Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1

[Yervant1]

“Keep Turkey on our side …

whether as a result Armenians do perish or not.”

The German ambassador in Constantinople, Count Paul Wolff-Metternich, wrote to the Imperial Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, in Berlin on December 7, 1915:

… Our displeasure over the persecution of the Armenians should be clearly expressed in our press and an end be put to our gushing over the Turks. Whatever they are accomplishing is due to our doing; those are our officers, our cannons, our money… In order to achieve any success in the Armenian question, we will have to inspire fear in the Turkish government regarding the consequences. If, for military considerations, we do not dare to confront it with a firmer stance, then we will have no choice but… to stand back and watch how our ally continues to massacre.

The Chancellor’s response:

The proposed public reprimand of an ally in the course of a war would be an act which is unprecedented in history. Our only aim is to keep Turkey on our side until the end of the war, no matter whether as a result Armenians do perish or not.

Toronto—The Zoryan Institute is pleased to announce that the long-awaited English edition of The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, compiled and edited by Wolfgang Gust, has just been released by Berghahn Books. It contains hundreds of telegrams, letters and reports from German consular officials in the Ottoman Empire to the Foreign Office in Berlin which describe in graphic and shocking detail the unfolding genocide of the Armenians. The documents provide unequivocal evidence of the genocidal intent of the Young Turks and the German government’s official acquiescence and complicity.

 

Upon the earlier release of the German and Turkish editions of the book, the media reacted emphatically:

• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [Germany]—“The documents collected here illustrate clearly the shared responsibility of the Kaiserreich, the most important ally of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War… They are therefore largely undisguised and so vivid that the reader often shudders when reading them.”
• Forum Wissenschaft [Germany]—“Wolfgang Gust documents, in this excellent political-historical edition from contemporary German sources and the Foreign Office of the Reich government, the murderous events themselves…as well as the political co-responsibility of the German state.
• Hurriyet Daily News [Turkey]—“If you read the book and look at the documents, if you are a person who is introduced to the subject through this book, then there is no way that you would not believe in the genocide and justify the Armenians.”

The exceptional importance of these documents is underscored by the fact that only German diplomats and military officials were able to send uncensored reports out of Turkey during World War I. Apart from the Americans, who remained neutral in the war until April 6, 1917, German diplomats and their informants from the missions or employees of the Baghdad Railway were the most important non-Armenian eyewitnesses of the Genocide. These documents, meant strictly for internal use and never intended for publication, are remarkable for their candid revelations. Even as allies of the Ottoman Empire, German officials still felt compelled for moral and political reasons to report and complain about the atrocities being committed against the Armenians by their Ottoman ally.

 

In describing how he came to undertake this massive project, Gust writes,

…….I was shocked to see the Germans again playing an important role in mass murder at the edge of Europe. This genocide was neither initiated nor committed by Germans, but was widely accepted by them. Imperial Germany was the closest ally of the Young Turks and had a formal military alliance with them. Was there a link between these two most important genocides in Europe? Did the Nazis copy the methods of the Young Turks, who had committed the Armenian Genocide? Were the two World Wars in reality one historical event, as some historians believe?

Questions upon questions. Was Imperial Germany a driving force in the genocide of the Armenians, or possibly even the source of the idea, as some non-German historians have suspected…. Did Imperial Germany view the Armenian Genocide with indifference or with sympathy? Did some Germans or part of the leading class resist the deportations and mass killings? And finally, did Germany have the power to stop the Armenian Genocide, and if they were able to so, why did they not make use of this power?

 

The answers to these questions are found in this prodigious 800-page collection. For more information about the book, please contact the Zoryan Institute zoryan@zoryaninstitute.org or telephone 416-250-9807.

 

The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, compiled and edited by Wolfgang Gust. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014. $89.95US, $95.50CDN.

 

The Zoryan Institute is a non-profit, international center devoted to the research and documentation of contemporary issues with a focus on Genocide, Diaspora and Homeland. The Zoryan Institute through its division, the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, runs an annual course in comparative genocide studies in partnership with the University of Toronto and is co-publisher of Genocide Studies International in partnership with the University of Toronto Press. For more information please contact the Institute by email zoryan@zoryaninstitute.org or telephone 416-250-9807.

Copyright © 2014 The Zoryan Institute, All rights reserved.

 

 

Our mailing address is:

The Zoryan Institute

255 Duncan Mill Rd, Suite 310

Toronto, ON M3B 3H9

Canada

 

[Yervant1]

ZORYAN INSTITUTE PUBLISHED ENGLISH VERSION OF BOOK ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONTAINING SECRET GERMAN FILES

14:01, 9 January, 2014

YEREVAN, JANUARY 9, ARMENPRESS. The Zoryan Institute published the
English version of the book titled "The Armenian Genocide 1915-1916:
Proofs from German Foreign Ministry's Archives".

As reports "Armenpress", a number of letters, telegrams, and reports
have been enclosed in the book. The files have been sent by the
German officials to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany from
the Ottoman Empire during the World War I.

These documents introduce undeniable proofs of the intentions of the
Young Turks regarding the Genocide and that the German officials were
aware of it.

Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reflected upon the book and stated:
"If you read the book and see the documents and if you get acquainted
with the issue via this book, then it's impossible not to believe in
the Genocide.

http://armenpress.am/eng/news/745641/zoryan-institute-published-english-version-of-book-on-armenian-genocide-containing-secret-german-files.html

[Yervant1]

NEW BOOK PROVIDES SHOCKING EVIDENCE OF GERMAN CO-RESPONSIBILITY IN ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

11:03 10.01.2014

The English edition of The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the
German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, compiled and edited by
Wolfgang Gust, has just been released by Berghahn Books, the Zoryan
Institute informs.

It contains hundreds of telegrams, letters and reports from German
consular officials in the Ottoman Empire to the Foreign Office in
Berlin which describe in graphic and shocking detail the unfolding
genocide of the Armenians. The documents provide unequivocal evidence
of the genocidal intent of the Young Turks and the German government's
official acquiescence and complicity.

Upon the earlier release of the German and Turkish editions of the
book, the media reacted emphatically:

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [Germany]-"The documents collected here
illustrate clearly the shared responsibility of the Kaiserreich, the
most important ally of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War...

They are therefore largely undisguised and so vivid that the reader
often shudders when reading them."

Forum Wissenschaft [Germany]-"Wolfgang Gust documents, in this
excellent political-historical edition from contemporary German
sources and the Foreign Office of the Reich government, the murderous
events themselves...as well as the political co-responsibility of
the German state.

Hurriyet Daily News [Turkey]-"If you read the book and look at the
documents, if you are a person who is introduced to the subject
through this book, then there is no way that you would not believe
in the genocide and justify the Armenians."

The exceptional importance of these documents is underscored by the
fact that only German diplomats and military officials were able to
send uncensored reports out of Turkey during World War I. Apart from
the Americans, who remained neutral in the war until April 6, 1917,
German diplomats and their informants from the missions or employees of
the Baghdad Railway were the most important non-Armenian eyewitnesses
of the Genocide. These documents, meant strictly for internal use
and never intended for publication, are remarkable for their candid
revelations. Even as allies of the Ottoman Empire, German officials
still felt compelled for moral and political reasons to report and
complain about the atrocities being committed against the Armenians
by their Ottoman ally.

In describing how he came to undertake this massive project, Gust
writes,

...~E.I was shocked to see the Germans again playing an important
role in mass murder at the edge of Europe. This genocide was neither
initiated nor committed by Germans, but was widely accepted by
them. Imperial Germany was the closest ally of the Young Turks and
had a formal military alliance with them. Was there a link between
these two most important genocides in Europe? Did the Nazis copy
the methods of the Young Turks, who had committed the Armenian
Genocide? Were the two World Wars in reality one historical event,
as some historians believe?

Questions upon questions. Was Imperial Germany a driving force in the
genocide of the Armenians, or possibly even the source of the idea,
as some non-German historians have suspected.... Did Imperial Germany
view the Armenian Genocide with indifference or with sympathy?

Did some Germans or part of the leading class resist the deportations
and mass killings? And finally, did Germany have the power to stop
the Armenian Genocide, and if they were able to so, why did they not
make use of this power?

The answers to these questions are found in this prodigious 800-page
collection.

http://www.armradio.am/en/2014/01/10/new-book-provides-shocking-evidence-of-german-co-responsibility-in-armenian-genocide/

[Yervant1]

GERMAN WARTIME DOCUMENTS NOW IN ENGLISH

HISTORY, NEWS | JANUARY 23, 2014 11:25 AM
________________________________

By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

Special to the Mirror-Spectator

HAMBURG - Who was responsible for the Armenian Genocide? The ready
answer is the Young Turk leadership, and that is on the mark. But
there is more to the story. The Genocide took place in the context of
the First World War, whose centenary is being commemorated this year,
a war which saw Ottoman Turkey allied with Imperial Germany. It stands
to reason that documentary material from official German sources can
provide special insight into the actual campaign of deportations and
mass murder, because, as allies, the Germans were privy to information
that others did not have.

The richest source of information is to be found in the German Foreign
Ministry archives during the war. German researcher and historian
Wolfgang Gust compiled a critical edition of key documents in German
in 2005, and his groundbreaking research has been translated into
several other languages. Now it is finally available in English. (See
release.) I had the opportunity to talk to Gust about his new book and
to learn more about the background and special relevance it has today.

Wolfgang Gust was active for decades with the leading German weekly
Der Spiegel, including seven years as head of the Paris office and
later work as editor of Spiegel books. It was during his stay in Paris
that he first read about the Armenian Genocide in a book by Jacques
von Alexanian, Le ciel etait noir sur l'Euphrat, and began research
on the subject. Following a series in Spiegel in 1991 on Karabagh,
he published his first book on the subject (1993), which drew largely
on existing research in French, German and other sources. There was
relatively little original work in German, so he was breaking new
ground when he went to the official German government sources and in
2005 issued a selection of 240 of the most important documents. It
is this volume which is now available in the US.

The fact that it is in English is "most important," he told me,
"because English is the international language" which most scholars can
read. And, he quipped, although American and British historians have
a very good reputation, they are not noted for their foreign language
capabilities... As for the substance of the work, the significance
lies in the documents themselves, "which are the most important
non-Turkish documents because Germany was one of the Great Powers in
the war." Diplomatic personnel, both the Ambassador and various consuls
in Turkey, as well as members of the numerous Christian missions,
reported at length on what they could observe on the ground. Although,
he noted, the Americans and British may have had more information about
the Committee of Union and Progress, they did not have facts about
the massacres. Or if they did - for instance Ambassador Morgenthau's
reports - they did not have the same access to safe, encoded channels
of communication that the Germans, as allies, had.

What then did the Germans know? And what did they do? Were they
co-responsible? Or were they even, as some Turkish and other
researchers have suggested, the prime movers for genocide? Was "German
militarism" the culprit? Gust has explored this aspect in great depth
and has concluded that there were varying levels of knowledge and
different modes of response. He pointed out, for example, that lower
level officers on the ground had more access to knowledge about the
deportations and killings than the higher level General Staff. There
were those who knew about the massacres and supported them, Gust said:
"like First Lieutenant Bottrich, who was the German officer responsible
for the Ottoman railways, and therefore for the Armenians working on
the Baghdad railway project. He personally signed deportation orders,
which were death warrants." Or there was Eberhard Graf Wolffskeel von
Reichenberg, a German artillery and General Staff officer, who not only
witnessed killings in Zeitun and Urfa, "but also shot them himself." At
the same time there were some German officers who protected Armenians,
and due to German intervention they were not deported en masse
from Smyrna and Constantinople. As for the diplomats, the consuls,
they "were on the side of the Armenians, not the Turks," Gust said,
"but since they were officially German representatives they had to
be careful about what they said."

Notwithstanding, "in their internal reports they spoke openly of
massacres; deputy consul Hermann Hoffmann-Volkersamb from Alexandrette,
for example, and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter from Erzerum,"
who gave detailed accounts.

There are many historians who have stressed the role of German
militarism, among them Sean McMeekin. In his book, The Berlin-Baghdad
Express, he highlights the role of Max Baron von Oppenheim and his
nationalist propaganda. "But," Gust explained, "Oppenheim was merely
a propagandist, not a representative of German policy." German
militarism, in Gust's view, "does play a role, in that it was the
military that the Turks wanted as allies. And German policy was
influenced by the military." But this was not what motivated the
Genocide. Gust also points out that, contrary to the idea current
among some historians, it was not the Germans who forced the Young
Turks into the alliance. Rather, as the archives show, "Turkey wanted
Germany as an ally because they were convinced that Germany would win
the war and they had plans for conquering the Caucasus." They even
insisted on guarantees that, in the event of victory, they would have
a border with a Muslim state.

A frequent argument put forward in particular by those who deny the
Genocide is that the Armenians constituted a military threat to Turkey
and that they had to organize the deportations, during which Armenians
perished. In further research conducted over the past two years, Gust
has unearthed crucial evidence to refute this notion and has published
it on www.armenocide.net. Here he has focused on surviving military
documents from the Supreme Headquarters, documents by foreign ministry
representatives who always reported what they heard from military. "I
have found nothing - nothing," he repeated, "referring to the Armenians
as a 'danger' or as 'preparing a rebellion.' From 1,000 documents,
stretching to the end of 1916, there is not one such reference."

There may have been, he said, some German military in Constantinople
who were influenced by Turkish allegations of such activity, but the
absence of any reference in these documents "is important, because
the military dominated in Germany: if the Armenian issue did not
exist for the German military," he reasoned, "then it was not part of
German policy." As the new research confirms, Germany's military aims
concerned the Suez Canal (which they tried to block but failed), but
not the Middle East. For Germany, France and Belgium were important,
and for economic reasons. Russia was important, "and therefore they
hoped to use Turkey in a war against Russia, to open a second front."

The German military in Berlin were for the war, but were neither for
nor against the Armenians.

In serious historical research, it is the primary sources which count,
not ideological leanings or political opportunism. This first English
edition of the German wartime documents will shed new light on the
fate the Armenians suffered in that conflict. When I asked Gust who
the likely readers would be, he said he thought that Armenians above
all would be interested in the book, not only specialists but also
students in Turcology and genocide studies. Most important for those
involved in genocide studies are "the direct quotations from Young
Turk leaders Enver and Talaat which show they planned the Genocide."

- See more at:
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2014/01/23/german-wartime-documents-now-in-english/#sthash.DsoWtPyZ.dpuf

[Yervant1]

NEW EVIDENCE OF GERMAN GUILT

Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto,

12 June 2014

In a recently published book by the Yale University Press ("Nazis,
Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East) about Germany's
alliance with Ottoman Turkey during the First World War, co-authors
Barry Rubin & Wolfgang G, Schwanitz shed newlight on Berlin's
complicity in the Genocide of Armenians.

Rubin and Schwanitz say that the father of the German policy to recruit
Muslims into the German side was Max von Oppenheim and call for Jihad
against Christian Britain, France, and Russia. According to the two
authors, he was as important to German strategy in the Middle East
as Lawrence of Arabia was to Britain. In November 1914 von Oppenheim
wrote a 136-page plan, "The Revolutionizing of the Islamic Territories
of Our Enemies", to the Kaiser. "The plan was quickly approved and
funded. The plan identified [Germany's] enemy not only the British,
French, and Russians but also non-Muslim minorities, Christians and
Jews who supported the Allies. This meant Germany's endorsement of
a war against civilians and spreading religious hatred.

Thus, German strategy would be intimately involved in the Ottoman's
mass murder of Armenians," say Rubin and Schwanitz.

Here are more excerpts from the book:

"But the Kaiser [Wilhelm II] was not trying to win over the empire's
[Ottoman] non-Muslim or dissident subjects. In 1898, the Ottoman
Empire appeared a stronger horse than scattered Arab nationalist
intellectuals, Jewish ideologues, and Armenian activists with no troops
or money behind them. Thus, the Germans turned down Armenian requests
for help against the Ottomans...Consequently, Armenians would turn
toward Russia and both Zionists and Arab nationalists toward Great
Britain for support."

When the Kaiser visited (1898) Istanbul for the second time, bilingual
(German and Turkish) postcards printed the Kaiser's pledge to be the
"friend of the Ottoman sultan and the three-hundred Muslims who revere
him as their caliph. The postcard was produced two years after the
Ottoman sultan and caliph Abdulhamid II had been condemned throughout
Europe for massacres against his Armenian subjects that shocked all
'minorities of infidels.'"

"...Quickly, Enver (*****), who was simultaneously planning the
deportation and massacre of Armenians, realized that the violence
had to be focused against his and Germany's enemies."

"...But the most momentous immediate event arising from the German
jihad strategy was the mass murder of Ottoman Armenians. Von Oppenheim
either urged or supported Ottoman repression of the Armenians and Jews
[although he was a Jew], as well as the execution of Arab nationalists,
groups he saw as favoring the Allies. When German officials warned
about massacres of Armenians, von Oppenheim told them to shut up."

"...Von Oppenheim's aide, Scheubner-Richter, sent three vivid
reports to German Ambassador von Wangenheim on the cruelties against
Armenians in the Lake Van region, Scheubner-Richter reported rumors
that deportations were being conducted according to German advice.

Personally, he explained he didn't believe the story and tried to
help ease the pressure on the Armenians, but von Wangenheim ignored
his request for intervention. If the Germans had wanted to stop, or
at least mitigate, Ottoman policy and behavior toward the Armenians
they could easily have done so. For example, on October 8, 1915,
von Oppenheim received a report that the Ottoman government's goal
was the extermination of the Armenians. Only one week later, however,
he was telling Berlin that the deportations were justified war measures
because the Armenians were betraying the Ottomans by supporting their
Russian enemy."

"Meanwhile, German consuls, bankers, and clerics in the empire were
telling a different story from what von Oppenheim reported to Berlin.

During the second half of 1915, they warned of how jihad rhetoric was
inflaming Muslim hatred of Christians and determination to annihilate
them; how the jihad was just a cover for systematic looting, killing,
and terror toward Armenians; and they provided detailed accounts of
mass deportations, killings, and concentration camps."

"These Germans said they often heard the slogan from Muslims that
jihad should begin by killing local Christians. They also noted that
Ottoman officers and officials frequently said that Germany wanted
the Armenians killed. German bankers told how Armenian employees and
customers were disappearing. The Ottoman government then informed them
that it was seizing the Armenians' assets. The official explanation
for German inaction was that Germany needed Turkey's help as an ally
and so could say nothing."

"By early 1916 German officials in the Ottoman Empire had no doubt
about what was happening. Even the Kaiser heard the news. The head of
his military cabinet, Moriz von Lyncker, wrote in his diary on August
8, 1916: "Most terrible how the Turks rage against Christian Armenians,
their subjects. Thousands--men, woman and children--are slaughtered;
others were driven purposely to death by starvation. Our diplomats
appear at this point powerless. But in fact the German government
never made the slightest attempt to discourage the mass murders."

"Soon, the Armenians disappeared entirely from eastern Armenia. Enver
told a visiting German that there was "No Armenian question anymore."

He said that Armenians had killed between 125,000 and 150,000 Muslim
Turks, and that the Turks had killed--the figures are hotly debated
to this day--up to one and a half million Armenians."

"The mass murder of Ottoman Armenians was the largest organized
massacre against a civilian minority since medieval and probably since
ancient times. While it was carried out by the Ottomans, the German
broadly inspired it, were well aware of it, and didn't interfere
with it."

"...German policy looked down on Middle Eastern Christians, especially
Armenians. Von Oppenheim said that they deserved their reputation
'as being cowards, and great at plotting and scheming.' This racial
theme would continue under the Nazis..."

http://www.keghart.com/Tutunjian-German-Guilt