Stefan Ihrig tarafından “Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination – Nazi Hayalinde Atatürk” başlığı ile yazılan kitap Harward Üniversitesi tarafından basılmakta olup Ocak 2016’ da yayımlanacak. Kitapta sözde soykırımla ve ATATÜRK ile ilgili, özel hayatı da dahil, akıl almaz iddialar yer alıyor.
Basımı sırasında kitap hakkında elde edilen bilgiye dayanarak Ermeni konularında Araştırmacı ve Yazar Sayın Şükrü Server AYA kitapla ilgili olarak ekteki 50 sayfalık yorumu hazırladı ve Stefan Ihrig’ i yalanlayarak ilgili adreslere gönderdi.
Subject: OPEN MESSAGE for Introduction of “Book Review and Repuditation on Dr. Ihrig’s book Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination” Harvard Univ.Press 2014
Gentlemen.
In referring to the book entitled “Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination”, I am attaching my “BOOK REVIEW and Repudiation”, contents of which are self-explanatory. This text and attachment will be shared with all Ataturk Societies, as well as academic publications world wide.
This review will also be posted on “armenians-1915.blogspot.com” blog towards the end of October where you can also find my several e-books and over four hundred articles, all on the subject of genocide, as well as over 400 e-books and essays on Turkish-German and Jewish relations.
The blog (Armenian Genocide Resource Center) -as they always do- will publish short or long counter comments on their pages. They have been active for the past ten years and if you have not heard of them or other neutral sources on the internet, it is not their fault.
The reviewed book is flawed with major errors of historical facts and lacks scholarly respect for reputed world leaders, in this case Ataturk.
I am saddened to read these “fantasies” which badly damage the Turko-Jewish-German and Armenian relations. I am also sorry to note the support of the van Der Leer Institute and Harvard University Press to this book, as they also must share the responsibility of disseminating wrong information and slanders. In this review I have shown and proved very clearly how the author has not been truthful and how he omitted the wealth of knowledge on the subject which does not support his thesis .
Yours Cordially,
Sukru Server Aya (Researcher & Writer)
_____________________
BOOK REVIEW & REPUDITATION:
Atatürk in the Nazi imagination Stefan Ihrig –Harvard Univ. Press
FOREWORD:
I have read the subject book in detail and watched the presentation video. Given my age, the things I lived and read in my life, my international experience (importing machinery for workshops from many countries), and my affection and respect for all nations and faiths (in particular Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Germans as well as Asiatic and South and North American countries) I feel that I should share my views on this book which is also a prelude to a new book expected in January 1916 “Justifying Genocide, Germany and the Armenians From Bismark to Hitler”(Harvard University Press). As you may realize from my four books, over 400 essays, several interviews and video presentations, or the biographies, published on the internet, I am not a scholar or a professional historian. I am a reader who suspected that there were lies and charlatanism behind the genocide myth when it was introduced in 1960s. This was immediately after all “displaced persons” (ex Armenian Legion soldiers in Germany) were admitted into the USA with special quotas (perhaps as a result of Dashnakist skills). This gave birth in the 1970s in a wave of “revenging terror”!
When I was an elementary school student and started reading newspapers for my mother to tell her what was going on, I thought that “now I know the world just like other grownup people”. Then, in high school, our literature teacher used to bring and read us passages about “stars, universe, space, light years” etc. which I could hardly grasp or understand. He told us “boys, now you are learning many things, remember than your knowledge is like a ball that grows bigger and bigger but never forget that what you don’t know is the outside the surface of the ball”; the more you learn, the more you realize how much you do not know. It took me a many decades to understand the importance of what our teacher had taught us, and now I have another live example.
Most of the links in this review are mine; they are annexes and references to truths that were published years ago. I will be very happy if you would read them all as vital annexes!
In this book review I will make frequent references to my two books, which have been available for a long time on the internet also open for downloads: “The Genocide of Truth”[GoT](link:) and “The Genocide of Truth Continues, but…” [GTC](link:). (GoT p.662): The article dated Nov.14, 1915 of the “Reno Evening Gazette” (America and the Armenians) was a wise prophecy and stands valid today. The article ends with the following sentence: “If this country, therefore, does not want to appear foolish before the whole world, it will refuse to be duped by impossible tales and will let the Armenians severely alone.”
This review will be sent to several academic magazines and will, most likely, be posted in the BLOG of “Armenian Genocide Research Center” (link) and IADD/ASUK website. This blog has been active since 2005 and is operated by three young Armenians originally from Turkey who lives abroad but has to hide their identities and locations for understandable reasons. There are about 400 E-books, over 100 videos and movie films, some 3,600 articles-essays and reviews (likely over 150,000 pages) all relating to Turkish-Armenian relations, past and present! It seems that the author of the book I am now reviewing and the supporting institute is not aware of this blog or the other one called “tallarmeniantale” which is written with references to concrete documents. Hence, readers of this REVIEW are most welcome to write to the posting blog (Armenians) as it posts “all polite reader comments”, so that the comments and answers are open to the whole world!
Biased G-scholars (as you may find in this book) are very selective about what they read and use as evidence; they seldom cross-check with original sources. Anyone who starts reading the “Armenian Blog” today will need over ten years to read the present data! I think I have read about one half or more to date. My writings alone (comments, essays, articles…) are probably more than 7,000 pages.
Most laws require a Witness Affirmation similar to: "I solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
(Book) PROLOGUE
The writer gives some general information about Turkish-German historic relations. I think that my co-authored essay submitted at the Wurzburg University Symposium (Nov. 14-15, 2013) is much more comprehensive and accurate in explaining these historic bilateral relations! (Moeltke, Goltz, Sanders, Talatrpasha, Tehlirian etc.) See:
(English) DIFFERENT OPINIONS ON OTTOMAN AND GERMAN POLITICAL MILITARY AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS - link
(German) Unterschiedliche Meinungen uber die politisch militarische und wirtschaftliche Beziehungen zwischen den Osmanen und Deutschen - link
(Turkish)OSMANLI ALMAN ILISKILERINDE SIYASI EKONOMIK ve ASKERI ALANLARDA FARKLI DUSUNCELER - link
On P.8 and towards the end of the prologue the author states that the book was inspired by an unnamed woman shouting: “HITLER was a friend of Turkey” in Munich railway station in 2007 and what follows is an attempt to understand the woman’s memory. I do not object to the statement, but it lacks credibility that this unnamed woman would still be able to remember Hitler of 2007s, let alone his shout about his relationship with Turkey, when she would have been well into her 90s.
My limited knowledge about the Nazis and Hitler (other than the many sources on the Armenian Legion) mainly depends on ‘The Rise and fall of the Third Reich’ by William L Shirer. On the internet we have reviews on Shirer’s book, and I quote the first one from. “The Guardian’s page, which reads” link: <For me, this is the grand daddy of them all, the standard work by which all others on the subject are still measured. A brilliant and respected journalist, Shirer was actually there for much of the time and his book shows comprehensive, erudite, detailed data, always lively and readable; a model of what a popular narrative history should be.>
I have not seen any references to this very dependable source in Dr. Ihrig’s book. More important is the fact that there are no “Armenians” or “Turks” spoken about by Hitler in the Shirer’s book index!
If the writer and Professors Gabriel Moltzkin and Mosche Zimmermann of “The van Leer Institute” which endorsed this study, had but known William Shirer’s “grand-daddy” book, “or “Armenians-1915.blogspot.com” they could have looked into the matter more deeply (as I have done during the last two decades) and avoided a fundamental mistake. In Shirer’s book,(p. 705-708) we have the text of Hitler’s August 22, 1939 speech in which the author now claims that he said (p.175)“who after all speaks today of the annihilation of Armenians?” Not only this new book, but all “Genocide allegations” are built on this erroneous statement, even though it comes from what has been proven to be a “poorly doctored document” at least ten years ago. Dr. Ihrig refers on p.281, (13 & 14) to the (L-3) Louis P. Lochner, (Washington Government Printing Office, 1946) document as its source and evidence.
In chapter 14/2 (p.249-270) of my book GTC (and also www.cwporter/com/gl3.htm) I included a picture of the Certificate by the Nuremberg Court dated Jun 24, 1948, confirming that this (L-3) document had been withdrawn (refused by the court as evidence). You also see the negative copy of the Lochner’s document, which is supposed to be Hitler’s speech on August 22, 1939. Note the extremely bad typing, page arrangement and the absence of the “double SS” letter (which exists on all German keyboard typewriters, but apparently not on the typewriter used to write a text for Hitler! The GTC book contains evidence of correspondence from the Holocaust Museum (which by then knew that Lochner’s document was false) and their attempt to shift responsibility for the truth from the museum to Lochner, by inserting the following sentence; “According to reports received by the Associated Press Bureau Chief in Berlin Louis Lochner”. I had sent my book “registered mail - return receipt” to the museum with a letter and the final question set out on p. 270. Of course, no reply was received! Last year new documents from another book (which had long disappeared from libraries) were found! These newly found documents irrefutably prove that “the museum knew about this fabricated Armenian genocide, which was loaded over the true Jewish Holocaust”. For formal letters sent to the Museum please refer to http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2015/04/3539-preserving-memory-struggle-to.html, where you can see the full text (plus book pages attached and highlighted) asking for a reply and explanation as regards “what is true”. The Museum (the Highest Authority) again could give no answer.
In 2012, further documents surfaced, this time confirmed by US Military Records (as shown in http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2012/02/3337-armenians-or-jews-dont-exist-in.html). The text of the 22.08.1939 Hitler’s speech is annexed; and of course it is the same of the text in Shirer’s book!
Unless the references, books and documents hereby submitted are proven to be untrue, Dr. Ihrig, the van Leer Institute or Harvard University Press, and the many pro-Armenian scholars (Bloxham, Dadrian, Suny, Kaiser, Akcam, Ugur Umit, (p.240 etc),Kocak, Bardakjian or Zoryan Institute) and all the rest should write to the US Army Records, the blog of Cole Porter and tell them that they are all wrong; and that the L-3 document of 1946 is still valid and all the rest are trash!
Again on p.7 and on several following pages, Dr. Ihrig (and van Der Leer Professors) are all sure that “an Armenian genocide happened”, but in their certainty they see no reason to indicate reason, place, time, numbers, murder tools, neutral documents relied on, not even neutral eye witness statements or mass graves. This is a great “impossibility which is circulated by heresy” openly. No one applies even minimal logic. To kill 1,000,000 people in 100 days or 1,500,000 in 150 days (duration of the relocation process), you have to kill 10,000 people every day (and even Hitler failed to achieve half of this number in his dedicated camps and facilities). You would need about 6,000 workers to dig a graveyard the size of a stadium every day to bury the bodies; but not even one has been found. The smaller graves that have been found are in fact of Muslims murdered by Armenians, confirmed in irrefutable documents which will be referenced below. It is impossible to kill 10,000 persons by hand every day! If you shoot them you would need more than 100 tons of bullets (delivered by 100 ox-carts - which were not available in the subject restricted zone). So, the Reno Evening Gazette’s “impossibility” sentence quoted in the foreword is proven! It is the duty of the claimant or district attorney to “prove the crime with evidence”; because otherwise people “are innocent until proven to be guilty”!
Please see http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2015/08/3561-genocide-claims-must-be.html. This research study was submitted at the symposium of the Marmara University on May 26, 2015. The title of this co-authored document is “Genocide Claims Must Be Scrutinized”. This consists of 47 pages of scholarly research and provides all the details starting with United Nations stipulations, unfounded and unproven claims. Gentlemen, if you defend truth or accept the evidence provided under my “witness affirmation”, you have to read it all, and if you have any objections please write to the blog and let the world see the debate and weigh the evidence. It is an essential requirement that “the crime of Genocide must be proclaimed by the verdict of an authorized international tribunal”. The United Nations even has a special advisor for the G-crimes and rules of application: http://www.un.org/es/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/osapg_overview.pdf. To date the United Nations has only acknowledged the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocide, both based on authorized court verdicts. Accordingly, the rest is hearsay, gossip etc. Despite the tirades in books, movies, publications and brain washings, the G-screamers have not approached to the above referenced UN under-secretary for a “compulsory” lawsuit against Turkey. They carefully avoid even face-to-face meetings where formal charges and evidence would be required.
(1) TURKISH LESSONS FOR GERMANY
This chapter draws on the early relations between Turkey and Germany as described by the author, the visit of Wilhelm II etc., and tries to build a justification of the Turkish image in the German mind, while history and documents prove the very opposite. In page 15 it reads, “As early as 1921, the Nazis, in their Völkische Benbachter, featured an article with headline “Turkey – the Role Model”.
In 1921 Nationalist Turks were fighting to their last breath; Armenians in the East, French in the South East and Greeks in the West. During WW-1 all media news were distributed solely through “Reuters”, which was under the control of the British propaganda center at Wellington House. All news was centered in London and distributed by cablegrams to the world. Reuters had agents in Istanbul, but no one (except a very few) could get close to the Nationalist Turks during their War of Independence. Turks were in no mood for any modeling after some 11 years of continuous wars!
Dr.Ihrig’s book tries to provide evidence, mainly through German newspaper clips, that Hitler liked and followed Ataturk (Kemal) as a role model. He states that Ataturk annihilated Armenians and this inspired Germans to annihilate Jews! This is the fantasy or message this book tries to establish, as a prelude for the book which will follow on the Armenian genocide. The “imagination” is childish and is not confirmed by other sources.
I copy paste from my book “Preposterous Paradoxes of Ambassador Morgenthau” ISBN 978-085034-125-6 (2013) pages 47-49 which informs who the first dictator and teacher was:
http://conservativecolloquium.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/woodrow-wilson-americas-worst-and-first-fascist-president/ Wilson was the first president to criticize the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Wilson criticized the diffuseness of government power in the US in most famous book Congressional Government. In this work he confessed, “I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive.” His love and worship of power was a prime characteristic of fascism. “If any trait bubbles up in all one reads about Wilson it is this: he loved, craved, and in a sense glorified power,” writes historian Walter McDougall. It should not surprise us that his idols were Abraham Lincoln and Otto von Bismarck.
Wilson created the first official propaganda department in the US.A week after Congress declared war on Germany, Wilson created a government apparatus whose sole purpose was to lie to the American people, the first modern ministry for propaganda in the West. It was called the Committee on Public Information and was led by journalist George Creel.
In sum, Wilson was the first fascist president of the US and first major fascist dictator of the 20th century.
Wilson took over the US economy, infringed on American civil liberties especially by suppressing dissent, oppressed the “unpatriotic,” and purposefully sought to drag the US into war. This Marxist, totalitarian, jingoistic, and militaristic Democrat president was a fascist. He worshiped the power of the state, and such statolatry is exactly what fascism is.
Let us have a different view from another researcher: Jonah Goldberg- Broadway Books, “Liberal Fascism” ISBN 978-07679-1718-6
P.78: WOODROW WILSON AND THE BIRTH OF LIBERAL FASCISM
P.84: Two of his biggest heroes were the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Abraham Lincoln.
P.85: Those who stood in the way –the bourgeoisie, the “unfit”, the “greedy” and the “individualist”, the traitor, the kulak the Jew – could be demonized as the “other”…
Wilson would later argue when president that he was the right hand of God and that to stand against him was to thwart divine will.
P.103: The New Republic defended both fascism and communism on similar grounds throughout the 1920s.
P.105: Despite Wilson’s promise to keep us out of it, America entered the war in 1917. In hindsight, this was probably a misguided, albeit foregone intervention. But the complaint that the war wasn’t in America’s interests, misses the point.
At the end of WW1, all that was given to America against her loss of 106.000 killed, 254.000 wounded, was the “honor to prepare a map showing the borders of Armenia”! The map was concluded on 27.11.1920 but Armenia surrendered on 2.12.1920 to Nationalist Turks. The British and French did not give even a 5% share in the “Turkish Petroleum Company” in Mousoul, which changed hands.
The second important issue is Morgenthau’s leading role in relief operations, which will be discussed later. At this point we should note the following sentence of Charles S. Davison, Chairman, Board of Trustees of American Defense Society,
“If Armenia is to be free she must not be exploited. If she needs help temporarily it must be afforded her without any strings tied to it. If she needs counsel, or advice, or munitions, or actual temporary aid, it is true that they come from America.”
I hope that these excerpts will be sufficient to prove who modeled or followed whom! In this WW-1 game Mustafa Kemal was a small character, trying to save his country with his bare hands, fighting alone against the Imperialist Powers, Britain, France and USA and their spoiled child: Greece.
Dr. Ihrig on p.21 of his book gives a map from Margaret McMillan’s ‘Paris 1919’ book in reference to the treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne! At this point let me remind the readers that the Treaty of Sèvres was signed by the Ottoman Government in August 1920 because the Victors were delayed by internal arguments on “apportioning benefits”! The Nationalist government had declared earlier that it would not accept any peace without its agreement. The only “share of the profits” given to the USA (W. Wilson was partly paralyzed by a stroke in September 1919 which meant he could not go out of the White House) was the task of drawing up the Sèvres’ borders! Peace had to wait for the map of the borders; moreover these were being drawn for lands under the control of the Nationalist Turks. The victors had released their large armies after the Ceasefire or surrender of the Ottoman, German and Austrian Empires! Wilson’s map is dated November 22, 1920 and would have taken a few weeks to arrive in Turkey. The following paragraph from McMillan’s book is particularly relevant to this.
“In September 1920, less than a month after the Treaty of Sèvres had promised an independent Armenia incorporating part of Turkey, Ataturk’s forces attacked from the south. Despite their efforts and attacks of their tiny air force of three planes the Armenians were gradually forced back. When Aharonian, the Armenian poet who had spoken for his country in Paris, tried to see Curzon in London, he was brushed off with a letter. “What we want to see now is concrete evidence of some constructive and administrative ability at home, instead of purely external policy based on propaganda and mendicancy”, wrote Curzon. On November 17, the Armenian government signed an armistice with Turkey that left only a tiny scrap of the country still free. Five days later a message arrived from President Wilson. Under the Treaty of Sèvres he had been asked to draw Armenia’s boundaries; he decided it should have 42,000 square kilometers of Turkish territory.”
(A few personal notes follow):
a- The Gumru/Alexandropole Peace Treaty, signed on December 2, 1920 by Turkey and Armenia set the borders of Armenia and is still valid today. A few weeks later the Dashnakist Armenia became a Soviet Republic and fell under Moscow’s rule for all foreign matters.
b- I always wondered who (if not USA) donated three airplanes to Armenia when they were starving!
c- The Dashnakist Armenian Republic was founded on May 28, 1918 under Turkish protection! A series of Peace and Cooperation, amnesty etc. treaties were signed on June 4thon the best country terms. Avedis Aharonian (the Parliament speaker) and the famous poet Hatissian came to Istanbul to express their thanks to the Sultan! On September 6th 1918 they were received by the Sultan and cabled their joy to PM Katchaznouni! They continued their trip to Paris. A month after the Ottoman Empire surrendered (30.10.1918-Mudros) they unilaterally abrogated the June 4th, 1918 Treaties and attacked and annexed the provinces of Kars and Ardahan, with the express permission of the British forces in Persia. My essay http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008/10/2610-genocide-lies-need-no-archives.html gives detailed information on the unfounded Armenian claims and their (boastful) Memorandum of February 12, 1919 to the Paris Conference, signed by A. Aharonian and Boghos Nubar. Of course I would not expect Dr. Ihrig or the other G-scholars to have read or evaluated this or any other irrefutable official documents as their ethical “commitment to truth only”!
On p. 24, we are shown a photo of the “Breniche Zeitung” of September 22, 1922. I wonder why Dr. Ihrig, among thousands of newspaper clips, has missed (if not purposely avoided) (GoT p.657):
“DEUTSCHE ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG - #342 July 24th, 1921” A Witness for Talat Pasha, from Lt. Gen. a.d. Bronsart von Schellendorf, former Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Field Troops, recent Commander of the Royal Prussian Infantry Division.
This is a very informative document written by the “deputy of the Turkish Minister of War”; a man who knew every detail of all actions. He was supposed to be invited to the lawsuit of Talat Pasha’s murder in Berlin as witness, but at the last minute he was “left out”. The newspaper article is a very strong document, which the G-scholars do not know or prefer not to see or read! Chapter 29 of (GoT) has several news clips mostly from U.S. Papers that G-scholars also never see. We have more than one hundred such clips:,http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/09/1961-new-series-innocent-armenians.html . Some scholars may be proud of hiding the elephant in the ‘room of truthful documents’. All of it has been there for years, available to those who have the courage, endurance and dedication to learn about and face the facts!
On p.56, the writer says: “This same article offered yet another overview of how Germany should take the Turks as a role model. The author claimed that the Turks were never victims of the pacifist lies of the Entente but had trusted only their arms and power to regain their equal rights and honor”.
I do not wish to object to this “imagination or interpretation of the author”, as he may just be looking for excuses to push or defend Nazi ideology. The Turkish War of Independence was fought in hard to reach parts of the country. All German military personnel in Turkey, without exception, had returned to Germany when the Ceasefire was concluded. Henceforth, one wonders what kind and how dependable these sources were for these German writers (almost all of whom had never seen Turkey) really had. You cannot write history from faraway places, based on imaginations, fantasies or personal dreams. (The confidential letter of the British Ambassador, at the end of this review, evidences that the German papers or staff and the writer could not understand Ataturk at all)
May I take this opportunity to add that I highly respect and appreciate the hair or hay counting Dr. Ihrig did in preparation of this book! Personally I am thankful for all the new things I learned “sourced from Germany”. I cannot read or write German and, in truth, never needed to depend on unreliable German sources, because I had other genuine, irrefutable and direct sources.
On p.59, Dr. Ihrig makes a very important but confused comment on Ataturk, without showing the exact source:
“These attacks also show that the discussion of Ataturk as proof of the Fuhrer idea was not limited to Hussong, but more widespread. Among others he attracted those focusing on Ataturk’s alleged vices (such as “Arabian horses, Armenian women, and Greek boys”) and deemed them utterly irrelevant regarding his role as Fuhrer”.
How such a “base statement” can be considered to be “scholarship” in a book on history, written about a person who has been declared to be “the man of the 20th century”, has no explanation – rather it provides an indication of the moral-ethical values of authors and their ghost writers or companions and their much respected supporting institutes such as The van Der Leer Institute (note that history is not shown as one of their lines of activity) and Harvard University Press. For the reply to this statement see the section below on “Personal Repudiation” in reply to p.158 (par. c) of Ihrig’s book repeating the above. Vague, fogged and elastic statements and slanders are outstanding features of most G-scholars. While they repeat the charge of “genocide”, they never show “reason, date, place, numbers, murder tools, graves, document or neutral eyewitness”, nor do they comply with UN’s requirements to establish the “serious crime of genocide” such as an “authorized court’s verdict”.
Here are the answers to these base slanders:
a) Mustafa Kemal resigned from his post as “army commander” on October 9, 1917¸ he got on the train at Aleppo on October 11 and reached Istanbul on October 15th. He had three Arabian horses, but there was no one in Aleppo to buy these valuable assets. He left the horses to be sold to Djemal Pasha and borrowed 2000 in gold for his trip and stay in Istanbul. The horses were sold later and the difference paid to him. As an “Army Commander” he had no savings for this trip!
b) We have no record that Mustafa Kemal as a soldier or President of the Republic ever met “Armenian women”. As a minimum the author should have specified the date and place where such meetings took place and whether these women volunteered or were forced. A bare allegation carries no weight at all.
c) During WW-1 there were Armenian, Greek, Jewish etc. soldiers (although not many) in the Turkish army who fought and died as “Ottoman citizens” defending their homeland. But we have no historical record that Ataturk ever had Greek orderly or any Greek men/boy servants at all. Dr. Ihrig’s raw, superficial or whispered knowledge, is deficient in not referring to the great services “few Armenians did to Mustafa Kemal during his war of Independence” or the outstanding performance of the Jewish Rabbi Haim Nahum, who had taught history and manners to Ambassador Morgenthau. Later in 1917 he was commissioned to take the position of Turkish Ambassador in Washington, but he was turned back by the British when he reached Copenhagen. After the Independence war Haim Nahum was included in the Turkish Nationalist Delegation at the Lausanne Conference. Later he moved to become Chief Rabbi to Egypt, and his son and grandsons became partners and managers of Koc Holding, one of the most reputable 500 Companies in the world. Regrettably, Dr. Ihrig and the van Der Leer Institute seem to be totally unaware of the six hundred years of togetherness enjoyed by Turks and Sefarad Jews and the “close friendship of the peoples” which continues!
p.64: “Additionally there were also the assassinations of Talat Pasha in 1921 and later other Young Turks in 1922 in Berlin; they were permanent links to the German situation, beginning with the question of war guilt and the Entente extradition lists and then, at the last minute, the Bolsheviks were excluded from the Lausanne negotiations…”
The author seems to approve of the assassination but has no idea about several publications that are available on the internet about the murder of Talat Pasha in Berlin and the shameful court procedures that followed:
a). Talaat Pasha’s murder (15.3.1921): a parody in the courts of Berlin belying 'The Miller of Sansoucci Legend of Justice American International Journal of Contemporary Scientific Research IMPACT FACTOR : 3.23Manuscript ID: AIJCSR-138Issue Due October 2014
b). Talaat Pasha’s Murder- A Parody in the Courts of Berlin, published Oct.2014 Lap Lambert LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing is a trademark of OmniScriptum GmbH & Co. KG Heinrich-Böcking-Str. 6-8, 66121, Saarbrücken, Germany a.gal@lap-publishing.com / www.lap-publishing.com Handelsregister Amtsgericht Saarbrücken HRA 10356
c).Talaat Pasha’s murder (15.3.1921): a parody in the courts of Berlin belying 'The Miller of Sansoucci Legend of Justice” October 2014 JOURNAL OF LAW AND ETHICS (JLE) Volume 5, No.1Issue ID: JLE14V5N1DOI: dx.doi.org/10.7813/jle.2014/5-1/4http://www.ijar.lit.az/law.php?go=currentjlp
d).Talaat Pasha’s Murder- A Parody in the Courts of Berlin Talaat Pasha’s murder (15.3.1921): a parody in the courts of Berlin belying 'The Miller of Sansoucci Legend of Justice” July 2014; European Journal of Research and Reflection in Arts and Humanities (EJRRAH):June 2014Vol. 2 (1), p. 17-38.ISSN 2056-5887 http://www.idpublications.org/ejrrah-vol-2-no-1-2014/
The following sentence of the Defense Lawyer Niemeyer is sufficient to show the type of Law and Justice which was available in the Weimar Court: “If a German court were to find Soghomon Tehlirian not guilty, this would put an end to the misconception that the world has of us. The world would welcome such a decision as one serving the highest principle of justice.”
Those who would want to read complete court minutes translated into English can refer to: http://www.cilicia.com/armo_tehlirian.html. Please do not forget to read General Bronsart’s article in “DEUTSCHE ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG - #342 July 24th, 1921” (GoT p.657) at this time!
p.64:“And then there was also the opportunity for German anti-Semitism to think through their ideas about Central European Jewry and the stab-in-the-back myth with the Armenians standing in for the Jews in the Turkish case. It is not surprising that Turkey fascinated German public for over four years. The Turkish case was a revisionist-nationalist dream comes true…”
Dr. Ihrig implies that Armenians never stabbed Turks in the back and that because Turks killed Armenians; this inspired Germans to kill the Jews in Europe! This is the product of a gigantic imagination in an excessively deranged mind! In later parts of this review you will be given sufficient visual documents of the continued treasons of Armenian revolutionaries. Some of these are already confessed to and referenced in my essay: http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008/10/2610-genocide-lies-need-no-archives.html
p. 65-66: “In 1920-1923 the humoristic weekly Kladderadatsch devoted at least five covers, thirty-nine caricatures and fifteen poems to Turkey. It even developed its own signature depiction of “the Turk” as an angry crescent-man. Turkey as a topic was closely followed by the Weimar media and attributed the highest political significance for Germany. “Learning from Turkey” the nationalist papers proclaimed, was the only way out of the contemporary German misery. The Turkish War of Independence served the broader German nationalist right to discredit current politics and to “learn” the international treaties, alliances and the League of Nations were not mechanisms through which, by themselves, a bright future Germany could be achieved.”
Since “Nationalist Turks” had no diplomatic or private relationship with Germany, (which also had no involvement in the Turkish War of Independence) it is hard to understand how history can be based on such caricatures, no matter how carefully counted and classified! But since the writer refers to the “League of Nations” for the years 1920-1923, he of course has no knowledge at all of the (General Secretary of the League of Nations, Sir Eric Drummond’s) note verbal of March 1, 1920 which erases all charges of any atrocities done by Turkish Governments. This solidly proves that all the G-fanfare is nothing but hearsay, [“Further, in Turkey, minorities were often oppressed and massacres carried out by irregular bands who were entirely outside the control of the central Turkish Government.”].
(2) Ankara in Munich
p.70: “The following explores how the völkisch, and particularly the Nazi, press in the time leading up to the Hitler Putsch understood the Turkish example and appropriated if for itself…If, as we saw in Chapter 1, the German Press in general had already and continually proposed learning from Turkey and then the Nazi Press went even further… This chapter further develops the argument that the Nazis “grew up” with Turkey.
Everyone is free to think and imagine as he/she wishes, but working out the theme that “the Turkish example” (War of Independence all alone) taught German Press and the Nazis (when there was no Turkish Nationalist Press or any German or other correspondents or means of communication in Ankara) is either a fabrication or a childish palaver. The last remains of Turks fighting for their freedom (without shoes or uniforms) were in no mood to teach anyone anything. It is no surprise that the author is unaware also of the “1919 Captain Emory Niles Report” or the visit in August 1919 of “General Harbord and his report submitted to the US Senate” in which he mentioned his long interview with Mustafa Kemal and having seen evidences confirmed the Armenian atrocities done to Turks.
Read:http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2005/07/67-captain-emory-niles-and-mr-arthur.html and http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2009/04/2813-conditions-in-near-east-report-of.html
p.73: “As its source the article mentioned a “Turkish personality of high standing” who was currently in Germany and had played a very important role in Turkish political life within the past years. Perhaps this was one of the triumvir pashas, Enver or Djemal (Talat had died in March that year) or another prominent Young Turk in Berlin – one can only speculate. The article began by stressing that like in Germany, in Turkey “the opposition” had taken power after the end of the war.”
All of the Pashas of the Turkish triumvirate had high standing in relation to their personalities, their decency and patriotism. This is confirmed by General Sanders in his speech at Talat Pasha’ Murder case and also by General Schellendorf in his article above. Surprisingly Dr. Ihrig writes that “Talat Pasha had died” when he knows that he was assassinated by an Armenian in Berlin! Is this an error or a further distortion?
p.76: “The incredible rise of Ankara Turks seems to validate the individual approach. It was a great man alone, Mustafa Kemal, who woke the dully brooding, exhausted, and totally desperate Turkish nation and who transformed defeat into a shining victory… The article continued with a short biography of the “dictator of Anatolia” and then re-narrated the history of the War of Independence.”
This excerpt about Mustafa Kemal is paradoxical when set next to the remark he made on p.59 of his book. What is Mustafa Kemal, a devoted soldier and hero, or an Armenian women and Greek boy hunter? These contradictions are open insults to the understanding and intelligence of the reader!
P.82: “The political situation of Turkey after signing of the Treaty of Sèvres is well known. It is the same as our Fatherland is in today.”
The Treaty of Sevres was signed by the Ottoman Government and not the Nationalist Ankara Turks. It should be remembered that the Armenian Republic was founded with the protection of the Ottoman Turks. On June 4th, 1918 various treaties such as amnesty, return of people, property, preferential country terms… were signed between the Armenian Republic and the Ottoman Empire! However, a month after the surrender of the Ottoman Empire on 30.10.1918 at Mudros, these treaties were abrogated by Armenia and the zones under the control of the Ankara Turks (Kars and Ardahan) were grabbed by the “newly founded Armenia under Turkish patronage from Turks”.
p.84: “When finally Mustafa Kemal had overcome the restrictions of the Ankara parliament and was granted unlimited powers, “the blow of annihilation flashed down of the clear sky on a totally surprised enemy”.
The footnote reference (55) is dated October 6, 1923. The “unlimited powers” referred to were given for the overall Army command in June 1922, two months before the final attack on the Greek army on August 25, 1922 - sweeping them into the sea in Izmir on September 9th. (The scope of authority is well explained in the confidential letter of at the end of this paper). Many Armenians who were relocated had been allowed to return and repossess their homes after the Oct. 30th 1918 ceasefire. In the west they were protected by the occupying forces and additional laws were added by the Ottomans to comfort Victors! In the east, their repetitive “stabbings in the back”, were brought to an end by the Nationalist Turks. The Dashnakist Armenia suited for peace to the Nationalist Turks on Dec. 2, 1920 (Gumru). Hence, there were no “Armenians to be annihilated” after this date!
The following sentences copy-pasted from my book GTC should be sufficient to shut the many mouths speaking of genocide (which has never been documented, proven or even witnessed by neutrals!).
(GTC p.105-110) US National Archives Ref 184.021/175, Aug.16, 19919 Report of Captain Niles:“At first we were most incredulous of the stories told as, but the unanimity of the testimony of all witnesses, the apparent eagerness with which they told of wrongs done them, their evident hatred of Armenians, and, strongest of all, the material evidence on the ground itself, have convinced us as of the general truth of the facts, first, that Armenians massacred Musulmans on a large scale with many refinements of cruelty, and second that Armenians are responsible for most of the destruction done to towns and villages. The Russians and Armenians occupied the country for a considerable time together in 1915 and 1916, and during this period there was apparently little disorder, although doubtless there was damage committed by the Russians. In 1917 the Russian Army disbanded and left the Armenians alone in control. At this period bands of Armenian irregulars roamed the country pillaging and murdering the Moslem civilian population. When the Turkish army advanced at Erzindjan, Erzerum, and Van, the Armenian army broke down and all of the soldiers, regular and irregular turned themselves to destroying Musulman property and committing atrocities upon Musulman inhabitants. The result is a country completely ruined, containing about one-fourth of its former population and one-eighth of its former buildings, and a most bitter hatred [of] Musulmans for Armenians which makes it impossible for two races to live together at the present time”.
(GTC p.111-120) Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia, Gen. Harbord, October 1919: [P.9: “Where the desperate character of the warfare with its reprisals of burning and destroying as one side and then the other advanced, has not destroyed the buildings, which are generally of abode, the wooden beams have been taken for fuel and the houses are ruined. In the territory untouched by war from which Armenians were deported the ruined villages are undoubtedly due to Turkish deviltry, but where Armenians advanced and retired with the Russians their retaliatory cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity”]
[P.11: “Such are conditions to-day in the regions where the remnant of the Armenian people exist; roads and lands almost back to the wild; starvation only kept off by American relief; villages and towns in ruins; brigandage rampant in the Tran Caucasus; lack of medicines and warm clothing; winter coming on in a treeless land without coal. We saw nothing to prove that Armenians who have returned to their homes in Turkey are in danger of their lives…”]
[P.35: “We entertain no unfriendly dispositions toward the Armenian Republic of which Erivan is the center. For the present the league has no relations with this State and is not interested in it. Our knowledge concerning it is derived from rumors and indirect information. We know, however, so much to be a fact that the Armenians in the new State are carrying on operations in view of exterminating the Mussulman element in obedience to orders from the Armenian corps commander. We have had copies of their orders under our eyes. That the Armenians of Erivan are following a policy of extermination against the Mussulman and this wave of sanguinary savagery has spread right up to our frontier is also established by the fact of the presence within our borders of numerous Mussulman fleeing from death on the other side. The government of Erivan has, on the other hand, resorted to direct acts of provocation such as the practice of gunfire this side of the border. Although the course of these events the English encouraged on the one hand the Armenians in the attitude adopted by them against…”]
Now, let us add a tombstone from the “League of Nations Official Gazette Sept.21, 1929” and ask all G-scholars to refute this concrete document of the highest International Authority:
[GTC p.100:]
p.85-86:“First, the Greek army had waged a “war of annihilation” and second, and this seems to have been more important to Tröbst, “The Armenians and the Greeks multiplied very fast in comparison with the Turks, commerce and development were solely theirs and they understood in the most perfidious way how to exhaust the ever more powerless Turkish population totally at their mercy. Then he again stressed the treason committed by the minorities who had enjoyed the “hospitality” of the Turks and who had exploited the working population, the Turks, without shame.”
It is true that Greeks waged a war of annihilation after they landed on May 15, 1919. The theory of “multiplication” may be true but insignificant for any counter action. It is again true that business and money was in the hands of minorities. But this was because of their higher education and the fact that no preferences were given to the “Turkish millet” among all others. Greeks and Armenians as well as Jews could have high positions in the administration of the state (ministers, ambassadors, treasurers, pashas) in return to their service and loyalty. They had their own schools, independent management of their millet socially, legally, etc. It would be absolutely wrong to define “Greeks and Armenians” as a whole as traitors guilty of stabbing Turks in the back. Outside forces or “national heroes” (Revolutionary hump abets) could move large groups of Armenians by terror or church’s force. But we have many examples of Greek and Armenian persons being loyal to the state where they could hold the most significant offices (treasury, foreign representations, finance, healthcare, post, public works etc.). The Jews in Turkey remained loyal to the state in general and could not be easily influenced or used by foreign Christian powers. Some Christian powers had anti-Semitic attitudes which the Moslems did not!
p.86: “Tröbst also enthusiastically welcomed the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey decided upon in Lausanne, which he however depicted as a one-sided expulsion of Greeks by Turks”!
The exchange of population was requested by the Greek PM Venizelos (because of their huge losses) after their adventure in Turkey. The exchange operation was coordinated by the League of Nations and was based on “Religion”. Because of this, many “Christian Turks” (mostly from the middle Anatolia) were expelled unjustly by force and were not welcomed in Greece for being Turks.
p.91: “Hitler decided that the time was right for his coup d’état, it would be easy to infer that the calls for a “German Kemal Pasha” and an Ankara government in Munich also influenced him. What has been established here as an additional prehistory of the Hitler Putsch does not change the actual events of November 8-9, 1923 in Munich”.
“It is always assumed that Hitler had a March on Berlin in mind when he started his national revolution in Munich in late 1923, but the example of Ataturk and Ankara had captivated the imagination of the Nazis for a much longer time and had been deemed better suited to the German case than that of Mussolini, at least by the Heimatland”.
Excuse my outspokenness; every time I read such nicely arranged words with apparent weight, rather than calling these “empty words”, I prefer to call them “ballast” words or talk, because the words appear to carry weight but in fact are inconsistent; they have no real value and they mean nothing in relation to the end result. At the time of the Hitler Putsch (November 8-9, 1923) Mustafa Kemal had just declared the Republic in the new capital of Turkey (October 29, 1923). The tiny town of Ankara didn’t even have electricity; they had a large task and the debts of the Ottoman Empire to be paid. The first session of the new parliament could be realized with the little money that was donated by Ankara shop owners. The same Putsch is explained by Shirer in his book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” from page 104 and it is notable that Shirer did not write a word about Ankara or the Turks, so no flights of imagination or the rest of the ballast verbiage please.
p.101: “However, a closer look at the Hitler Putsch shows that a great number of “German Ottomans” were involved on all sides. There was the Munich resident Liman von Sanders, who published many articles, but did not know anything of his involvement in völkisch or nationalist circles in Munich during these turbulent times. Similarly unclear remains the involvement of Friedrich Kress von Kressentein, formerly Ataturk’s commanding officer at the Palestine Front and at the time of Hitler Putsch a commanding officer in the Munich garrisons.”
Turn to p.64 of Ihrig’s book and the research on Talat Pasha Murder in which General Schellendorf (although notified), was not invited to witness. Liman von Sanders was invited as an ‘expert witness, next to Pastor Lepsius’. Liman von Sanders did not speak against Turkish Pashas but “he did not tell the whole truth; he did not inform the court that under a special agreement he was the overall commander of the Ottoman Army and he knew everything”. It was him to demand Enver Pasha to bring the “soldiers kept busy by Armenian sabotages” to the Dardanelles; and he didn’t care how!
Regarding Colonel (later General) Kress von Kressentein, we know he was the General staff of the 4th Army Commander Djemal Pasha in Palestine. It was he who opened the water wells in the Sinai desert enabling an Army of 12,000 men to cross the Sinai desert both ways on foot. Djemal Pasha fled to Germany on Nov.1st night, immediately after the Mudros Ceasefire of 30.10.1918! Mustafa Kemal was posted as commander of the 7th Army in Aleppo on August 15, 1918. His 7th Army was dissolved after the Ceasefire and on November 13, 1918 he returned to Istanbul. The German staff in the Ottoman Army had all returned to Germany after the ceasefire. It looks like Mr. Ihrig or his mentors did a sloppy work again. Von Kressentein was never Ataturk’s commanding officer!
p.103: “Another German Ottoman Jochacim von Ribbentrop, was involved in the making of yet another chancellor, Hitler. Ribbentrop had served with the others in Constantinople and had since then been one of von Papen friends. He served as go-between, and his house was a meeting place for Hitler and von Papen during the process that culminated in Hitler’s Machtergriefung in 1933. Other important German Ottomans were the future foreign minister Konstantin von Neurah and General Bronsart von Schellendorf. The latter was the president of the völkische Tannenbergbund, founded in 1925. Otto von Feldman, formerly an officer in the German High Command and actively involved in the Armenian Genocide, was to become leading politician in the DNVP and the Alldeutscher Verband and, perhaps more importantly, political advisor of Hindenburg during his election campaign as well as later his personal chief of staff.”
We do not have marked references about Ribbentrop’s service in the Ottoman Army! Even von Papen is scarcely mentioned. But the name of Bronsart von Schelledorf is the best witness of Ottoman Empire’s WW-1 history since he was the General Staff and a deputy of Enver Pasha. His signature under an Ottoman Declaration can be seen in the video http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2012/07/3363-video-brief-hopscotch-scroll-in.html, part 2/3, (time 12.10). Because of his post, Schellendorf followed Enver like his shadow and was aware of everything passing through the Ministry of War. He was next to Enver during the Sarikamish campaign disaster, in the front lines in the snow! (They barely escaped falling prisoners to the Russians). Therefore his article in Deutsche Allgemein Zeitung, referred to on p.64, is a very important document (GoT p.657) which answers many things.
Regarding the ‘Armenian genocide myth’, other than the documents shown by reference on pages 64 and 84 of Ihrig’s book, I could have filled at least ten more pages with excerpts from ‘neutral’ or ‘Armenian books and documents’, evidencing the atrocities done by the Armenians. Personally, I think that the Turks had to have “some” blood on their hands as well, but these were mostly in retaliation and not written in formal correspondence. As yet I have not seen any concrete document (except for the well-circulated myths) that condemns Turks for planned murders.
The year 1933 is important in the G-history. In October 1933, there was a conference organized by the League of Nations in Madrid. This is the time and place where Raphael Lemkin, a young Polish Jewish lawyer, advocated the necessity to punish crimes of barbarity carried out by states. This was before he coined the “genocide” word. Lemkin, of course, was not aware of the General Secretary’s note of March 1, 1920 relieving the Turkish governments of any intended crimes, nor did he ever pronounce the word Turk or Armenian in his two speeches available on the internet. The Soviet Union and the Third Reich Germany walked out of the conference in protest at Lemkin’s words. Whilst Ihrig’s book is mainly about “genocide”, I could not see the name “Lemkin” in the index or any comments about the 1933 Madrid Conference which was his breakthrough!
p.104:“Scheubner-Richter had served as German vice-consul in Eastern Anatolia and had witnessed the Armenian genocide there. It is often assumed that Hitler knew from him, his political advisor, about Armenian Genocide and much about Turkey.”
As a reader I would have liked to see the document which proves Richter’s witnessing the non-existent genocide, in defiance of German Ambassador Wangenheim, Generals Liman von Sanders and Schellendorf! As regards the “assumption” that Hitler knew about it from him…let us understand history by reference to irrefutable documents and not by making assumptions etc. I have the following contrary evidence.
a). On p.125 of my book GTC you can see a letter dated February 8, 1916 from Aleppo US Consul J.B. Jackson addressed to US Ambassador Morgenthau in Istanbul (who left Istanbul on February 2ndbefore the letter reached him) giving a list of the locations and the number of refugees in the ten major camps, showing a total of 486,000 Armenians. There is no word of massacres etc. Why?
b).Let us remember that there is no ‘Armenian’ or ‘Turk’ word in the masterpiece written by William Shirer! Dr. Ihrig makes “assumptions” instead of using “concrete documentation”!
c).The very sad and scholarly inexcusable fact is that both Dr. Ihrig and The van Der Leer Institute (or Harvard University Press) is completely unaware of the full history of Germany during WW-2 and the 22,000 men ‘Armenian Legion’ in the Nazi Army with their special ensigns. The following extract from my book GTT (page 253) is on the internet and awaits counter comments if anyone can provide them! The advisor to Hitler was General (Butcher) “Dro” Drastamat Kanajan, who had ethnically cleansed Muslims after the 1918 Batum Treaties and took refuge in Romania during the 1920s, after Armenia surrendered on Dec 2nd, 1920 at Alexandropole! Dro spoke excellent Russian and was trained by the Russians and knew all of their military tactics. Who could be a better advisor to the German military? On pages 228,229, 230 of GTC you are given more pictures and information about the Armenian Legion, their 4,800 men in SS units, excerpted from the book “Secrets of a Christian Terrorist State, Armenia” by a US Judge Samuel A. Weems, (ISBN 0-9719212-3-7). The book is available on the internet (for full details see: http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/06/1747-free-e-book-secrets-of-christian.html). For a more condensed text see chapter 13 (pgs. 131-233 of GTC).Both as a researcher and a human being, frankly, I find it horrifying for any scholar - be they Jewish-Armenian-German or anyone - to speak of Genocide, but to be unaware of the German Hayastan or Daily/Weekly Hairenik papers and to be unaware of their anti-Semitic support of the Nazis is astounding!(GTC p.227)
Page 253 of GTC
p.104: “Conclusion: there was clearly a Turkish, Kemalist dimension to the events of November 1923 in Munich. Turkey helped create an atmosphere that was conductive for the Nazis to think that a Putsch might be successful. If we are to believe what Hitler said in a speech (?) in 1936, that between 1919 and 1923 all he ever thought was a putsch then he must have given (?) a lot of thought to Turkey, because there a successful example had played out, and was being played out in the media of the Weimar Republic time and again.”
Frankly I fail to understand how a serious scholar can come to such conclusions, other than in his own imagination, without providing supporting documents. In none of my books have I ever used expressions such as ‘believe’ or ‘must have given’, because my responsibility and my respect to the reader is such that I am obliged to “write and defend the truth” (as far as I could find it) and there is no alternative to use such vague words in the place of “historical facts”. I have checked Shirer’s colossal “Book 3, Road to War, 1934 – 1937”, pages 385-423 and I did not see anything related to Turks or Kemalists!
p.105: “Indeed we must assume that Hitler had already been thinking intensively about the Führer figure Mustafa Kemal Ataturk for two or three years before the German papers started reporting more extensively on the Italian Fascists and Mussolini in the wake of the March on Rome in 1922.
Thus, Mustafa Kemal Pasha must have been a key influence to the evolution of Hitler’s ideas about the modern Fuhrer and about himself as a political leader. This also partially explain the Ataturk cult in the Third Reich, which will be discussed in Chapter 3 … But Turkey was also part of the internal Fascist atmosphere when the March on Rome took place.”
Again, repeating vague words such as “must have been – Ataturk cult” shows that the writer’s knowledge of Turkish history is extremely shallow and distorted. An ambitious book on a giant character like “Ataturk” should not be written with the sort of talent that is used in mystery novels. Let us see some facts:
a). The “Turkish Surname Law” entered in effect in Turkey in June 1934. Until that date he was Mustafa Kemal only. The “surname ATATURK” was suggested by his devoted right hand aid on Turkish language matters, an Armenian scholar, Mr. Hagop Martanyan. (Hagop was a graduate of Robert College and a reserve officer who was decorated for his service in the East. He was brought to Mustafa Kemal by chance under supervision. He had spoken in English to Indian soldiers of the British army who were prisoners and this was forbidden). They also found in his pocket a letter in the Turkish language but written in Latin alphabet. Ataturk gave Hagop the surname DILACAR (person who opens up language) in 1934.
b). Mustafa Kemal was in no mood to think or know about Mussolini and Hitler (unless he heard of them by chance) and accordingly he had no “cult” and no time to know what they were up to in Germany and Italy. As regards Mussolini’s March on Rome is in late 1922; Mustafa Kemal was fully occupied with preparations for the last great battle to sweep out Greeks from Turkey from June 1922. The attack started on August 26th and the strong defensive lines collapsed in one day, Greek Army Commander Trikopis fell prisoner; Izmir was taken on September 9th but three days later the city was set on fire by Armenian and Greek provocateurs! To speak of a “fascist atmosphere” and the rest are more of these “ballast theories” trying to show that “Mustafa Kemal was inspired by Fascism” and later became an “idol for Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s Fascism”… And with this kind of bizarre imagination Mustafa Kemal is the “Dr. Jekyll” in history who spoiled Hitler - and because “Ataturk massacred the Armenians” (???) He taught and inspired Hitler “to annihilate the Jews” (?).What a fantastic combination of disturbed prejudice and distorted mentality? The author who proposes all of these fantasies is a Jew, mainly educated in Germany, but “he never heard of the 22,000 men special Armenian Legion” during WW-2 in Germany (with 4,800 special SS troops), who were partly instrumental in rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps (whilst some Turkish diplomats were risking their lives to save the Jews in France who had come from Turkey.)
[Clarification: Hitler had formed in 1921 the “SA” Nazi (Storm Troops). They had brown shirts and handled the troubles or discipline on streets. The “SS” (Political Soldier) organization was set in 1925 by the Nazis. Later the SS Party troops were incorporated in the German Army; the officers had black uniforms and were untouchable in the Army. Their head was Heinrich Himmler. Their number during war increased to 50.000 and 5.000 of this number were from the Armenian Legion”.] [In Romania in 1927 a similar fascist-anti-Semitic youth organization “Garda de Fer” (Iron Guard) was organized. In 1933 the dictator Marshall Antonescu entered under Hitler’s service and in 1941 and he provided an army of One Million Romanian soldiers to fight alongside German in the Russian front. Armenian General Kanajan was living in Romania, and chances are that Antonescu knew him as well, and made the proposition to Hitler for the “Armenian Legion”.]
If Dr. Ihrig had scanned the internet (instead of German newspaper clips) he could have obtained http://www.foreignpolicy.org.tr/documents/stashan_091101.htm direct knowledge on “Ataturk’s Foreign Policies.”
The following conversation recently found in General McArthur’s diaries, when he had visited Ataturk on September 27, 1932, is some lecture on the future of Europe, Ataturk had foreseen WW-2 and thereafter. Any “average intelligent person” that reads below notes which General McArthur had taken, should look into mirrors and scream his own stupidity for “weighing Ataturk as a dictator and twinning of Hitler”!…
< In this respect, mention must be made of the words Ataturk spent during his talk with General Douglas D. MacArthur in 1931: «If the European statesmen fail to take up their political problems within a spirit of mutual comprehension devoid of all egotism and chauvinistic feelings, I am afraid the debacle will be unavoidable. We should remember that the European problem is no longer a problem between France, Germany and United Kingdom. There is an altogether new force menacing the humanity. This force, mobilizing all its material and moral strength for a world revolution utilizes methods and means unknown to Europeans and Americans, and manage exploiting to the fullest even the least errors committed by its opponents. The victor of a war in Europe shall be neither England, France nor Germany. The victor will be the Soviet Union. As a country which has fought untold numbers of times with Russia, we follow the events there very closely and see the danger with all its implications. The Bolsheviks, exploiting to best advantage the feelings of the awakening Eastern world, pleasing their egos and inciting hostility, have become a force threatening Europe as well as Asia.>
p.106:“It is not necessary to argue against the influence of the March on Rome here, but there is much to be said for the argument that, for the Nazis and völkisch circles, both Mussolini and Mustafa Kemal were rather a package deal.”
Mustafa Kemal’s personal library contained more than 3,000 books (many in French) which were all read and highlighted. “A brilliant army officer Mustafa Kemal” educated himself after the Republic was founded and reforms were put in place! Mustafa Kemal was inspired by “no person”, other than “science, European standards of civilization and KNOWLEDGE” and what he learned from a broad range of serious books. The reader of these lines should compare factual data versus fantasy and at least realize that Ataturk’s dimensions cannot be grasped in a few years by just glancing some newspaper clips that knew nothing other than their own small world. “A Package Deal”; hilarious!
Until the Lausanne Treaty was concluded in July 1923, the “occupied” Istanbul-Ottoman government was active and had foreign correspondents. But the governing Nationalist Parliament was already “an enemy of the Istanbul Ottoman Government”. The Nationalist Resistance area (most of Anatolia) was not open to “any correspondents”. If there were any Germans who spoke to Ataturk, the author should have indicated the name and date from his book “NUTUK” (the Speech).
p.107: “Nazis grew up with Turkey and had been growing up with Turkey for some time before Mussolini came along. It is also interesting to note in this context that up until the Landsberg imprisonment, the only documented instances of Hitler mentioning Mussolini in public speeches as a role model were the two speeches in which he also mentioned Ataturk in the same breath: In late 1922 and at the Hitler Trial”.
The author repeats the same naïve argument. (His source [115] says):“This is only if we trust Pese’s analysis of Hitler’s speeches”. Really what Hitler thought or spoke in public speeches about Mustafa Kemal, has no documentary importance. I could see nothing in Schiller’s book about “the November 1922 speech of Hitler”, but I did read the November 8, 1923 “The Beer Hall Putsch” speech.
(3) Hitler’s “Star in the Darkness”
p.108: "Although Turkish historiography portrays him as anti-Nazi, and with good reasons, Ataturk seems to have liked Röhm. A surviving document (?) suggests that Ataturk believed Hitler had not needed to dispose of Röhm in 1934 - although he himself had many of his former comrades executed. Ataturk thought Röhm would have been beneficial as well as completely loyal to Hitler. Whatever Röhm and Ataturk, or for that matter Röhm and Mussolini, talked about, Röhm's trip is in a way very indicative of how Nazis felt about Turkey." (Note: Röhm was the head of the SA - brown shirt Storm Troops)
Dr. Ihrig is still confused; he does not give the date; place or reason Ataturk spoke with Ernst Röhm. We have checked the “chronologically arranged diaries” of Mustafa Kemal for the years 1933-1934-1935 and did not see this name.
p.109: “It appears that Hitler and others did not change their minds about Turkey in these years. When in 1929, following another of his inflammatory speeches, proceedings for treason were once again initiated against Hitler; he jotted down another speech in his defense. Although the proceedings were terminated in 1931 without ever going to trial, the speech survives. Here again Hitler draws parallels between himself and Ataturk and between his movement and the Kemalists.”
I feel tired of such illogical remarks without any consistency and these childish efforts to make Ataturk guilty, on the basis Hitler mentioned his name in speeches when we are given neither date nor place to check for corroboration! How come no one informed Hitler on McArthur’s 1932 visit?
p.110: “Given this, as well as past and future references to Ataturk, it is not entirely easy to explain Hitler’s omission of Ataturk in (1925). But perhaps this stems from the specific connotation Ataturk and Kemalism had assumed at the time in Germany, which heavily conflicted with Hitler’s new ”legality” course.”
Dr. Ihrig again makes an excellent analogy starting with “perhaps” and refutes the plain fact that Mustafa Kemal was not at all important or known at all when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, but he is sure of “specific connotation” as justification. (?)
p.111: “The specific topic Turkey re-surfaced on other occasions, between 1924-1933; addressing an NSDAP gathering in Nuremberg in December 1928, Hitler discussed the German defeat in and after WW-1. Again he compared Turkey to Germany.”…
“He then attributed German’s different path to moral collapse. Hitler went on to discuss various aspects of German political development, including demographics, and then warned that the Germans could possibly descend to the level of Armenians (that is dispersion and eventual extinction). Hitler was, in a way, mixing Turkish metaphors here! “
I could not find any reference to this gathering in Nuremberg in 1928 in Shirer’s book. But even if such a comparison is true, it still doesn’t prove anything!
We have no “solid documentation” that Hitler ever knew or heard of Armenians until the Armenian Legion under General Dro Kanajan joined the Nazi Army in 1941. This will be confirmed by reference to the cross checked sources below. For a prelude you may view the following:
p.124:“Kemalettin Sami Pasha’s coffin was to be taken by train to Turkey by train, and the transport to the train station was used by Third Reich to once again celebrate New Turkey. Apparently Hitler himself ordered the “incredibly festive procession”, as one Turkish witness described it later…”
Most likely Germans remembered that when their Ambassador in Istanbul, Baron Wangenheim, died of a heart attack on October 25, 1915, he was buried in the garden of the Embassy’s summer house in Tarabya with great ceremony. Later when Field Marshal Baron von der Goltz died of typhus in Baghdad on April 19, 1916, his body was taken to Istanbul by train and he too was buried in the same garden. He was the 5th Army commander and Triumphed at the Battle of Kut, but he didn’t see the surrender of the British General Townsend on April 29th, 1916. Goltz’s body, on his request, was adorned with both German and Turkish flags. Certainly both funerals were executed with the participation of the highest ranking Turks. We should also remember that the United States sent the body of the Turkish Ambassador Munir Ertegun to Istanbul with their greatest battleship, the Missouri, on April 5th, 1946. (I had visited the battleship and remember that Istanbul went crazy with joy for the next four days, until the ship left. The ship was sent for political reasons, to show Russia ‘who had asked for two provinces’ that the USA is behind Turkey.)
p.126: “Given the evidence we have explored thus far, we might expect far more expressions of the Nazi admiration for the New Turkey. Yet there is one area we would expect things to be more problematical; that of race. The Nazi concept of race was difficult to grasp, even for the Nazis themselves. Not everybody who looked “Jewish” to the “righteous” and motivated SS man was indeed a Jew, to be ridiculed.”
There was never any discrimination by race and even by religion in the provinces governed by Turks. Readers may refer to GTC p.296-297 for the contents of Sultan Mehmet’s Edict when he conquered Istanbul and the Armenian Students at the Harbiye Military College in 1913. Those obsessed with anti-Semitism, may view p.10 of GoT, footnotes 1 & 2.
p.129: “This [Aryan] applied mainly to the nation and state as well as in extension, to Turks from Turkey, on the other hand, were Jews all the same for the Third Reich, as the document stressed. A Press Directive by the Propaganda Ministry two months after the circular, in June 1936, reminded the German Press that the Hungarians, the Finns, and the Turks were considered ‘racially related’.”
At this stage I expected the author to explain how Armenians were accepted as “Aryan” and saved them from persecution like Jews and enabled them to become an active branch in the Nazi Army! I think it would be too much to expect Dr. Ihrig and the “van Der Leer Institute” to have studied Jewish history and to know what Turks did to save the French Jews from Nazi persecution. Let me copy paste the start of the essay by Prof. Stanford Shaw of University of California L.A. http://www.sefarad.org/lm/043/6.html
“While six million Jews were being exterminated by the Nazis, the rescue of some 15,000 Turkish Jews from France and even of some 100,000 Jews from Eastern Europe might well be considered as relatively insignificant in comparison. It was, however, very significant to the people who were rescued, and above all it showed that, as had been the case for more than five centuries, Turks and Jews continued to help each other in times of great crises.”
I feel sorry that Jewish scholars are not aware of many such “nice things”, as shown on pages 254-5-6 of my book GTC. If I were Jewish or German, I would feel like a dupe if I didn’t know such concrete facts and instead defend Armenians who were in reality serving the Nazis during the Holocaust, or for a heresy never proven to be true! What more Dr.Ihrig and van Der Leer Institute are also unaware of: <salom.we jews understand what being a refugee means-link >
[“We Jews Understand What Being a Refugee Means" - Ronald S. Lauder, World Jewish Congress President praises Turkey: "In the past, the Ottoman Empire let in Jews expelled from Spain. During the Nazi era, many Jews also found refuge in Turkey. This country is thus continuing a great humane tradition and deserves not just praise for that, but also support."
p.129: “Another piece of evidence for the Nazis’ and especially Hitler’s admiration for Ataturk and the new Turkey comes from a sphere that also firmly connected the ‘New Turkey’ and the ‘New Germany’ - sculptures. … But “Ataturk to be admitted greatly, and a bust of him by the famous sculptor Professor Thorak, was one of his cherished possessions”. Hitler not only possessed a bust of Ataturk, but “cherished” it and in this fashion continued to identify with Ataturk at least privately”.
On pages 131-132-133 the author gives pictures of other “Ataturk works” by Thorak. I think this subject was unnecessary in view of the fact that there were many other more important things Hitler should have known about the formation of “the New Turkey”; to name but a few:
a) German Architect Dr. Carl Christopher Löhner; made the master city plan of Ankara 1924-1939.
b) In 1932 a new plan by German Professor Jansen was approved. This plan foresaw an Ankara of 300.000 populations in 1950 but it turned out to be 400.000. Today Ankara has 5.150.000 people.
c) Dr. Ihrig made no reference to some 60 Jewish-German scholars who took refuge in Turkey starting 1933s and they were the pioneers of all branches of science, faculties of medicine, law and everything you can think of! Even Albert Einstein had applied but he got a better title and job at the Princeton University. Wasn’t Hitler aware of this great welcome of Ataturk for Jewish Professors? For a list of the names see:
p.138:“On November 11, 1938 Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Kemal Ataturk has died. A great man passed”. These very words were echoed four months later in April 1939, when Goebbels was passing by Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, he was to recollect “Here Ataturk died. He was a great man”.
p.141:“Hitler’s telegram spoke of “his and German people’s painful sympathy” regarding Ataturk’s passing and called Ataturk “a great soldier, a genius of a statesman, and a historical personality”.
I think that the photos and note provided above (p.111) on Goebbels are much more important! Dr. Ihrig’s continuous references to Hitler to portray Mustafa Kemal as an iconic leader, does not mean much; Mustafa Kemal was already famous worldwide, as an exceptional leader from 1923 on. link for time cover
(4) The “Turkish Fuhrer”
p.147: “In December 1938 the Hamburger Tageblatt published an essay entitled “Führer and Nation”. The author developed ideas about the perfect Führer and the way he should govern and about the nation.” … “Strangely enough, the author was now way off track about himself, or rather about how Nazis viewed and portrayed him, for the author was none other than the very recently deceased Mustafa Kemal himself.”
Here is another commentary using “ballast” that makes no sense and proves nothing other than that some propagandist Germans frequently used the name of Ataturk for their local purposes. Of course the footnote on this statement, being the newspaper only, is far from convincing.
p. 149: “This early struggle over meaning, the resulting clear opposing lines, as well as the fact that the German nationalist press had begun to canonize Ataturk and his accomplishments as early as 1919, all resulted in a remarkably uniform discourse about Ataturk’s biography.”
The author’s inconsistent remarks draw pictures in his own imagination alone; these statements are not confirmed elsewhere. In 1919 Hitler had just been released after the Ceasefire and was employed as an “informant” of the German Army; he attended the Beer Hall Meeting of the German Labor Party on Sept. 12th, 1919; he developed anti-Semitism; his first written comment on the Jewish Question was on Sept. 16, 1919. Whereas Mustafa Kemal and his entourage landed in Samsun on May 19, 1919; he had his first public meeting in Amasya on June 22, 1919 and resigned from the Ottoman Army. In July he had reached Erzurum and held the first meeting of the Nationalist Union from July 23rd to August 8th and proceeded to the Sivas Congress (Sept. 4 - 11th). At Sivas he had a three hour talk with General Harbord, who was sent by the US Senate for a one month special Mission to Armenia. Ataturk (!) arrived in Ankara in late December 1919, and the “Nationalist Parliamentary Government” was declared on April 23, 1920. All these facts make the above statement on Ataturk, “ballast”!
p.152: “Not only were the Ataturk biographies and country studies in line with what had been written in the nationalist press about Ataturk and the New Turkey, many newspapers also used book reviews on these biographies to tell the story of Ataturk at length, invited the authors of Ataturk biographies to write obituaries for Ataturk, or used lengthy quotes from these books to introduce essays on Turkey.
“However there was one reader of a Third Reich Ataturk biography who did leave us some of his impressions. This reader noted in his diary in June 1937: “In the afternoon work…Studied mainly documents. Continued to read about Kemal Pasha’s adventurous life”! And one week later: A nice flight. While travelling I finished reading the book on Ataturk. A proud hero’s life! Totally admirable! I am happy.”
Repetitions of essays and biographies to impress or endorse Third Reich policies is not serious enough proof that Hitler or Mussolini were impressed by Ataturk. He came from a barren country without a young generation (they had all died during the wars of the previous eleven), no money and no knowhow of anything. If these biographies or essays were to be “not local propaganda and flattery” they should have also mentioned the employment of so many Germans (!) who preferred Turkey as their new home country. They could also have mentioned Ataturk’s pacts of peace with all neighboring countries. Finally the writer should have reached a conclusion as to whether “Ataturk is an admirable character with so many successes” or “he is another version of Casanova, interested in Armenian women and Greek boys and, shamefully, the owner of (3) Arabian horses!” Such sharp or twisted contradictions in one book that purports to be an “iconic role model”, really beats all logic! As regards Goebbels’s “valuable written witnessing for Ataturk”, the reader will certainly be more interested to learn about “his breaching Armenian future soldiers” who had come from Adana to Germany for training. According to the “Armenian genocide ballads” repeated in the book, they should have been all annihilated during the 1915s during relocation. Also, why is an important Russian military tactician (General Butcher Kanajan) who swept Moslems from East Anatolia not even mentioned! Some sources I have read say that “there were a few Jewish villages in the area and about 3,000 Jews that lived in those mountains were also cleansed” next to Kurds and Turks!
p.153: “All the Third Reich texts tended to call Ataturk “the Turkish Führer”, “the Great Führer”, or most of the time just “the Führer” as had been done so often already in the early 1920s.”
I am not a specialist on German or Nazi History. But in 1920s, Hitler was “an informant” and Mustafa Kemal was opening of the Nationalist Parliament in April, trying to organize a Nationalist Army to stop the Greek advances in the west that had already passed Bursa. In the East, Armenians had taken Kars and Ardahan and were ethnically cleansing Moslems. In the southeast of Anatolia, from May 1920, the French Army had begun occupying the mandated areas set out in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Nationalists had to put up with the French (Armenian Legion) atrocities. The term “Führer” was given to all party leaders. In Turkey there was chaos; for example a group of Nationalists were condemned to death (in absentia) in Istanbul under the Victors’ rule by the Ottoman Government. If the Germans named Mustafa Kemal ‘Führer’ even before he became head of the Nationalist Parliament, which is their mistake. On the German side, Hitler became Fuhrer or leader of the Nazi party on July 29, 1921. I fail to understand the use of the word “tended” in historiography.
p.154: “The fact that Ataturk was a boy with blue eyes and blond hair made just all too good sense for all authors. He must be Aryan really, they claimed – and so did Hitler, apparently. These alleged Aryan root, in the typical circular argument of the time, were reflected in his actions and in turn made them possible in the first place. But also besides the purely “Aryan” features, his overall physical appearance underlined his Führer status. “His soldier’s face, like it was cast in bronze…Schopen concluded: “He is nothing less than the incarnation of all warrior-like nations. The Turk is, in his moral qualities, one of the best soldiers of the world. For him the victorious military Führer stands above everything else. And Mustafa Kemal, mathematician and carriers of soldier blood from his father’s line, was a genius of the strategic idea”.
Turks were never obsessed with racism; hence flattering words about his being blond when he was a boy or having “Aryan” features are senseless arguments of no importance in this study. I included this passage because it came to my mind that “Armenians” were declared “Aryan” (which saved them from racial persecution), but not having seen a “blonde Armenian” in my life or a photo of one, I find this “racial” compliment insincere. The next excerpt is a paradoxical insult on Ataturk.
p.158: “Ataturk was often described as leading very frugal life: As a real and true son of his nation, Kemal never led a luxurious and simple life.”(* Reference 69 - Rossler’s book is given). Not surprisingly, the “other Ataturk”, the heavy drinker and womanizer, was not present in these texts.(* no source reference is given for this heavy insult added by the author] Friedrich Hussong, in 1922 essay, was the last of the Führer-oriented German writers on Ataturk to attempt to directly address and refute such claims about Ataturk’s private life.“
Personal Repudiation: See the previous insult quoted from Ihrig’s book p.59, inserted by him without any source reference! Now, despite all the nice words and references about Ataturk, Dr. Ihrig finds himself “knowledgeable and authorized” to infer a historical character’s personal life with offensive words such as “womanizer” and “heavy drinker”. Mr. Ihrigs insults against Ataturk, implying that “he went to bed with some unknown woman at unknown times”, seems to save him from accused of “being gay”, though it is not clear why the insinuation is also made about his having a “Greek boy-(not man)”, which is mentioned nowhere in Ataturk’s personal daily history incidentally. Mr. Ihrig, specifically mentioned “Armenian woman”; if he were a real scholar interested in writing the truth, he should have given the names of the lucky or raped Armenian women who shared a bed with Ataturk, and what style of womanly talent they had or generally have! Personally, I think that these words are a base insult to Armenian women as well. I have met many Armenian women who are successfully married; they were all good housewives, mothers, sincere friends or neighbors. Given these unsupported slanders, should we be inquiring into the writer’s sexual life or choices to see what prejudices drive these allegations? Ataturk was a “dinner drinker but no one ever saw him drunk”! His method of discussing reforms etc. was to invite “competent persons” to dinner at his home and to talk and debate the issues during long dinners.
p.162: “In this fashion Ataturk’s biography, or rather the German and especially the Nazi interpretation of it played a role in the preparation for the ultimate German war. …”
“But Ataturk’s story also provided another example that would be much needed later in Hitler’s war. Many of the texts pointed out that Ataturk had been opposed to Enver Pasha’s decision to align the Ottoman Empire with Germany in the First World War, yet he had fought for the nation, even if he did not agree with the choice of its leaders…”
“(Ataturk)… in a way he was the tactician among modern leaders, “a master of diplomacy”! One obituary summed him up as a “Turk, mathematical, soldier”. In this light the tactical alliances Ataturk entered into Islam and Bolshevism were of special interest for many German authors.”
The Nazi’s use of Ataturk’s achievements for their propaganda purposes is unavoidable and to be expected. As regards to his thoughts on Enver Pasha’s (?) decision to align with Germany, this does not fit historical chronology.
a) Jan.3, 1914: Enver Pasha is appointed “Minister of War” of the “CUP” government.
b) March 1, 1914: Mustafa Kemal’s rank is raised from “major” to “lieutenant colonel”
c) August 1, 1914: WW-1 Started on Aug.2, 1914: Secret Alliance Pact signed by the Ottoman PM Sait Halim and German Ambassador Wangenheim; (General Liman von Sanders was given authority to be Chief Commander of all Ottoman Armies!)
d) Nov.3, 1914: Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire (Armenian volunteers join Russian army).
e) Jan.20, 1915: Kemal (Military Attaché in Sofia) appointed “Division” Commander at the Dardanelles.
Conclusion: Mustafa Kemal by place, time and rank was in no position to comment on Governments’ decisions. Comments in the third paragraph are true for the War of Independence and later events!
p.163: “It was only with the successful conclusion of the war and the establishment of the Turkish Republic that Ataturk ended his alliance with religion and not only abolished both sultanate and caliphate but also thoroughly secularized the New Turkey…the Kemalist alliance with the Soviet Union was only tactical and had no ideological implications whatsoever.”
Very true!
p.166: “It is no surprise that the Nazis made full use of Ataturk’s story… Having been accepted by the Nazis as the pioneer as well as offering a doubly successfully completed Fuhrer story, the Nazis used Ataturk’s story to explore a whole range of topics to the theme “Fuhrer and nation”, the Fuhrer idea itself, total mobilization and ultimate war, minorities, opposition, religion, and so on. “
p.168:“Nazi admiration for Ataturk was not just part of the propaganda machine but was for the various authors the preferred Fuhrer story of modern contemporary times.”
No comment. It appears that only the author differs from the most other writers by suggesting that Ataturk was an alcoholic, a womanizer, etc… which no other history writers have ever hinted at!
p.170: “But more importantly even, there were also some major lessons entirely lost on the Nazi commentators. One of these lost lessons was the point about world peace Ataturk had tried to convey in his essay “Fuhrer and Nation”. Although many hagiographic Nazi texts attempted to show that Ataturk’s dictum “Peace at home, peace abroad” also applied to Hitler and Mussolini, they clearly did not understand the idea behind it”.
No comment!
p.170: “Enver Pasha had dreamt of a Pan-Turkish, Turanian Empire during WW-1 and jeopardized the existence of the Ottoman Empire for it; his excursion into Caucasus, often compared in these texts with Napoleon’s Russian adventure, and the ensuring catastrophe of Sarikamis had effectively destroyed a large part of the Ottoman fighting force; at least 10,000 Ottoman soldiers died of cold before seeing the battle.”
The “Sarikamish attack” project was not approved by Liman von Sanders, but General Bronsart von Schellendorf (General Staff) and Berlin did not object to this very risky operation (to take the whole Russian army prisoner when they were on Christmas vacation) given the time of the year, the high mountains with no roads and very cold winters, it indeed became a catastrophe with many more casualties and the destruction of an army of some 60,000. On this matter I copy paste two paragraphs from my essay [http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008/10/2610-genocide-lies-need-no-archives.html] where the Armenian “hero Armen Garo” (later US ambassador Pastermadjian) states:
p.19: “The Armenian reservists, about 160,000 in the number, gladly responded to the call, for the simple reason that they were to fight the arch enemy of their historic race! Besides regular soldiers, nearly 20,000 volunteers expressed their readiness to take up arms against the Turks”.
p.21 “Opposite Sarikamish, where a battle was waged for three days and nights, the Turks suffered a loss of 3,000 men, mostly due to the cold weather rather than to the Russian arms... This was an invaluable service rendered to the Russian army by the fourth battalion of Armenian volunteers under the command of matchless Keri. Six hundred Armenian veterans fell in the Barduz Pass, and at such a high price saved 60,000 Russians from being taken prisoners by the Turks.”
For a very detailed study on Pastermadjian’s books and heroism see the new book of Dr. Pat Walsh http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2015/08/3571-book-review-armenian-insurrection.html
How is it possible for a “decent scholar” to personally opine on the (sexual) life of one of the most important men of the 20th Century, but be unaware of the Armenian Revolutionaries and their service to the Russians at Sarikamish, which has been written about in so many books (which the writer omits)?
(5) The New Turkey
p.173: “But we must remember that Turkey in the 1930s was, by all standards, still a backward country – It was developing rapidly, but it was not comparable to Western industrialized countries. Nazi perceptions about the New Turkey were, thus, far from “objective” and were not about the status quo. Turkey to them, was the most modern country due to its ideology, political tools, and goals!”
True!
p.175: “By the beginning of the Third Reich the “minority question”, had been mainly resolved. Most of the Armenians of Anatolia had either perished in the Armenian Genocide or subsequently left the country. And the Greeks had left in the wake of the retreating Greek army in the Turkish War of Independence; most of those who remained at first had been “exchanged” with Greece later, following the Lausanne Treaty. There remained some non-Muslim minorities (Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and others), especially in Istanbul, but in the Nazi vision of the New Turkey they did not matter much. For the Nazis the New Turkey was a “racially” homogenous state.”
I have mentioned few documents on the Armenian genocide myth. New ones will be referred to later. But, let me settle this (likewise) Greek slander and bury it forever. Refer to GTC p.117, for a paragraph from the letter given to General Harbord during his trip to Turkey and Armenia in August 1919. This is a memorandum published by the American-Hellenic Society signed by eleven of the twelve Greek members of the Ottoman Parliament, which is self-explanatory:
“P.3: “The undersigned Greek deputies, as members of the Turkish Parliament during the whole war, were in the best possible position to observe from the very beginning the sufferings of our people. Honorable American Commission on Mandates over Turkey, who’s well known impartiality permits us to believe that the claims of the Greek population in Turkey will be considered favorably and will be eventually made known to your Government as well as to your liberal country.
1. We demand the total abolition of the Turkish rule over Greeks.
2. We desire to be united to the Greek Kingdom, thus forming our national state under a democratic government.
P.4: ...and finally the recent Armenian and Greek tragedies, which ended in the extermination of over 1,500,000 Christians in the course of five years!”
“III- The Inter-Allied Condemnation of Greece: http://www.ataa.org/reference/greekinvasion.html Reports of the atrocities and other inhumane acts committed against western Anatolian Muslim and Jewish populations led to the formation of a Special Commission of Judicial Inquiry on June 17, 1919. The Commission collected extensive evidence and witnesses, meeting forty-six times between August 12 and October 15. The Commission detailed the atrocities committed by Greek troops and Greek civilians, and concluded that the Greeks were responsible for the massacres and ill treatment of Turkish Muslims and Jews in western Anatolia.”
“(Admiral Mark L. Bristol, in US Library of Congress, Naval Records Collection Group # 45) Letter dated Jan.11.1923 received Feb.6, 1923 from Near East Relief for Armenian Refugees signed by Mark O. Prentiss, attaching a long report on Izmir Fire, covering his conversation in English with Smyrna Fire Division Chief, (Austrian Engineer) Paul Grescovitch and his testimony, confirming that the fire was started by Armenians and Greeks using Turkish soldier uniforms! (Bundles of discarded clothing and rags covered with petroleum were found. Most firemen were Greeks, but that they abandoned their posts before Turkish soldiers came). The report leaves no doubt! Prentiss was sent by Admiral Bristol to assist the refugees as head of the delegation, and arrived in İzmir on Sept.8th, one day before the occupation!“
“However, to complete our reconstruction of the Nazi view of modern Turkey, it is necessary to briefly survey the discussions surrounding the Armenians. There is still ongoing debate about the Armenian Genocide as well as about Hitler’s alleged exclamation, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilations of the Armenians “.
A: In the PROLOGUE section I have shown documents proving that Hitler’s statement is a “forgery”.
B: Most laws say: The ‘burden of proof’ defines the duty placed upon a party to prove or disprove a disputed factor it can define which party bears this burden. In criminal cases the burden is placed on the prosecution who must demonstrate that the defendant is guilty before a jury may convict him or her.
As regards the “Armenian genocide myth”, Dr. Ihrig and G-scholars “must be aware of”: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf in which at Article 6 it says: “Persons (not states) charged with genocide or any other acts enumerated in Article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such International penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect of those Contracting Parties which have accepted its jurisdiction.” (United Nations Treaty Series, 1951, p.281) or http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/
p.176: “’There is no point debating here whether an Armenian Genocide actually took place, but it is interesting to note that the Hitler quote is used in this context both to either affirm or deny that there has been a genocide. (Reference: Bardakjian)‘ “
Dr. Ihrig, this time, (depending on an Armenian opinion) finds himself authorized to override existing U.N. rules and laws, without showing even one authentic/not forged document or neutral eyewitness!
p.176:“ To whitewash Germany’ guilt associated with these ‘Armenian Horrors’, the German Foreign Office commissioned the publication of a collection of diplomatic documents that it claimed would show that Germany did everything it could to help the Armenians. However, these documents – edited by Johannes Lepsius, who had already been one of the champions of the Armenian cause for over two decades – also illustrated, to a horrifying extent, what actually happened in Anatolia during the war. The book, published in the summer of 1919, was widely reviewed and discussed in the German media.”
a) The German Foreign Office commissioned no such documents! How and why should they? Chancellor Hollweg knew everything; Liman von Sanders was the Overall Commander of the Ottoman Army, it was he that requested the Turkish army units, busied in the east by Armenian sabotages, brought to the Dardanelles front where schoolboys aged 16-17 were drafted and dying!
b) Johannes Lepsius was a fanatic Protestant pastor, attracted to the Armenians for their conversion to Protestantism. He had visited Istanbul in July 1915 for about a month (when relocations had started); he was not welcomed by the German Embassy. He was received about three times by the American Ambassador Morgenthau (who probably gave him some old missionary reports) and spent most of his time with the Armenian Patriarchate who gave him lots of documents which they had fabricated. No one was in Anatolia to see the relocations. The only neutral eyewitness is a Swedish Major Pravitz who was passing through the area on horse in July 1915 with his friend, on his way to Persia where he was instructed to organize the gendarmes!
Pravitz wrote in the Paper “The Taglight Allehanda” on 23 April 1917 that he saw plenty of misery but no murders, floating corpses etc. For more details see GTC pages 311-313. The same facts are confirmed in the book (in my library) which he wrote in Swedish language in 1919. Lepsius’ verbal witnessing can be read in my essay on the Talat Pasha Murder case (p.64-above). He did not submit “any documents” to the Court Judge; he only spoke “having seen nothing”.
p.177: “The murder of a former prime ally of German interests in the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent trial of his assassin, Soghomon Tehlirian, elicited great media interest. Especially so, because the assassin was acquitted by a Berlin Jury in a spectacular trial in June 1921! “
Dr. Ihrig apparently supports the assassin. I named my essay on this subject “Talaat Pasha’s Murder- A Parody in the Courts of Berlin”. Those who read the court minutes can see that it was a “true comedy”. Dr. Ihrig, instead of going direct to the source http://www.cilicia.com/armo_tehlirian.html; preferred to go through various newspapers’ comments! I based my paper on these minutes, which contain close to 100 pages, and had to drop many sections in my research paper, due to content limitations. I read the whole process; I prove that everything was based on Armenian sources; but the author prefers heresy!
p.177: “These debates were re-ignited in 1922, when another two Young Turks were assassinated in Berlin by Armenians, and continued until the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) was signed.”
The author shows no dismay for these murders and again gives a German newspaper as his reference instead of the full treaty text on internet: http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Treaty_of_Lausanne
p.178: “Wherever some malice, some treason is planned, certainly the hawk’s nose of the Armenian is implicated. When even the unconscionable Greek refuses to commit some villainy, there will no doubt be an Armenian who wants to earn the wages of sin! Accordingly, in this transfer of the vilest anti-Semitic stereotypes onto the Armenians, descriptions of them as “parasites” and as a “plague” were commonplace. Such negative stereotypes of the Armenians continued to circulate in the press and publications up until World War-II; they were an integral part of the descriptions of the old pre- Kemalist Turkey. The perceived parallel between Central European Jews and Ottoman Armenians further cemented far-right and Nazi interest in the Armenian Genocide.”
Dr. Ihrig bases these lines again on German books. I am against the “generalization of nations or faiths” for negativity, because crime and punishment are personal and every human is supposed to know what he is doing. However, just to show “how distant the writer is from historical realities”, I include from my book GTC p.227, Daily Armenian Hairenik Newspapers, printed in Germany, to show what Armenians in Germany thought of Jews as a prelude to the Holocaust. Can anyone deny this?
“The Daily Hairenik, not to be outdone by the Weekly Hairenik, joined in supporting the German cause. On August 19, 1936: "Sometimes it is difficult to eradicate these poisonous elements [Jews] when they have struck deep root like a chronic disease, and when it becomes necessary for a people (Nazis) to eradicate them in an uncommon method these attempts are regarded as revolutionary. During a surgical operation, the flow of blood is a natural thing. Under such conditions dictatorship seems to have the role of a savior”.
The very next day, this Armenian newspaper published the statement, "Jews being the most fanatical nationalists and race-worshiper, are compelled to create an atmosphere of internationalism and world-citizenship in order to preserve their race. As British use battleships to occupy lands, the Jews use internationalism or communism as a weapon”. Consider the fact that just eighteen years before the Armenians were begging arms, ammunition and military supplies from these same British they now attack on behalf of Germany.
On September 17, 1936, the Hairenik praised Hitler and the Germans: "and came [to power] Adolph Hitler after Herculean struggles. He spoke to the racial heart strings of the German, opened the fountain if his national genius”. For a more detailed research and repetition of above remarks also see:
Now let us have an excerpt from a reputed author who later wrote that it was the Jews of the Ottoman Empire who arranged the exile and annihilation of the Armenians “because Armenians had already occupied all important posts of the Empire and Jews wanted to get those posts”. Dr. Ihrig seems to be unaware of this as well; if it was not included in the sources given to him by his “…ian” friends. From: Christopher J. Walker "Armenia: The Survival of a Nation" (1980) p.357, par.2.”
“...Nevertheless there remains the incontestable fact that relations between the Nazis and Daschnaks living in occupied areas were close and active. On 30 December 1941 an Armenian battalion was created by a decision of the Wehrmacht, known as the Armenian 812th Battalion. It was commanded by Dro, and was made up of a small number of committed recruits and a larger number of Armenians from the prisoners of war taken by the Nazis in their sweep eastwards. Earlier the total number was 8000; this number later grew to 20,000. The 812th Battalion was operational in the Crimea and the North Caucasus. A year later, on 15 December 1942, an Armenian National Council was granted official recognition by Alfred Rosenberg, the German minister of the occupied areas. The Council president was Professor Ardasher Abeghian, its vice-president Abraham Guilkhandanian and it numbered among its members Nzhdeh and Vahan Papazian. From that date until the end of 1944 it published a weekly journal, Armenian, edited by Viken Shantn (the son of Levon) who also broadcast on Radio Berlin... What was the motive for the collaboration in the occupied areas? It is possible to see it as a purely vengeful desire to retake Armenia from the Bolsheviks...There is in the untutored mind a tendency to class Armenians and Jews together (offensive to both peoples); and the malevolent paranoia of the Nazis might have manifested itself against Armenians as well as Jews. Hence it was important to prove to the Nazis that the Armenians were Aryans. With the aid of Dr. Paul Rohrbach they seem to have achieved this. The Nazis did not persecute Armenians, just for being Armenians, in the occupied lands..."
p.181:“Along with “misguided” German sympathy for the (modern) Greeks, he especially singled out German sympathy for the plight of the Armenians, which had been produced by the “drawn out depiction of “Armenian Horrors”.
The source for this statement is based on what was written about Hitler or his statements in 1930. I have not seen the source or content; but I do not think that Hitler ever mentioned “Armenians” in those days.
“The reluctance to mention Armenians in public statements could have been due to the fact that implications would have been all too clear to the well informed German public, especially old enough to remember the early 1920s debates in Germany. Nevertheless, Hitler continued to use the Armenians as an example of a lesser race on a par with the Jews.”
Again this contains fantasy statements such as “could have been” and “Hitler continued”; the source referenced again is an Armenian writer with no clarity about what the original source might be!
p.182: “One precondition for Ataturk’s success as defined by Nazi and Third Reich texts had been “the destruction of the Armenians”, as Mikusch put in the Ataturk biography – a “compelling necessity”. Perceiving the Armenians as an “inassimilable foreign body”, he concluded: “If one disregards the human side (of it), then the expulsion of the Armenians from their state for the New Turkey was a no less compelling necessity than – granted there are certain differences in the preconditions – the annihilation of the Indians for the Whites in America”. ”
I have no knowledge of the writers of the given sources, nor their expertise about Ataturk or the WW-1 history, and more importantly their “authentic documentary sources”. Turks never tried to assimilate any millet but gave each millet complete religious – educational freedom plus authority to settle their own internal disputes. Armenians (of the Central and Eastern Anatolia only) were allowed to return and repossess their belongings after the October 30, 1918 Ceasefire. (Protestants and Catholics were allowed to return earlier in mid-August 1915)! Records show that at least 300,000 Armenians (US records say 500,000) immigrated to Armenia when the Russian forces retreated. Armenians in the West, (Istanbul, Izmir, and Marmara Region) were never moved since they presented no logistical danger. More than 150,000 Armenians, who were settled in Syria, returned to the Southeast cities after the 1918 Ceasefire and the old neighbourly life was recreated. (The people were always friendly, but it was the Revolutionary gangs that only cared about their personal interests).
However, the French-Armenian Legion of some 5,000 soldiers, originally from Antakya, was involved in many local hostilities, which made civilian Turks take arms against the occupying French Forces. French military casualties became heavy. The Armenian Legion in the French Army was not controllable and was in frequent conflict with other colonial French soldiers. On October 20, 1921 France signed (the first) agreement with the Ankara Nationalist government, in defiance of the “Sevres’ Treaty of 1920”, and evacuated all Turkish cities where there were French soldiers. Local Turks encouraged the Armenians who had returned and resettled in the Southeast cities, to stay and return to the good old days, but Armenian revolutionary propaganda convinced Armenians who had returned after 30.10.1918 to leave Turkey, en-masse. Most of them went to France. The last ship with refugees left on January 10, 1922. On the inland road of return they suffered a serious winter blizzard and (some or many) Armenians died on route. Biographies or commentaries written by persons who did not personally witness these events and do not have “solid documents” can write no more than rumor and hearsay.
p.183: “The Armenians as long as they were there various authors stressed, remained an eternal threat to the Turks. “And every time the hearts and weapons of the Armenians found themselves on the side of enemy”. The Armenians were also, again, identified as a major threat during the Turkish War of Independence in some Third Reich narratives of the war – even as perpetrators of massacres against Turks”. Indeed the continuation of older anti-Armenian stereotype, of perceiving them as the “Jews of the Orient”, was so strong in Nazi publications and the press that the Ministry of Propaganda felt the need to issue a directive in 1936 stressing that the Armenians were not in fact Jews.”
It should be noted that all Armenians in the service of Ottoman administrations (even army cipher rooms) were kept in service. It is wrong to classify “all Armenians” as enemy of Turks. We have too many examples for the opposite! Nevertheless the “Revolutionary Parties” (mostly Dashnaks) terrorized their own people and everyone obeyed general orders. There was no racial discrimination in the Ottoman system; hence the German classification “Jews of the Orient” is only their opinion.
“Some authors recognized that the Lausanne exchange was in fact only the official formalization of what had already happened… The minority problem in Anatolia was solved in a very simple fashion; the fleeing Greek troops had taken the Christian population of Anatolia with them! There was no more Armenian or Greek question in Asia Minor.”
The Greeks that left with their troops were those in the area surrounding of Izmir and Anatolia, and not Istanbul where there was a large population. The exchange was requested (not by Turks but) by the Greeks at the Lausanne Conference and was executed based on “religion”. (Many Turks of Christian faith that lived in the Middle Anatolia were also exchanged by force and were not welcome in Greece).
p.185: “Islam, this great retarder, was responsible for the old Turkey having been stuck “partly in the Middle Ages, untouched by the developments and the progress of times.” Religion and “the church” had become “a farce” and had kept the Turks in a “lower state of spirit”.” Like a nightmare it made the development of youthful life in the Ottoman Empire impossible.”
Well said, and unfortunately still valid a century later!
p.187: “Hitler was not as radical as Mustafa Kemal. Leers went to some lengths to show that Hitler was not planning anything similar to Ataturk. But in fact, Hitler’s own views seem to have been different. Hitler admired Ataturk’s resolve in his fight against “the church”.
No comment; so on this subject Ataturk was not a role model!
p.188: “The language reforms and the new role of women were two prominent non-topics in the Nazi discourse on the New Turkey. They were often present in these texts in am enumerative fashion, but they were rarely, if ever explored in any meaningful extent. Propaganda was another such topic. Unlike the Weimar press, which had made much of the Kemalists’ creation of the first ”propaganda ministry” during War of Independence, the Nazis had little to say on this topic. Even the specific Kemalist propagandistic and educational facilities, the “people’s houses” (halkevleri) received little attention… It donated not only the reconstruction of a country and an economy devastated by war and “ethnic cleansing”, and not only the modernization of Turkey, it meant everything – and it was same term as used for Germany.”
a) The language reform and the change in writings Turkish to the “Latin Alphabet” in 1928 was a very important reform for the young Republic. The author should have indicated the name of Hagop (Martayan) Dilacar, an Armenian scholar (1895-1979) who was an important aid in the introduction of the Latin alphabet and later (1932) General Secretary of “Turkish Language Association”.
b) I have no knowledge whatsoever that the Nationalist Turks fighting a war of Independence in April 1923 “had set up a propaganda ministry”! Above see the reference given on Woodrow Wilson being the first person to set an “official propaganda department”. If the writer refers to “halkevleri” (people’s houses) as a “propaganda ministry” he is mistaken. These were totally educational, sporting and cultural development houses. They were opened only in 14 provinces (by the only party in power) starting in 1932 and were closed in 1951, immediately after the first democratic multi-party elections in 1951. The new democratic winners immediately shut down these “secular important establishments”. They did not like sporting, library, music, theatrical, etc. cultural facilities (key aspects of secularism) as opposed to religious organizations.
c) Referring (without source) to these Cultural Houses as places for “ethnic cleansing” is totally wrong. On the contrary these were places where “all youngsters in the district” would come and share activities “as neighbors and friends”. There was never any “ethnic separation”!
p.189: “To stress the vitality and potency of the New Turkey, Anatolia was frequently compared to America.”
Dr. Ihrig’s use of this sentence implies that he “shared this opinion” with its typical shallowness!
p.189: “During the Turkish War of Independence the Kemalist capital Ankara, had already reached iconic status in Germany. The right and far right talked about Ankara in Munich, the Kemalists were also known as the Ankara-Turks, and every reader was expected to know what the word “Ankara” stood for. The iconification of Ankara continued in the 1920s and during the Third Reich“.
I could not see whose observation these lines were based on! “Ankara first started to be heard of in 1920 with the declaration of the Parliamentarian National Resistance”. At that time Ankara’s population was no more than 25,000; there was no electricity! Nearby swamps and malaria were real problems. The Parliament could only just be opened in a “party building” with the expense being raised from local shop owners. There were no tiles to complete the roof (because even tiles were an import item)! What genius can compare such a small town to America?
p.191: “A key ingredient of the miracle of the Turkish Aufbau was the economy. Here one could witness the “economic development” under national Führertumas the vice president of the Turkish Chamber of Commerce in Germany dubbed it in a guest commentary in a Berliner Newspaper. “
The speech was made on the occasion of the 10th year of the Turkish Republic and of course included few words of compliments for Turks, which could be used for Nazi propaganda.
p.194:“The economy needed to be “a fortress” it needed to be truly a national economy. The various texts all stressed that Ataturk had almost nothing to work with in the beginning, no industry, no money, nothing nut a totally devastated country…It was a great battle at the “economic front” and Turkey was clearly winning”… A planned economy was what facilitated the almost ideal development of Turkish resources, while class conflicts were kept at minimum, some texts even argued that there were no (longer any) classes in the traditional sense in Turkey. “
Other than “state industrial capital investments”, eighty percent of the available trade and local small industry was in the hands of the minorities; because they were educated, had some capital and good connections with foreign countries (Britain, France, Germany, etc.)! There was no “class problem”!
p.203: “The New Turkey represented the “victory of their own [Turkish] character… And taken as a whole, that was precisely the overall scope of the Nazi Twinning of the New Turkey with the Third Reich: the Turkish case showed just what could be accomplished if the volkisch model of the Fuhrer state was followed. If the Turks could do it in a country with the worst preconditions for a swift and successful rebirth and modernization– then the Germans could do it as well and so much more…Thus there was something in it for the various German authors, commentators, and politicians too when glorifying Turkey; it was also about themselves, their kind of politics, and their belief in the future. “
It looks like the Nazis used and exaggerated these Turkish improvements for their own propaganda.
p.206: “The “fact” that the New Turkey was a real and pure völkisch state, because no more Greeks and Armenians were left in Anatolia, was stressed time and again, in hundreds of articles, texts and “speeches”. The “pure national” existence of the New Turkey was crucial for everything that had happened in Anatolia in the 1920s and 1930s, for these authors.”
Here we have an obscure statement inserted by Dr. Ihrig himself, without quoting any source, and saying that “no more Greeks and Armenians” were left in Anatolia; but he does not give any corroborating details.
According to the 1914 Ottoman Census, there were 13,390,000 Moslems, 1,173,422 Armenians and 1,564,000 Greeks in the Empire. In 1927 there were some 42,000 Armenians in Greece, by 1950 that dropped to 9,000. According to the agreed exchange of population (demanded by Greece in 1923), some 480,000 Moslem Turks were transferred to Turkey from Greece. In return, there were some 850,000 Christian Greeks that were moved out of Anatolia. Included in this figure were Greek army deserters and some Turks who were Christians. The following factors cannot be missed:
The fact that Armenians (excluding Istanbul and western Anatolia) fought against their home country while collaborating with enemies and that 200,000 of them died while fighting is confirmed (see above-p.65)! Another official Soviet document dated 1936, confirms that 195,000 Armenians “died in Armenia under their own government rule because of epidemics and starvation (GoT p.502).”
All Armenians had FOUR chances to repatriate and repossess their belongings. The first one was the Batum Treaty of June 4, 1918 (one year grace period); the second one October 30, 1918 Mudros Ceasefire when the Turks surrendered, and all relocated persons were free to return to Turkey and repossess their belongings under the Victors’ guarantee (no limitation). Even the Capitulations abrogated when WW-1 started were reinstated. Strangely Dr. Ihrig did not refer to this crucial historical fact. The third one was the Gumru Treaty of December 2, 1920, with one year grace period! The final two years “grace period” was granted under the Lausanne Treaty. The parties that revolted and did not apply in time (when several amnesties had been declared) have no right to complain. The Greek invasion of the Aegean region and the treason of eleven of the twelve Greek members of the Ottoman Parliament are irrefutable.
Let us remember that during the 1929-1930 depression, the USA ‘repatriated’ to Mexico “American citizens of Mexican ethnicity “because there were no jobs and they were working for lower salaries than the whites”. We should also not overlook the fact that, during WW-2, American citizens of Japanese and German origin were interned in various camps and on Ellis Island. They were released a year later, and in some cases even later, after WW-2 had ended.
p.207: “The vast discussion of the role model and the New Turkey in the Third Reich media and publications means that Third Reich had, at least implicitly continually highlighted the “benefits” of ”ethnic cleansing” and genocide. This whole aspect of the Turkish success story removes any veil of “innocence” regarding, for example, the Hoffmann photos showing the new boulevards and factories in Turkey. The Armenians, while invisible, were always there, and explicitly so in the Nazi perception. And thus the harmony of these pictures is destroyed: these were also the pictures of a post-genocidal country. The broad debates on the Armenian Genocide in Post-World War- I Germany tradition of anti-Armenianism parallel to anti-Semitism and the connection made through the Turkish case between rejuvenated nation and national purity – all of these warrant a revaluation of the role of the Armenian Genocide in the genesis of the Holocaust. Especially the connection to the Turkish case through the “twinned” victim groups, the transfer of the stab-in-the-back myth and the existence of war also contributed to reinforcing what Ian Kershaw calls in another context the “genocidal link between war and the killing of Jews…Furthermore, discussions of the Armenian Genocide in the 1920s had used the established parallel between anti-Semitism and anti-Armenianism and highlighted the stab-in-the-back myth, transferred to Anatolia, as the rationale of “justifications” for genocide.”
I do not think Mr. Ihrig has ever visited or will ever visit Turkey or shake hands with any Turk! He is soaked in Turkish animosity and labors hard to prove (by his fantasies and his own conclusions) that Turks did not only ethnically cleansed Greeks and Armenians, but also “inspired and taught Hitler and Nazis” to eliminate the Jews in Germany and the occupied lands. The notes and references shown in the text or contained in the very limited index, give enough information to show that the work is based on “selected sources” or “whispered lessons” from only some of the G-scholars. He has not seen hundreds of Armenian or neutral books or any document that may upset his historical, mental and documentary obsessions of the Armenian Angels and Turkish genocidal crimes. Such cognitive - bias and self-delusion that the author knows everything much better than everyone else, is well explained in [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect] for those who wish to learn!
Any attentive reader can understand that Mr. Ihrigs’ aim is indirectly to prove that:
a) If the Turks had not fought a War of Independence, Ataturk would not exist;
b) After Ataturk succeeded, Nazi Germans and Hitler took him as an idol or “twin” leader;
c) Since Ataturk ethnically cleansed Turkey of Armenians in the 1920s, his success inspired Nazis to murder the Jews.
CONCLUSION: Ataturk and the Turks did not only cleansed Greeks and Armenians but are also responsible for Hitler and the Holocaust by the Nazis!
What a lunatic fantasy premised on a wholesale ignorance of even a very few fundamental facts, which “polished ballast words around the bush” cannot possibly hope to cover. Here are the questions I ask to think about as a reader if you are attracted to the author’s arguments:
1- “Genocide” is a legal expression that must be based on a Judicial Verdict! Where is yours!
2- How can you repeat the unproven Hitler quotation about the Armenians (Lochner’s 1946 L-3 document) when it has been proven many times to be false?
3- “National purity” is a racist nonsense that no Turks believe in. Our Constitution says: “The people of Turkey are called the Turkish Nation”. (It does not ask about people’s origin or faith!).
4- Regarding the “stab-in-the back” myth; are the documents partly shown under pgs. 21, 24, 65 and 84; the Official Gazette of the League of Nations, the Memorandum given by Armenia to the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919, or the books of Garekin Pastermadjian all are wrong or false? The “myth complex”, despite so many concrete documents is pure nonsense.
5- Can you refute the statement of the General Secretary of the League of Nations, dated March 1, 1920, to the effect that “Turkish governments were not involved in brutalities”?
6- In 1920s there was “no Ataturk or Genocide as yet”. The term “Genocide” was first introduced in 1946 during the Nuremberg trials and accepted by the UN in 1948 subject to certain legal conditions. (The U.N. has only accepted the Jewish Holocaust & Rwanda Genocide based on judicial verdicts.)
Here are some albums relating to the “innocent Armenians” for those who have the courage to view:
* https://picasaweb.google.com/105274642392277132294/BiggestPhotoArchiveOfWorldOfArmenianGenocideLie
* Two pages on internet copied from my pocket book, included in the video presentation http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2012/07/3363-video-brief-hopscotch-scroll-in.html
The “black hole of knowledge” in relation to what happened during WW-2 with Jews in the occupied zones, the collaboration of the Armenian Legion with Hitler up to the very last moment, has been established beyond proof in several documents and photos. Not knowing the “Jewish History and Relations with Germany” and the superhuman efforts of some Turkish diplomats in saving Jews who were formerly associated with Turkey, has no excuse. The size of the Turkish antagonism is visible.
Personally, if I were a history scholar associated with some (Jewish?) Institute or famous university, I would feel extremely embarrassed about not knowing highly relevant data available on the internet abundantly and most dependable of them all: http://sefarad.org/lm/044/5.html.“TURKEY AND THE JEWS OF EUROPE DURING WORLD WAR II” of that Prof. Stanford J. Shaw (rest in peace) left UCLA in fear of his life when his house was set on fire by Armenian students! He subsequently started teaching at the Ankara Bilkent University where he died.
p.208: “Knowledge of one gruesome crime does not absolve a person from guilt if one commits it again or plans something similar yet even more gruesome and “effective”. Quite the contrary!”
Ignorance brings courage! Psychologically prejudiced scholars may come up with this kind of trash and arrogance, without even thinking whether the “crime (?) was ever legally debated and proven.” Please note the quote from: “The Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence — or specifically, their incompetence — at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence robbing them of the ability to critically analyze their performance, leading to a significant overestimate of themselves…. If you have no doubts whatsoever about your competence, you could just be that damn good.“
“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” (Bertrand Russell)
p.211: The writer shows a photo of Turkish General Toydemir with a group at the German occupied Paris in 1943 with another slandering remark. “This now was the Third Reich courting Turkey and treating it almost like an actual member of the Axis”
In 1943 and earlier, Turkish Ambassador Erkin was chartering trains to transfer Jews from France to Turkey and on to Palestine. Turkey did not become a part of the Axis; while the “Armenian Legion” stayed loyal to Hitler to the very last month of the war (February 1945).
When Berlin was occupied some of them lived in Army barracks, and run the “black market” trade!
p.214: “While Leitz juxtaposes Turkey the “active neutral” with Spain “the Axis neutral”, it has to be asked whether there was that much of a difference. (*) [The reference is from a Turkish Professor Selim Deringil who retired from Bogazici University, another Armenophile) who never saw the reference given above and avoided debate]
“And recent German historiography stresses in an almost singular fashion Turkey’s role as a safe haven for German refugees from Nazism. (*)”
Here we have another expression of doubt or disagreement without evidence. The interesting part is that in the source reference (*) the name of Stanford J. Shaw and his book Turkey and the Holocaustis given, but there is no excerpt. This raises serious doubts as to whether the name of the book and author were added to fill up the page, or if the book was ever read. Ironically, the author claims that he read the whole book but has no knowledge of Stanford’s essay on the internet. I didn’t see any reference to the Museum and the Sourced Library of the Sefarad Jews in Turkey. Why? Are the Jewish scholars in Poland, Germany or Jerusalem and Harvard University more documented or self-appraised than the Jews of Turkey who lived through these events in person and are the best direct source, at least on Ataturk and Jews who were associated with Turkey?
“In 1941 Turkish Prime Minister Saracoglu even gave permission for the transit of German troops through Turkey toward Iraq, although he had to withdraw this permission later. Shortly thereafter, a ten year Treaty of Friendship between the Third Reich and the New Turkey was signed promising Turkey’s benevolent neutrality.”
The reference for PM Saracoglu’s permit is again an unconfirmed fantasy or an unsubstantiated opinion of a German reporter. How can the PM give such an important permit, without the government’s and parliament approval, especially when Ismet Inonu was the president?
p.216: “Turanism – the vision of a union of all Turkic peoples from the Aegean to Northwestern China under Turkish leadership – has once motivated Enver Pasha and had led to catastrophe at Sarikamiş. Under Ataturk Turanism was suppressed…”
Turanism was never taken seriously or even tried to be put into practice; it was a “thousand and one night” dream! Enver Pasha’s catastrophic campaign in late December 1915 is explained above. The author should have mentioned the important service of the Armenian Revolutionary units as detailed by Armen Garo, one of the Unit Commanders in the Caucasus who had delayed the Turkish Army.
“And although Enver had not succeeded in traversing the Caucasian passes beyond Sarikamiş, his brother Nuri Pasha had marched into Baku at the end of WW-1 at the head of the Ottoman “Army of Islam”. Massacres of local Armenians had followed.”
This time, I think that the writer purposely shows only the trunk of the elephant and tries to hide all the rest by leaving out a large part of the story, which as follows:
a) After the Soviet Revolution in 1917 the SEYM federation of the four Caucasus countries broke down, Georgia and Azerbaijan declared their independence in mid May 1918. Armenia was trying to make peace with the Turks and on May 28th, 1918 they too declared their Dashnakist Independence. On June 4th, they had to sign a series of Treaties with the Ottoman Turks and entered under Ottoman Protection. One of the signatories was Nuri Pasha.
b) Nuri Pasha continued his advance towards Baku, while Armenian Generals (?) Antranik and the Butcher Dro Kanajan and Keri (they all did not obey the Batum Peace) continued their ethnic cleansing in the Armenia regions under their control. Aharonian and Hatissian were sent to Istanbul to thank to the Sultan for their “protection, amnesties, treaties, assistances etc”. They were received and sent their telegram of joy to PM Katchaznuni on Sept.6th 1918. They continued their trip to Paris. The Armenian butcheries are confirmed in the separate 1919 reports of Captain Emory Niles and General Harbord. We want documented history not imaginary stories; please!
“The only immediate result was that the Nazis began employing Pan-Turkic propaganda among the captured Soviet soldiers of Turkish ethnicity (Tatars, Azeris, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and so on) in order to recruit them into special SS units.”
SS Troops were relatively educated capable soldiers. It is true that certain Soviet prisoners were converted into German soldiers. How is it possible that the author knows all about these Turkic soldiers in the Soviet army; but fails to know about the “Armenian soldiers” in the Russian Army who after being captured, were added to the 812th Battalion of Dro in 1941? This initial force of some 5,000 Armenians subsequently expanded to 22,000 (about a quarter of them special SS troops) as shown in the photos above!
p.217:“At least not openly, because even if Nuri Pasha was in Berlin only in semi-official capacity-there is evidence that it was indeed official Turkey was extending its feelers.”
The remark is from a German book, which appears to be distorted with the Pan-Turkism fantasy. On p.255 of my book GTC you can see the news in the “Washington Post”, June 17, 1943, reading: “Turkey Recalls Envoy to Vichy, Ties Strained, Strong Nazi Curbs on Ambassador’s Activities blamed.” The ambassador was ex-colonel Behic Erkin, who the Germans and French had decorated with a first degree Iron Cross and a Legion of Honor medal for his cooperation during WW-1. What are we to believe? Is it the fantasy of the German writer or factual news that Nazis were so disturbed about the Jews saved in France by Ambassador Erkin, that they had to ask Turkey to withdraw the Ambassador, “the Jewish refugee trouble maker Turk”? I let the reader to decide!
“Almost a year later, now the Turkish Prime Minister, Saracoglu told Von Papen how happy he would be if the Third Reich would destroy the Soviet Union, and he advised the Germans that what they needed to do to win this war was to kill half of the Russian nation. Von Papen summarized the message of Saracıoglu “As a Turk he yearns for the destruction of Russia; it would be the Fuhrer’s most magnificent deed.”
The reference for the second sentence is Mr. Deringil’s book. It was natural that Turks preferred the destruction of Russia because, throughout history, they fought so many wars with Russia, a country that always wanted to get the control of the Turkish Straits. Regarding the first sentence, it looks unusual that the Turkish PM would make such a compliment to Germany in 1944, when the war had turned against it!
p.218: “The deputy chief of staff even told von Papen in certain terms that at that point the Turkish army would enter the war on the German side. The High Command of the Wehrmaccht also counted on this side effect in its operations towards the Caucasus.”
The reference is from a German, Herr Leitz, and makes no sense because Germany concluded a Treaty with Turkey in 1941 and attacked Russia four days later. Would a deputy chief of staff be authorized to talk to the German Ambassador and make such a statement? What diplomatic authority did he have?
p.218: “When pressed by the Allies in early 1944 to end exports of chromite to Germany and break off diplomatic relations with the Third Reich, Turkey dragged its feet on both as long as possible – on the latter for months, until August 1944.”
Dr. Ihrig, turns every small stone in history to find something to make Turkey look guilty, but in doing so he either deliberately omits some parts of actual history or has simply not read the rest. Turkey, before making a deal to sell chromite to Germany, offered Britain the stocks and the production. Britain said “that they were not interested” and Turkey had to sell to the only buyer, Germany!
The writer omits or forgets to remind the reader that although the war between Britain and France against Germany started on Sept. 1st, 1939, the USA’s exports to their subsidiaries in Germany continued until they were stopped when USA joined the war on the British side in Dec.11th, 1941.
p.218-219: “And there were indeed many visits by a variety of Turkish delegations to the Third Reich, including military delegations in 1941, 1942 and 1943 – such as a delegation of Turkish intelligence officers and police chiefs to Berlin and the concentration camp Sachsenhousen, the latter per request of the Turks. Furthermore, Turkey also took a variety of anti-minority and explicitly anti-Jewish measures, which obviously would have endeared it to the Third Reich… Turkey provided refuge for a number of Jews from Germany”
The source for the first sentence is German and may be true except for the “request of Turks to visit concentration” camps, as these were not known about even among many Germans until the war ended. There was no note that shows Ambassador Erkin knew the interiors of the camps where the trains with Jewish exiles were sent! As regards the second sentence quoted from an “anti-all” Turkish Jew who is not much supported by the local Jewish community, this is full of mistakes and distortions and must be corrected. During WW-2 all young Turks were in the army; although the normal term of service was 2 years, some spent 3 or 4 years. The country ran short of everything. Every item was rationed; import items were not available at all. The financial economy collapsed because of heavy military expenses and an absence of tax revenues. Turkey did not even have the paper or printing machine for banknotes; they too were printed in Europe and imported. The government was in dire need of money to exist. A onetime unjust tax of “wealth and property” was imposed for “all Turkish citizens” (Turks, Armenians, Greeks, etc.). Everyone was subject to a wealth tax established by local “estimate committees”. The minorities were much richer; so they took a heavier burden compared to Turks. It is not hard to guess that there were the usual bribes and injustices. After Turkey adopted the multi-party democracy in 1950s, in a public political meeting, one young man had shouted to the ex-president Ismet Inonu: “you left us in deprivation and even without shoes in the past years; now you ask us to vote for you”. Inonu’s reply was very short, he said: “what you say is true; but I did not leave you fatherless.” I and my family lived through those WW-2 years and shortages; but we all survived without casualties. I have a wide variety of factual stories that today’s generation with its easy reliance on fast food cannot visualize… In the last very short sentence Dr. Ihrig acknowledges ironically that (a number) of Jews from Germany were provided refuge! Possibly he briefly meant only about sixty German Jewish scholars who were accepted and became the pillars of Universities. But for the tens of thousands that Stanford J. Shaw had saved, as written in his essay and evidenced by supporting documents, one may think that he was blind or simply knowledge deficient!
p.221: “Turkish motivations and goals during WW-2 will remain clouded in mystery, as do Hitler’s goals regarding Turkey. Did his admiration of Ataturk influence his policies vis-à-vis Turkey after all? Why did he care about German-Turkish friendship after the war? Given the dearth of sources, we will probably never know.”
It makes no sense to be romantic and indulge in imaginations and fantasies. The facts are very simple. Germany, among other imperialist countries, was never at war with Turks; and it served their interests to have Turks on their side throughout the war years. What was “Ataturk’s influence or policies or friendship”? Turkey had 2,000,000 soldiers to defend a barren country with few roads, limited one-track railways, and natural barriers such as high mountains .To traverse Turkey by war, it would have needed Germans an army of 3,000,000 (half of those on the Russian front), without a final goal! There is no scarcity of sources! If people cannot use their logic, it is their personal failing.
On p.222, Dr. Ihrig again refers to “Turkic SS units” (mentioned in p.216) who fought on every street in Berlin, but he misses to indicate if this was a favor and honor to those Turkic soldiers or a simple sacrifice of lives in street fights where casualties were much higher!
Epilogue
p.223: “If we are to believe Hitler, Ataturk was his “shining star” in the darkness of the 1920s Ataturk’s revolution and the New Turkey fascinated the German nationalists and far right in the early Weimar Years like almost no other topic during this time… Hitler described Ataturk as the great teacher whose first student had been Mussolini and whose second was Hitler himself”.
These words are the concluding thoughts of the writer desperate to show that Ataturk is the one who perverted Mussolini and Hitler and caused all these calamities that followed, including the Jewish holocaust because Hitler had learned from Ataturk’s ethnic cleansing of Armenians! This is how I interpret the aim of this book, with its flights of fantasy, fabrications and carefully inserted defamations, insinuations and insults. Ataturk was fully occupied with his own struggle against the Ottoman regime, which condemned him during the occupation; he hardly had any time or the means to be interested in any other part of the world. In section 1 of this study I have submitted concrete documentation that Woodrow Wilson was the first fascist dictator of the twentieth century, and in trinity, at least in their eagle emblems, with the Italians and Germans. These fantasies, if they were made to propagate Nazi nationalism, cannot be connected to “any teaching of anyone by Mustafa Kemal” before he became Ataturk in 1934. There is “no other dependable source” to support this parallelism.
If we look into http://ww2timelines.com/leaders/hitler/hitler2power.htm with its timeline of Hitler, we can easily see that the actions themselves were completely different and had no timing unity.
p.224: “This twinning of Turkey and Germany expressed itself in narratives of the Turkish Fuhrer, of the War of Independence as an example of “ultimate” of “total war”, of Turkish modernity and the miracle of the Turkish Aufbau as well as the Turkish revisionism, old and new. But unfortunately the Turkish success story also offered even more disturbing examples of “völkisch good practice” when it came to treatment of minorities. Although this topic requires much more research, the Armenian Genocide was not forgotten by the 1930s as might be suggested by the disputed Hitler statement “Who, after all speaks today of the annihilation of Armenians”? The Armenian Genocide and expulsion of the Greeks were part and parcel of Third Reich discourses about the New Turkey; they were viewed as crucial preconditions for the völkisch success story that was New Turkey. The Nazis had “grown up” with both the rise of the New Turkey and the Armenian Genocide, and they had not forgotten either.”
This statement is not quoted from another source and is the “condemning slander” of a very young scholar, who thought he knew everything, when what he knew was very wrong when there were mountain of facts and documents which he, or the supporting institute or endorsing university, could have immediately and easily shared without any need for cross checking! The result is that the writer and supporting organizations will only ‘enlighten’ their readers on the following “false pillars of their” arguments. The writer ironically inserts a few words such as: “this topic requires much more research …the Armenian Genocide was not forgotten by the 1930s” which does not release him from the following liabilities:
a) The writer and supporters of the “famous but fake statement attributed” to Hitler show that they depend on a single 1946 reference only. They are unaware of the refusal by the Nuremberg Court in 1948, or the exposition of the negative of Lochner’s document in the web site of Cole Porter plus the fact that the Holocaust Museum in Washington had to add a sentence “making Lochner responsible in person for the truth of the statement.” Hitler’s actual speech appears in William Shirer’s encyclopedic book and also in the US Military records verbatim where there is no such sentence or any mentioning of Armenians or Turks!
b) The writer and his supporters have no idea or have not read the agreement made between the German Ambassador Wangenheim and the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sait Halim on August 2, 1914 in which it is clearly stated that General Liman von Sanders is in command of all Turkish Armies.
c) Let the writer speak of “stab in the back myth”; we have thousands of documents and photos proving the very opposite. The “black hole of information” is so big that the writer has never seen the contents of the Pastermadjian’s book or the official Armenian Memorandum given at the Paris Conference in February 1919; otherwise he would have spoken with more care.
d) Armenian (and Greek) claims of massacres are totally unsupported by any valid document. International irrefutable documents (of US Army officers or memorandums etc.) disclose the exact opposites of such “fabricated distortions”. I have submitted just a few of such documents that in fact extend to hundreds of pages (quite a lot are included in my book GoT)!
e) League of Nations’ official attestations (March 1, 1920 Note Verbal) that Turkish central governments were not involved in the banditries or retaliations that occurred! How can any office refute the League of Nations Official Gazette of Sept.21, 1929 confirming the “stabbings”?
f) I would strongly suggest that readers see Chapter 21 (p.425) of my book GoT where I give some excerpts from “Armenians Affairs” Magazine of 1949, authored by John Roy Carlson (true name Arthur Derunian) where he spent time among the “Displaced Persons” (Armenian Legion) who were running the Berlin black market. There is not a single word on any Turkish atrocity (genocide?).
g) Dr. Ihrig will hardly find any serious Armenian publication in the 1930s or 1940s, when they were volunteering to serve Hitler. There were no scheduled travel connections in an out of Turkey. I think that the Armenian youngsters shown in photos with Goebbels could only have got to Germany by crossing the Turkish-Bulgarian railway station into German occupied Bulgaria; from there picked up and sent inland as military personnel. There was no other way. I know because I lived those hard days. My father was a pilot captain for large ships on the Danube River. He was there during the German and later Russian occupation and saw the banditries of Russian soldiers on internal trains. My aunt was imprisoned on charges of spying, her husband died in prison under Russian torture. Gentlemen, I am a lasting friend to all of the “decent Armenians” I have met. This is why I research thoroughly and avoid expressing unsupported or unsubstantiated opinions”!
p.226: “This adulating discourse about the New Turkey was not something the Nazis had to invent in the 1930s; it was already there and only to be appropriated and continued. The readymade discourse supported the Key Nazi policies and ideological components; the Fuhrer principle and myth, the Fuhrer state, the völkisch revolution of state, society and economy, “ethnic cleansing” and the preparation for the coming “ultimate war”. It was there for the Nazis to pick up and continue, but, at the same time, it was also their very own discourse. It is no accident that Goebbels remembered Hitler as a” brightly shining star in the in the hours of deepest despair” and that conversely Hitler himself remembered the Türkisch Fuhrer in these same terms.”
Ataturk’s life has been documented as if a diary had been kept for every day of his life showing what he did, wrote, talked etc. The lines above are referenced to a German author on Goebbels. In Turkey we do not have the slightest written evidence for any such “close or inspiring” co-operation, which is paradoxical to reality in any event. How could a devastated country, ruined by a war of twelve years, with its young generation of school boys killed, 98% of the population illiterate, destitute and struggling to live, become any example to a developed, industrialized, cultured and leading “Power in the World?” I think that Dr. Ihrig included this excerpt just for the words “ethnic cleansing” which have not been proved in over a century, other than as hearsay. With so much as mentioning Goebbels, I really wish I could know what Gobbels told the visiting Turkish Armenian men from Adana, (photo under p. 111 above) hinted to be spying for the Nazis.
p.227: “As has become clear in this book, when we think of policy development, myths, goals and overall ideology of the Third Reich, we should always also think about Turkey’s role for the Nazis. Given how the Nazis connected themselves both quantitatively and qualitatively, to the other “kindred systems”, Fascism and Kemalism a closer examination of Italy’s role is called for.”
p.228: “What this book also illustrates, then, is how foreign topics and foreign events were not only closely watched but also imported into domestic contexts by the modern mass media in the 1920s. So, interested was the German public, or at least the newspapers, that despite the other many things Germany had to worry and talk about, Turkey was a dominant ingredient of the newspaper discourse of the early Weimar years… “
Dr. Ihrig’s endless efforts to blame Ataturk and Turkey for Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s Fascism are well understood to depend on “myths, goals and ideology”. Can such subjective values, without ethics or morality, be viewed as a “history book on some of the most important leaders of the 20th century”? I think the subject and the vague efforts of justification are secretly aimed to show “Turkey and Ataturk as culprits responsible for WW-2 and as the “teachers behind the Jewish Holocaust”, because “they cleansed minorities by massacre”! Dr. Ihrig is completely unaware of the breadth and depth of the irrefutable documents and basic realities that prove the very opposite, and holds himself out as knowledgeable and authorized to write history “to show the victimization of Greeks, Armenians and Jews”, all done by Turks without a cause.
Speaking of “modern mass media in 1920s and the connections to (any Turkish newspaper)” is nothing but illusion or fantasy! At the time the Republic was announced in 1923 in Ankara, only the Soviet’s had a diplomatic representation. You can’t have “media communication without electricity”. The first electricity was brought to Ankara in 1925. Foreign embassies for many years did not want to move from Istanbul to Ankara. It took several years until they started moving in 1930s to Ankara.
p.228: “National Socialism does not have only a German prehistory, nor was it influenced only the Italian Fascism. Its origins are more international, and some of them, as I have shown, are Turkish.”
Sir, you have shown nothing other than an ability to mix up bits of imagination from today and applied it to a century earlier in complete ignorance of the conditions on the ground and the actual happenings at that time! I am sure this “tossed history” will prevail in the coming new book!
p.230: “This analysis of Ataturk in the Nazi imagination thus illustrates the flux of images about Turkey in Germany and the very specific societal and political factors that always influence such kinds of perception: Our national, societal, and personal views and discourses about the “Other” are much more about us than about any actual “Others”; they are dependent on time and place, on fears, expectations, plans and dreams. We must always be wary of alleged traditions and continuities. More often than not they are constructed and imagined rather than real. There is no “eternal Turk” in the German national psyche or in German history. The image of “the Turk” has often changed over the course of the centuries – massively so in the twentieth century – and it will change again.”
I understand that “the Other” is “the Turk” who is tar washed at every opportunity with such imagination, distortions and unfounded hearsay. But the writer has not clarified who the “Our” is? Is it the “German psyche” as expressed by a Pole? Is it the “Armenian genocide industry” feeding many for over a century with fabrications of impossible lies and selling “grudge, revenge, animosity, racial, national and religious hate and separatism”? Or is it that a Jewish Institute in Jerusalem (not specialized in history) and unfamiliar with the Jewish sources on WW-2 in Istanbul and itself involved in a useless exercise in anti-Turkism, irrespective of the six hundred years of perfect harmony with the (Sefarad Jews) or many other refugees welcomed by Turks. (Today’s Syria is living evidence)
For my Jewish (many in Turkey) friends I include photo of the biggest Synagogue in Edirne recently reopened and reconstructed with Turkish taxpayers money, having been burnt to the ground in a fire 46 years ago! I also copy include the letter of a Jewish Rabbi in 1564s from my book GoT p. 10
The Chief Rabbi of Edirne between1454-69, Isaac Sarfati wrote his famous “Edirne Letter” during this same period. It concerns several German Jewish families, which had immigrated to the Ottoman Empire. #1
“I have heard of the afflictions, more bitter than death, that have befallen our brethren in Germany, of the tyrannical laws, the compulsory baptism and the banishment, which are of daily occurrence. … Brothers and teachers, friends and acquaintances! I, Isaac Sarfati… I proclaim to you that Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking, and where, if you will, all shall yet be well with you… Here every man may dwell at peace under his own vine and fig tree… Here you are allowed to wear the most precious garments”...
As regards the Dashnakist/ANCA indoctrinated diaspora Armenians who take every minute possibility to denigrate and debase Turks, let me say that apart from some 60,000 Armenians who remain from the old times with their Turkish passports, we have at least as many Armenians tourists who officially should have left the country after a month, but have settled here illegally for years to earn some money (by caretaking or in other domestic jobs) to send home to Armenia. Their children are in Armenian Turkish schools without passports or ID cards. There are also about 60 active Armenian churches, thus averaging one church for one thousand believers. Below is a picture of a new Armenian Church reconstructed and opened in Istanbul this year. On the right, Aktamar Church reconstructed a few years ago as a historic monument. These are all done with Turkish taxes. (We have hundreds of more important monuments waiting funding!)
As regards my German (business) friends, my essay in the “Prologue” about German-Ottoman historical relations was presented at Wurzburg University, and many readers have found it very informative and enjoyable. Of course you also have the link on my posted essay on Talat Pasha’s “Parody Trial” for further reading. But the “star” would be the letter and documents I painfully collected and mailed to German President Gauck, to which I received a short courtesy answer proving that no-one had any interest in reading them and learning the truth! The irony is that “three priests” (the Pope, Armenian Patriarch and pastor Gauck) all of a sudden find themselves authorized and knowledgeable to “write history” based on hearsay and without any debate. It is not a hard task for them; despite the new discoveries about the universe and the World, they still have billions of believers for the tales about Noah, Abraham, Heaven and Hell and so many myths. Hence, if these persons are “proficient to make and interpret history”, then why shouldn’t our carpenters be deciding on our psychology or our engineers taking care of patients in hospitals instead of medical doctors? Here is an example on the internet: “Because the tailor has made a dress, he is intimately familiar with the quality of the item in craftsmanship, features, and fabric quality. “
Before blaming Turks, the Pope should have remembered that on April 17, 1980 the Turkish Ambassador of Vatican Vecdi Türel and his guard were ambushed by Armenian terrorists and shot in their car; they escaped with heavy wounds. But there were some 250 acts of Armenian terror between 1973-1985, which resulted in the deaths of 42 Turkish diplomats and two strangers.
p.234: “Indeed the sheer volume of texts supporting the key arguments presented in this book has been the most surprising outcome of my research”.
The author is content with his research because he “thinks that he already covered everything within the volume of the ball of his knowledge”. If he had viewed “tallarmeniantale” or “armenians-1915.blogspot.com” (with my five books, over 400 essays) some 150,000 pages of publications and some 400 E-books, he could have understood the huge volume of documented concrete knowledge that he was apparently never aware during all the years of “his indeed surprising research”. May be Mr. Ihrig is “the only academic” working on a very difficult subject like Ataturk, simply using carefully selected clips from some German newspapers, but missing the ones which do not serve his purpose.
Here is an article http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2012/09/05/archives/kemal-pasha.html by another Jewish reporter (October 20, 1923 by Isaac F. Marcosson) who had been in Ankara and interviewed Mustafa Kemal. Never too late to learn; at least from a Jewish correspondent!
As a lecturing document on Ataturk I am including the confidential letter by the British Ambassador in Ankara (from 1933 to May 1939) to his Lordship which tells much more than what the hundreds of Dr. Ihrig’s book or German papers/writers could never come close as truthful.
<Confidential letter which was released by the British Archives after forty years, in 1978> From: Sir P. Loraine to Viscount Halifax No.608 ANGORA, Nov. 25, 1938 (Rcvd. December 8, 1938)
My Lord,
1. It was with a feeling of the profoundest regret that I dispatched my telegram No. 194 acquainting you with the death of M. Kemal Atatürk.
2. Although I have the honor to enclosure herein an account which the counselor of this embassy has been so good as to prepare for me of the career of the late President of the Republic, I do not propose in this dispatch to attempt an appraisal of the work of Kemal Atatürk, but rather to give a picture of the man himself and to attempt some estimate of what he stood for and signified. His career and his works will no doubt be related, analyzed and be discussed by publicists and historians. Few, if any, of these, however, will have known the man himself; without such knowledge a reconstruction of him is almost certain to be misleading.
3. In the matter of acquiring that knowledge I have perhaps been specially privileged. Although my occasions for seeing the late President were few, they were nevertheless, probably more frequent and of longer duration than those enjoyed by other diplomatic representatives. But apart from that, I know that from my early stages of my mission, Atatürk regarded me as a personal friend, that he enjoyed seeing me, that he was always glad when an opportunity to do so offered itself , and that his interest and attention never flagged during our conversations. It would seem, moreover, that I had some gift for stimulating his faculties, and that he never resented it at all when I found occasion to challenge his ideas or his conclusions on the subject under discussion. So I think he revealed himself more to me than he usually did with foreigners.
4. But, apart from my direct personal experience, I have had many opportunities of discussing him and his characteristics with a number of his intimates, including some of the Cabinet Ministers, who felt no difficulty in speaking to me freely once they understood that Atatürk had given me his personal friendship.
5. It does not really convey anything particular to say that Atatürk was a most unusual and remarkable man. He was, but I must try to explain why he was unusual and why remarkable.
6. I believe the root explanation is a duality of character. Most people who have read Grey Wolf, the book of Mr. Armstrong that is abhorred and banned in this republic, would get in the main the picture of a man of great talent and indomitable energy, but of complete ruthlessness, repellent demeanor, ungovernable temper, unbridled appetites, and rather discreditable passions; moreover, of a man to whom friendship was an unknown quantity. It would not be difficult to assemble evidence which would appear to confirm this diagnosis; I am myself convinced, however, that such a picture of the man would be utterly misleading. Duality of character is the only explanation I can find for a series of apparent anomalies. The incalculable good that this man has done in not much more than fifteen years, not by winning this or that battle, not by introducing this piece of legislation, or that alphabet, or by prohibiting the wearing of the fez, or by laicizing the State, by trusting in the genius of a race that had suffered centuries of woeful, soul-standing misgovernment, by liberating incalculable forces merely because he knew that they must not be allowed to suffer further servitude – that good must be the measure of the man’s greatness and the justification of his extraordinary vision. The rest is detail; merely the detail on which a gossip-monger will fasten, but which the historian would do well to reduce to its proper proportion.
7. On the man’s dynamic energy I need not dwell; it is irresistible force has now become one of the most notable chapters in the history of the Turkish race. But I should like to mention another quality, which has not been so self-evident and that was Atatürk’s native and, indeed, unconscious capacity to sift instantly the unessential from the essential, and to discard the former as automatically as a separator divides the milk from the cream.
8. Everywhere in this man’s character, or at least in the current version of it, you find contradictions. His alleged ruthlessness cannot be reconciled with the desire for the affection of his fellow-men that was manifest to those who knew him. His reputed addiction to the sins of the flesh and taste for ephemeral companionships in the half world are difficult to reconcile with the conception of the role of womanhood, and of the rights and dignity of the female sex to which his public acts bore the most striking testimony. For in a few years he abolished polygamy as a legal state, and threw open all the liberal careers to the female sex even, should they so wish it, to the former inmates of cloistered harems. The complete disregard of conventionality which characterized his private life-and it made no difference if at a particular moment he was living his private life in a public place – stood in strange contrast with the impeccability of his dress, the excellence of his manners, and the dignity of his bearing whenever he was acting in an official or representative capacity. Few great men could make you feel more at your ease, fewer, I imagine, could, if needs were, make you feel more uncomfortable.
9. Atatürk disliked and despised what is now known in the west as the “yes-man”, and has long been known in Turkey as the “evetji.” Neither fools nor sycophants did he suffer gladly, and most of all perhaps did he loathe the exploiter and condemn the covetous. To him there was something ridiculous in the idea that someone was working for him. He himself lived, thought, and worked for the country, the race and the people. In his view, others would be merely lacking in their duty if they failed to do likewise.
10. I fear he will go down to posterity as a dictator. I am persuaded that this is a misnomer. A very great leader, yes, both in war and in peace; but a true dictator, no! Unfortunately we have, so far as I know, no accepted definition of a dictator by which to measure him. But, unlike Hitler and Mussolini, he had no administrative or executive function, in the State; he did not have the power of pardon or amnesty; he could not instruct courts of low; he could decline to receive representations from foreign diplomatic representatives. You may brush aside these points as merely technical and urge that in all the activities of the State his will prevailed. That is true; but it prevailed by the more than willing consent of those whose responsibility was engaged. The hard sequence of events had shown that Atatürk’s vision was clear, his judgment discerning, and that he did not make mistakes. Small wonder then, that his counsel was eagerly sought and gladly followed. But what perhaps distinguished him most of all from the typical dictator, classing as such Hitler, Mussolini and Primo de Rivera, was that from the outset he was wittingly, strenuously laboring to create a system that should survive him. And, if the tranquil election of his successor and the unruffled continuity of the regime since his death be any criterion, he has succeeded.
11. There was something almost uncanny about his insight, something superb about his incapability of pettiness or furtiveness, something awe-inspiring in the relentlessness of his power of concentration, something appealing in his subconscious need for warmth and understanding – probably the counterpart of the icy inflexibility of his conscious will.
12. Born a Moslem and become an atheist, he loved righteousness and hated iniquity; a soldier by instinct and profession, he loathed war and, so soon as he had the freedom and the power to do so, he sought peace and ensued it. Since he took control of Turkey’s destinies there is not one of Turkey’s neighbors, most of them the enemies of the Ottoman Empire, some of them its former subjects, to whom the Kemalist Republic has not offered the hand of equal friendship. Mostly the hand has been grasped, and the cumulative effect has been a notable reduction of sources of friction and an equally notable consolidation of peace over a wide area of the hither East.
13. Kemal Atatürk never stopped doing fearlessly what he knew ought to be done and needed to be done. Even when the aggravation of his malady brought death near, fear never touched his heart or his mind. He died in the service of the Turkish people. And even death may not have cheated him of his greatest victory – the restoration of that people of life, dignity, honor, and the means to live; and, most precious gift of all, the freedom to enjoy them.
I have, &c PERCY LORAINE [F.O. 424/282, part 36, p. 42-44, No.54]
I wonder whether, among the hundreds of authors who have written books or essays about Ataturk, Dr. Ihrig, and van Der Leer Institute or Harvard University Press can point to just one other author who was brazen and rude enough to call Ataturk “an alcoholic, (Armenian) womanizer, interested in (Greek) boys”, using the kind of language best left to the streets. Perhaps they thought such ‘sensationalism’ would sell more books, but it is a poor reflection on modern academic research and standards. I wonder if these three authorities will have the courage to look into their individual mirrors and realize the huge mistake they have made and offer public apologies to Turkey for the profound insult they have rendered to the country and one of the inspirational leaders of the 20th Century. I regret that they will neither be that humble nor brave enough to write openly to “armenians-1915.blogspot.com” and post this review together with all the links I have provided to show that the contents of this essay are wrong in fact, in spirit and intent.
Regretfully and cordially,
Sukru Server Aya (Researcher & Writer) Istanbul, October 2015 - to read
For additional essays on Hitler, Jews, Armenians and Turks please also see:
http://armenians- 1915.blogspot.com/2007/05/1713-book-review-turkey-and-jews-of.html
Addendum: As regards the new book to be released in January of Dr. Ihrig, < “Germany and the Armenians from Bismark to Hitler” JUSTIFYING GENOCIDE >, I do not think that I need to waste my time any longer on fabricated fantasies. The prejudice and nonsense are clear from the title; it will be repeating all the fundamental mistakes, enlarging the volume of deficiency on historical facts. Even Hitler did not hear of Armenians until 1941! May be Germany and Armenia had diplomatic relations and Bismark exchanged ambassadors but I have never heard this! ŞSA.
I, as a reader, come to conclusion:
A scholar from "Harvard and Cambridge", can lie and falsify too...
SB
