Germany and Its Involvement in the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

• 06.02.2016, 14:08
•  Europe,  World,  Armenia,  Diaspora

Wikipedia.org

During the First World War, the Kaiser's Germany was an ally of Turkey. It can be said that the establishment of the Turkish armed forces was being carried out under the leadership of the German military. And if the participation of the Turkish army in the Armenian Genocide is indisputable, then, of course, one could argue that Germany, albeit indirectly, was also involved in it.

By the way, this is not denied by many Germans as well. Recently, on one of the German TV channels a video material called "The Germans and the Armenian Genocide" was shown and the correspondent for the German weekly newspaper "Tageszeitung" in Turkey, Jürgen Gotshlih, directly spoke about Germany's role in the implementation of the Armenian Genocide. Having studied Turkish and German archives, Gotshlih came to the conclusion that Germany "had strong political support for the implementation of the Armenian Genocide, in order to realize its military objectives." In particular, according to Gotshlih, Chief of Staff of the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, German General Friedrich von Bronzart Shelendorf was a direct participant in the crime, and not just an observer.

Here, I think, it’s time to say a few words about the German archives. The Germans are known to be characterized by meticulous in all matters in which they participate. They love to capture in all details everything in what they have participated. We do not know to what extent our historians who study the issue of Genocide have used the archives in Germany, but it seems, they can find a lot of what has long been "cleaned up" in Turkish archives, where the Turks so kindly are inviting us.

By the way, the German punctuality played "a cruel joke" with them in many ways. When preparing the famous Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, there was no shortage of the evidence of their criminal acts. The Court had been given the lots of directives, written instructions and other documents which to the smallest details described the mechanisms of destruction of people and ways of "utalization" their things.

Germans not only like to write detailed documents on any occasion, but they also store them carefully. In this sense, the German archives are unique sources of information from which one can draw the right information, including some about the Armenian Genocide as well.