by Benny Morris
killed in 1895 and her husband and son massacred in 1915. If she survived,
she prob ably would have been raped and murdered in 1919–1924. Certainly
she would have been deported in that last genocidal phase. For most Greeks
and Assyrians, the period of acute persecution would have been restricted to
a “mere” ten years, from 1914 to 1924.
All this said, there were many points of similarity between the two geno-
cides. Much as the Nazis saw the Jew as both an external enemy, controlling
both Anglo- American capitalism and Soviet Bolshevism, and an internal
enemy, polluting German blood and culture, so the Turks saw the Christians
as both the external threat and the subversive internal enemy. During both
genocides the great powers were aware of what was happening—in Turkey,
in real time; during the Holocaust, certainly from 1942— but did next to
nothing to save the victims. The exception was the French sealift of Arme-
nians off Musadağ in 1915.
Both the Nazis and the Turks benefitted from the docility of their victims.
After the Holocaust, many Zionists in Palestine and later Israel blamed the
Conclusion
Jews of Eu rope for going “like lambs to the slaughter,” almost like unresisting
collaborators in their own deaths. The anti- German uprisings in Warsaw, Bi-
alystok, and several other sites, and the activities of a few Jewish partisan
groups, were the rare exceptions rather than the rule. Likewise the vast ma-
jority of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians went to their deaths unresisting;
the preemptive rebellions in Zeytun and Van in 1915, and the resisters on
Musadağ, were also almost unique. In both cases the power of the state and
the situation of the victim populations were such that effective re sis tance was impossible. Neither the Jews in Eu rope nor the Christians in Turkey were
“nationally” or ga nized or armed.
But there was a difference relating to the two victim populations. During
the Holocaust, the Germans found, and made dev ilish use of, Jews to assist
them in the work of destruction. Prominent, usually older, Jews served in the
ghettoes’ Jewish councils (Judenrats), where they “managed” the internal life of the ghettoes and often, on demand, supplied the Germans with lists of
Jews destined for “resettlement.” The Judenrats ran ghetto police forces com-
posed of young Jews with truncheons, who helped maintain order and also
occasionally helped the Germans round up their coreligionists for deporta-
tion to the death camps. And, in the extermination camps, kapos, many of
them Jews, helped with the disposal of the victims’ belongings and corpses
and in the maintenance of the death facilities— the gas chambers, crematoria,
and so on. The council members, ghetto policemen, and Kapos were driven
by an instinct to save themselves for as long as pos si ble but often also, in the case of the Judenrats and police, by a desire to assist their communities or
relatives and friends.
During the Thirty- Year Genocide, Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians were
not recruited, and did not “assist,” their murderers in such institutionalized
ways, according to the evidence we have seen. But, to be sure, there were in-
dividual Christians who informed on other Christians and handed them over
for destruction.
In the course of the massacres, both the Germans and the Turks employed
deceit to smooth the path of murder, to stanch potential trou ble and rebel-
liousness on the part of the victims. The Germans told the Jews they were
being “resettled in the East” and that “work leads to freedom”; the Turks told
the Armenians they were being resettled in the southeast or in Konya, and
Conclusion
Greeks were often led to believe that they were merely being deported just
before they were actually executed. In many cases Armenians were told that
bribes or conversion would lead to salvation, but they were often murdered
after paying bribes or converting.
Both the Germans and the Turks tried, during the years of massacre, to hide
what they were doing from the prying eyes of outsiders. The Turks made sure
that much of the killing was done well outside cities where consuls and mis-
sionaries roamed; the Germans sequestered their murderous enterprise in
closed- off ghettoes and camps, mostly in Poland and the conquered parts of
the Soviet Union. Both peoples subsequently tried to cover up and expunge
the physical traces of the mass killings, by burial and with lime and fire. Both,
in describing what happened and in the language used in operational orders
and reports, deployed euphemisms. It must be pointed out, though, that much
of the original Turkish documentation is inaccessible; perhaps the Turks also
used more explicit terms.
While the Germans did not employ forced marches as a means of killing—
as did the Turks with the Armenians and Greeks— many Jews died in the
marches westward in 1945 as death and concentration camps were disman-
tled in the east. Both genocides witnessed the assembly of victims in concen-
tration camps or special areas as a preliminary to the coup de grace. In the
case of the Turks, these concentration camps were usually open fields, some-
times marked off by barbed wire, in which deportation convoys were halted
for a night or a week or months. Often the camps were near railway termi-
nals, in which the inmates died of disease, exposure, and starvation, much as
many Jews died of the same causes in the ghettos and concentration camps
of Central and Eastern Eu rope.
In the course of both genocides, the perpetrators looted the victims’ prop-
erty on a large scale; mass murder produced economic gain. In both, gold
teeth, and occasionally swallowed jewelry, were extracted from the dead. But
it would appear that German soldiers and civilians enjoyed far less personal
economic gain than did their Turkish counter parts. Looted Jewish property
almost always went to the state or to the leadership, whereas during the Thirty-
Year Genocide, plundered property was “shared” between the state and
countless Muslim civilians, officials, gendarmes, and soldiers.29
Conclusion
There were similarities also in the composition of killing squads. Both
Turks and Germans deployed special- operations units, not just regular troops.
During the Holocaust, initially, much of the killing was carried out in the East
by specially formed Einsatzgruppen; in the Ottoman case, the shadowy Spe-
cial Organ ization served a similar purpose, though its operatives largely used
local troops, gendarmes, and Kurdish hirelings to do the killing. During both
genocides, the chief perpetrators— Germans and Turks— used other ethnic
groups as auxiliaries— Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Frenchmen; Kurds,
Circassians, and Chechens—to round up the victims and murder them.
And, lastly, both peoples, after defeat by the Allies and appropriate regime
changes, tried some of the perpetrators, though the postwar Turkish govern-
ments quickly abandoned the effort and punished almost nobody whereas the
Germans, after initial hesitation, persisted. They tried and punished Nazis for
; de cades. Nonetheless, many Nazis, including actual perpetrators, were reem-
ployed in the bureaucracies of East and West Germany and Austria in the
de cades after World War II. In the Turkish case, the most prominent World
War I– era perpetrators were assassinated by Armenian avengers, but others
often resurfaced in the state apparatus under Mustafa Kemal during the 1920s.
And whereas the German people acknowledged collective guilt, expressed
remorse, made financial reparation, tried to educate itself and future genera-
tions about what had happened, and has worked to abjure racism, successive
Turkish governments and the Turkish people have never owned up to what
happened or to their guilt. They continue to play the game of denial and to
blame the victims.
We set out to discover what happened to the Armenians in Anatolia during
World War I. Our investigation convinced us that the story cannot be con-
fined to 1915–1916 or to the Armenians and that the Turks’ genocidal ethnic-
religious cleansings were designed to deal with all the country’s Christians
and were implemented by successive governments over a thirty- year period.
Since the bouts of atrocity were committed under three very diff er ent ideo-
logical umbrellas, we must resist the temptation to attribute what happened
to an aberrant ideology or to an evil faction or person. Clearly Islam was the
banner under which, for a great majority of the executioners, the atrocities
Conclusion
were perpetrated. But “Islam” in itself is not a sufficient explanation. After all, for centuries the Muslim Ottomans ran an empire that respected religious minorities and protected and allowed them a mea sure of autonomy, as long
as they accepted subordination and obedience. As we have tried to show, it
was the specific convergence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries of a declining, threatened Islamic polity and people and the rise of
modern nationalisms and greed that brought forth this protracted evil.
We approached this study with no po liti cal agenda. Our sole purpose was
to clarify a fateful period of history. But in the years since we embarked on
this journey, the true dimensions of the tragedy gradually unfolded before our
eyes, document after document. We hope that this study illuminates what hap-
pened in Asia Minor in 1894–1924, that it will generate debate and, in
Turkey, reconsideration of the past.
abbreviations
notes
bibliography
acknowl edgments
illustration credits
index
Abbreviations
BOA Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Prime Ministry’s Ottoman
Archives)
A. MKT. MHM
Grand Vizier’s Chamber, Impor tant Affairs Office Documents
DH. EUM
Interior Ministry, Public Security Directorate
DH. EUM. 2Şb
Interior Ministry, Public Security Directorate, 2nd Bureau
DH. EUM. AYŞ
Interior Ministry, Public Security Directorate, Public Order
Bureau
DH. EUM. MEM
Interior Ministry, Public Security Directorate,
Officer Chamber Documents
DH. EUM. SSM
Interior Ministry, Public Security Directorate,
Traffic and Passages Chamber
DH. I. UM
Interior Ministry, General Directory Papers
DH. KMS
Interior Ministry, Directorate of Special Section
DH. ŞFR
Interior Ministry, Cypher Section
HR. SYS
Foreign Ministry, General Intelligence Section, Po liti cal
Documents
IAMM
Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants
I. HUS
Privy Directives
Y. A. HUS
Yıldız Palace, Grand Vizier’s Office, Requests / Petitions
Y. A. RES
Yıldız Palace, Grand Vizier’s Office, Official Submissions
Y. EE
Yıldız Essential Papers
Y. MTV
Yıldız Diverse Submissions
Y. PRK. ASK
Yıldiz Occasional Documents, Military Submissions
Y. PRK. BŞK Yıldız Occasional Documents, Chief Scribal Department
Submissions
Y. PRK. UM
Yıldız Palace, Retail notes of all vilayets
Y. PRK. ZB
Yıldız Occasional Documents, Police Ministry Submissions
Bodl. MS
Bodleian Library MS Collections
Lord Bryce Papers
Rumbold Papers
Toynbee Papers
Abbreviations
British Documents on Ottoman
Şimşir, British Documents on Ottoman
Armenians
Armenians, Vol. 1: 1856–1880
DE / PA- AA- BoKon /
Deutschland, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtiges,
Botschaft-
Konsulat
(Po liti cal Archive of the German Foreign Office,
Embassy-
Consulate)
Ermeni Isyanları
Osmanlı Belgelerinde Ermeni Isyanları
(Armenian Uprising in Ottoman Documents)
Ermeni- Rus Ilişkileri Osmanlı Belgelerinde Ermeni- Rus Ilişkileri
(Armenian- Russian Relations in Ottoman Documents)
FDRL
Franklin Delano Roo se velt Library
HM Sr. Papers
Henry Morgenthau Sr. Papers
FRUS
Foreign Relations of the United States
German Foreign Office Gust,
The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German
Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916
HHStA
Österreich, Haus- Hof- und Staats Archiv, Politisches Archiv,
Türkei (Austrian Habsburg Archives, Po liti cal Archive,
Turkey),
1848–1918
Houghton ABC
Houghton Library, American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign
Missions
LC
Library of Congress
HM Sr. Papers
Henry Morgenthau Sr. Papers
Bristol Papers
Mark Bristol Papers
MAE Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Ministry of Foreign Affairs),
France
Turquie
Nouvelle Serie (NS)— Turquie
Affaires jusqu’à 1896
Affaires Politiques jusqu’en 1896— Turquie
OeUA Ohandjanian,
Österreich- Ungarn und Armenien 1912–1918
SAMECA
St Antony’s College Middle East Centre Archive
Sevk ve Iskan
Osmani Belgelerinde Ermenilerin Sevk ve Iskanı
(Referral and Relocation of Armenians in Ottoman Documents)
SHD
Ser vice Historique de la Défense (Ministry of Defense), France
UKNA
United Kingdom National Archives
FO 371
Foreign Office
WO 95
War Office
USNA
United States National Archives
RG 59
Rec ord Group 59
RG 84
Rec ord Group 84
RG 256
Rec ord Group 256
U.S. Official Rec ords Sarafian,
United States Official Rec ords on the Armenian Genocide
Notes
Introduction
1. Davis to Morgenthau, 30 December 1915, quoted in Suny, They Can Liv
e in the Desert, 320.
2. “Report of Leslie A. Davis, American Consul, Formerly at Harput, Turkey, on the Work of the American Consulate at Harput Since the Beginning of the Pres ent War. This Report is Prepared at the Request of Mr. Wilbur J. Carr, Director of the Consular Ser vice,” 9 February 1918, USNA RG 59, 867.4016, Roll 46. Back in December 1915, Davis briefly mentioned these lakeside trips, “where I saw the dead bodies of fully 10 thousand persons” (Davis to Morgenthau, 30 December 1915, U.S. Official Documents, 474).
3.
Kevorkian,
Armenian Genocide, 400.
4. This was already noted in Ambassador Henry Morgenthau’s 1918 account: “The Armenians are not the only subject people . . . which have suffered from this policy of making Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks. The story which I have told about the Armenians I could also tell . . . about the Greeks and the Syrians” ( Morgenthau’s Story, 323). The Danish minister in Constantinople also noted that the government “has made xenophobia and hatred toward the Christians a leading princi ple in its policies”
(Carl Ellis Wandel to Erik Scavenius, 14 August 1915, http:// www . armenocide . de / armenocide / armgende
. nsf / $$AllDocs - en / 1915 - 08 - 14 - DK - 001).
5.
Kevorkian,
Armenian Genocide; Bloxham, Great Game of Genocide; Akçam, Shameful Act; and Suny, They Can Live in the Desert.
6.
Akçam, “Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies,” 127–148. See also Üngör, Making of Modern Turkey, xiv.
7.
Akçam, “Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies,” 127–148. See also Üngör, Making of Modern Turkey, xiv.
8.
Akçam, Shameful Act, 270.
9. Arnett (Ankara and Istanbul) to Department of State, 12 July 2004, published by Wikileaks, https:// wikileaks . org / plusd / cables / 04ISTANBUL1074 _ a . html.
1. Nationalist Awakenings in the Nineteenth- Century Ottoman Empire
1. The description of events here and in the following pages is based largely on Hanioğlu, Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 109–135; Quataert, Ottoman Empire, 54–73; Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 146–193; and Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 8–18.