FROM THE ARMENIAN GOLGOTHA TO THE HOLOCAUST–FORESHADOWING ATTITUDES OF THE GERMAN MILITARY?
by Andrew Bostom
AndrewBostom.org
http://www.andrewbostom.o rg/blog/2009/03/22/from-the-armenian-golgotha-to-t he-holocaust%e2%80%94foreshadowing-attitudes-of-th e-german-military/
March 23 2009
Grigoris Balakian, 1876-1934: "The German officers would often speak
of us as Christian Jews and as blood sucking usurers of the Turkish
people."
This past week I was privileged to receive an advance copy of the
soon to be released (March 31, 2009, according to the publisher,
Random House) first time English translation of Grigoris Balakian’s
epic personal memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918, "Hai
Koghkotan," "The Armenian Golgotha," originally published in Vienna,
in 1922. The 1922 volume 1, and the second volume (which apparently
"fell into a void for lack of funding," was found among Grigoris
Balakian’s sister Rosa Antreassian’s post-humous papers in 1956,
and published in Paris in 1959) are presented in a very accessible,
elegant English translation by Grigoris Balakian’s grandnephew,
Professor Peter Balakian–an accomplished scholar of the Armenian
Genocide himself–with the able assistance of two colleagues, Anahid
Yeremian, and Aris Sevag.
Modern genocide historians who have been wont to re-examine the
disintegrating Ottoman Empire’s World War I jihad genocide against
its Armenian minority through the prism of The Holocaust, often cite
a comment by Hitler that the mass killings of the Armenians served
the Nazi leaders as an "inspirational" precedent for predictable
impunity. During August of 1939, Hitler gave speeches in preparation
for the looming invasion of Poland which admonished his military
commanders to wage a brutal, merciless campaign, and assure rapid
victory. Hitler portrayed the impending invasion as the initial step
of a vision to "secure the living space we need," and ultimately,
"redistribute the world." In an explicit reference to the Armenians,
"Who after all is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?,"
Hitler justified their annihilation (and the world’s consignment of
this genocide to oblivion) as an accepted new world order because,
"The world believes only in success."
Grigoris Balakian’s eyewitness account of events from
1915-1918–recorded in his diaries during World War I, and already
published by 1922–provide a unique, independent confirmation of
this ideological, and genocidal nexus, and antedate The Holocaust
by two decades. Specifically, Balakian’s striking observations (on
pp. 280-281) from a chapter entitled, "The Treatment of the Armenians
by the German Soldiers" capture attitudes of German military officers
towards the Armenians that foreshadow, chillingly, the genocidal
depredations they would inflict upon European Jewry during World
War II.
The German officers on their way to Palestine and the Mesopotamian
front had no choice but to pass before the Bagche [Asia Minor]
station [train]. All of them used offensive language with regard to
the Armenians. They considered us to be engaging in intrigue, ready
to strike the Turkish army from the rear, and thus traitors to the
fatherland…deserving of all manner of punishment.
Although most of the Armenians living in Turkey had been deported,
scattered, and martyred in the spring of 1915, a few hundred thousand
survivors still perishing in the deserts to the south–wasting
away to nothing. Nevertheless the German officers’ Armenophobic
fury continued, and not a word of compassion was heard from their
lips. On the contrary, they justified the Ittihad government, saying,
"You Armenians deserve your punishment. Any state would have punished
rebellious subjects who took up arms to realize national hopes by
the destruction of the country."
When we objected, asking if other states would dare to massacre
women and children, along with men, and annihilate an entire race on
account of a few guilty people, they replied: "Yes, it’s true that
the punishment was a bit severe, but you must realize that during such
chaotic and frightful days of war as these, it was difficult to find
the time and means to separate the guilty from the innocent." This
was also the merciless answer of the chief executioners–Talaat,
Enver, Behaeddin Shakir, Nazim–and their Ittihad camarilla.
The German officers pretended ignorance of the widespread slaughter
of more than a million innocent Armenians, irrespective of sex and
age, and referred only to deaths by starvation and the adversities
of travel during the deportations. Thus they exonerated the Turkish
government, saying that its inability to provide for hundreds of
thousands of deportees in a disorganized land like Asia Minor was
not surprising. Meanwhile Turkish government officials prevented the
starving refugees from receiving bread distributed by the Austrians
and Swiss, stating, "Orders have come from Constantinople not to
give any assistance. We cannot allow either bread or medicine to be
given. The supreme order is to annihilate this evil race. How dare you
rescue them from death?" The German officers would often speak of us
as Christian Jews and as blood sucking usurers of the Turkish people.
What a falsification of the wretched realities prevailing in Asia
Minor, and what a reversal of roles! Yes indeed, there was an
oppressor. Either the Germans were consciously distorting the facts
and roles, or the Turks had really convinced them that the Turks were
the victims and the Armenians were criminals. How appropriate it is
to recall here this pair of Turkish sayings: "The clever thief has
the master of the house hanged" and "The one who steals the minaret
prepares its sheath in advance, of course."
Many German officers had no qualms about turning over to the Turkish
authorities Armenian youths who had sought refuge with them; they knew
full well that they were delivering them to their executioners. If
an Armenian merely spoke negatively about a German–be he the
emperor or [Baron] von der Goltz Pasha [a German military aide to
the Ottoman Empire], or the average German–or dared to criticize
German indifference toward the Armenian massacres, he was immediately
arrested and turned over to the nearest Turkish military or police
authority. And if the Germans found a certain Armenian particularly
irritating, they pinned the label of spy on him.
Mistaking me for an Austrian, a few German officers boasted of having
turned over several Armenians to the Turkish police, adding with a
laugh, "Only the Turks know how to talk to the Armenians."
Wilhelm Harun-el-Raschid Bey, 1886-1963: The apotheosis of two
conjoined, genocidal twentieth century ideologies–jihadism, and
ethno-nationalism.
The career trajectory and personal attitudes of Wilhelm
Hintersatz (born 1886; died 1963) epitomize these genocidal
connections. Hintersatz achieved the rank of colonel serving the
Kaiser’s Austrian armed forces in Turkey, during World War I, where he
became an assistant to Enver Pasha–one of the ruling Ittihad (Young
Turk) triumvirate architects of the Armenian Genocide–and converted
to Islam, assuming the name Harun-el-Raschid Bey. During World War II,
he joined the Waffen SS as Standartenfuhrer (Colonel) of a unit that
merged Waffen groups operating in the Ural Mountains, and Central
Asia, from 1944-1945. As described by Professor Kurt Tauber in his
meticulously documented two volume tome (published in 1967) on the
post World War II era phenomenon of residual anti-democratic German
nationalism, Beyond Eagle and Swastika, Wilhelm Harun-el-Raschid Bey
wrote Aus Orient und Occident; ein Mosaik aus buntem Erleben [From
the Orient and the Occident: A Mosaic of Varicolored Experiences],
ostensibly "…about his personal experiences and travels, interlarded
with his reflections," which was published in 1954. However, as
Tauber observes, cleverly avoiding strict German laws against the
publication of overtly Antisemitic writings which were stringently
applied during the early post World War II period, Harun-el-Raschid
Bey concealed his Jew-hatred behind a "folkish" facade.
Yet, in doing so he presented a clear and penetrant racist orientation,
masquerading as lighthearted story telling and simple good fun. Some
of the descriptions of people and events have an almost Sturmer-like
quality, including even the attempted seduction by a Russian Jewess!
Wilhelm Harun-el-Raschid Bey represents the apotheosis of two conjoined
genocidal 20th century ideologies–jihadism, and ethno-nationalism. And
as true believer in both, he remained seemingly unrepentant even in
the aftermath of the genocidal killings these hatemongering ideologies
provoked.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
