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German complicity in the Armenian Holocaust

It would seem that Hitler used the following argument: Why shouldnt we murder the Jews? When the Armenians were massacred nobody lamented, nor will they do so when the Jews are cleared out. It is quite possible that Hitler knew of Germanys complicity in the massacre of two million Armenians and other Christians in the First World War. (1) The Dominican Jacques Rhtor was an important witness to what happened in Turkey. His report was recently referred to in Les Chrtiens aux Btes, or Christians to the lions (Cerf, Paris - 2005, pp. 283-96). The book refers to Ren Pinon, who as early as 1916 expressed concern over the German involvement in the slaughter of the Armenians. And it quotes Gabrielle Yonan known from Ein Vergessener Holocaust (A forgotten Holocaust) in 1989. The massacre of the Armenians by the Turks was the result of several factors such as the fact that the Armenians ran the countrys trade even though they were a minority of the population. But the Turks main motive was an extreme rise of nationalism. They had been humiliated by the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and wanted Turkey for the Turks and a return to the pure Islamic belief. This, it was thought, would solve all their problems. The Koran and its various interpretations have always preached hatred and contempt for Christians, and thus little effort was needed to call up this type of feeling. But it was Germany that tipped the balance. The Germans were desperately trying to form an alliance with Turkey in order to counterbalance the Russian troops on the southern front. The friendship was purchased with enormous quantities of gold during the First World War and it was Germanys idea unbelievable though it may seem to have Turkey declare a Holy War (Jihad). And yet well beforehand they knew that this could have terrible consequences for the Christians living there. The politicians cared little for the fate of the Christians, but considered the Jihad to be the ideal means of bringing together the various ethnic groups inside and outside Turkey. It seems reasonable to assume that the Germans instructed the Turks regarding systematic mass murder, which deviated from the approach used by the Turks in previous times. The approach now showed a frightening similarity to the methods later used by the Germans in their mass murder of the Jews. Once the barbarities which all classes of the population joined in with enthusiasm had broken out, a succession of German ambassadors sent alarming reports to their ministry and continued to submit official protests to the Turkish government which were

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then pushed to the back of a drawer. (They knew that no political action would follow the diplomacy.)
The Armenian holocaust has an aspect that is scarcely mentioned in the news media. It so happens that within Islamic thinking, a region conquered in the name of Allah remains an inalienable territory. If you are so nave as to think that Spain belongs to the Spanish, then you are wrong: Isabel of Castile stole it from the Moors! Seen from this point of view it is, of course, a fantastic achievement to have murdered almost all the Christians in Turkey during and shortly after the First World War, since that was the most important region to become Christian, thanks to Paul. Hence for the Turks this slaughter proves that Christianitys days are numbered. I should now be crying 'Allauh Achbar', but as long as my wife of more than 35 years does not wear a burqa, I will not do so. And perhaps then I too will wear a burqa for securitys sake.

The most important German who can be held responsible for the Armenian debacle was, according to Pinon, not the Kaiser but General von Staab, at the time member of the High General Staff. David Shermer writes that Germany had no long-term war plans in 1914 since such specific plans would have required alertness and consistency of action, both of which, in fact, Behmann-Hollweg and Moltke lacked to say nothing of the Kaiser. But once the war began to drag on, the German government was in an excellent position to intervene with Turkey, had they found it necessary to stop the slaughter or to reduce its ferocity. Instead of which those who wanted to inform the German population of what was going on in Turkey were threatened with court martial. Hubert Luns
See also:
The Genocide of the Eastern Christians of the City of Smyrna in 1922 by M. H. Dobkin The Blight of Asia by George Horton The Underreported Persecution of Christians by Herb Denenberg The Return of Anti-semitism to Germany - it never really left by William E. Grim

(1) The Herero and Namaqua Genocide, also known as the Namibian Genocide, is considered to have been the first genocide of the 20th century (UN Whitaker Report 1985). It took place under the German rule. Between 1904 and 1908 about 80,000 people died due to violence and starvation after having been driven into the desert, a tactic used also against the Armenians. The German colonial army seems to have systematically poisoned desert wells. In 2004 the German government pleaded guilty and apologized for the atrocities committed then.

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Letter to the editors

Dear editors,
What Mr. Luns writes is correct. I have had an Armenian friend for more than 25 years. Her father experienced the genocide of the Armenians and now lives in Canada. Five years ago Professor Vermeulen wanted to talk to him about the genocide but he did not dare to. Now he is as good as demented. The rest of his family lives in Antwerp. During a visit he made some ten years ago he told of how, as a small boy, he saw his pregnant aunt cut open from belly to throat by a Turkish sword. He said that the reason why the Armenians were murdered was first and foremost because they were Christians and secondly because they refused to fight on the side of the Germans. Wouter Bos, chairman of the PvdA political party, only sees the Turkish voters in the Netherlands and thus prefers to speak of an Armenian incident instead of genocide. Hitler was most certainly inspired, if not placed under pressure, by the Mufti of Jerusalem. Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was born in 1893, son of the Mufti of Jerusalem, and member of a highly respected and aristocratic family. The Husseini family was one of the richest and most powerful families within the rival clans in the Ottoman province of Judea in Palestine. He volunteered to serve in the Ottoman pro-German army during the First World War but returned to Jerusalem in 1917 where, for opportunistic reasons, he opted to support the victorious British after the war.

With kind regards, Janice Laureyssens

(Published in the Email magazine t Scheldt, No 752 / 10-11-2006 and follow-up in No 756 / 24-11-2006)