The lyrics focus on atrocities in the history of mankind from Satan 's point of view including the trial and death of Jesus Christ ( " Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands to seal his fate " ) , European wars of religion ( " I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made " ) , the violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the 1918 shooting of the Romanov family during World War I ( " I stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change/Killed the Tsar and his ministers/Anastasia screamed in vain " ) , and World War II ( " I rode a tank , held a general 's rank when the blitzkrieg raged , and the bodies stank " ) . The song was originally written with the line " I shouted out ' Who killed Kennedy ? ' " After Robert F. Kennedy 's death on 6 June 1968 , the line was changed to " Who killed the Kennedy '' 's ' '' ? " . And the answer is " when after all it was you and me " , which is a way of saying that " the devil is not the other one , but eventually each one of us . " The song may have been spared further controversy when the first single from the album , " Street Fighting Man " , became even more controversial in view of the race riots and student protests occurring in many cities in Europe and in the United States
the bodies stank
The Holocaust
Sympathy for the Devil