Welcomed unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. He swam back to consciousness. The line of fire burned across his belly where the knife had slashed him open. But Grigory Rasputant's mind was already charging ahead to what came next after the attack and who was behind it. In fact, when he came to Rasputin told the people around him that he knew who was to blame, the
mad monk Iliodora. After the two men finally severed their friendship, Grigory must have known it was only a matter of time before one of Iliodora's followers would follow his signature command for violence. As time would reveal, Rasputin was right. The woman who had attacked him in the street outside his house was a follower of Iliodora's violent teachings. She had even met Rasputin before, when the two teachers were
still traveling together. Now, like so many others in Russia, she had come to believe that rasputants prophecies were false and his spirit was polluted with vile habits and selfish ambitions. She believed that it was Rasputin who had turned on Iliador. So she set out to avenge her chosen leader with a fifteen inch dagger on a white bone handle. In fact,
she had come to see Resputant as the Antichrist. She tracked him to Crimea a year earlier, but by the time she arrived, he had already set out elsewhere again, so she followed him first to St. Petersburg and then on to Siberia. When she arrived at Pokrovsko, she rented a room and waited until she judged the time was right. Now she had left the resputant family in a panic, calling for doctors. A surgeon from the hospital in the nearby city raced by horse and carriage to Pekrowsko to
try and save Resputant. When he arrived, he could see how grave the situation was. Grigory was on the verge of bleeding out. There wasn't any time to waste. The resputant family boiled water, and the surgeon held chlorophone to Grigory's face. He set to work. Resputant's wife and the other women in the house were pressed into service as nurses. When he looked into Gregory's abdomen, he found the wound
was worse than he thought. The knife had cut the intestines, and when Grigory held them in they had tangled in his belly. The surgeon worked feverishly to save him, cutting, untangling, cleaning, clamping. All the gauze and antiseptic that he carried from the hospital was put to use. When he was done, he sutured the cut closed with knotted silk, and then it was time to wait. A medical orderly was assigned to the house, and he joined Rasputant's wife and their guests
in the anxious questions. Had they done enough to save him? Had they acted quickly enough to stave off a lethal infection? As they waited. I can only help but wonder if they saw the irony in it all. After Grigory's years of cultivating a following among vulnerable women, not to mention his support for violent cheerleaders like Iliador, it seemed the sharp end of his project had finally come back and
caught him in the gut. Now only time would tell whether the attacker had done enough to put an end to his hunting habits. So they waited, and while the doctor went back to his post in the city hospital. It didn't take long for news of the attack to travel. In fact, in under a day, the St. Petersburg Courier was shouting the story in the headlines, and it was
mere hours before the word passed beyond Russia's borders. English and American papers were making it known that the evil genius behind the throne of Russia, the mystical monk in the ear of the Czar, had been stabbed in the street. All of that is a bit overblown, of course, most newspapers in Russia and abroad got the basic facts wrong, and in the big picture, Rasputin had far less power than the rumors about him said. But when has that
ever stopped a good story from finding an audience? And this was an assassination attempt with all the mystery and drama anyone could desire. But as the readers across Europe and Russia were about to learn, the only thing that could top the story of a failed assassination attempt was a successful one. This is an obscure yard. I'm aaron mankey. It was a ceremonial stop. The journey into town went as you might expect, at least at first. The family sat in the open back seat of the car coming
second in their motorcade. The streets were lined with happy faces, waving hands, and cheers filled the air. It was all going to plan, but as the royal motorcade approached City Hall, something changed. The driver spotted something taking flight from the crowd. Nothing natural, though, This was a dark object thrown into the air by an anonymous hand. As it arcd high over the line of onlookers, the driver realized it was headed right for them. He slammed on the gas pedal.
The car lurched forward, and it was a moment of quick thinking and quick action that saved the family's life. Rather than dropping into their laps, the bomb bounced off the rear of the car and skidded into the car behind them. That's where it detonated. The explosion ripped through the following members of the Imperial entourage. By the Imperial family was unscathed, that is until they were on their
way out of town. Because there was some confusion about the route, a new winding way was drawn up, maybe to avoid further assassination attempts, or, according to some accounts, to visit the injured guards in the hospital. Regardless, the confusion began immediately. The driver of the first car forgot that there was a route change. He turned down a street that was on the first plan in the Imperial car followed, But when the officials screamed, not that way,
you fool, the royal driver slammed on the brakes. His alertness and quick thinking had saved the lives of his sovereigns earlier in the day. Now a brief lapse and attention would doom them. As the driver shifted gears and tried to turn the car, he made them sit. They had ground to a halt five ft from the crowd. That's when a wiry nineteen year old jumped forward from his side. He raised a pistol, rammed it into the car,
and fired twice. Later the shooter would say that he even turned his head away while he pulled the trigger, but the shots came from point blank range. It didn't take any skill to take a life. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been shot and killed alongside his wife Sophie. Today we might know this as the assassination that started the First World War, and fair enough, but at the time, well, it was sort of seen as politics as usual in
the region. In fact, it was seen first not as an attack that began a war, but rather an assassination that followed from a war. Here's Dr Joshua Sanborn to tell us more. This isn't assassin the nation, that is not random. Franz Ferdinand is in Sarajevo to oversee military maneuvers that have just recently annexed the territory. And you have these young radicals who are inspired both by nationalism but also by the Russian revolutionary movement now looking to
change the dynamic on the ground. The people that kill Franz ferinand are not sponsored by Russia. They're not even sponsored by the top Serbian leadership. They are sponsored by the head of military intelligence, who was trying to run his own sort of radical paramilitary revolutionary movement at the
same time that he's that he's heading military intelligence. It was a complex and chaotic political moment A few years before nationalist revolutionaries fought to shatter the grip of the Ottoman Empire, and with support from nearby imperial powers Russia, say or Russia's German cousins, they succeeded. That fight had been what we might call a decolonizing war. Siberia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro had all formed an alliance the Balkan League,
and fought a bloody war to read claim power. In the wake of this bloodshed, the movements leading the fight struggled to become governments, and it was a bloody process. As with many decolonizing wars, this just opens up a new question of regional power and you get these new nations states starting to act like many empires themselves, most notably Serbia in this case. And this is what causes the Second Balkan War between Serbia and Bulgaria over the
question of Macedonia. In other words, nationalism doesn't just come when the empire leaves. That just opens up the more interesting phase of politics, honestly, and the more and the more violent phase frankly, of the politics of decolonization. And so you have these first two Balkan Wars and the third war, as we all know, is triggered in the Balkans in Sarajevo with the assassination. So arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's assassination look like a third link in a long
chain of violence. Yes, the killing appalled the world leaders who looked on, but few expected the fighting to spread beyond the cauldron where it began, but things escalated quickly, everyone expecting what came next to just be more Balkan politics as usual. It was in for a shock. By August. Alliances were secured, diplomacy failed, sides were taken, armies mobilized, and soon even Holy Russia was entering what would become one of the bloodiest wars the world had ever seen.
They were on their yacht. Of course, the splendid isolation of life on open water kept the Romanovs refreshed. But the messages came fast, and whatever tranquility they had enjoyed that year was burned away. The Archduke France Ferdinand had been assassinated swiftly. On the heels of that message, they learned that their friend Grigory Rasputin had been gutted in
the street. Their kingdom was suffering violence, and if they didn't act fast, violent men would take it by force, or at least that's what Nicholas came to fear, so it was time for him to act. Gregory's daughter Maria, had sent a telegram to the royal family just after the attacks, and it set them in motion. Nicholas got hold of the Russian Minister of the Interior and told him to put his attention on Grigory's life. Rasputin is a man much honored by us, Nicholas wrote. Gregory's life
was deeply valued by the imperial family. They wanted their government to serve his welfare. Gregory and Alexandra exchanged letters. He assured her that he was recovering, but the knife that wounded Resputant had cut into the Czarina's heart. Our grief is beyond description, she said in her reply. And with the Empress that invested in Gregory's health, the Russian government had little choice but to comply with the orders coming from the Romanov yacht. The Minister of the Interior
and his deputies set their own constant watch on Resputin. Yes, it was protection, but it was surveillance too. If the Russian papers thought that Gregory was an evil influence on the imperial household, well, the officers of the Russian government could only have agreed. In fact, the Minister of the Interior and his deputies had long hated Rasputin, and why not they were being told to spend their precious time
holding his hand. So for agents tailed Restputant as he was carried down the river and placed on board a steamer. It carried him to the city of Human where he was admitted to the hospital. The surgeon who had performed his emergency surgery could watch him there, now surrounded by all his assistants, including the new doctors who were sent by the royal family to attend him. As the doctors came in, more telegrams came out. Gregory assured the Empress
that he would pull through. In fact, he downplayed how serious his injuries really were. In truth, the first surgery wasn't enough to save him. They went in again and again, trying to repair the damage. Gregory had lost so much blood that things were looking dire, but even as they tried to heal him at seeing the doctors had respute and once again on the brink of death. But somehow
he pulled through. The News of the attack on him had been so widespread that anyone who heard he was still alive had to be surprised, and that made people start asking questions. The whispers that followed were the first hint of another rumor that would grow stronger over the years. The idea that Grigory Rasputin was very hard to kill. But even as Resputin recovered, the empire around him was coming down with a bad case of war fever. Not that it was new. Some observers in Russia had followed
the Balkan Wars with pleasure. They had cheered on the Balkan League through the years of violence. People that is, like Nicholas, along with many others across Russia. The Czar saw the fighting through the lens of his religion. In his writings, Nicholas called it the war between Christians and Turks, and he said he gave it great attention. Others added a layer of ethnic prejudice to the mix. To them,
the Balkan League was more like a Slavic lead. The war on the western border of the Empire wasn't just Christians against Turks, but also Slavs against Germans. And while Russia wasn't sending troops into the region during those first years of fighting, they certainly were growing their forces. Russia's armies were modernizing and expanding. The Romanov government was pouring money into its army and navy and calling it the
Great Program. But it was a slow process, and Nicholas thought they would not be ready for war until at least nineteen seventeen. But the crowds in the streets weren't paying attention to military logistics, and Nicholas himself had his
head turned by the open moves from Austro Hungary. They were backed by his German cousin Wilhelm, and they had just declared that they would overrun Siberia and crush the pro Slavic groups that they said were responsible for the death of the Austro Hungarian air But a statement like that echoed farther than Siberia. In fact, it resonated all across Russia. If anyone wanted to crush the Slavs, they would have to face the world's greatest Slavic power, Russia.
So when Austria Hungary began lobbying shells into Belgrade that July, Nicholas felt he had no choice. The Russian military went on the march to the Austrian border. A sense of Russian patriotism and slav pride swept the country. The Duma, which had so recently been tearing into the Romanovs, saw which way the wind was blowing. They pledged full support of the Czar in the Romanov's household. The children's French tutor wrote that the enthusiasm of the masses was obvious.
Of course, we know that ethnic violence had flamed up across Russia for years in groups like Eliodora's terrorist supporters. But to the tutor writing in the Royal Palace, this new desire for Slavic soldiers to smash German enemies felt like a spontaneous fever. The targets of their political violence had shifted to enemies outside the Russian Empire. Nicholas and Alexandra felt that finally they had the whole country behind them.
They were united for bloodshed. Telegrams flew out to the German Kaiser, Wilhelm convinced the Austrians to back down, Nicholas demanded, but the fact that Russian troops were on the move infuriated the man that Alexandra knew as cousin Willie. The response that Nicholas got from him was kind of a back yourself to on first. But after so many years of trouble, and with flags waving in the streets lifted on cheers of war, Nicholas did not want to look
weak again. His forces continued to march in Germany, declared war. Grigory Resputant spent forty six days in the hospital. He was surrounded by well wishers, friends and family. Journalists tried to get to him too, and at least one photographer managed to snap a photo of Resputin in his hospital bed, even though police were stationed outside to hold back onlookers. As he recovered his strength, Grigory was also collecting his thoughts. He closely followed the situation in Europe and the rising
tensions in the Balkans. People who had been hearing about Rasputin as a power behind the throne assumed that he shared the thirst for blood. Papers published all across Russia and Europe speculated that Resputant was filled with Slavic fever. They called, after all, he was Orthodox. What about all those things he said when he came back from the Holy Land, and didn't he champion the reign of the czar over the Russian Empire? Surely he was committed to
uniting all Slavs under the Romanov dynasty. Maybe he was even going to enlist in the army himself, As in so many other times in Resputant's life. They actually got the story dead wrong. The idea that he was cheerleading for the war was pure fabrication. It was one more way of stirring up controversy and criticism, but it certainly wasn't a look at the truth. In fact, when news of the fighting in the Balkans reach Resputants hospital bed,
the news hit him like a blow. Whatever else was true about Gregory, he was not an engine driving toward war. When he considered the idea, he didn't see a glorious future for the dynasty. Instead, as Douglas Smith says, for once,
Resputant saw clearly the devastation it would bring. He foresaw that if Russia were to go to war, that it would lead to seas of blood, millions of innocent Russian peasants killed, and bloody slaughter, and he pled with Nicholas in the most powerful and prophetic of terms, to not go to war. In fact, during the earlier fighting in the Balkans, Rasputin had urged Alexandra to intervene. He wanted her to convince Nicholas to hold back. Even then, Rasputin
believed war would be a disaster. Once in nineteen twelve, when the Czar's cousin Nikolasha was trying to convince Nicolas to send Russian forces into the Fray, Rasputin begged him not to listen. A year later, in nineteen thirteen, when he was asked to comment on fighting in the Balkans, Rasputin actually said something that would have surprised his readers.
Going to war, he said, kills your own soul. Even the vicious army will live in fear after it has beaten its enemies into submission, because the violence of conquest will breathe the violence of retaliation. And in some ways this was really sharp insight the violence of that first Balkan War. It led to the second, and on and on. Not that Resputin didn't share the ideas that fuel the war's loudest cheerleaders, the idea that the Russian spirit and
even Russian Christianity were superior to all others. Well, he had been clamoring that for years, but it was that very Russian spirit he was most worried about, and no one remembered this better than Grigory's own family, the people around him as he recovered from his injuries. His daughter Maria would later write, the Resputant was fixed on the horrors and cruelty of war. His thoughts weren't on the triumphs of the Czar, but on the people who would
be crushed by armies criss crossing the countryside. It seems Grigory had a deep seated conviction that war and violence were a violation of his Russian faith. Rasputin saw this as the clear and simple problem at the center of a clash between nations, and he wanted the Tsar to see it too. As Douglas Smith says, he begged the Tsar to back away from the coming storm, and one letter he sent to Nicholas makes for an eerie warning
of the devastation to come. Rasputant wrote, dear friend, I'll say again, a menacing cloud is over Russia, lots of sorrow and grief. It's dark and there's not a ray of hope, a sea of tears immeasurable. And as to blood, what can I say? There are no words indescribable horror. I know they all want war from you, evidently not realizing this this means ruin. I'm gonna redo that little bit there. I know they all want war from you, evidently not realizing that this means ruin. Hard is God's
punishment when he takes away reason. It's the beginning of the end. You are the czar, father of the people. Don't allow the madness to triumph and destroy themselves and the people. Yes, they'll conquer Germany, but what of Russia. If one thinks than truly, never, for all of time has once suffered like Russia drowned in her own blood.
Great will be the ruin grief without end grigory. As the following years went on, the show, more prophetic words have rarely been spoken, and for Resputin it was deeply personal, because the lives of Russian soldiers weren't just abstract to him. In fact, he was worried about his own son, Dmitri. The boy was of fighting age. If Russia went to war, Rasputin's own son would be among those sent to the front line. In his agitation about the coming catastrophe, Rasputin
even managed to tear open his wounds once again. Nicholas and Alexandra were always concerned with the health of Alexei, their son and heir, and Rasputin was no different, and that concern made the prospect of marching into the looming conflict deeper and more terrifying for him than it could possibly be for the royal family. And as far as we can tell, Respute the letter to Nicholas did nothing
to change his mind. Gregory may have hoped that, as a spiritual adviser to the Romanov household, his words would carry authority, but the Russian Empire had already marched too far. Rasputant's letter landed on deaf ears. Unfortunately, it didn't have enough of an in fact on the Czar. And I always think it's one of those great what if moments in the history of the twentie centuries. What if Nicholas had listened to Respute and and not agreed with his generals.
How the course of history might have been different. But this wasn't resputants only attempt to change history. He sent a series of letters and telegrams to the Czar. In another shorter message, he simply wrote, let Papa not plan war, for with war will come the end of Russia. Once the fighting began, though Gregory believed disaster was inevitable, not that he was completely alone either. There were other State
of shoals who argued against war. A few voices here and there rose up to call the plans madness and to dismiss the idea of Slavs fighting for Slavs as a form of old fashioned romanticism. But these objections were too few and too far between to catch the Tsar's ears, and by now Nicholas was determined. When he received the telegram, he was furious. Not only was respute and meddling in matters beyond his authority, but he was also undermining the
very thing that was uniting Russia around the Czar. Besides England and France appeared ready to join Russia in the fight. There was a whole network of allies who were rising up to crush Germany, and the Czar's army was so huge that even without friends at their side, most Russians believe that the war would be over in just a few months. Officers in the army even planned to pack their dress uniforms so that they would be ready for the parades after their quick victory. The generals agreed, they
laid plans for a quick victory. A few supplies, weapons and ammunition was all they really needed. Nicholas had been trying to live up to his role as an absolute monarch for his entire life. He was not about to give up now, when the fighting on the western edge of his empire offered him the chance to solidify his role with the Russian people, a pact sealed with the blood of their enemies. Gregory was released from the hospital towards the end of August, but his wounds weren't fully healed.
In fact, he could barely stand. The pain in his gut was constant. He wore loose robes because nothing else would fit over his bandages. But more than all the pain in his body were the thoughts that wouldn't leave his mind. The attack had left him shaken, frail, even paranoid. He was being hunted. Danger surrounded him on every side. Even so, he didn't retreat to his home in Siberia this time. When he was released from the hospital, Rasputin
set out for the capital fighting had begun. Grigory did not want to be cut off from the heart of the empire, where decisions of grave importance were being made. When he arrived, he found a city as changed as he was. On the first of September, the government dispensed with the name St. Petersburg. It was to European, to German. They preferred something more Slavic, so they chose the name Petrograd.
But if Grigory feared that he would have to overcome his differences with the Czar, he found the opposite was the case. Two days after he arrived, he had his first meeting with Nicholas, and any anger or ill will on the Czar's parts had faded. After all, the first victories on the battlefield had given way to some serious defeats. All those supplies the generals had sent to the front,
they were far too few. Despite the millions of soldiers added to the Russian army, they found that they had entered the war with only half the artillery that they were facing from the Germans. And when it came to mobilizing their forces, the Germans had ten times the length of railroad to rush soldiers into the battlefield. There would be no swift Russian victory. The Empire was in the war for the Long Hall, and that left Nicholas in a foul mood. His confidence was shaken. As the city
and the czar changed. Grigory followed suit. Now that he was back in the emperor's presence and the war had begun, Rasputin joined the chorus of Russians who were supporting the war effort. If Nicholas needed someone to tell him that the war was the right choice and Russia would be victorious, well, Grigory Rasputin would tell him what he wanted to hear.
Soon enough, Nicholas came to treasure their meetings once. That October, he wrote in his diary that the difficulties of the war had left him anxious and afraid, but Rasputin brought him peace. It was Grigory's calming talk, Nicholas wrote that lifted his spirits. But even as Grigory was rekindling his relationship with the Romanovs, he was finding it difficult to resume his old habits in the capital. Back at his Petrograd apartment, Resputant found himself flooded with the constant throng
of well wisher's friends and new followers. People came to him asking for money, prayers, healing, and advice. Once they found out where he lived, they started lining up before sunrise. The police watching Grigory reported that he met with over one people every single day, and the police themselves were a constant presence around Resputin. Here's more from Douglas Smith.
There was typically, you know, dozens of agents that were tracking him in any one time, and not only were they tracking him, but they were tracking everybody that he came in contact with, and would would do investigations into his circle and his contacts and associates and what have you.
And part of it was surveillance, but part of it was also after the summer of nineteen o fourteen, when he was almost murdered, supposedly they were also charged with keeping him safe from another such attempt on his life. But these officers only went part of the way toward lifting Grigory's fear of assassination. He had spent too many years dodging the secret police to suddenly appreciate them. Now there were some perks though. He no longer went to
the Czar's Palace by train. Instead, he was now chauffeured by a car to and from the palace for his meetings with the royal family. But even that left Grigory open to more rumors. The car itself became the subject of legends and rumors about the machine guns being carried to and fro to protect the holy Man, and even that he was driving through the streets, gunning down pedestrians
as he went. It was ridiculous, of course, but it's an example of just how much every move Grigory made was turned back on him, as if reflected in a fun house mirror. But there wasn't too much that Grigory found fun about it. Having been robbed of his quiet, his peace, and his sense of safety and confidence, Grigory turned for solace to the bottle. He had been drinking more and more over the past few years, but after
the attack on his life, it took over. If Rasputin had been consuming alcohol before, now the alcohol was consuming him. He was rarely sober. His wealthy followers kept up a regular supply of Madeira wine, so when he was huddled at home in his apartment, he always had a drink at hand, all the more when he would decide to throw caution to the wind and go out on the town, like the night that he hopped on a train from Petrograd to Moscow and wrote one of the most sordid
chapters of his personal legend. Here's Douglas Smith to walk us through it. The so called incident at the Yar is one of the iconic UH moments in the biography of Respute, and it's in every book on him, UM and it's sometimes told in in somewhat different versions, but basically, the the standard story is that Uh, in March of nineteen fifteen, Respute and took the train from uh Petrograd as Petersburg was now called, down to Moscow where you
met with some friends. And one night they went out to this famous restaurant called the Jar, which had this uh gypsy choir and chorus and everything. That he got outlandishly drunk. He started chasing the girls in the gypsy choir. Uh,
he started being rude and vulgar Uh. And then it's sort of culminated in him jumping up on the table, exposing himself, dropping his trousers, waiving his member around and and claiming in front of the astonished guests at the r restaurant that this was the the altar at which the Empress worshiped, at which point the police were called and they dragged him, snarling and screaming and cursing out
and put him into jail. Now, this is the standard story that you'll read over and over and over, and indeed agents tracked Respute and from Petrograd to Moscow on the train in March. They followed him around literally by the minute, and indeed he did go to the r restaurant. But what's interesting is you read the policeman's report of
what happened there. There's no talk of drunkenness. There's no talk of chasing chorus girls, gypsy chorus girls, there's no talk of you know, dropping his trousers and waving his member around, and there's no talk of any arrest. In fact, they had dinner, he went back to someone's house. Uh. He did get drunk the next day and drove around with some friends, and then the agents followed him back to the train station and he went back to Petrogratte.
End of story. The report of the simple truth didn't satisfy Grigory's enemies, and that's a problem when those enemies include the head of the Okrana. When the initial report reached him the simple narrative of resputants tripped to and from Moscow, he sent word back down the line. Clearly there was a mistake somewhere. Something must have happened worth reporting something terrible. Of course, the police in Moscow knew
how to read between the lines. They knew what was being asked of them, so they put their heads together and they drafted a second report. This time they brainstormed the bizarre and disturbing story that would become a mainstay
of resputants legend. They literally, you know, quote unquote sex it up if you will, to make it more out amish, and add all sorts of crazy elements to it, not only sexual stuff, but in fact that he was meeting with various shady figures who are involved in in vast graft and corruption schemes to defraud you know, the the National Treasury of all sorts of millions and millions of
roubles and what have you. And so finally they create this outlandish story on official police letterhead, and Alexandra says, this is this is total nonsense. And here Alexandra was right, this is a pack of lies, and I refused to believe it. Uh. And so it again is then taking as proof that nothing can damage resputing in the eyes of Nicholas and Alexandra, and he can go to any lengths he he wishes, and his place is secure. But
in fact he really never did anything wrong. That night at the r restaurant, the fights went on and on. Church officials, a Krona, officers and journalists took aim at resputing members of parliament open he condemned him within the Duma. When their words had no effect, they added outlandish lies to their observations about resputants real wrongdoings, and those outlandish lies gave the Empress the very excuse she needed to
ignore the charges altogether. As each new twist and turn in Grigory's life gave his enemies new ammunition, the struggle to control rasputants relationship with the Romanovs took on a stranger and stranger shape. He was hacked down in the street and his reputation was ripped apart by the police. But somehow Resputant endured in this little war behind the big war, rasputants enemies never seemed to win. It was supposed to be Nikolasha's our. He was always the man
who exuded power. His violence was legendary, his physical strength was an echo of the old Czar. It was only right that he be made the commander in chief of Russia's armies. At first, Zar Nicholas had wanted to take the role on himself. He held a firm and almost mystical belief that the czar's place was with his troops, and the memory of his younger days spent among the officers only strengthened his belief that he should command, But
his ministers talked him out of it. Any losses that his inexperienced and unready army suffered as the conflict began should not be placed at the feet of the czar. So it was agreed his cousin Nikolasha should take the reins. He had, the war lord's frame and the war lord's pedigree, ferocious and imperious, or those qualities what they needed to lead a fight. Nikolasha himself seemed to think so. But despite his confidence and his personality, there was one thing
at least that Nikolasha did not have experience. He had never actually commanded in battle, not to mention that modern warfare was more of a clash of logistics than heroics, and however strong Nikolasha was, that was not his strong suit. As the first brief burst of victories gave way to a string of astonishing defeat Nikolash's officers were devastated when the Russian second Army was destroyed at the Battle of Tannenburg.
The Empire lost one and ten thousand men. The commander of the destroyed forces went off into the woods and took his own life, and even worse losses were to come even steeper and more devastating. In the summer of nineteen fifteen, for example, the Russian army was in retreat. Russian forces fled the Carpathian Mountains. Withdrawal from Ukraine followed after that, as German attacks blue holes in the Russian lines, Nikolasha and his officers failed to bring up enough reserves
to reinforce them. The surviving soldiers fell back in fear. Soon they had abandoned all of Poland. They fled Lithuania, they fled Belarus. The Empire was drowning in her own blood. Nikolasha and his armies ran so far that their withdrawal was given a name a Great Retreat. The Russian spirit was broken and the Romanovs were in despair. As a prophetic pen had written to Czar, the Russian Empire was in ruins. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.
Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's in store for next week. He had already been spending as much time as he could at Stavka, the Russian military headquarters. The camp where battle plans were laid was established off the Moscow Warsaw Road, nestled between the trunks of pine and birch trees and surrounded by ring after ring of centuries. Nicholas found all of that
invigorating to him. It was a masculine place, a place for a rugged, disciplined life, a place where every second counted and every man was about his work. The urgency in order reminded him of his fondest memories his younger years in the cavalry, before he had taken up the responsibilities of the czar, But in the summer of nineteen fifteen, it was the responsibilities that he shouldered. The czar's place was with his troops. Niko Us believed it so strongly
that it was almost mystical. He even made up his mind in the church. It was while he was standing in the cathedral with his eyes fixated on an image of Jesus, that he felt a voice speak in his mind. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick Alex Williams and Josh Thane in partnership with My Heart Radio, with research by Sam Alberty, writing by
Carl Nellis, and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our contributing historians, source materials, and links to our other shows over at grim and mild dot com, slash Unobscured, and as always, thanks for listening.