The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

When the victorious United States Army in 1945 stumbled upon the cache where the secret files of the German Foreign Office had been stored, there were several documents going back to the times of the First World War that our Soviet Allies would have given a great deal to lay their hands on first. One of these items, of outstanding interest to historians was a memorandum dated March 9, 1915, setting forth a comprehensive program for German political warfare against Czarist Russia. The paper included the usual proposals for blowing up bridges and for spreading defeatist propaganda among Russian conscripts; it urged getting in touch with, and giving financial assistance to, most of the socialist opposition and a number of national minority organizations (with the exception of the Zionist Jews, whom the author of the plan considered “incapable of any political action”).