On this episode of Dave Does History, we take a sobering look at one of the most haunting nights of the 20th century: the brutal execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family by Bolshevik revolutionaries on July 17, 1918.

It wasn’t a battlefield. It wasn’t a courtroom. And it certainly wasn’t justice. It was a dark cellar, a lie about a photograph, and a hail of bullets that ended over 300 years of Romanov rule in a single night.

This wasn’t just the fall of a monarchy. It was the violent birth of a regime willing to kill children to kill an idea.

We’ll explore who the Romanovs really were, how they came to be prisoners in their own land, and what this moment meant for Russia and for the world. This isn’t just history. It’s a reminder of what happens when power forgets its humanity.