GermanResponsibility

GERMAN RESPONSIBILITY IN THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

A REVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF GERMAN COMPLICITY

By Vahakn N. Dadrian

* A review by Shant Norashkharian *

PART.1

"...It concerns the great contribution German consuls, stationed in wartime Turkey, made in documenting the Armenian genocide. Seemingly unaware of the covert designs and purposes of their superiors in the German embassy in the Ottoman capital, the Foreign Office, and the German Chancellor's Office in the capital of Germany, these lesser functionaries of the German state literally deluged the former with a stream of reports on the details of the unfolding mass murder; similar reports were sent to the German Military Mission to Turkey by German officers operating in the interior of Turkey. Compared to other state archives in Europe, the depositories of the archives of the German Foreign Affairs Ministry in Bonn are unexcelled in terms of their abundance in primary sources relative to that mass murder. The respective records are preserved, classified, and filed with Teutonic discipline and orderliness. It would be no exaggeration to state, therefore, that through the existence and maintenance of these records, the documentation of the Armenian genocide is elevated to the highest degree of its incontestability."

* "...Several German thinkers and activists, notably Field Marshall von der Goltz, laid out explicitly in the late nineteenth century what became the Ittihadist Turkish ideology. Goltz, who also was a principal reformer of the Turkish army, and professor at Istanbul's military college, put forth a doctrine portending a major calamity for the Armenians in what today would be called "ethnic cleansing." He encouraged the Turks to turn away from Europe and create a new empire in East...Ominously, Goltz projected the forcible evacuation of the Armenian population residing in eastern Turkey."

* "...Once the genocide began, the refusal to intervene became the focal point of German policy."

* "...There was also a policy of covering up the genocide."

* "...The Kaiser and his coterie of German military and civilian leaders, honored many of the executioners of the Armenian people. They conferred upon these executioners a host of decorations..."

* "...Three high ranking German military officers at the end of the war organized, through a coordinated effort, the clandestine flight from the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, of the seven top Young Turk Ittihadist leaders, who during the war had masterminded the Armenian genocide."

* "...Deportations, with "severe measures", were ordered by German military officers, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Armenians."

* "...General Bronsart von Schellendorf, the German Chief of Staff of Ottoman Armed Forces...issued orders for the deportation of the Armenians. In one of these orders he demanded that "severe measures" be applied against already disarmed Armenian labor battalion soldiers most of whom were consequently slaughtered by the gangs of the murderous Special Organization. Others aided and abetted massacres and deportations through suggestion or through approbative passivity."

* "...In the case of Urfa, for example, German cooperation with the Turks transformed itself into sheer butchery when a German artillery officer, Major Wolffskeel, single-handedly reduced the Armenian section of the city to rubble and ashes..."

Dr. Smith concludes:

"Indeed, there is already sufficient evidence for Germany to acknowledge such guilt, not as the actual and principal perpetrator of the genocide, but as an accessory to that crime of genocide. Again and again, officials fretted about possible German financial liability in the wake of revelations inculpating German officials on the matter of personally ordering Armenian deportations."

There were many economic and political reasons for the friendship between Germany and Turkey, not the least of which was the expansion to the East by the construction of the Baghdad Railway. But as Dr. Dadrian writes:

"...The episode that is believed to have exerted a great influence in cementing Turko-German ties of friendship was the German response, or rather the lack of it, to the 1894-1896 empire wide massacres against the Armenians. The crucial role this German attitude played in the unfolding of the subsequent stages of the Turko-Armenian conflict involving aggregate massacres against the Armenians of Turkey cannot be overemphasized...The massacres thus proved affordable, as far as these perpetrator—ms were concerned...The relish of the Germans in the pomp and ceremony attending William II's second visit to Turkey in 1898, barely two years after the end of the series of the empire wide massacres, when a benumbed Europe was still abhorring them and anathematizing its author, "the Red Sultan", was an indulgence that signaled German proclivity to condone the butchery of a subject nationality."

In spite of consistent German policy of "turning the other way" for decades while Armenians were being massacred, Dr. Dadrian points out that there were instances, when Bismarck and the monarch "did not absolutely reject principles of humanitarianism. At times both rulers reacted rather vehemently to tales of unspeakable Turkish atrocities. Even Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, could not contain his indignation in the face of 'the heinous atrocities perpetrated by the Turks against the wounded and the defenseless. It is difficult to maintain diplomatic quiet in view of such barbarities, and I believe that the sense of indignation is common among all Christian Powers.' Bismarck directed these words to his Emperor William I at the time of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish war, urging the dispatch, together with the other Powers, of a protest note to Turkey."

Unfortunately these instances were rare and did not effect German foreign policy. Dadrian adds:

"The manifest nonchalance of the German monarch toward the fate of the Armenians, subjected to exterminatory massacres, at the very least indicates, if not demonstrates, that Germany didn't object to the emergence of a new Turkey that is purged of its native Armenian population."

PART 2

Dr. Dadrian states in his book that there are no grounds to make a blanket accusation against all German officials who were connected with the German government during the 1894-96 Hamidian massacres and the Genocide, especially in the light that many of them including an ambassador, top military officials and consuls "risked their positions, health, and even lives in their efforts to obviate, if not prevent, the carnages occurring in the interior of Turkey..." I believe this may be an overstatement and is not borne by sufficient evidence, in the case of HIGH German officials.

I bring up these points for three main reasons:

1) That the German high officials did have the power and influence to actually put a final stop to orders issued by the highest Turkish officials, whenever the will was there.

2) That the excuses of the Turks to commit the Armenian Genocide because of their vulnerability by the Armenian presence in their Eastern front apparently did not apply to the Southern front or the Jews in Palestine.

3) That if Armenians had the kind of influence and organization in Germany and other countries to influence German government and media as the Jews did, history may have been different. Regarding this matter, "Lichtheim indicated that due consideration was given to the strong influence of the Jews on the public opinion in America and in other neutral states..."

It is also evident from Dr. Dadrian's book that in the absolute majority of the cases, the absolute majority of the German officials did not go beyond mere words to interfere with the planning and execution of the Armenian Genocide, as they did in the case of planned Jewish deportations. For instance, the German consul at Jaffa, Schabinger, actually threatened to accompany the Jews subject to evacuation if Jemal did not revoke his order.

The Greeks also had friends in the High German Command, who saved them frequently from falling victim to the same fate as the Armenians. "In December 1917, for example, Marshal Liman von Sanders alerted the German ambassador Bernstorff about an order by War Minister Enver who wanted 'the deportation of all Greeks of the coast to inland areas...' ...Sanders 'had personally intervened and had succeeded because he had threatened to resign .' The German Foreign Office supported the efforts of Sanders and Ambassador Bernstorff, and let it be known that it 'advised strongly against the deportations.' A similar threat of resignation by Marshal von der Goltz materialized when the Turkish deputy governor of Baghdad in 1916 ordered the wholesale deportation of the Greek residents of that city. As Commander-in-Chief of the VIth Ottoman Army in Iraq (Sanders commanded the Vth Army) Goltz energetically and swiftly protested against the order and War Minister Enver had to be accommodative in order to avert his actual resignation."

In the light of the above I am not as benevolent as Dr. Dadrian to release the German officials who only protested with words against the Armenian Genocide from any responsibility, as it is clear that NOT ONE HIGH German official put his career or life on the line to save the Armenians, and it was well within their power to do so, as the numerous examples of the Jews and the Greeks demonstrate. However, there were some lower officials, such as a vice consul named Scheubner who was threatened by General Mahmud Kamil, commander of the Ottoman IIIrd Army, when he "sneered bitterly" at the latter's suggestion that the expulsion of old men, women, children were a "military necessity".

The German complicity in the Armenian Genocide, Dr. Dadrian writes, is based on such evidence as "the order of General Bronsart, the Chief of the Ottoman General Staff at the Ottoman General Headquarters, in which two critical ingredients constitute a basis for the kind of liability that is nothing short of being a criminal liability. First of all he is declaring in it that 'the deportation of the Armenian people (Ermeni ahali ) has been decided (mukarrerdir ).' This is not an order targeting a segment of the Armenian population but one encompassing the general Armenian population. Secondly, he is ordering the adoption of "severe measures" of security against clusters of disarmed and isolated Armenian soldiers, classified as labor battalions...In case after case, civilian and military Germans in these documents narrate how the victims in every instance were butchered wholesale in paroxysms of mass execution."

The question never ceases to surface again and again. How is it that in the presence of hundreds, or perhaps thousands of German witnesses to the Armenian Genocide, these crimes were not only committed, but almost totally silenced? There are eyewitness accounts of totally emaciated Armenians approaching garbage dumps of German soldiers for a few scraps of food and being knocked on the head by them. When vice consul Scheubner suggested distributing bread to some deportees, "Bronsart objected even to this help", and wrote to him saying "The consul would do better sending the bread to the Turkish army". It was Bronsart as well who persistently argued that the deportation of the old men, women and children, were a "military necessity". Whenever isolated instances of acts of rebellion were portrayed by the Turks as "military threat", Bronsart (and other top German officials) supported the Turkish claims, in spite of reports to him (them) by Scheubner (and other low officials) indicating that 'the Armenian male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-eight was in labor battalions or had already been killed off...' " There were dozens of reports proving that Turkish claims of rebellion were totally manufactured, yet the German High Command ignored them, and gave the green light to mass murderers to proceed with their crimes based on the claim that war justified such crimes against humanity. Of course, it was only a generation later that German high officials justified their crimes against humanity by similar arguments.

High German officials like Ambassador Wangenheim, General Bronsart, and Lieutenant Commander of the Navy, Humann, "automatically and rather willingly embraced Turkish assertions that the Armenians were plotting and rebelling and that the Armenians were also massacring the Muslim population of the regions in question". The IIIrd Army's German General Chief of Staff, Colonel Felix Guse, "lambasted the Armenians as a people deserving the 'punishment' meted out to them by the Turks". As Hitler did with the Jewish population in Germany and Poland to justify mass murdering them, Guse characterized Armenians as a "population harboring a 'dangerous mentality.' ...The designation of the Armenians residing in the command-and-control zone of the IIIrd Army as a dangerous internal foe was the defining moment of the World War I Armenian genocide. It was the alpha and omega of the plea of 'military necessity' put forth by the High Command of the Turkish army. It was stated earlier that Guse was allowed to reign supreme in that command..."

General Kamil, who according to Colonel Stange was "a principal authority in charge of the exterminatory undertaking against the Armenians", had Colonel Guse as his Chief of Staff. His office routinely flooded Enver and Talaat with reports of "Armenians as saboteurs, spies and insurgents", to prepare the basis/justification for a new set of massacres. Apparently this "homework" was done at the request of these mass murderers to be prepared for inquiries from foreign embassies. According to one of Kamil's own German officers, "Pertev, the Acting Commander of IIIrd Army's Xth Army Corps stationed in Sivas: 'Kamil has the greatest responsibility for the Armenian massacres. He exaggerated small incidents when reporting them, and blamed the Armenians for Turkish military defeats. I am free of all responsibilities because I have in my possession telegrams ordering massacres.' "

When the Turks decided to invade Russian Armenia, "General Seeckt, the Chief of the Ottoman General Staff at the time, not only proposed to issue an order for a march into Yerevan but also provided the rationale for the proposed incursion: 'to drive away (or to banish) the Armenians' from there. In order to achieve this goal of mass expulsion he ordered the cessation of the operations for the drive to Tiflis and the redirection of the Turkish troops toward southeasterly objectives...The efforts by two other German generals... to avert the catastrophe associated with this Turkish invasion were fruitless. General von Lassow, protested against the new Turkish intent aiming at 'the total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasus', and "General von Kressenstein, Chief of the German Imperial Delegation in the Caucasus, (who) wrote: ' The Turkish policy of causing starvation is an all too obvious proof, if proof was still needed as to who is responsible for the massacre, for the Turkish resolve to destroy the Armenians'... In a subsequent report, he wrote the following: 'The Turks have by no means relinquished their intention to exterminate the Armenians...' ". Like General Bronsart, Seeckt also "offered Enver and Talaat, the two principal architects of the Armenian genocide, help to escape justice through an escape from Turkey altogether, for which purpose German military ships were made available." Seeckt also became one of Hitler's generals later, which again goes to show that the unpunished criminals of the Armenian Genocide made the Jewish Genocide possible.

There is no doubt about that. Was there German responsibility in the cover-up of this great crime against humanity while it was being perpetrated? There is no doubt about that. Did the Germans believe that German geo-political-military interests were "uber alles", even when a whole nation had to be sacrificed? There is no doubt about that either.

Is today's Germany required legally and morally to compensate the Armenian nation for the German nation's responsibility in the Armenian Genocide? The answer is a flat "YES". According to the laws of most Western countries, (and I believe this is true of Germany as well), an accomplice to a crime, even if he does not actively participate in it, is equally guilty and punishable under the law. Thus, for example, when a murder is committed during a robbery by only one of a group of robbers, all robbers are tried for murder, for no other reason than the fact that they were present when the murder was committed and failed to stop it from happening.

In his AENEID, Virgil, a Roman poet from the first century B.C., wrote: "From a single crime know the nation." Does Germany want the whole world to "know it" from this crime? Will Germany remain in the eyes of the world as a nation which is responsible for at least two Genocides in three decades, or will it admit its responsibility, formally apologize to the Armenian nation, and make reparations as it did with the Jews? But how can reparations be made for a million and a half lost lives, many more millions from lost generations, infinite pain and suffering, the loss of a homeland of 4,000 years, and the tragedy of the majority of a nation exiled to the four corners of the world? Only God can forgive such crimes.