Germany's Gamble: Send Lenin. Collapse Russia. Win WWII️

[00:00:00]Vladimir Lenin's life story explained in 1 minute. Did you know Lenin spent most of his adult life as a failed revolutionary writing pamphlets in European exile that almost nobody read?

[00:00:10]Vladimir Lenin was born in 1870 in Russia. He became radicalized young, drawn to socialist ideas after his brother was executed for plotting against the Tsar. He spent years in Siberian exile >> [music] >> and then wandered Europe writing, organizing, and waiting for a revolution that never seemed to come. Then World War 1 changed everything. Germany was desperate to knock Russia out of the war. So, in April 1917, [music] German military leaders made a calculated gamble. They smuggled Lenin home in a sealed train car straight through enemy territory like a human grenade [music] they planned to pull the pin on. It worked beyond anything they imagined.

[00:00:47]Within months of stepping off that train [music] in Petrograd, Lenin had toppled 300 years of Romanov rule and seized control of the world's largest country.

[00:00:56]By 1922, [music] the Soviet Union was born. Germany planted a spark, Lenin burned down [music] an empire.