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DID THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE INSPIRE HITLER?
by Hannibal Travis
http://www.meforum.org/3434/armenian-genocide-hitler
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2013, pp. 27-35 (view PDF)
It is well known by genocide scholars that in 1939 Adolf Hitler urged
his generals to exterminate members of the Polish race.[1] "Who speaks
today of the extermination of the Armenians?" Hitler asked, just a week
before the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland.[2] However, while
it is generally agreed that Hitler was well aware of the Armenian
genocide,[3] some genocide scholars and historians of the Ottoman
Empire have questioned whether he actually made the above statement
or even intended to exterminate portions of the "Polish race."[4]
Still, there is evidence that the massacre of the Ottoman Armenians
helped persuade the Nazis that national minorities posed a threat to
empires dominated by an ethnic group such as the Germans or the Turks.
Furthermore, these minorities could be exterminated to the benefit
of the perpetrator with little risk. Indeed, it was German officials
who had smuggled out of the Ottoman Empire the leaders of the Young
Turk regime, culpable for the deaths of over a million Armenians and a
million or more other Christian minorities such as the Assyrians and
Greeks.[5] Diverse historical evidence suggests that Hitler viewed
the Armenians and Poles as analogous; in several ways, his statement
about the Armenians was consistent with his other beliefs and writings.
A number of clues point to the possibility that Hitler's "final
solution" was inspired by the Turkish massacre of its Armenian
population in 1915. His infamous 1939 question, "Who speaks today of
the extermination of the Armenians?" although hotly debated concerning
its authenticity, is only one indication leading to that conclusion.
The Assassin's Leak
The historical context of Hitler's statement and the manner in which it
came to Western attention has long been problematic. On November 24,
1945, The Times of London published an article stating that Hitler
referred to the extermination of the Armenians during an address to
his commanders-in-chief on August 22, 1939, a statement that was read
at a hearing of the Nuremberg trial. Hitler's speech asserted that the
aim of the war is not to attain certain lines, but consists in the
physical destruction of the opponent. Thus, for the time being,
I have sent to the East only my "Death's Head units" with the order
to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish
race or language. Only in such a way, will we win the vital living
space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of
the Armenians?[6]
The anti-Nazi writer Louis Lochner, a former bureau chief of the
Associated Press in Berlin, quoted Hitler's statement from an original
Nazi document before the Nuremberg trials had even convened.[7]
Lochner had a variety of sources within the Nazi government and had
been interned from December 1941 to May 1942 before being exchanged
for German diplomats interned in the United States. After his release,
he published What about Germany? containing the quote mentioning
the Armenians.[8] The quote was used in the November 1945 The Times
article, which cited the ongoing proceedings of the Nuremberg trials.
Two additional copies of the memorandum describing Hitler's speech
were found immediately after the war in the files of the Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht (German High Command, OKW), but neither contained the
Armenian quote. Nor was either military document signed as would be
expected for an official record of a meeting. These incongruities
led Nuremberg prosecutors to conclude that there had been two Hitler
speeches on August 22 and that the Lochner version containing the
quote was a merger of notes from both. As a result of the disparities,
objections were made by lawyers for two Nuremberg defendants, Hermann
Göring and Erich Raeder, to the authenticity of the OKW versions and
to the inclusion of the Lochner document in evidence. The key issue
for the defense was not the Armenian quote per se but rather the term
"brutal measures," which they claimed was never used by Hitler although
they conceded that he had used "severe" expressions.[9]
Since the prosecution had other records of the meetings, as well as one
introduced by defendant Raeder, the Lochner document was included in
the trial record but was not introduced as evidence. In the context
of the Nuremberg trials, the overriding issue was not the Armenian
quote but Hitler's call for a brutal war of aggression against Poland.
But defenders of the Ottoman Empire regard the court's decision as key:
The military versions of Hitler's speech without the quote are viewed
as more reliable, and the Lochner version as suspect or tainted.[10]
The question of Lochner's source for the document, and hence the quote,
has therefore been the crux of intense historical interest.
Lochner himself indicated only that he had obtained it from "Mr.
Maass" without saying who the original source was at the August 22,
1939 meeting. But subsequent research had shown that the Lochner
and The Times versions have a clear chain of transmission.[11] The
original source of Hitler's speech on the Poles and the Armenians and
of its transmission to The Times was Wilhelm Canaris,[12] head of the
Abwehr, a German military intelligence organization, and a leading
figure in the military opposition to Hitler. Canaris became involved
with several conspiracies against the dictator, including a July 20,
1944 assassination plot. Another member of the German resistance,
Hans Bernd Gisevius, confirmed that Canaris took notes of the speech
even though it was "forbidden to do so."[13]
Canaris's notes were passed to three men, all of whom were executed
before the Nuremberg trials convened and thus could not be questioned:
Hans Oster, Ludwig Beck, and Hermann Maass. Historian Kevork Bardakjian
concluded that Canaris likely passed the notes to his deputy, Oster,
who then transmitted them to Beck, a conservative general and former
chief of the General Staff, who had long opposed Nazi influence
on the German military and foreign policy. Beck probably instructed
Maass, formerly general manager of the Reich Committee of German Youth
Associations, to give the document to Lochner due to Beck's role as a
"leader of the German resistance."
Like Canaris, Beck was involved in a number of conspiracies and was
executed after the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate
Hitler, in which he had a leading role.[14] Finally, historian
Winfried Baumgart has argued that Canaris's notes also appear to
have been the source of the two unsigned documents in the German high
command files.[15]
Gisevius and Oster believed that the invasion of Poland gave them a
unique chance to get rid of Hitler and ensure peace with Poland.[16]
Canaris's opposition to Hitler was wide-ranging. An official with
British intelligence boasted of having "buil[t] ~E up" Canaris as a
potential assassin of Hitler.[17] In 1944, the Gestapo found documents
revealing Canaris to be conspiring with Catholics and the West against
Hitler. The admiral was executed in a concentration camp on April 9,
1945, for plotting a coup against Hitler, along with Oster.[18]
Turkish Historians on the "Armenian Quote"
Hitler's citation of the Armenians in his August 22, 1939 meeting
has been an important concern for Turkish historians and pro-Ottoman
analysts. Türkkaya Ataöv of Ankara University, with the apparent
endorsement of the Turkish government, has contended that the Armenian
quote does not appear in Nuremberg documents and is a forgery. He goes
further to assert that no Armenian genocide took place, that Armenians
had collaborated with the Nazis, and that Turks had welcomed Jews.[19]
Similarly, Princeton University professor Heath Lowry suggested
in 1985 that the lack of clear evidence that Hitler's alleged
statement about the Armenians was "authentic" should have put an end
to attempts to recognize the Armenian genocide in exhibits of the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, resolutions of the U.S. Congress,
or in the curricula on the Holocaust established by state boards of
education. The logical outcome, Lowry argued, was that the Armenian
genocide was simply a type of "propaganda" and "vilification against
the Republic of Turkey."[20] Finally, Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus
of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has contended that
any attempt to link the anti-Armenian massacres and the Holocaust
rests "on a shaky factual foundation." But Lewy has conceded that
the document containing Hitler's statement about the Armenians might
"represent an embellishment of points made in the speech" by Hitler
to his generals in August 1939.[21]
In contrast, in a notable 1995 article in Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Lifton argued that
Lowry was being professionally irresponsible in claiming that the
Armenian genocide was simply a "ludicrous" Armenian claim. In their
view, it was the more recent claim that Hitler did not refer to the
Armenian genocide that lacked an evidentiary basis.[22] Moreover,
they demonstrate that Lowry, like historian Justin McCarthy, had
engaged in a pattern of protesting academic characterizations of the
Armenian genocide that was welcomed by the Turkish government.[23]
According to Inside Higher Education, McCarthy once called the Armenian
genocide a "meaningless" idea and served on the board of a grant-making
organization in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Turkish Studies,
which has ties to the Turkish government. McCarthy argues that the
Armenian case is dissimilar to the Holocaust and resembles the U.S.
Civil War.[24]
One of Lewy's preferred sources for Hitler's speech were the copies
from the OKW, used by Nuremberg prosecutors to demonstrate command
responsibility for numerous crimes in Poland. Lewy has argued that
Hitler's statement about the Armenians was not "accepted as evidence
by the Nuremberg Tribunal," citing Lowry to this effect.[25] Ankara
University's Ataöv similarly asserted: "Hundreds of thousands of
captured Nazi documents were assembled as evidence in the trial of
the major Nazi war criminals. One cannot find the oft-repeated Hitler
'statement' among these documents."[26] The idea that the Hitler
quote is a forgery and that it does not appear in the Nuremberg trial
documents is frequently repeated on websites dedicated to denial of
the Armenian genocide.
While the Lochner document was not used at Nuremberg, even Lowry admits
that volume VII of the compilation of evidence against the Nazis,
entitled Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, reproduced the statement.[27]
That compilation contained in its introduction a description of the
document series as the tribunal's "documentary evidence demonstrating
the criminality of the former leaders of the German Reich."[28]
This means that the document was introduced as evidence before the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg even if it was not
used on a specific day of the trials. The Lochner document with the
Armenia quote was also included in the 1961 publication of foreign
policy documents by the German Foreign Office.[29]
The Armenian Genocide as Nazi Precedent
As part of a larger effort to deny or downplay the Armenian genocide,
some historians have claimed that Hitler did not cite the Armenians
as an example of the impunity of perpetrators. They have also denied
that the Armenian genocide provided the inspiration or any form of
precedent for the design and conduct of Nazi aggression and genocide.
One method has been to suggest that the Nazi program of extermination
was a late creation. Thus, for example, Lewy suggested that Hitler
did not order exterminations in Poland~Wor mention the extermination
of the Armenians~Wbecause "by August 1939, Hitler had not yet decided
upon the destruction of the Jews."[30]
This argument is unpersuasive for several reasons. First, as has been
shown, there are compelling reasons to believe that Hitler's statements
about extermination in 1939 indeed cited the Armenians and were aimed
at the Poles. Hitler's intentions toward the Jews had been spelled out
across many statements, including in the notorious January 1939 speech
in which Hitler "prophesied" that another world war would result in
the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Second, Hitler had
repeatedly engaged in virulent anti-Polish and anti-Slavic rhetoric
prior to August 1939.[31] Third, Hitler's decision to destroy Poland
as a nation, while allowing some Poles to survive, was entirely
consistent with his political philosophy that nations played out
a chaotic struggle for life in an unforgiving world, as shown by
history. Finally, there was the tacit acquiescence of the major powers
in the Turkish model of ethnic cleansing and genocide. These may have
provided Hitler with reasons to adopt it for Poland and the East.
To what extent was the Armenian genocide understood as a model by
Hitler? In a 1931 interview, he told a German newspaper editor that
when deciding Germany's future, one should "[t]hink of the biblical
deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages (Rosenberg refers to
them) and remember the extermination of the Armenians."[32] Hitler and
other contemporary European leaders admired Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as
a national leader who won for the Turkish people the living space it
needed from the Slavs and the British. Speaking in 1925, Hitler "dwelt
at length on patriotism and national pride and quoted approvingly
the role of Kemal Atatürk of Turkey and the example of Mussolini,
who had marched on Rome" a few weeks prior.[33]
The parallels between Hitler and Atatürk were also noted at the time.
The influential Foreign Affairs journal published an article in
the 1930s stating, "Just as in Italy since 1922, and as in Germany
since early in the present year, the conduct of political affairs in
Turkey rests today on the personality of a leader. ~E By means of a
clever scheme ~E the President, while constitutionally without undue
influence, becomes the real autocrat.'" It argued that with the end of
foreign "influence," Turkey "had become an almost homogeneous state"
in "national and religious" terms, so that its "Christian minorities
hardly existed any longer."[34] In early 1939, the German socialists
had also pointed out the similarity between the Nazis and past leaders
of Turkey.[35] Three days after the speech reported by Canaris, Hitler
wrote to Mussolini that he hoped that the Turks could be persuaded
to join Italy, Japan, and Russia in an anti-British coalition.[36]
He planned to hand over parts of the southern Soviet Union to Turkey
in due time.[37]
The fate of the Armenians was also understood within Nazi ideology. A
key influence on Hitler was the Prussian-educated British writer
Houston Stewart Chamberlain. His work Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century sold 250,000 copies by 1938 and secured his fame in
Germany.[38] Volume 1 of this work offered a model for Germany,
arguing that Turkey was "the last little corner of Europe in which
a whole people lives in undisturbed prosperity and happiness," and
blaming non-German world powers (Britain and France) for encouraging
an Armenian rebellion, in response to which "the otherwise humane
Moslem rises and destroys the disturber of the peace."[39]
In 1927, leading Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg had published a
booklet calling Chamberlain the "apostle and founder of a German
future."[40] In 1938, Rosenberg published a collection of speeches
in which he commented that in 1921, after the Turkish minister Talat
Pasha was murdered in Berlin by an Armenian, a campaign was waged in
the "international press" to release the killer due to the history of
struggle between Armenians and Turks.[41] Rosenberg endorsed the Turks'
resistance to Armenian claims for autonomy ("den armenischen Staat
im Staat"), comparing the Armenians to the Jews, because he claimed
the Armenians engaged in espionage against Turkey as the Jews did
against Germany.[42] He "praised Talat Pasha ~E [and] minimized the
[Ottoman Christian] genocide."[43]
Rosenberg also introduced Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter to Hitler.
Scheubner-Richter had been the German vice-consul in Erzerum and
documented the planning and implementation of the murder of Armenians
by the Young Turks in the name of Islam and pan-Turkic ideology.
Scheubner-Richter's relationship to Hitler was so close that he was
killed standing next to Hitler and Rosenberg during the failed Munich
"Beer Hall" putsch of 1923. Hitler then dedicated the first part of
Mein Kampf to his "irreplaceable" fallen comrade.[44] Armenian-American
historian Vahkan Dadrian has argued that Scheubner-Richter had a
"direct" influence on Hitler that may have included introducing him to
the example of how the Ottoman Armenians (then called the "Jews of the
Orient") were deported from their villages, worked to death, starved,
and frozen to death during exposure to harsh winter conditions.[45]
Mike Joseph has called Scheubner-Richter the "personal link from
[the Armenian] genocide to Hitler."[46] Scheubner-Richter's reports
regarding the genocidal solution to the Armenian question foreshadow
and may have inspired Hitler's later ideas and rhetoric regarding
the Jews as did his descriptions of Turkish methods, including
provocations and allegations of terrorism and revolution. Prior
to his death, Scheubner-Richter urged that Germany be "cleansed"
of alien peoples by "ruthless" measures.[47]
Other high-ranking Nazis were also well-placed to learn how the
Armenian genocide occurred and to inform Hitler. Franz von Papen
became Hitler's vice chancellor after serving as chief of staff of
the Fourth Turkish Army during World War I and was responsible for
managing German-Austrian and German-Turkish relations under the Nazis.
Rudolf Hess, deputy inspector of concentration camps under Himmler,
had served in the Ottoman-German forces fighting the Russians during
World War I. Hans von Seeckt was chief of the Ottoman General Staff in
1917 and 1918 and "laid the groundwork for the later emergence of the
Third Reich's Wehrmacht" and "embraced Hitler and his ideology."[48]
The similarity of the genocidal methods employed by the Nazis and the
Ottomans is also inescapable. Parallels between Ottoman and Nazi theory
and practice include the central place of race in the self-conception
of the fascist elites and the notion of relocating ethnic minorities
to reservations. Hitler often expressed his belief that race was
the dominant independent variable in history and that it had to be
dealt with directly by any ethnonationalist leader who wanted to
be successful.[49] "When the race is in danger of being oppressed,"
he wrote, "the question of legality plays only a secondary role."[50]
Both the Ottomans and the Nazis also used the concept of ethnic
"cleaning" or "cleansing." While the Young Turks implemented a "clean
sweep of internal enemies~Wthe indigenous Christians," according to the
then-German ambassador in Constantinople,[51] the Nazis implemented a
"housecleaning of Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, and the nobility."[52]
The official who announced the ethnic cleansing plan for Poland may
have been aware of similar policies of the internal security officials
of the Ottoman Empire, which resulted in "hundreds of thousands of
the Ottoman Empire's Muslims, Christian Armenians, and Orthodox Greeks
[being] expelled or murdered."[53] Hitler himself used "cleaning" or
"cleansing" as a euphemism for extermination[54] and described his
rule as being characterized by an "unheard of cleansing process."[55]
On December 12, 1941, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that "with
respect of the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a
clean sweep."[56] Finally, the impunity with which the Armenians had
been slaughtered~Wthe essence of Hitler's August 22, 1939 remark~Wwas
reinforced by the international community's failure to prevent the
massacre of other peoples, including later massacres by the Italians
using poison-gas and machine-guns in Ethiopia.[57]
Conclusion
Numerous ideological and political influences led from the Armenian
genocide to the rape of Poland and the Holocaust. Chamberlain, Hess,
Rosenberg, Seeckt, Scheubner-Richter, and von Papen all likely played
a role in prompting Hitler to use Turkey's example as a model for
Poland. Hitler compared the two cases in his 1939 speech, which,
like most evidence that the Holocaust took place, was not relied
upon in the tribunal's judgment.[58] Subsequent efforts to discredit
the speech by defenders of the Ottoman Empire should not, however,
blind us to the manifold connections between the Armenian genocide
and that perpetrated by the Nazis.
Hannibal Travis is the author of Genocide in the Middle East: The
Ottoman Empire, Iraq and Sudan (Carolina Academic Press, 2010) and
"The Assyrian Genocide: A Tale of Oblivion and Denial," in Rene
Lemarchand, ed., Forgotten Genocides: Denial, Oblivion, and Memory
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
[1] Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed.
(London: Routledge, 2010), p. 149.
[2] Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918-1945, Federal Republic
of Germany, Federal Foreign Office, ser. D, vol. 7, 1961, p.
193, fn. 1; Louis P. Lochner, What about Germany? (London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1943), p. 12.
[3] Jones, Genocide, p. 173.
[4] Heath W. Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the
Armenians," Political Communication and Persuasion, 3, 1985, pp.
111-39.
[5] Vahakn Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian
Sources," in Israel Charny, ed., The Widening Circle of Genocide, vol.
3 (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), pp. 122-4.
[6] Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 7, U.S. Chief Counsel for
the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing
Office, 1946), p. 753.
[7] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians," pp.
113-4, 121.
[8] Lochner, What About Germany? pp. 11-2.
[9] Kevork B. Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide (Toronto:
Zoryan Institute, 1985), pp. 14-5, 18.
[10] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
p. 116.
[11] Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, pp. 20-3; idem,
"Hitler's 'Armenian Extermination' Remark, True or False?" The New
York Times, July 6, 1985.
[12] Vahakn Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections
between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust: From Impunity
to Retributive Justice," The Yale Journal of International Law, 23
(1998): 539-40; Allan Bullock, Walter Schellenberg, The Labyrinth:
Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, Hitler's Chief of Counterintelligence
(New York: Harper and Bros., 2000), pp. x-xi, 353, 359-60; Joachim
Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of German Resistance, Bruce
Little, trans. (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt, 1997), p. 5.
[13] Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, pp. 20-1.
[14] Ibid., pp. 20-3; Bardakjian, "Hitler's 'Armenian Extermination'
Remark, True or False?"; Helen Fein, "Political Functions of Genocide
Comparisons," in Yehuda Bauer, Alice Eckardt, and Franklin H. Littell,
eds., Remembering for the Future: Working Papers and Addenda, vol. 3
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989), p. 2432.
[15] Winfried Baumgart, "Zur Ansprache Hitler's vor den Führern der
Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung,"
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Apr. 1968, pp. 120-49.
[16] Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death, p. 110.
[17] John H. Waller, The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy
in the Second World War (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), pp.
237, 357.
[18] Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, p. 22; Michael
Mueller and Geoffrey Brooks, Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler's
Spymaster (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2007), pp. 208, 245-57.
[19] Türkkaya Ataöv, "The 'Armenian Question': Conflict, Trauma
and Objectivity," Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Center for Strategic
Research, Republic of Turkey, SAM Papers, no. 3 / 97 (1999), accessed
Jan. 5, 2012.
[20] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
pp. 123-4.
[21] Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed
Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), p.
265.
[22] Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton,
"Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide," Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, Spring 1995, pp. 9, 12.
[23] Ibid., pp. 9-10.
[24] Scott Jaschik, "Genocide Deniers," Inside Higher Education,
Oct. 16, 2007.
[25] Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, p. 265; Lowry,
"The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians," p. 120.
[26] Ataöv, "The 'Armenian Question,'" accessed Jan. 5, 2012.
[27] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
Appendix II.
[28] Roger W. Barrett and William E. Jackson, "Preface," in Nazi
Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 1, Nuremberg Commission, Jan. 20, 1946.
[29] Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, p. 193, fn. 1.
[30] Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, p. 265.
[31] Richard Veatch, "Minorities and the League of Nations," in
United Nations Library, ed., The League of Nations in Retrospect
(Boston-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), p. 380; Otto Tolischus,
"German Army Attacks Poland," in Douglas Brinkley, ed., The New
York Times Living History: World War II, 1939-1942: The Axis Assault
(New York: Macmillan, 2003), p. 82; Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl,
eds., The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from
the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides (Jackson, Tenn.: Public
Affairs, 2006), pp. 47-8; William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 872, 875.
[32] Richard Breiting, Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two
Newly-discovered 1931 Interviews, Édouard Calic, ed. (New York: John
Day, 1971), p. 81; Édouard Calic, Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews
with Hitler in 1931, Richard Barry, trans. (London: John Day, 1971),
p. 81; Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections between
the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," p. 540.
[33] Martyn Housden, Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary (New York:
Psychology Press, 2000), p. 47.
[34] Hans Kohn, "Ten Years of the Turkish Republic," Foreign Affairs,
Oct. 1933, pp. 143, 145.
[35] Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi
Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 129.
[36] Hitler to Mussolini, Aug. 25, 1939, in Max Domarus, ed., Hitler:
Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship,
vol. 3 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), p. 1689.
[37] Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social
Catastrophe (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 422.
[38] Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 152, 156.
[39] Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century, vol. 1, John Lees, trans. (London: J. Lane, 1911), pp. 6-7.
[40] Fritz Nova, Alfred Rosenberg: Nazi Theorist of the Holocaust
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986), p. 12.
[41] Alfred Rosenberg, Kampf um die Macht: Aufsätze von 1921-1932,
Thilo von Trotha, ed. (Munich: F. Eher nachf., 1943), p. 435.
[42] Ibid., p. 436.
[43] Tessa Hofmann, "An Eye for an Eye: The Assassination of Talaat
Pasha on the Hardenbergstrasse in Berlin," in Huberta von Voss, ed.,
Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the Contemporary World, Alasdair Lean,
trans. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), p. 295.
[44] Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 46.
[45] Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the
Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," pp. 534-7.
[46] Mike Joseph, "Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter: The Personal
Link from Genocide to Hitler," in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Elmar Plozza,
eds., Der Völkermord an Den Armeniern, Die Türkei und Europa (Zurich:
Chronos, 2006), pp. 147, 198.
[47] Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the
Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," pp. 535-6.
[48] Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide," p. 107; idem,
"The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the Armenian
Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," pp. 533-6.
[49] Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945, vol. 3,
pp. 2618, 2748-9, 2593, 2717-8, 2764, 2774, 3130, 3260; Adolf Hitler,
My Struggle (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1938), pp. 152-85.
[50] Albert Camus, "State Terrorism and Irrational Terror," in Roger
Griffin and Matthew Feldman, eds., Fascism: Critical Concepts in
Political Science (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 16.
[51] German Ambassador in Constantinople, Wangenheim, to the
German Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, DE/PA-AA/R14086,
DuA Dok. 081 (gk.), June 16, 1915, in Wolfgang and Sigrid Gust,
eds., A Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in World War I (n.p.,
1995-2012); Richard Hovannisian, "Introduction: History, Politics,
Ethics," in Richard Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: History,
Politics, Ethics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. xi-xii.
[52] Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 874.
[53] Robert Gerwarth, Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 151.
[54] M. Cherif Bassiouni, "From Versailles to Rwanda in Seventy-Five
Years: The Need to Establish a Permanent International Criminal Court,"
Harvard Human Rights Journal, Spring 1997, p. 21.
[55] Norman Hepburn Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April
1922-August 1939, vol. 1 (New York: H. Fertig, 1969), pp. 1115-6.
[56] Die Zeit (Hamburg), Jan. 9, 1998; Richard Weikart, Hitler's
Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), p. 193.
[57] George Baer, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of
Nations (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976), pp. 66, 92-3, 170,
183, 199-214, 274, 281, 290-6; A.J. Barker, The Rape of Ethiopia,
2nd ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971), pp. 106-29; Angelo Del
Boca, The Ethiopian War, 1935-1941, P.D. Cummins, trans. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 78-84, 109, 120; John W.
Turner, "Mussolini's Invasion and the Italian Occupation," in A Country
Study: Ethiopia (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1991), call
no. DT373 .E83 1993.
[58] Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, p. 265.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
by Hannibal Travis
http://www.meforum.org/3434/armenian-genocide-hitler
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2013, pp. 27-35 (view PDF)
It is well known by genocide scholars that in 1939 Adolf Hitler urged
his generals to exterminate members of the Polish race.[1] "Who speaks
today of the extermination of the Armenians?" Hitler asked, just a week
before the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland.[2] However, while
it is generally agreed that Hitler was well aware of the Armenian
genocide,[3] some genocide scholars and historians of the Ottoman
Empire have questioned whether he actually made the above statement
or even intended to exterminate portions of the "Polish race."[4]
Still, there is evidence that the massacre of the Ottoman Armenians
helped persuade the Nazis that national minorities posed a threat to
empires dominated by an ethnic group such as the Germans or the Turks.
Furthermore, these minorities could be exterminated to the benefit
of the perpetrator with little risk. Indeed, it was German officials
who had smuggled out of the Ottoman Empire the leaders of the Young
Turk regime, culpable for the deaths of over a million Armenians and a
million or more other Christian minorities such as the Assyrians and
Greeks.[5] Diverse historical evidence suggests that Hitler viewed
the Armenians and Poles as analogous; in several ways, his statement
about the Armenians was consistent with his other beliefs and writings.
A number of clues point to the possibility that Hitler's "final
solution" was inspired by the Turkish massacre of its Armenian
population in 1915. His infamous 1939 question, "Who speaks today of
the extermination of the Armenians?" although hotly debated concerning
its authenticity, is only one indication leading to that conclusion.
The Assassin's Leak
The historical context of Hitler's statement and the manner in which it
came to Western attention has long been problematic. On November 24,
1945, The Times of London published an article stating that Hitler
referred to the extermination of the Armenians during an address to
his commanders-in-chief on August 22, 1939, a statement that was read
at a hearing of the Nuremberg trial. Hitler's speech asserted that the
aim of the war is not to attain certain lines, but consists in the
physical destruction of the opponent. Thus, for the time being,
I have sent to the East only my "Death's Head units" with the order
to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish
race or language. Only in such a way, will we win the vital living
space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of
the Armenians?[6]
The anti-Nazi writer Louis Lochner, a former bureau chief of the
Associated Press in Berlin, quoted Hitler's statement from an original
Nazi document before the Nuremberg trials had even convened.[7]
Lochner had a variety of sources within the Nazi government and had
been interned from December 1941 to May 1942 before being exchanged
for German diplomats interned in the United States. After his release,
he published What about Germany? containing the quote mentioning
the Armenians.[8] The quote was used in the November 1945 The Times
article, which cited the ongoing proceedings of the Nuremberg trials.
Two additional copies of the memorandum describing Hitler's speech
were found immediately after the war in the files of the Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht (German High Command, OKW), but neither contained the
Armenian quote. Nor was either military document signed as would be
expected for an official record of a meeting. These incongruities
led Nuremberg prosecutors to conclude that there had been two Hitler
speeches on August 22 and that the Lochner version containing the
quote was a merger of notes from both. As a result of the disparities,
objections were made by lawyers for two Nuremberg defendants, Hermann
Göring and Erich Raeder, to the authenticity of the OKW versions and
to the inclusion of the Lochner document in evidence. The key issue
for the defense was not the Armenian quote per se but rather the term
"brutal measures," which they claimed was never used by Hitler although
they conceded that he had used "severe" expressions.[9]
Since the prosecution had other records of the meetings, as well as one
introduced by defendant Raeder, the Lochner document was included in
the trial record but was not introduced as evidence. In the context
of the Nuremberg trials, the overriding issue was not the Armenian
quote but Hitler's call for a brutal war of aggression against Poland.
But defenders of the Ottoman Empire regard the court's decision as key:
The military versions of Hitler's speech without the quote are viewed
as more reliable, and the Lochner version as suspect or tainted.[10]
The question of Lochner's source for the document, and hence the quote,
has therefore been the crux of intense historical interest.
Lochner himself indicated only that he had obtained it from "Mr.
Maass" without saying who the original source was at the August 22,
1939 meeting. But subsequent research had shown that the Lochner
and The Times versions have a clear chain of transmission.[11] The
original source of Hitler's speech on the Poles and the Armenians and
of its transmission to The Times was Wilhelm Canaris,[12] head of the
Abwehr, a German military intelligence organization, and a leading
figure in the military opposition to Hitler. Canaris became involved
with several conspiracies against the dictator, including a July 20,
1944 assassination plot. Another member of the German resistance,
Hans Bernd Gisevius, confirmed that Canaris took notes of the speech
even though it was "forbidden to do so."[13]
Canaris's notes were passed to three men, all of whom were executed
before the Nuremberg trials convened and thus could not be questioned:
Hans Oster, Ludwig Beck, and Hermann Maass. Historian Kevork Bardakjian
concluded that Canaris likely passed the notes to his deputy, Oster,
who then transmitted them to Beck, a conservative general and former
chief of the General Staff, who had long opposed Nazi influence
on the German military and foreign policy. Beck probably instructed
Maass, formerly general manager of the Reich Committee of German Youth
Associations, to give the document to Lochner due to Beck's role as a
"leader of the German resistance."
Like Canaris, Beck was involved in a number of conspiracies and was
executed after the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate
Hitler, in which he had a leading role.[14] Finally, historian
Winfried Baumgart has argued that Canaris's notes also appear to
have been the source of the two unsigned documents in the German high
command files.[15]
Gisevius and Oster believed that the invasion of Poland gave them a
unique chance to get rid of Hitler and ensure peace with Poland.[16]
Canaris's opposition to Hitler was wide-ranging. An official with
British intelligence boasted of having "buil[t] ~E up" Canaris as a
potential assassin of Hitler.[17] In 1944, the Gestapo found documents
revealing Canaris to be conspiring with Catholics and the West against
Hitler. The admiral was executed in a concentration camp on April 9,
1945, for plotting a coup against Hitler, along with Oster.[18]
Turkish Historians on the "Armenian Quote"
Hitler's citation of the Armenians in his August 22, 1939 meeting
has been an important concern for Turkish historians and pro-Ottoman
analysts. Türkkaya Ataöv of Ankara University, with the apparent
endorsement of the Turkish government, has contended that the Armenian
quote does not appear in Nuremberg documents and is a forgery. He goes
further to assert that no Armenian genocide took place, that Armenians
had collaborated with the Nazis, and that Turks had welcomed Jews.[19]
Similarly, Princeton University professor Heath Lowry suggested
in 1985 that the lack of clear evidence that Hitler's alleged
statement about the Armenians was "authentic" should have put an end
to attempts to recognize the Armenian genocide in exhibits of the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, resolutions of the U.S. Congress,
or in the curricula on the Holocaust established by state boards of
education. The logical outcome, Lowry argued, was that the Armenian
genocide was simply a type of "propaganda" and "vilification against
the Republic of Turkey."[20] Finally, Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus
of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has contended that
any attempt to link the anti-Armenian massacres and the Holocaust
rests "on a shaky factual foundation." But Lewy has conceded that
the document containing Hitler's statement about the Armenians might
"represent an embellishment of points made in the speech" by Hitler
to his generals in August 1939.[21]
In contrast, in a notable 1995 article in Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Lifton argued that
Lowry was being professionally irresponsible in claiming that the
Armenian genocide was simply a "ludicrous" Armenian claim. In their
view, it was the more recent claim that Hitler did not refer to the
Armenian genocide that lacked an evidentiary basis.[22] Moreover,
they demonstrate that Lowry, like historian Justin McCarthy, had
engaged in a pattern of protesting academic characterizations of the
Armenian genocide that was welcomed by the Turkish government.[23]
According to Inside Higher Education, McCarthy once called the Armenian
genocide a "meaningless" idea and served on the board of a grant-making
organization in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Turkish Studies,
which has ties to the Turkish government. McCarthy argues that the
Armenian case is dissimilar to the Holocaust and resembles the U.S.
Civil War.[24]
One of Lewy's preferred sources for Hitler's speech were the copies
from the OKW, used by Nuremberg prosecutors to demonstrate command
responsibility for numerous crimes in Poland. Lewy has argued that
Hitler's statement about the Armenians was not "accepted as evidence
by the Nuremberg Tribunal," citing Lowry to this effect.[25] Ankara
University's Ataöv similarly asserted: "Hundreds of thousands of
captured Nazi documents were assembled as evidence in the trial of
the major Nazi war criminals. One cannot find the oft-repeated Hitler
'statement' among these documents."[26] The idea that the Hitler
quote is a forgery and that it does not appear in the Nuremberg trial
documents is frequently repeated on websites dedicated to denial of
the Armenian genocide.
While the Lochner document was not used at Nuremberg, even Lowry admits
that volume VII of the compilation of evidence against the Nazis,
entitled Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, reproduced the statement.[27]
That compilation contained in its introduction a description of the
document series as the tribunal's "documentary evidence demonstrating
the criminality of the former leaders of the German Reich."[28]
This means that the document was introduced as evidence before the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg even if it was not
used on a specific day of the trials. The Lochner document with the
Armenia quote was also included in the 1961 publication of foreign
policy documents by the German Foreign Office.[29]
The Armenian Genocide as Nazi Precedent
As part of a larger effort to deny or downplay the Armenian genocide,
some historians have claimed that Hitler did not cite the Armenians
as an example of the impunity of perpetrators. They have also denied
that the Armenian genocide provided the inspiration or any form of
precedent for the design and conduct of Nazi aggression and genocide.
One method has been to suggest that the Nazi program of extermination
was a late creation. Thus, for example, Lewy suggested that Hitler
did not order exterminations in Poland~Wor mention the extermination
of the Armenians~Wbecause "by August 1939, Hitler had not yet decided
upon the destruction of the Jews."[30]
This argument is unpersuasive for several reasons. First, as has been
shown, there are compelling reasons to believe that Hitler's statements
about extermination in 1939 indeed cited the Armenians and were aimed
at the Poles. Hitler's intentions toward the Jews had been spelled out
across many statements, including in the notorious January 1939 speech
in which Hitler "prophesied" that another world war would result in
the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Second, Hitler had
repeatedly engaged in virulent anti-Polish and anti-Slavic rhetoric
prior to August 1939.[31] Third, Hitler's decision to destroy Poland
as a nation, while allowing some Poles to survive, was entirely
consistent with his political philosophy that nations played out
a chaotic struggle for life in an unforgiving world, as shown by
history. Finally, there was the tacit acquiescence of the major powers
in the Turkish model of ethnic cleansing and genocide. These may have
provided Hitler with reasons to adopt it for Poland and the East.
To what extent was the Armenian genocide understood as a model by
Hitler? In a 1931 interview, he told a German newspaper editor that
when deciding Germany's future, one should "[t]hink of the biblical
deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages (Rosenberg refers to
them) and remember the extermination of the Armenians."[32] Hitler and
other contemporary European leaders admired Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as
a national leader who won for the Turkish people the living space it
needed from the Slavs and the British. Speaking in 1925, Hitler "dwelt
at length on patriotism and national pride and quoted approvingly
the role of Kemal Atatürk of Turkey and the example of Mussolini,
who had marched on Rome" a few weeks prior.[33]
The parallels between Hitler and Atatürk were also noted at the time.
The influential Foreign Affairs journal published an article in
the 1930s stating, "Just as in Italy since 1922, and as in Germany
since early in the present year, the conduct of political affairs in
Turkey rests today on the personality of a leader. ~E By means of a
clever scheme ~E the President, while constitutionally without undue
influence, becomes the real autocrat.'" It argued that with the end of
foreign "influence," Turkey "had become an almost homogeneous state"
in "national and religious" terms, so that its "Christian minorities
hardly existed any longer."[34] In early 1939, the German socialists
had also pointed out the similarity between the Nazis and past leaders
of Turkey.[35] Three days after the speech reported by Canaris, Hitler
wrote to Mussolini that he hoped that the Turks could be persuaded
to join Italy, Japan, and Russia in an anti-British coalition.[36]
He planned to hand over parts of the southern Soviet Union to Turkey
in due time.[37]
The fate of the Armenians was also understood within Nazi ideology. A
key influence on Hitler was the Prussian-educated British writer
Houston Stewart Chamberlain. His work Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century sold 250,000 copies by 1938 and secured his fame in
Germany.[38] Volume 1 of this work offered a model for Germany,
arguing that Turkey was "the last little corner of Europe in which
a whole people lives in undisturbed prosperity and happiness," and
blaming non-German world powers (Britain and France) for encouraging
an Armenian rebellion, in response to which "the otherwise humane
Moslem rises and destroys the disturber of the peace."[39]
In 1927, leading Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg had published a
booklet calling Chamberlain the "apostle and founder of a German
future."[40] In 1938, Rosenberg published a collection of speeches
in which he commented that in 1921, after the Turkish minister Talat
Pasha was murdered in Berlin by an Armenian, a campaign was waged in
the "international press" to release the killer due to the history of
struggle between Armenians and Turks.[41] Rosenberg endorsed the Turks'
resistance to Armenian claims for autonomy ("den armenischen Staat
im Staat"), comparing the Armenians to the Jews, because he claimed
the Armenians engaged in espionage against Turkey as the Jews did
against Germany.[42] He "praised Talat Pasha ~E [and] minimized the
[Ottoman Christian] genocide."[43]
Rosenberg also introduced Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter to Hitler.
Scheubner-Richter had been the German vice-consul in Erzerum and
documented the planning and implementation of the murder of Armenians
by the Young Turks in the name of Islam and pan-Turkic ideology.
Scheubner-Richter's relationship to Hitler was so close that he was
killed standing next to Hitler and Rosenberg during the failed Munich
"Beer Hall" putsch of 1923. Hitler then dedicated the first part of
Mein Kampf to his "irreplaceable" fallen comrade.[44] Armenian-American
historian Vahkan Dadrian has argued that Scheubner-Richter had a
"direct" influence on Hitler that may have included introducing him to
the example of how the Ottoman Armenians (then called the "Jews of the
Orient") were deported from their villages, worked to death, starved,
and frozen to death during exposure to harsh winter conditions.[45]
Mike Joseph has called Scheubner-Richter the "personal link from
[the Armenian] genocide to Hitler."[46] Scheubner-Richter's reports
regarding the genocidal solution to the Armenian question foreshadow
and may have inspired Hitler's later ideas and rhetoric regarding
the Jews as did his descriptions of Turkish methods, including
provocations and allegations of terrorism and revolution. Prior
to his death, Scheubner-Richter urged that Germany be "cleansed"
of alien peoples by "ruthless" measures.[47]
Other high-ranking Nazis were also well-placed to learn how the
Armenian genocide occurred and to inform Hitler. Franz von Papen
became Hitler's vice chancellor after serving as chief of staff of
the Fourth Turkish Army during World War I and was responsible for
managing German-Austrian and German-Turkish relations under the Nazis.
Rudolf Hess, deputy inspector of concentration camps under Himmler,
had served in the Ottoman-German forces fighting the Russians during
World War I. Hans von Seeckt was chief of the Ottoman General Staff in
1917 and 1918 and "laid the groundwork for the later emergence of the
Third Reich's Wehrmacht" and "embraced Hitler and his ideology."[48]
The similarity of the genocidal methods employed by the Nazis and the
Ottomans is also inescapable. Parallels between Ottoman and Nazi theory
and practice include the central place of race in the self-conception
of the fascist elites and the notion of relocating ethnic minorities
to reservations. Hitler often expressed his belief that race was
the dominant independent variable in history and that it had to be
dealt with directly by any ethnonationalist leader who wanted to
be successful.[49] "When the race is in danger of being oppressed,"
he wrote, "the question of legality plays only a secondary role."[50]
Both the Ottomans and the Nazis also used the concept of ethnic
"cleaning" or "cleansing." While the Young Turks implemented a "clean
sweep of internal enemies~Wthe indigenous Christians," according to the
then-German ambassador in Constantinople,[51] the Nazis implemented a
"housecleaning of Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, and the nobility."[52]
The official who announced the ethnic cleansing plan for Poland may
have been aware of similar policies of the internal security officials
of the Ottoman Empire, which resulted in "hundreds of thousands of
the Ottoman Empire's Muslims, Christian Armenians, and Orthodox Greeks
[being] expelled or murdered."[53] Hitler himself used "cleaning" or
"cleansing" as a euphemism for extermination[54] and described his
rule as being characterized by an "unheard of cleansing process."[55]
On December 12, 1941, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that "with
respect of the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a
clean sweep."[56] Finally, the impunity with which the Armenians had
been slaughtered~Wthe essence of Hitler's August 22, 1939 remark~Wwas
reinforced by the international community's failure to prevent the
massacre of other peoples, including later massacres by the Italians
using poison-gas and machine-guns in Ethiopia.[57]
Conclusion
Numerous ideological and political influences led from the Armenian
genocide to the rape of Poland and the Holocaust. Chamberlain, Hess,
Rosenberg, Seeckt, Scheubner-Richter, and von Papen all likely played
a role in prompting Hitler to use Turkey's example as a model for
Poland. Hitler compared the two cases in his 1939 speech, which,
like most evidence that the Holocaust took place, was not relied
upon in the tribunal's judgment.[58] Subsequent efforts to discredit
the speech by defenders of the Ottoman Empire should not, however,
blind us to the manifold connections between the Armenian genocide
and that perpetrated by the Nazis.
Hannibal Travis is the author of Genocide in the Middle East: The
Ottoman Empire, Iraq and Sudan (Carolina Academic Press, 2010) and
"The Assyrian Genocide: A Tale of Oblivion and Denial," in Rene
Lemarchand, ed., Forgotten Genocides: Denial, Oblivion, and Memory
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
[1] Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed.
(London: Routledge, 2010), p. 149.
[2] Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918-1945, Federal Republic
of Germany, Federal Foreign Office, ser. D, vol. 7, 1961, p.
193, fn. 1; Louis P. Lochner, What about Germany? (London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1943), p. 12.
[3] Jones, Genocide, p. 173.
[4] Heath W. Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the
Armenians," Political Communication and Persuasion, 3, 1985, pp.
111-39.
[5] Vahakn Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian
Sources," in Israel Charny, ed., The Widening Circle of Genocide, vol.
3 (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), pp. 122-4.
[6] Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 7, U.S. Chief Counsel for
the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing
Office, 1946), p. 753.
[7] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians," pp.
113-4, 121.
[8] Lochner, What About Germany? pp. 11-2.
[9] Kevork B. Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide (Toronto:
Zoryan Institute, 1985), pp. 14-5, 18.
[10] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
p. 116.
[11] Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, pp. 20-3; idem,
"Hitler's 'Armenian Extermination' Remark, True or False?" The New
York Times, July 6, 1985.
[12] Vahakn Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections
between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust: From Impunity
to Retributive Justice," The Yale Journal of International Law, 23
(1998): 539-40; Allan Bullock, Walter Schellenberg, The Labyrinth:
Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, Hitler's Chief of Counterintelligence
(New York: Harper and Bros., 2000), pp. x-xi, 353, 359-60; Joachim
Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of German Resistance, Bruce
Little, trans. (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt, 1997), p. 5.
[13] Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, pp. 20-1.
[14] Ibid., pp. 20-3; Bardakjian, "Hitler's 'Armenian Extermination'
Remark, True or False?"; Helen Fein, "Political Functions of Genocide
Comparisons," in Yehuda Bauer, Alice Eckardt, and Franklin H. Littell,
eds., Remembering for the Future: Working Papers and Addenda, vol. 3
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989), p. 2432.
[15] Winfried Baumgart, "Zur Ansprache Hitler's vor den Führern der
Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung,"
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Apr. 1968, pp. 120-49.
[16] Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death, p. 110.
[17] John H. Waller, The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy
in the Second World War (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), pp.
237, 357.
[18] Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, p. 22; Michael
Mueller and Geoffrey Brooks, Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler's
Spymaster (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2007), pp. 208, 245-57.
[19] Türkkaya Ataöv, "The 'Armenian Question': Conflict, Trauma
and Objectivity," Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Center for Strategic
Research, Republic of Turkey, SAM Papers, no. 3 / 97 (1999), accessed
Jan. 5, 2012.
[20] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
pp. 123-4.
[21] Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed
Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), p.
265.
[22] Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton,
"Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide," Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, Spring 1995, pp. 9, 12.
[23] Ibid., pp. 9-10.
[24] Scott Jaschik, "Genocide Deniers," Inside Higher Education,
Oct. 16, 2007.
[25] Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, p. 265; Lowry,
"The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians," p. 120.
[26] Ataöv, "The 'Armenian Question,'" accessed Jan. 5, 2012.
[27] Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,"
Appendix II.
[28] Roger W. Barrett and William E. Jackson, "Preface," in Nazi
Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 1, Nuremberg Commission, Jan. 20, 1946.
[29] Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, p. 193, fn. 1.
[30] Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, p. 265.
[31] Richard Veatch, "Minorities and the League of Nations," in
United Nations Library, ed., The League of Nations in Retrospect
(Boston-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), p. 380; Otto Tolischus,
"German Army Attacks Poland," in Douglas Brinkley, ed., The New
York Times Living History: World War II, 1939-1942: The Axis Assault
(New York: Macmillan, 2003), p. 82; Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl,
eds., The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from
the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides (Jackson, Tenn.: Public
Affairs, 2006), pp. 47-8; William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 872, 875.
[32] Richard Breiting, Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two
Newly-discovered 1931 Interviews, Édouard Calic, ed. (New York: John
Day, 1971), p. 81; Édouard Calic, Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews
with Hitler in 1931, Richard Barry, trans. (London: John Day, 1971),
p. 81; Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections between
the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," p. 540.
[33] Martyn Housden, Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary (New York:
Psychology Press, 2000), p. 47.
[34] Hans Kohn, "Ten Years of the Turkish Republic," Foreign Affairs,
Oct. 1933, pp. 143, 145.
[35] Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi
Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 129.
[36] Hitler to Mussolini, Aug. 25, 1939, in Max Domarus, ed., Hitler:
Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship,
vol. 3 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), p. 1689.
[37] Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social
Catastrophe (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 422.
[38] Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 152, 156.
[39] Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century, vol. 1, John Lees, trans. (London: J. Lane, 1911), pp. 6-7.
[40] Fritz Nova, Alfred Rosenberg: Nazi Theorist of the Holocaust
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986), p. 12.
[41] Alfred Rosenberg, Kampf um die Macht: Aufsätze von 1921-1932,
Thilo von Trotha, ed. (Munich: F. Eher nachf., 1943), p. 435.
[42] Ibid., p. 436.
[43] Tessa Hofmann, "An Eye for an Eye: The Assassination of Talaat
Pasha on the Hardenbergstrasse in Berlin," in Huberta von Voss, ed.,
Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the Contemporary World, Alasdair Lean,
trans. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), p. 295.
[44] Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 46.
[45] Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the
Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," pp. 534-7.
[46] Mike Joseph, "Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter: The Personal
Link from Genocide to Hitler," in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Elmar Plozza,
eds., Der Völkermord an Den Armeniern, Die Türkei und Europa (Zurich:
Chronos, 2006), pp. 147, 198.
[47] Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the
Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," pp. 535-6.
[48] Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide," p. 107; idem,
"The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the Armenian
Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust," pp. 533-6.
[49] Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945, vol. 3,
pp. 2618, 2748-9, 2593, 2717-8, 2764, 2774, 3130, 3260; Adolf Hitler,
My Struggle (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1938), pp. 152-85.
[50] Albert Camus, "State Terrorism and Irrational Terror," in Roger
Griffin and Matthew Feldman, eds., Fascism: Critical Concepts in
Political Science (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 16.
[51] German Ambassador in Constantinople, Wangenheim, to the
German Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, DE/PA-AA/R14086,
DuA Dok. 081 (gk.), June 16, 1915, in Wolfgang and Sigrid Gust,
eds., A Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in World War I (n.p.,
1995-2012); Richard Hovannisian, "Introduction: History, Politics,
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[58] Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, p. 265.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress