Germany and the Armenian genocide
It is known that individual German military advisors signed some of the orders that led to Ottoman deportations of Armenians, a major component of the genocide.
On 2 June 1915, consul Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter reported that "An evacuation of such a size is tantamount to a massacre because due to a lack of any kind of transportation, barely half of these people will reach their destination alive.
"[11] Twenty days later, missionary Johannes Lepsius told the Foreign Office that the systematic deportations were obviously an attempt to decimate the Christian population in the empire as far as possible under the veil of martial law and by putting to use the Muslim elation aroused by the Holy War, abandoning it to extermination by carrying it off to climatically unfavourable and unsafe districts along the border.
[13] Most of the German consuls in Anatolia prepared reports on the genocide and criticized it,[14] but there was also an agreement with the Young Turk government "there was to be no written record of... conversations" on the Armenian issue.
[19] German newspapers printed denials of the atrocities and regurgitated the Ottoman position of seeing Armenians as a subversive element and their persecution as justified.
[14] Historian Margaret L. Anderson states, "If we look not at the hard-pressed German-in-the-street but at the elites, the close-knit world of movers, shakers, and public opinion-makers, then the answer is clear: everyone.
"[21][22][23] Other politicians of the left-wing elements of the SPD, such as Hugo Haase, Georg Ledebour, and Eduard Bernstein, also denounced the mass extermination.
[16] The first use of railways for genocide occurred in early 1915 when Armenian women and children from Zeitun were deported on trains to Konya and later marched into the Syrian Desert.
According to the deputy director of the railway, Franz Günther, an average of 88 Armenians were packed into a single cattle car (usual capacity of 36 men) and newly born infants were taken from their mothers and thrown out of the train.
[19] In late 1915 and early 1916, the Ottoman government demanded the handing over of the Armenian workers as well as an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 widows and orphans who were in camps beside the railway.
[5][32] Other Germans, including naval attaché Hans Humann, openly approved of the genocide on nationalist grounds, rather than military necessity.
[33][39] Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian argued that German officials were "indirect accessories to crimes perpetuated by the [Turkish] Special Organization functionaries whose overall goal they endorsed, financed to some extent, and shepherded".
[40] According to historian Hilmar Kaiser, "German involvement in the Armenian Genocide covers a spectrum ranging from active resistance to complicity.
Failing that, "the German authorities could have bargained much better in the summer of 1915 in order to exclude certain groups and regions from removal", although Kieser does not think it possible for Germany to have stopped the genocide.
Over the summer of 1915, Talat Pasha repeatedly ordered for deportations of these groups to start and stop, but on the ground sectarian massacres continued mostly without interruption.
[1][47] Eberhard Graf Wolffskeel von Reichenberg was a German major and chief of staff of the deputy commander of the IV Ottoman Army, Fakhri Pasha.
[48][49] Otto von Feldmann was chief of operations department at the Ottoman General Headquarters from October 1915 and gave his advice to "clear certain areas [...] of Armenians at certain times.
[52] Some historians hold Bronsart von Schellendorf responsible for being the main architect of the deadly concept of deportations and for instigating the Armenian Genocide.
[55] Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz was Commander in Chief of the Ottoman Army from October 1915 and was involved in the Armenian genocide alongside Boettrich and other German officers.
[56][57] As early as October 1897, Goltz had suggested on an event of the German-Turkish Association (DTV) that half a million Armenians living on the Russian border be resettled in Mesopotamia.
[6]In December 2023, an Armenian genocide monument in Cologne, Germany was removed due to pressure from Turkey and Turkish-German organizations, including the far-right nationalist Grey Wolves.
A new monument is planned to replace it, which will be vaguely dedicated to "commemorating the victims of repression, racism, violence, and human rights violations".
