Alleged German Responsibility for Bolshevik Revolution / Germany sent Lenin to Russia

[Lamprecht]

Often communism is blamed on Germany, because Germany sent Lenin to Russia. What is often left out is the fact that the motivation was to end Russian involvement in the First World War.

From: https://history.stackexchange.com/quest ... a-revoluti

A Russian revolution caused by the Bolsheviks was most definitely the goal of the Germans when they allowed Lenin to pass through their lands. Germany wished to undermine, or end, the Russian war effort and sending Lenin back was done for that purpose.

If true, who came up with the idea and was there any consideration that a communist Russia could eventually be a threat to Germany?

The historian Richard Pipes writes in his book The Russian Revolution that based on disclosed German papers made available after WWII the German Foreign Secretary at the time of Lenin's passage Richard von Kühlmann was either the person that came up with the idea, or at the bare minimum signed off on the idea of letting Lenin pass through German lands to return to Russia. Lenin was even decried as a "German agent" when he finally returned.

As to whether there was any consideration of a future threat from a communist Russia, the answer seems to be no for two reasons. The first reason is that Germany was primarily concerned with the demands of World War I. Surviving the war was paramount. The second reason is that, according to former professor Albert L. Weeks, Lenin was a Germanophile. Weeks argues that Lenin viewed Germany as the central linchpin to an eventual proletarian revolution. Weeks further discusses the close relations enjoyed between the two nations after World War I, and how this relationship extended back into the 19th century. The relationship still exists today, see e.g. pipelines, or former German politicians heading Russian companies.

How much did the arrangement cost the Germans, money-wise?

According to Pipes, relying on numbers from Eduard Bernstein, the German government sent "more than 50 million deutsche marks in gold" from 1917 to 1918 to help the Bolsheviks establish and hold power. In 1917 US Dollars, 50 million marks would mean $9,041,591 — adjusting for inflation this equals about $172,910,538 in 2017 US Dollars.

The investment was substantial, and at least with respect to achieving the goal of ending Russian involvement in World War I, the investment paid off.

The German government was not a supporter of Lenin's ideology. Lenin published various pamphlets and books throughout his life making it clear he believed in abolishing the German monarchy. Their goal wasn't to have Lenin succeed with communism, but to incite a civil war to finish off the Russian Czar, or at least force him to sign a treaty for peace.




More information on the Bolsheviks and Soviet Communism:

(PDF) The Secret Behind Communism - David Duke
https://web.archive.org/web/20190507011 ... munism.pdf

Jews in the NKVD of Stalin's Soviet Union
https://codoh.com/library/document/1722

Winston Churchill - Zionism vs Bolshevism
https://archive.is/uaiY7

[Hektor]

I've noticed that thesis coming up during the last year or so a couple of times. It was on internet forums, but interestingly also a descendent of the Philip Kiril Prinz von Preußen apparently mentioned this during a prayer meeting (That's a another bull there... Flimsy evidence and an ununderstood event as basis for a penance prayer? That's alarming on its own).

That issue came up after there were discussions and also videos on who caused the 'Russian' Revolution.

Now the Kaiserreich may have played a smaller role in this, essentially giving Lenin passage through Germany so he could go and 'make some shit' in Russia weakening the Russian Empire militarily.

[Whodunnit?]

The German government was not a supporter of Lenin's ideology. Lenin published various pamphlets and books throughout his life making it clear he believed in abolishing the German monarchy. Their goal wasn't to have Lenin succeed with communism, but to incite a civil war to finish off the Russian Czar, or at least force him to sign a treaty for peace.

Whenever something is blamed on Germany, you just have to assume that the German names of the perpetrators often end with "-berg", "-blatt", "-baum" or "thal", and they have a nice mansion in New York.

Lenin did not single handedly turn Russia into a communist empire. This is "bro history". The Czar was ousted in february 1917 and replaced with the communist Kerensky government. Lenin's revolution was in October 1917. Lenin overthrew Kerensky, not the Czar.

The Russian army was pretty much finished by mid 1916. To explain the impossibility of continuing the war to the British, the Czar send Alexander Protopopov to London. After apparently very unsatifying talks, he went to Sweden, where he met Max Warburg. According to the Czar's chief of the secret police Alexander Spiridovich and his 1936 biography of Rasputin "Raspoutine 1863-1916", Protopopov allegedly said to Warburg that "the world war was caused by England" and that "Russia would gain much more from a friendship with Germany". So now you know what kind of a guy Protopopov was.

When he came back to Russia, the Czar appointed him minister of the interior in september 1916 and immediately sued for peace. Unfortunately the initial peace talks weren't successful because Germany wanted Russia to (drum rooooooollllllllll) give up it's polish west, to create a polish buffer state.
Those Germans just always have these dumb ideas, and they are often connected to Poland.

Well, what happened next? On December 31st 1916 the Czar's adviser Rasputin was murdered, very very most likely by British agents.
In february 1917 the Czar was overthrown by communists under Alexander Kerensky.
To my knowledge, Kerensky was a jew. He was almost certainly a british agent who's main task was to delay the surrender, which is why his government became increasingly unpopular.

Even though Russia didn't have a operable military anymore, as long as Russia didn't sign a armistice or peace treaty, Germany and Austria-Hungary would be forced to keep over two million soldiers there and engage in occasional skirmishes with warlords and some of the poorly armed troops that Kerensky still had.

Now the Germans send Lenin. To find out why exactly, you would probably need access to one of the various archives, probably British ones, which are closed to the public. Or maybe you'd need to find a rare copy of one of these books that were burned after may 8th, 1945.

But what Germany definitely wanted was an armistice, so that they could withdraw their troops from Russian soil, and finish off the french and british before the Americans were fully war ready. Militarily Russia had already lost, the Russian population was starving, but technically a war is only over when a government signs a treaty. Lenin signed the treaty.

[Hektor]

The German government was not a supporter of Lenin's ideology. Lenin published various pamphlets and books throughout his life making it clear he believed in abolishing the German monarchy. Their goal wasn't to have Lenin succeed with communism, but to incite a civil war to finish off the Russian Czar, or at least force him to sign a treaty for peace.

Whenever something is blamed on Germany, you just have to assume that the German names of the perpetrators often end with "-berg", "-blatt", "-baum" or "thal", and they have a nice mansion in New York.

Lenin did not single handedly turn Russia into a communist empire. This is "bro history". The Czar was ousted in february 1917 and replaced with the communist Kerensky government. Lenin's revolution was in October 1917. Lenin overthrew Kerensky, not the Czar.
....
But what Germany definitely wanted was an armistice, so that they could withdraw their troops from Russian soil, and finish off the french and british before the Americans were fully war ready. Militarily Russia had already lost, the Russian population was starving, but technically a war is only over when a government signs a treaty. Lenin signed the treaty.

At the time Lenin was probably seen as just another rabble-rouser. So giving him passage through Germany and allowing him to throw some inflammatory speeches there was probably not seen as to big a problem. Little the the Kaiser-Government realize that the Bolsheviks had some other sponsors from elsewhere to and could count on a larger number of people with organizational and networking skills to pull off a fully-blown second-phase Revolution .

This book gives some inside into the Revolution and Bolshevism:
https://archive.org/details/charlessaro ... vietrussia

And it was for sure not written by a pro-German Antisemite. Even those on the other side realized what was going on.

[Whodunnit?]

Quote "Iron Curtain Over America" by John Beaty

In Lenin’s sealed train, “Out of a list of 165 names published, 23 are Russian, 3 Georgian, 4 Armenian, 1 German, and 128 Jewish” (The Surrender of an Empire, Nesta H. Webster, Boswell Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., 10 Essex St., London, W.C.2, 1931, p. 77). “At about the same time, Trotsky arrived from the United States, followed by over 300 Jews from the East End of New York and joined up with the Bolshevik Party” (op. cit., p. 73).


In school history teachers made me believe that revolutions happen when somebody stands up on a soap box and says something powerful to a group of unhappy proletarians. Magically, guns with unlimited ammo appear in their hands, and they just march off and overthrow the government and defeat the military.
No, it needs organisation, a lot of money, smuggling of large quantities weapons and ammunition, professional military planners and instructors, and corruption.

A bunch of angry peasants will never be able to overthrow any government, even if they "break into an arsenal and capture weapons".
There was no "Lenin said some and all of the sudden everybody chimped out and a large empire just collapsed"

[Hektor]

Quote "Iron Curtain Over America" by John Beaty
In Lenin’s sealed train, “Out of a list of 165 names published, 23 are Russian, 3 Georgian, 4 Armenian, 1 German, and 128 Jewish” (The Surrender of an Empire, Nesta H. Webster, Boswell Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., 10 Essex St., London, W.C.2, 1931, p. 77). “At about the same time, Trotsky arrived from the United States, followed by over 300 Jews from the East End of New York and joined up with the Bolshevik Party” (op. cit., p. 73).

A list? One would need more concrete materials on all this. There is however a lot of reporting on Jews being dominant within the Communist party and movement in Russia. And this includes philosemitic sources. So if somebody denies the relationship, he is either deceived or deceiving himself.

In school history teachers made me believe that revolutions happen when somebody stands up on a soap box and says something powerful to a group of unhappy proletarians. Magically, guns with unlimited ammo appear in their hands, and they just march off and overthrow the government and defeat the military.
No, it needs organisation, a lot of money, smuggling of large quantities weapons and ammunition, professional military planners and instructors, and corruption.

I recall that teachers are also prone to have 'sympathies for the revolutionaries'. As if those revolutionaries are only fighting 'against injustice' and against 'oppression'. Turns out that the societies where revolutions occurred may have had some issues with 'inequality' and 'repression', but they were far from as bad as implied and portrayed. In fact the revolutions may have occurred, because the rulers were to soft on people and the fact that there was progress and wealth creation may have lead to more envy and conflicts, which can be exploited.

Revolutions need longer phases of preparation (or development beforehand, which isn't necessarily intentional). E.g. the French Revolution had the 'Philosophes' and there were 'new ideas' coming up, which delegitimized the Monarchy, Aristocracy, while demanding 'liberty, equality, brotherhood'. Of course they did get anything of this afterwards. France is bureaucratic and autocratic, social distinction is quite high and I'm not sure, whether they all 'love each other'. In fact I think the more liberal a society gets the more social cohesion goes down the drain. The past 70 years Western societies seem to have perpetual generational conflict and 'youthful rebellion' as an ideal. It is perpetual revolution, albeit not on the political level, the parties have adapted this and 'go with the flow'.

A bunch of angry peasants will never be able to overthrow any government, even if they "break into an arsenal and capture weapons".
There was no "Lenin said some and all of the sudden everybody chimped out and a large empire just collapsed"

While 'the poor' may join in on revolution, they are never the instigators. Instigators and organizers are generally people from the educated middle class. To run their operations, they need resources, lots of it. And the supply of finances and logistics must be permanent, until they are in power.