[Mr Ramsbotham]

The Germans sending Lenin to Russia in 1917 may have been stupider, but this ranks near the top of the list.

But that was isolated; it wasn't a case of mass stupidity. If I had to guess a close second it might be something like the Children's Crusade, but again, that was relatively isolated.

[Verginius Rufus]

But in terms of the death toll as a result...if Lenin had not seized power in Russia, tens of millions of people would not have died in Communist regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere, and the Nazis might never have managed to come to power in Germany.

Has anyone tried to calculate how many children took part in the Children's Crusade? What happened to them? Sold into slavery in the Muslim world? Something similar happened earlier with the Peasants' Crusade...naive belief that untrained peasants would beat the Turks because God was on their side.