanovs who had not been in the power of the Soviets and had succeeded in leaving the country were destitute. The total fortune belonging to the Tsar in England amounted to £500.
Two days after the murder, the Soviet government issued a decree declaring all the property and possessions of the Romanovs forfeited to them. This act had a double purpose: to afford any banks holding funds to the credit of the family a pretext for non-payment; to “legitimise” the robbery of the corpses in the wood and the appropriation of the valuables left in Ekaterinburg.
The ropes of pearls and the matchless pearl necklaces snatched from the bodies have been the objects of barter on the Continental and London markets. Red missions smuggled in a huge quantity of jewels belonging to the Crown and to the Romanovs personally as well as to other individuals—all “forfeited” in the same manner.