Just reposting this excellent point from lemmygrad
The notion that anyone can peer into the future and see all the possible outcomes to a sufficient degree of certainty to claim that the only possible outcome is to kill the kid is also very silly and Madeline Albrightesque.
We can be absolutely certain that the possibility of reinstating the monarchy would be very bad for lots of Jewish children. It’s terrible, but Tsar Nicholas shouldn’t have created a situation where he made the existence of his family so dangerous for everyone else.
We can be absolutely certain that the possibility of reinstating the monarchy would be very bad for lots of Jewish children.
Shooting a specific Royal lineage doesn’t change anything about the possibility of reinstating the Monarchy. The white’s didn’t evaporate after the executions in the same way that the coalitions didn’t evaporate as soon as soon as Louis XVI got the chop, and the House of Windsor doesn’t quake at the thought of the current Jacobite pretenders. . The notion that the fate of the revolution hangs in the balance of Alexei’s life is some grade A great man theory nonsense.
No, it wasn’t the only possible outcome but still a quite probable one.
Somehow I don’t think they made this decision after siting down with a slide rule and a bunch of actuarial tables, so I don’t know how they arrived at that balance of probabilities.
In reality it’s more like cops defending their use of deadly force in any circumstances. They reckoned it had to be done, and their judgement is all that’s needed to justify it, and now everyone else has to object to or rationalize their decision.
