the IRONY
… >
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] (http://armenians1915.blogspot.com/2008/04/2429-new-e-book-genocide-of-truth-based.html) and “The Genocide of
Truth Continues, but…” [GTC](http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2014/01/3432-free-e-bookgenocide-of-truth.html). (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.”
1
This review will be sent to several academic magazines and will, most likely, be posted in the BLOG of
“Armenian Genocide Research Center” (armenians-1915.blogspot.com) 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)https://www.academia.edu/5148333/DIFFERENT_OPINIONS_ON_OTTOMAN_AND_GERMAN_POLIT
ICAL_MILITARY_AND_ECONOMIC_RELATIONS
(German) https://www.academia.edu/5148315/Unterschiedliche_Meinungen_uber_die_politischmilitarische_und_wirtschaftliche_Beziehungen_zwischen_den_Osmanen_und_Deutschen
(Turkish)https://www.academia.edu/5148357/OSMANLI__ALMAN_ILISKILERINDE_SIYASI_EKONOMIK_ve_ASKERI_ALANLARDA_FARKLI_DUSUNCELER
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”
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/17/top10s.hitler.thirdreich <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
2
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 “Armenians1915.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-preservingmemory-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!
3
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!
4
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 978-085034125-6 (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-fascistpresident/ 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.
[Below, TRINITY of Emblems: Italy, Germany, and USA]
5
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
6
(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-needno-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
7
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-seriesinnocent-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:
8
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.comHandelsregister 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”October2014JOURNAL 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
9
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 20565887 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/2008/10/2610genocide-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
10
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-emoryniles-and-mr-arthur.html and http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2009/04/2813-conditions-innear-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
11
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
12
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
13
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.”
14
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 4 th
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://armenians1915.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.
15
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 nonexistent 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/2007/06/1747free-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)
16
(Page 253 of GTC)
On the left you see a page from Berenbaum’s Museum Book. We all know about Anne Frank and the diary she
kept. On the right you have another page from the same book showing how Germans occupation encircled the
Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam on Feb.12, 1941.
But the “devoted” historians apparently were unaware that there were 22,000
Armenian Legion soldiers (4,800 of them SS) in the Nazi army under command of
General (Butcher) Dro Drastamat Kanajian, who had fought against Turks, then,
escaped to Europe and later became Hitler’s counsel because he knew Russians
and their tactics. On the left, the Nazi Armenian Paper “HAYASTAN” (Feb.1945)
gives Hitler’s message of German victory (even when the war was lost, still urging
Armenians to fight). I would not be surprised if the Armenian Legion was actually
used to round up Jews and find Anne Frank!1
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
17
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
18
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
19
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 1933-19341935 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. (?)
20
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:
Photo #1: Title: ARMENIAN VOLUNTEERS IN NAZU WEHRMARCHT SWEAR LOYALTY TO
THE FUHREE. (German soldiers with three new soldiers in the front of German flag with right hands up in Nazi salute. –
Photo taken on August 5, 1944 by German War Correspondent, Strohmeyer)
Photo # 2 : Title: ARMENIAN VOLUNTEERS FROM TURKEY IN NAZI SERVICE DURING
WORLD WAR – Berlin 1943.Up: Armenians on Paıl Leverkuen’s staff visit Nazi Propagada Minister Juseph Paul Goebbels
before returning to Middle East to spread Nazi Propaganda from base in Adana. (Photo: Four soldiers facing Goebbels.)
Under: Title: Armenian volunteers in Wechrmacht training before dispatch to join Nazi invasion of Soviet Union. (Photo
shows some soldiers in running status in a battlefield with barbed wires.)
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
21
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:
<http://www.salom.com.tr/salomTurkey/haber-96517-we_jews_understand_what_being_a_refugee_means.html>
[“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
22
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: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933-1945_senelerinde_T%C3%BCrkiye%27ye_s%C3%BCrg%C3%BCn
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.
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19230324,00.html
(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.
23
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!
24
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,
25
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
26
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-noarchives.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)?
27
(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.htmlReports 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!“
28
“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)
orhttp://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!
29
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 antiSemitic 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 preKemalist 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.
30
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:
http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2005/07/266-armenias-jewish-scepticism-and-its.html
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 812thBattalion. 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”. ”
31
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).
32
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 multiparty 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!
33
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.
34
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
35
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:
* http://s256.photobucket.com/user/LDDnonstop/profile/
* https://picasaweb.google.com/105274642392277132294/ArmenianGenocideBallyhoo
* http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=792_1417447993#M2UtJlOhcPhGM7Jq.99
*https://picasaweb.google.com/105274642392277132294/BiggestPhotoArchiveOfWorldOfArmenianGenocideLie
36
*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
Armenians claim that Hitler mentioned their massacres
in his speech before attacking Poland. This a LIE!
Left: Armenian Nazi Newspaper of
February 1945, message of victory by
Hitler. Next “butcher” General DRO
head of the Armenian Nazi Legion army
of 22.000 (4.800 special SS troops).
Since he knew well Russian language
and military tactics he was consulted
by Hitler frequently. He was accepted
in USA as a hero!
Left: Cover of a magazine for the
FORGOTTEN ARMENIAN LEGION!
<<< Special soldier name plates made for Armenians!
When WW1 ended, these 22.000 Nazi Armenian soldiers
became “innocent displaced persons” and were admitted in
USA with special affidavits and tariffs! Even criminal
127
General DRO wanted by Russians, was admitted!
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.
What were Turks doing when
Armenian Legion was picking up Jews?
Further left, map showing Turkish
consulates and Embassies open during
WW-2! Left Consul General of Rhodes
Selahattin Ulkumen with “Yad Vashem”
prize given by Israel for his saving
hundreds of Jews and sending them
via Turkey to Palestine!
Below left an identification document
for Turkish Citizenship of Jews who
lived in Turkey before moving to
France.
Left: Ambassador Behic Erkin at
Vichy’s France! Ex-colonel and
Ataturk’s friend! He sent tens of
thousands of Jews by train via
Turkey to Palestine! He had both
Iron Cross and Legion D’honeur
medals and was “untouchable”.129
37
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: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect:
“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
38
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
39
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 capacitythere 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.
40
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.
41
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.htmwith 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:
42
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”?
d) 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?).
e) 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
43
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 20 th
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.”
44
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”...
2
45
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.
46
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 “armenians1915.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.htmlby
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.
47
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
48
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
49
For additional essays on Hitler, Jews, Armenians and Turks please also see:
http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/05/1707-richard-hovannisian-vs-stanford.html
http://armenians- 1915.blogspot.com/2007/05/1713-book-review-turkey-and-jews-of.html
http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008/02/2365-hitler-and-armenian-question-by.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!
50