Miserable 20th Century European Leaders - Volume 3; Czar Nicholas the Second From Russia

This incompetent ass took his nation into a war (World War One, coming to the aid of Serbia) at a time when a) his military was utterly ill-prepared (only 70% of his soldiers even had a rifle, huge ammunition shortages existed, military leadership was pitiful and hampered by nepotism, the fact that the Russians had already been decimated in their two previous wars; the Crimean War and the war with Japan, etc.), b) the infrastructure of the country was in horrible condition (railway tracks per square mile were minuscule, the railway system itself sucked, roads were totally inadequate, the communication system was extremely primitive, etc.), c) the economy was only beginning to improve and still quite backward, and d) the political situation was exceedingly chaotic with the socialist revolutionaries, Constitutional Democrats, and supporters of the monarchy (Rasputin's chicanery only started after the war) all trying to position themselves. To say that it was one of the biggest political miscalculations in human history is apropos and, I'm tellin' ya', if anybody on this planet ever laid the groundwork for what proved to be a seven decades long nightmare with communism, it's this guy.