"Lenin works entirely as desired ..."


After the successful March Revolution in Russia, the German Supreme Army Command (OHL) is very concerned - it sees that the new Provisional Government of Russia is by no means ready to surrender, but rather is making desperate efforts to continue the war against Germany.

The OHL urgently needs its divisions in the West!

Something has to be done!

Likewise in deep worry, yes despair, is at the same time the leader of the Russian Bolsheviks, Wladimir Lenin ...




He is sitting in a tiny apartment (see cross mark!) in a shabby house at Spiegelgasse 22 at Zurich ...






... and must - together with his closest confidants - watch impotently as the revolution is taking place in Russia.

Lenin cannot leave Switzerland because it is surrounded all around by warring countries.

At this point the wishes of the German OHL meet the longing of the Bolsheviks. According to the motto "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", one now allies!

Contacts between the Foreign Office and the Bolsheviks have existed for a long time, as the Germans support Leni's party with large sums of money through secret channels (Dr. Parvus alias Helphand, we'll come to that later!).

The Germans decide to somehow bring Lenin to Russia to further destabilize the country. In addition, the Bolshevik leader has repeatedly stressed that he would immediately make peace "without attachments and contributions" unless he is first in power.

About the Swiss socialist Fritz Platten (here next to Lenin) ...




... discreet contacts are made with the Germans. Platten regulates the conditions for transit through Germany to Sweden.

It is negotiated that the railway car of the Russian emigrants will be declared an extra-territorial area during the journey through Germany.

Fritz Platten also acts as a "tour guide".

After crossing the German-Swiss border, Rittmeister Freiherr Arwed von der Planitz from the Saxon Gardes du Corps and another German officer, whose name has unfortunately disappeared in the dark of history, get on as transport escorts.

The two officers monitor the journey in a separate part of the train. You have been chosen especially because of your manners, the chief of the German "Oberste Heeresleitung" (OHL) General Ludendorff ...




... has expressly ordered the "deployment of tactful officers"!

Language skills are unnecessary as one of the fellow travelers, Karl Radek, speaks ...




... fluent German - just like the Swiss Fritz Platten speaks Russian, who is also on board.

Lenin insists that there must be no contact between the Russians and Germans during the journey.

Lenin also demanded beforehand that the emigrants should finance the trip themselves. A "protocol on the transit to Germany" signed by well-known socialists from various countries was intended to protect the Bolsheviks against possible accusations of having carried out the journey in a conspiratorial manner.

Lenin absolutely wants to avoid the odium of traveling with money and the support of the enemy.

In addition to Lenin and Radek, about 30 other Russian revolutionaries are on board, including the leading Bolsheviks Grigorij Sinowjew ...




…Lenins wife Nadeschda Krupskaja…




... and - spicy! - his ex-lover and now confidante, the French Inessa Armand ...:




Members of the jewish-socialist "Bund" also travel to give the company a non-partisan character.

Before that, each and every one of the Russian revolutionaries had to sign a declaration stating that they would travel at their own risk and that they would be informed of the threat from the Provisional Government in Petrograd to "treat travelers as treason" upon arrival in Russia.

Winston Churchill later aptly commented:

"Lenin was transported from Switzerland to Russia in a sealed wagon like a plague bacillus."




The train leaves Zurich on April 9th ​​- the Swiss, whose Federal Councilor Hoffmann was involved in the negotiations between Russians and Germans, are very happy that they are rid of Lenin and his followers!

The route leads via Singen - Offenburg - Mannheim - Frankfurt am Main - Berlin - Bergen to the island of Rügen.

Then it should continue across the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden and from there to Finland, from whose southern border the Russian capital Petrograd is only a stone's throw away.

During a stop in Mannheim, Lenin indignantly refuses to receive a delegation of German workers who have somehow learned of his passage and want to pay their respects to him.

In this situation, the "internationalist" Lenin is acting entirely in the interests of his own and far removed from the motto "proletarians of all countries - unite!".

On April 11th, the train reached Saßnitz, the last German station.

On April 12th, Lenin sent a telegram from neutral Sweden to the socialists in Geneva: "The German government preserved the extraterritoriality of our car. Keep driving."

The famous writer Stephan Zweig comments on the trip as follows:

"Millions of devastating projectiles were fired in the world war, the most powerful, the most powerful, the most powerful projectiles devised by engineers.

But no projectile was more far-reaching and decisive for fate in modern history than this train that, loaded with the most dangerous, most determined revolutionaries of the century ... rushes across Germany to land in Petersburg and there to shatter the order of the time... "

** continued next post**

Part II:

After his secret train ride through Germany, Wladimir Lenin travels on through Sweden and Finland.
The next picture shows him and his fellow travelers during a stopover at Stockholm ...:



Lenin can be seen at the very front with hat and umbrella, next to him the “tour guide” Fritz Platten, the Swiss socialist. In the foreground, Lenin's wife Nadeshda Krupskaja is turning her back on us, Lenin's ex-lover Inessa Armand walks with a headscarf next to Karl Radek at the end of the small procession ...

On April 17, 1917, Lenin and his colleagues crossed the Russian border near Vyborg (Fritz Platten was refused to cross the border by the British military in Finland!) - and Lenin took the train to Petrograd, as the Russian capital has been called since the beginning of the war in 1914.

A little later he meets at the Finnish train station ...



... in Petrograd (as the Russian capital Saint Petersburg has been called since the beginning of the war) - the locomotive No. "293", which pulled Lenin's train, has even been kept - it is still on display in the Finnish train station ...





While still at the Finnish train station, Lenin gave his first public speech on Russian soil in front of hurried supporters ...:



Lenin proclaims what will later go down in history as the "April Theses":

• All power to the Soviets
• Ending the war
• Expropriation of large estates, all land to the peasants
• Workers' control over industry
• Nationalization of the banks
• Establishment of a Soviet republic
• Overthrow of the Provisional Government
• Foundation of a revolutionary international
• Agitation and education of the masses and winning of a Bolshevik majority in the councils.

The Bolshevik leader can look to the future with confidence:

The time works for him - and he personally and his party were and are generously supported by the Germans with many millions of gold marks from 1915 until the collapse of the German Empire!

Here are two of many documents, the first over 15 million gold marks ...:



... and this one over 40 million gold marks ...:




For comparison:


The total construction costs of the German battle cruiser SMS "Lützow" ...



... the 1916 Admral Hippers flagship was at the sea battle off Jutland (and went down after the battle) cost 58,000,000 gold marks!

Before Lenin's seizure of power, the secret "money postman" was the Russian with a German passport Israel Lasarewitsch Helphand, who works under the pseudonym "Dr. Alexander Parvus"...:



After Lenin is in power, the money will flow through the Foreign Office and the German ambassador in Moscow, Count Mirbach.

When they heard Lenin's “April Theses” on April 17, 1917, the Germans were delighted! Investing in the man seems to be paying off!

“Lenin's entry into Russia was successful. He works entirely according to our wishes”, an enthusiastic diplomat named Steinwachs cables from the German embassy in Stockholm to the Supreme Army Command.

Don't you believe ...?

Here is the original telegram ...:





During his seizure of power, Lenin was often and severely accused of being a paid German agent...:








After he was firmly in the saddle, great efforts were made to destroy as much as possible all documents relating to Lenin's cooperation with the Germans.

For the assertion there was then - needless to say - the usual shot in the neck in the torture cellar of the "Cheka".

Even after 1945 the Soviets fled all German archives that fell into their hands.

But the Germans kept too precise and comprehensive records of their Lenin activities from 1915 to 1918, so that there is still much evidence of this today ...

Good thread! I love this period in European history. So much intrigue and double-dealing. Bit like today I guess

Phil

From the historian's point of view, it was certainly a very interesting time - but at that time I did not want to have lived in what was then Russia at any cost!

How do the Chinese say when they make a particularly bad wish on someone?

"May you live in interesting times."


Cheers