When Germans Saved Jews! and Turks Massacred Armenians! (6 July, 2015, 19 Tammuz, 5775)
Adapted from, "Esau. Edomites Today", by Yair Daviidy, 2015.
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Contents:
1. The Triumvirate of Three Pashas and the Young Turks
2. Conspiracy?
3. Armenians in Turkey Before the Genocide
4. The Armenian Genocide and German Complicity
5. Genocide
6. Armenian Nazis!
7. The Jews in Palestine
8. Germans Saved Jews in World War-1!
9. The Kaiser and the Holocaust
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1. The Triumvirate of Three Pashas and the Young Turks
In 1908 a group of army officers and intellectuals known as the Young Turks took control of the Ottoman Empire intending to replace the autocratic rule of the Sultan with a constitutional monarchy and modernize the country.
A clique of "Three Pashas" amongst the Young Turks, after a struggle, managed to seize absolute control over the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918.
They brought Turkey closer to Germany and in November 1914 entered the war (World War -1) on the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire). They also carried out the Armenian Genocide.
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2. Conspiracy?
Not all the Young Turks wanted the Armenian Massacres. At the beginning there were even Armenians among supporters of the Young Turks. These hoped that the Young Turks would take a more secular and liberal approach towards their community. Unfortunately the clique who took control were not so inclined. They unleashed passions of popular hatred that already existed against the vulnerable Armenians citizenry. None of the Young Turks were Jewish nether were they descendants of Jews. Nevertheless Jews are blamed for the Armenian Massacres by some Armenian and non-Armenian Comspiracy writers. A Conspiracy Author named Barry Chamish is sometimes quoted as claiming that Jews really were responsible. Chamish attributes the Young Turk Movement and Ataturk to the Donmeh whom he says were descended from Jews. These in turn, he claims, carried out the Armenian Massacres. This is not so. The Donmeh cannot be considered Jewish. Nor did they have much, if anything to do with the Young Turks. They certainly were not involved in any massacres. Even though Chamish is recognized as a Jew he is not an authority nor is he typical. Conspiracy Theories are in fact a characteristic of Edomite Thought patterns (Genesis 27:36).
On the other hand, there is one matter wherein Chamish might be correct (for a change):
"Barry Chamish believes that the Armenian Genocide was a dry run for the Jewish Holocaust" (Jack Manuelian 06-04-2005, "Kerry, Gaza And The New Sabbatean Holocaust" by Barry Chamish, 2004).
He may have a point here. This has been remarked upon by others. German officers were present and even to a degree involved during the Armenian Massacres. The same personnel may well have later utuliized familiarities with the logistics of extermination to Jews during the Holocaust.
The Turks killed Armenians by inciting the local populations, including the intelligentzia, against them. Muslim religious authorities appear to have benn actively co-operative in the killing operations and sale of women into lsavery. Women and children were usually separated from the males at an early stage. Methods of killing included mass drowning, burning entire village populations alive, death marches, starvation, thirst, exhaustion, exposure, innoculations with typhoid, experiments with poison gases, repeated gang rape.
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3. Armenians in Turkey Before the Genocide
The Armenian people were to be found throughout Turkey. They were especially concentrated in the eastern regions adjoining the Russian spheres of influence or areas directly controlled by Russia. The country now known as Armenia represents a remnant of the Armenian spread of population in the area.
Armenians had been in Turkey and Armenia before the Turks arrived from Central Asia.
Bad blood had always existed between the Christian Armenians and their Muslim Kurdish, Turkish, and other neighbors.
Being in the minority in a Muslim domain the Armenians had endured centuries of persecution.
During the 1800s the Ottoman Empire had been in decline. They were losing control of their European possessions. This caused many Turkish Muslims to move from Europe into central Turkey. So too, the Russians were asserting themselves in the Caucasus and Muslim Circassians and others also moved into Turkey. The result was an upsurge of Turkish Muslim nationalism and massacres against Armenians and other Christians in the 1890s.
Russian Imperialism was progressively expanding in the direction of Turkey and the Russians hoped that Turkey (or parts of it) might eventually succumb to Russia. There were Turks who suspected the Armenians of planning to rebel and join the Russians in attacking Turkey and possibly taking control of her. There were indeed Armenians who had pro-Russian sentiments. Armenian political activity worked towards civil rights for Christians in Turkey and liberalization in general. The Armenians also often requested the intervention of European Powers hoping that through their influence they might receive better treatment from the Turkish authorities. In 1914 the Turkish army suffered defeats at the hands of the Russians in the Caucasus region in areas populated by Armenians. Minster of War, Enver Pasha (one of the ruling triumvirate), who had led the Turkish forces publicly blamed the Armenians for his defeats.
This set the background for the Armenian Genocide that began in 1915. There was what was considered an Armenian problem and so it was decided to remove the Armenians.
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4. The Armenian Genocide and German Complicity
The rationale for the Massacres included the expression of ancient hatreds, a desire for homogeneity within the Empire, and the alleged fear of Armenian collaboration with the enemies of Turkey.
In the Armenian Genocide (1915-1921) the Turks massacred 0.8 to 1.5 million Armenians. Vahakn N. Dadrian, ("German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide. A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity", USA, 1996) has explained how German Advisors had HELPED formulate the ideological rationale for these actions.
German officers serving with the Turks assisted in carrying them out, and German diplomats worked to lessen Turkish culpability in the eyes of the international community.
The German officer, Hans von Seeckt (1866-1936) was made Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Army in 1917. He supported the Young Turks and their actions against the Armenians.
"Seeckt blamed all of the problems of the Ottoman Empire on the Jews and the Armenians, whom he portrayed as a fifth column working for the Allies".
[After Germany's defeat in 1918, Seeckt became the head of the German Army in October 1919.
# Seeckt ignored the Constitution of 1919 which prohibited religious discrimination. He ordered that Jews were not to be accepted into the Reichswehr, no matter how qualified they might be. #]
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Concerning the Armenian Massacres by Turks from 1915 onwards: Beginning ca. 24 April 1915, the massacres of Armenians by Turks continued intermittently into 1921. All able-bodied Armenian males had been first conscripted. They were disarmed and massacred or died through forced labor. This was followed (or accompanied) by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. Many of the women were sold into slavery as concubines or mass-raped and left to die by the way-side. Assyrians (i.e. Nestorian Christians) and Greek Christian residents of Turkey were subjected to similar treatment. Turkish refugees who previously had been driven out of Europe and Russia played an important role in the displacement, robbery and massacre, of the Armenians. These people resented the Armenians who were comparatively better off than them. They robbed and bespoiled the Armenians they were killing and in some cases took over their properties. Kurdish tribesmen and other local Muslims were also culpable and assisted the Turks in tormenting
and killing Armenians. In these cases those in charge exploited the predatory nature of local populations to expedite the elimination of an ethnic group they wished to dispose of.
At the end of World War -1 Turkish troops took control of Armenia in the Caucasus and further massacres took place.
The Armenian Genocide needs to be kept in mind when considering the attitude of the Turks to the Jews in Palestine. Similar measureswere intended against the Jews and on several occasions almost implemented.
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6. Armenian Nazis!
The Armenian experience did not cause them to later be more sympathetic towards Jews. Nor did it lead them to be against Germany.
In World War-2 many Armenians collaborated with the Nazis. The Armenians considered themselves to be Aryans. Nazi Racial doctrines resonated with the sentiments of Armenian nationalist intellectuals.
There was an Armenian Nazi group known as the Dashnaks. These helped to kill Jews in various parts of Europe such as Bucharest, Romania. Within the Waffen SS there was an Armenian battalion. 20,000 Armenians served in the German forces. Armenians killed Jews in the Crimea. Even today within Armenia there are still those who are openly sympathetic towards Nazi doctrines. Attacks against Jews in the Armenian media are vicious, frequent, and repeated. Armenia today considers itself an ally of Iran. Armenia could well be the most anti-Jewish non-Islamic State in the world at the official level, i.e. where anti-Jewish sentiment is openly countenanced.
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7. The Jews in Palestine
Before World War-1, the Ottoman Turks ruled over Palestine. Turkish rule was corrupt and anarchic. The Prussians (and after them the German Empire) had traditionally taken an interest in the Protestant communities. The Russians worried mostly about their own subjects and the Greek Orthodox. The French patronized the Catholics. This concern by the Great Powers for the vulnerable under Ottoman
Rule was not entirely altruistic. It enabled the development and exercise of influence in a decaying system. In 1914, there was a Jewish community of about 85,000. They suffered from Turkish rule. Most of them were Russian citizens and technically could appeal to the Russian Consulate. The Russian Gentile authorities however were not always willing to be of assistance. The British therefore stepped in.
The British would extend some help to the Jews and maintain an interest in their fate. This ended in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire found itself allied with Germany, and the Austria-Hungarian Empire against
the Triple Alliance [Entente]. - England, France and Russia. Russian citizens (i.e. most of the Jews in Palestine) were required to become Ottoman citizens or to leave.
The Jewish Yishuv (i.e. Community in Palestine) was to diminish - from 85,000 to 56,000 - due to people leaving, deportations, economic strife, and disease. Many of the Jews previously had survived through
receiving stipends from overseas. The War stopped these arriving. The USA did not enter the war until 1917 and was neutral. On several occasions American warships brought the Jews supplies of food, and money (supplied by Jews in the USA), and enabled the evacuation of thousands who otherwise may have died from starvation and disease. In 1917 the British issued the Balfour Declaration in favor of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. In 1918 the British Army, including important contingents from Australia and New Zealand, completed its conquest of the region.
At the beginning of the War most Jews and Zionists in Europe and Palestine had probably been sympathetic to the German side.
In the course of the war this changed. Zionist leaders pressured the British to allow the establishment of a separate Jewish Army to fight alongside the Allies. This resulted at first only in a token support group, the Zionist Mule Corps, under Joseph Trumpeldor being set up. It was headed by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson. Continued agitation by Zeev Jabotinsky led to the establishment of the Jewish Legion which regiment served under General Allenby in the eventual liberation of Palestine. There was also the NILI espionage group in Palestine itself. This had been formed by Sarah Aaronsohn, her brother Aaron, and their sister Rivka, together with their friend Avshalom Feinberg. This, before it was uncovered, provided vital information to the Allies. All these activities and more of like-nature, with the accompanying publicity and agitation had their effect. The Turks wanted to do to the Jews what they had done to the Armenians.
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8. Germans Saved Jews in World War 1!
The Germans had an overriding influence in Turkey. It was they who held the Turks back from attacking the Jews.
The Germans feared that any extreme anti-Jewish actions would arouse world opinion and adversely affect their war effort. The intervention of German military and diplomatic personnel was not restricted to isolated occurrences but was an ongoing phenomenon: On the one hand, local Turkish officials would periodically initiate actions against the Jews. [The Turks also worked at creating antagonism between the Jews and local Arab communities1.] The Turks spoke openly of wishing to carry out a 'Second Armenia' (Dadrian p.251).
Against this, the Germans for their part, at all levels of officialdom, would successfully do their best to reverse these measures. The Germans would also work to remove the anti-Jewish Turkish officials responsible (Dadrian p.252).
The Germans so acted since that is what they had orders to do. They considered it to be in their best interests.
Nevertheless, the resolution, determination, courage, and expressed sentiments (Dadrian p.254) of some of the German functionaries involved indicated that, in at least some cases, a different aspect of the German character had revealed itself. The successful efforts to save Jews of such figures as Karl Frieherr von Schabinger were truly heroic. This was in startling contrast to what came later.
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9. The Kaiser and the Holocaust
The Kaiser, Wilhelm-2, himself had given instructions to German officials in Turkey to prevent actions against the Jews (Dadrian p.255 quotes I. Friedman, "Germany, Turkey, and Zionism 1897-1918," Oxford, 1977, p.371).
The true sentiments of the Kaiser however appear to be those he expressed at a later stage of his life. In the mid-1920s, Wilhelm called for a struggle against Jewry throughout the world. He demanded that the Bible be re-written to eliminate most of the Old Testament, so leaving only genuinely Christian elements, which he claimed were Zoroastrian and therefore 'Aryan' in origin and 'not Semitic-Jewish' at all.
In 1923, after hearing a lecture by the anthropologist Frobenius, the Kaiser had an almost religious revelation. Suddenly he realized, he said, that the French and the English were not whites at all but blacks. The future mission of the German people was now clear to him:
'We shall be the leaders of the Orient against the Occident! .. we belong on the other side!'
The Germans were not part of the West, but the 'face of the East against the West'.
The main thing was that England, France and America should 'go under'.
On 2, December 1919, the now-deposed Kaiser wrote to General August von Mackensen and called for a "regular international all-worlds pogrom", as "the best cure" against Jews. The Jews and mosquitoes were "a nuisance that humanity must get rid of in some way or other"... "I believe the best would be gas" (Quoted from, "The Nazis Foreshadowed. The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany," by John Rohl).