Hitler and the Armenian Genocide

[Anonymouse]

The Nuremberg Trials were a kangaroo court and I need not go into the bogus nature of the trial to show why anything at Nuremberg ought to be suspect.

[winoman]

The Nuremberg Trials were a kangaroo court and I need not go into the bogus nature of the trial to show why anything at Nuremberg ought to be suspect.

yes of course - jews should all have been killed - I know how you think

[Anonymouse]

yes of course - jews should all have been killed - I know how you think

Unfortunately for you, that is not what I said is it? But to engage in nonsense, well, that's the Winston way to go, much like the Turks.

[nunechka]

who are you fighting anonymouse???

[bell-the-cat]

To elaborate, I believe that irrefutable evidence cannot be found to support the actual existence of this alleged statement by Hitler, and because of this it is a pointless distraction. A distraction because Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and so on, and every political or millitary leader under them were all fully aware of the events surrounding the Armenian Genocide.

Anyone who keeps using this spurious Hitler statement as a "sound-bite" way to prove the Genocide just allows the denialists a foothold of credibility since the denialist can 1/ produce evidence that Hitler did not say it. 2/ discredit genuine sources by tainting them with the same brush. 3/ spend time on this distraction so that actual irrefutable facts and issues can be ignored.

[nunechka]

Adieu.

everybody this is the word of the MONTH!

[winoman]

Anyone who keeps using this spurious Hitler statement as a "sound-bite" way to prove the Genocide just allows the denialists a foothold of credibility since the denialist can 1/ produce evidence that Hitler did not say it. 2/ discredit genuine sources by tainting them with the same brush. 3/ spend time on this distraction so that actual irrefutable facts and issues can be ignored.

I disagree (though I understand the concern of the quote being over & mis used and misunderstood). I guess you failed to read my intro to this.

While I do not believe it makes any real difference if Hitler knew about and mentioned the Armeiain Genocide for any proof of the genocide (it is irrelevant - it does not require affirmation by Hitler - etc) - this is not the issue - though it is frequently construed by deniers to be such. The issue of concern is the role of the Armenain Genocide in inspiring other like genocides - such as the Holocaust - and the importance of understanding how alowing the perprtrators to deny and evade justice can only encourage more of such action - (along the lines of "we shall never forget" and "for history to not repeat itself" - etc) - I think there is a perponderounce of evidence that in fact Hitler was very aware of the Armenain Genocide and that in fact it is very likely he made the quote refering to the Armenians in a speech before his military officers prior to invading Poland.

And while perhaps it is a distraction (and as I stated is immaterial for any kind of "proof" of the Genocide) I was not the first to mention it - others did - and then certain folks posted extensively that this quote was untrue etc and I countered with this thread. Obviously I think that Hitler made the statment and I feel that there is a very strong basis to believe such and that the evidence supports this belief. Just because you believe to the contrary - becuase you enjoy putting down Armenians and thinking yourself superior is no reason to take your word on this issue.

[winoman]

Exerpt from Essay: "Treatment of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1918 in Germany...

"Treatment of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1918 in Germany throughout the 20th century" - Arutyunyan May 2000


There (are) a number of more or less indirect connections between the Armenian Genocide and Nazi Germany. Some of them included assertions of Hitler’s knowledge of the Armenian Genocide and the lessons he learned in fulfilling his plan of first removing and then exterminating European Jews...

The Nazis’ view of the Armenian Genocide goes back to World War I and the years of the Weimar Republic. Hitler fought in World War I. Armenian massacres became something of an unspoken common knowledge, particularly in the years immediately following the war through eyewitness accounts and various publications, but more importantly, through the widely publicized trial and acquittal in Berlin of Soghomon Tehlirian (1896-1960). Hitler was in Berlin during the days of the trial. While Hitler himself had this indirect experience with the genocide, many of his future associates held various positions in the military or diplomatic spheres in the Ottoman Empire. It is likely that all those people were aware of the atrocities first-hand in Turkey or through rumors and publications that circulated, generally in a clandestine manner, throughout wartime Germany.

Among those Nazi functionaries was Franz von Papen, who became chancellor of Germany. Having helped the Nazis seize power, von Papen then served as Hitler’s vice chancellor and president of Prussia. Thereafter he became Germany’s ambassador to Austria, where he prepared the ground for the Anschluss in 1938. During World War I, Papen served as Chief of General Staff of the IVth Turkish army that operated in the areas of modern Syria and Palestine, including Aleppo, a place of large deportations and massacres. Kostantin Freiherr von Neurath, another Nazi functionary, served as councilor at the German Embassy in Constantinople in 1915-1916, the years when most of the massacres took place; as Vahakn Dadrian has noted, he "was instructed by Chancellor Hollweg to monitor operations against the Armenians." During Hitler’s rule, Neurath was appointed Protector of Bohemia and Moravia after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, where the Nazis inflicted horror on the local population, as well the numerous Jews residing in the occupied territories. Prince Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg served as Interim Consul in Erzerum, a site of some of the worst massacres, during August 1915-February 1916. His career in the Foreign Service flourished under the Nazis only to be terminated in July 1944, when Schulenburg was executed for his role in the assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. Lieutenant General Hans von Seekt, who served as the Chief of Staff at Ottoman General Headquarters during 1918, was instrumental in the re-emergence of the Wehrmacht in the 1930s and the formation of the SS units in the 1920s. It was general von Seekt who actively helped the leaders of the Young Turks, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha, to escape to Germany.

There were other, less prominent German officers serving in Turkey during World War I who subsequently achieved high status under the Nazis. Among those officers is first lieutenant Preffer von Wildenbruch, who later became SS Obergruppenführer (General) and the military governor of Budapest. The list also includes Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, who at the age of sixteen joined the German army in Turkey in 1916. He and other persons had direct or at least indirect contact with the genocide; thus, most likely they brought their memories and experiences into the Nazi regime. Some of them, like Rudolf Höss and Max von Scheubner-Richter, had a personal relationship with Hitler. It is likely that they further exposed the Führer to the details of the genocide and its cover-up.

Dr. Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter’s experience with the Armenian Genocide and relationship with Adolf Hitler were especially interesting. During most of 1915, Scheubner-Richter served as Vice Consul in Erzerum, where he learned about "the motivation, organization, mechanics, and concealment of a genocide." Even more interesting is the fact that he was one of the few German officials in Turkey who vehemently opposed the massacres and sent numerous communiqués to the German embassy in Constantinople, as well as to Germany. Scholars today are still debating whether Scheubner-Richter shared his knowledge and perspective with Hitler. However, based on their close, although brief relationship, one may infer that he most likely acquainted Hitler with some details about the genocide and the techniques of concealment the German and the Turkish governments used.

Scheubner-Richter was introduced to Hitler by Alfred Rosenberg, a leading theorist of Nazi ideology, in 1920; shortly thereafter, he joined the Nazi party and published a number of editorials in which he praised Nazi ideology and soon assumed a militant stand against the "alien elements" in Germany. He possibly introduced Alfred Rosenberg to the idea that the Armenians were the Jews of the Orient, leading the latter to refer to the Armenians as "the people of the wastes [like] the Jews" in his famous work The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Moreover, at one point Rosenberg believed the Armenians to be "even worse than the Jews." Such attitude almost certainly affected Hitler’s treatment of the Armenian Genocide and its lessons, attitude towards the Armenians, and his appreciation for the consequences of the genocide. Based on information provided by Scheubner-Richter and others, Hitler then probably formed his first known opinion about the Armenians and their place in Germany:

In enlightening the German people with regard to this racial legislation, we should conceive of it as having the task of protecting the German blood from contamination, not only of the Jewish but also of the Armenian blood.

Like Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler saw the Armenians as the Jews of the Orient in terms of their activities and role in the society: successful commercial merchants, wealthy peasants, bankers, goldsmiths, and craftsmen. However, he did not necessarily equate the two groups. If he described the Jews as parasites, he referred to the Armenians as a weak nation doomed to a meek existence. Based on this definition of the Armenians, Hitler warned that if the Germans did not do away with the Jews, "the German people would end up just like the Armenians." Alfred Rosenberg shared Hitler’s concern:

Nations which do not rid themselves of Jews perish. One of the most famous examples is the downfall of that people who were once so proud, the Persians, who now lead a pitiful existence as Armenians.

From this attitude, one may conclude that Hitler’s perception of the Armenian Genocide was ambiguous if nothing else.

A sense of ambiguity remained throughout the wartime period. In 1943, another interesting event took place. Talaat’s body was transported to Turkey some time in the late February. Strangely enough, there are no records about the source of the order to transfer Talaat’s body. Franz von Papen, who served as German ambassador to Turkey from 1939 to 1944, does not mention the event in his memoirs. This event can be seen as having serious political and ideological significance. First of all, by 1943 Germany most eagerly sought Turkish support for the Axis powers, a situation similar to World War I. Historians like Kevork B. Bardakjian see it as "a tacit approval of the violent ways in which the Young Turks had eliminated the Armenians during the First World War in pursuit of their pan-Turanian fantasy and empire." This fantasy of empire was all too similar to Hitler’s plans for acquisition of Lebensraum and establishment of the Thousand Year Reich. One possible explanation for the event is meetings in the latter part of 1941 involving pan-Turkists in Berlin "attended by Hitler, von Papen and Nuri Pasha," the brother of Enver Pasha, the man considered to be a major planner of the Armenian Genocide.

This background and context set the stage for the famous quotation from Hitler’s speech given to his military commanders on 22 August, 1939, a week before the invasion of Poland and the beginning the Second World War. This quotation has been disputed widely by the historians trying to prove its authenticity, which has been a hard task, because the four men allegedly involved in recording the speech were dead by the time of the Nuremberg tribunal, where the speech was presented to the judges. They all were executed in 1944-1945 as members of the anti-Hitler opposition and conspiracy. The notes from the meeting were secrectly transmitted to Louis Paul Lochner, an American journalist in Germany. He immediately transmitted this message to Britain, and soon after it appeared in the New York Times. The manuscript was also published in Locher’s book What About Germany? in 1942:

Our [Nazi] strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter—with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.

I have issued the command—and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad—that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my deathhead formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

If scholars today still debate the authenticity of Hitler’s wording in the speech, there is no doubt about another document available today. It consists of two interviews Hitler gave to Richard Breiting, an influential editor of the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten in 1931. In the second interview, which took place in early June 1931, Hitler spoke in detail about his external policy. This interview in its tone and meaning is not too far from Hitler’s August 1939 speech:

We must already be thinking of the resettlement of millions of men from Germany and Europe. Migrations of peoples have always taken place...We must colonise the East ruthlessly. Moreover we must not forget the world distribution of raw materials. . . We think of a white South Africa, a white Australia and New Zealand, but we cannot countenance anything but a white Ukraine and a white Caucasus. . . [Examples of colonializations undertaken by other European powers follow.] The Middle Wast is not far off either. One of the Hohenzollerns launched the idea of the Berlin-Baghdad railway and people like von Papen fought for it in Palestine...Everywhere there is discontent. Everywhere people are awaiting a new world order. We intend to introduce a great resettlement policy; we do not wish to go on treading on each other’s toes in Germany. In 1923 little Greece could resettle a million men. Think of the biblical deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages (Rosenberg refers to them) and remember the extermination of the Armenians. One eventually reaches the conclusion that masses of men are mere biological plastine.

This speech is important for three reasons. First of all, Hitler’s knowledge of the fate of the Armenians is clearly stated. Second, his referral to the Armenians is quite similar to the one made during his 1939 speech; this possibly may imply authenticity of the 1939 message. Finally, Hitler talks about "resettlement" and "deportations," tools Henry Morgenthau believed in 1919 to be German inventions. Hitler corrects Morgenthau, referring to much earlier resettlement measures. However, Hitler takes up the idea once again but on a larger scale. In that plan, the Armenian Genocide seemed similar to his own ideas in spirit, techniques, and goals, all of which he would advance even further.

[loseyourname]

I just spent ten minutes cleaning up this damn thread. Can you guys stick to discussing the issue at hand and not insult each other? wino, if you're reading this, you've been suspended for three days for continued use of profanity. Your reactions to people contesting what you say is starting to get hateful and violent. Take the time to cool off. If there is a post you have a problem with, report it. Don't start a shouting match.

As for Bell-the-Cat, refute a post you don't agree with using factual or logical argumentation, not by calling it garbage and personally attacking the poster. Keep it up and you'll be next.