(Continued from page 25)

The Field Marshall's file was found under the name of Beneckendorff.  His full name was Paul Ludwig Hans von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg.  Not only do we now have another Benckendorff involved in this story but we also have a third with the first name of Paul or Paula.  A wise man once said that there are no coincidences!  The Benckendorff family history reveals that Field Marshal Paul Hindenburg was descended from Johann Otto Gottfried von Benckendorff, who had been granted permission to combine the defunct Von Hindenburg family name and coat of arms with his own in 1789.
 
It must now be remembered that the Field Marshall's second in command was Major-General Erich Ludendorff who was the man with the real control of the Kaiser's armies.  Ludendorff was the fellow who arranged passage through Germany from Switzerland for Lenin's famous sealed train back to Russia.  Hoping that Lenin could bring an end to the war on the Eastern Front when he reached St. Petersburg, the German commanders had handed him the opportunity to seize control of Russia's Revolution. Lenin had a debt to repay.  The leader of the Bolsheviks owed the Kaiser's staff a very big favour.

As winter turned into spring in the town of Tobolsk, Nicholas and his family were having trouble making ends meet.  Their available funds were running desperately low and they were having to sell the few belongings they had with them just to get enough food to help them stave off the Siberian cold.  Then when February turned into March things suddenly started to change.

On the first day of March of 1918 Lenin's government in Moscow ordered that the family be placed on soldiers' rations.  Only two days later, on the third day of March, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed thereby ending the war between Russia and Germany and leaving the Kaiser's armies free to devote all of their efforts to the Western Front against the Allies in France.  The treaty forced Russia to surrender thousands of square miles of eastern Europe occupied by millions of its citizens to Germany, and the Baltic country of Estonia that is key to our story was now outside of Russia's borders.

In "The Romanov Conspiracies" historian Dr. Michael Occleshaw devoted a full chapter to Kaiser Wilhelm's desire to exert every effort possible to save his Russian cousins.  Dr. Occleshaw's book tells of rumours of a secret codicil added to the treaty to surrender the family to the Germans, but then goes on to say that none of the five secret clauses that have been found makes any mention of the Romanovs.  Amongst the other records of that period a British Foreign Office memorandum confirmed that the Germans did make overtures on behalf of the Imperial family during the negotiations.  One of the best ways to make sure something stays a secret is to avoid putting it on paper.  Sometimes a handshake is all that it takes.

©  J. Kendrick 1997                                                                                                                                      (Continued on page 27)