Into the Abyss

This episode looks at the realignment of the European powers and the emergence of the alliance system in the years following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. It examines the key role played by royalty in smoothing the path to the Anglo-Russian entente of 1907, and at the part played by the Kaiser's erratic, unstable personality in the growing isolation of Germany in the years leading up to 1914. It explores the role played by each of the three monarchs in the frantic, desperate days of July and August 1914. And it tells the tragic story of King George's refusal to grant his cousin, and close friend, Tsar Nicholas asylum in England following the Russian Revolution of 1917 - a refusal that would lead directly to the brutal murder of the Tsar and his family by the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1918.