Forbidden History - Could George V Have Saved the Romanovs?

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

When the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917, Tsar Nicholas II and his family looked to one man who might save them: King George V of Britain, his own cousin. Britain initially offered the Romanovs refuge, but the offer was suddenly withdrawn. Why did the king change his mind, and could that decision have sealed the Romanovs’ fate? Cast List: Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. We're an independent podcast, and advertisements help keep us going. Ads are automatically placed and not specifically chosen or endorsed by us, unless read by me the host. Thanks for supporting the show. Before we begin, this is a journey back into the Forbidden History Archives. If you miss this one the first time around, now's your chance to dive in. A brand new episode will be waiting for you next Tuesday. It is May 1913, and the world is coming together for a royal wedding.

Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia, the only daughter of the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm I, is marrying Prince Ernst August of Hanover. They make for a glamorous couple. Theirs is not a dynastic alliance, but rather a love match, and it captures the media's attention. The pair will feature on the front page. of the New York Times for several days. But at its heart, the event is a family affair. European royalty, connected through their family ties,

flocked to Berlin for the occasion. Wilhelm II greets his cousins, the British King George V, and the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, and a carriage procession parades them through the city to an adoring public. It is hard to imagine that the following years But the following year, George and Nicholas would be at war with their cousin Wilhelm.

And by the war's end, the trio's fates would be very different. George V's reign would continue, setting the foundations for the most successful monarchy in history. Wilhelm II would be forced to abdicate and would live out his days in exile in the Netherlands. Nicholas II would also be forced to abdicate, but he and his family, including his children, would be brutally murdered. Since then, the charge has been leveled at George V, that he could have saved his cousin,

that he could have offered him asylum in Britain, but that he callously abandoned him. It is only in recent years that the truth is coming to light. But by 1917, the First World War has been raging for two and a half years. Britain and Russia are allied against Germany, but Russia is performing poorly. Much of the blame is placed on Tsar Nicholas II himself, and in March he is forced to abdicate the Russian throne. But 300 years of Romanov autocratic rule are not easily replaced. Nicholas II's abdication sees the emergence of two separate centers of authority.

Both claim to speak for the people, but neither represent more than one group of citizens. Officially, in the wake of the Revolution, power is held by the provisional government. Composed of high-minded Democrats, as the name implies, the provisional government is designed to be a caretaker administration. Its tasks are to organize elections as Russia transitions into democracy, and to maintain essential government services in the meantime. But with full democratic elections impossible, while much of the country's citizens were at war, the provisional government lacked legitimacy.

It can only exist in an uneasy truce with the Petrograd Soviet, a council that represents the interest of Russia's soldiers and workers. soldiers and workers. The Petrograd Soviet develops into an alternative source of authority to the provisional government and becomes increasingly radical in its aims. The two groups also have very different ideas about what to do with the former Tsar and his family. At first, Nicholas and his family are placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace in Tsarska Yechello near Petrograd. For his part, the former Tsar has few worries about his fate.

He is expecting that he and his family will be exiled to their estate in Crimea to quietly live out the rest of their days. The provisional government wants to protect the Romanov family, but it is concerned that allowing them to remain in Russia may encourage a counter-revolution among those who would rather not have seen him gone. The Petrograd Soviet has a far more radical agenda. It wants to put the Tsar on trial, and by implication, execute him. In its view, Nicholas should pay for his despotic rule with his life.

While Nicholas and his family live in limbo in Britain, George V is faced with a quandary. We'll be right back after a quick break. On the one hand, he may instinctively want to help his royal relatives, but it remains a popular misconception that the decision is his to take. take. As a constitutional monarch, it is up to the British government to decide whether to offer the gift of asylum in Britain, and they make no voluntary offer. The first consideration of Britain as a place of asylum, in fact, begins in Russia in the provisional government. Spying

a way of preserving the Romanov family's lives while removing them from the domestic picture. Pavel Milukhov, the foreign minister, presses the British British ambassador to Petrograd, Sir George Buchanan, for Britain to offer the Romanov's asylum. The British government, under Prime Minister David Lloyd George, is tellingly slow to respond. And while after a few days they do extend an offer of asylum, they attach a very specific condition. It is to be for the duration of the war only. Perhaps surprisingly, given his family connection, this is a very specific condition. This reluctance to offer asylum extends to George V himself.

The reasons for this lie in the way in which Nicholas II was seen by the British people. Nicholas may be George's cousin, but in Britain, he's a deeply unpopular figure. Twelve years earlier, in 1905, when Revolution in Russia was first in the air, his soldiers fired on peaceful protesters outside the Winter Palace. The resulting massacre earned the Tsar the nickname Nicholas the Bloody and a reputation in Britain as a despotic ruler. There is even support in Britain, particularly among the working classes, for the new revolutionary regime.

To make matters worse, Nicholas's wife, Tsarica Alexandra, is German-born. At a time when Britain is at war with Germany, even the British family is concerned about its German heritage. so much so that it changed its own surname from Saxe-Kober Gota to Windsor. And so the idea of having a man seen as a brutal tyrant take up residents in Britain with his German-born wife at the heart of the First World War, and while elements in Britain even support the revolution in Russia, is fraught with difficulties. And soon after the offer of asylum is made, it is withdrawn. The risk be

being deemed too great. An alternative asylum location is then urgently searched for. Norway and Sweden offer help with an evacuation, but refuse to take in the Romanovs. Neutral Denmark is deemed too close to Germany. France and Switzerland, point-blank refused to take them in. Even the Tsar's European relatives take a less than sympathetic line. Many believe that Nicholas and Alexandra face a disaster of their own making. Their own mistakes had led to their downfall. They have endangered the positions of royal families throughout the continent, and they should sort out their own mess. By now, events in Russia itself are moving fast. A renewed Russian offensive on the Eastern Front in July 1917 ends in disaster,

and results in anti-government rioting in Petrograd. With fears that further disturbances could easily reach Tsarskaya Shiloh, the Romanovs are moved to a safer location, the town of Tobolsk in western Siberia. But the provisional government's days are numbered. In October, the Bolsheviks seize power under the leadership of Lenin. In March the following year, this new government signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending Russia's participation in the First World War by giving up vast swaths of territory to Germany. Nicholas is appalled by the price the Bolsheviks pay for peace, but his spirits are high.

He believes that his Western allies are plotting to break them out and smuggle them to safety. But he's mistaken. In April, with the anti-Bolshevik white army approaching to Bolsk, the Romanovs are moved once more to Yucatran in the Ural Mountains. Meanwhile, in Britain, the fact that the Romanovs are in distant Yucatrenburg leads to a single case of out of sight, out of mind. For George V, the need to continue

Britain's war effort without Russia sees the need to get the Romanovs to safety put very much on the back burner. And even if planning had been in motion, the logistics of getting the Romanovs out of Yucatrenburg Past trigger-happy revolutionaries, and overseas, patrolled by German submarines, would have been almost certainly insurmountable. The Bolsheviks still initially intend to put Nicholas on trial, but when their position in Yacetranburg is threatened, they take a drastic step. And so on the 17th of June 1918, the Romanov family are murdered.

Upon hearing the news, George V is dead. devastated. He writes in his diary, Those Poor Innocent Children. He later attends a memorial service held in his cousin's honor. But the charge that George V abandoned Nicholas to his fate remains a complex issue. The need to balance domestic opinion and the needs of the war with the family connection provided a situation in which there were no easy answers. But even if he, or more accurately, the British government, had maintained their offer of asylum. Getting the Romanov's out of Russia would have been far easier said than done. Thanks for exploring the past with us today.

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