Yenen, Alp

Alp Yenen

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Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques

Ihrig, Stefan: Justifying genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler

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Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – ReviewsIhrig, Stefan: Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck toHitler. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016, 460pp., ISBN 978-0674504790.Reviewed by Alp Yenen, Departement für Gesellschaftswissenschaften, Universität Basel,Maiengasse 51, 4056 Basel, Switzerland. E-mail: alp.yenen@unibas.chhttps://doi.org/10.1515/asia-2017-0053Hitler apparently got it wrong when he asked, in a popularly cited question:“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” StefanIhrig, professor of history at the University of Haifa, argues in his latest book,Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, thatthere was actually a broader awareness in Nazi Germany of what happened toOttoman Armenians in 1915. Ihrig’s book is about how the extermination of theArmenians was intellectually processed and politically justified – “justification”being Ihrig’s key analytical term in this regard – in a society that would go on tocommit, support, and justify yet another genocide.Justifying Genocide is told in 15 chapters in addition to a prologue, anintroduction, and an epilogue. In his Prologue, Ihrig introduces Franz Werfel,the Nobel laureate author of the Forty Days of Musa Dagh. For Werfel, himself aJew, the Armenians were the “stand-in Jews” (Ersatzjuden) of his story, also anindirect warning of the rise of Nazis. In the Introduction, Ihrig explains why hisbook is about “Germany and its road toward the Holocaust” (p. 6) rather thanabout the Ottoman Empire, Turks, and the tragic fate of the Armeniansin Anatolia. In many ways, Ihrig brings the history of the Armenian Genocidehome – first to Germany and then to Israel, where he lives. In Chapter 1, Ihrigtraces the origins of German anti-Armenianism in Bismarck’s foreign policy doc-trine, in which Armenian suffering was – in Bismarck’s famous words – not worththe life of a single “Pomeranian musketeer” (p. 23). Ihrig goes on in his Chapter 2to discuss the official and public discourse about the massacres of OttomanArmenians in 1890s. He convincingly underlines the political continuity fromBismarck to Wilhelm II, in which Armenians served as “the sacrificial lamb […]of intensifying Ottoman-German relations” (p. 32). This is also when the Germanpublic saw the gradual emergence of racial and anti-Semitic depictions ofArmenians (p. 46, 57) and a new “genocide language” (p. 55). In Chapter 3,Ihrig establishes how the anti-Armenian “racial prism” (p. 59) fully replaced theprevious pro-Armenian “religious prism” (p. 80). These racial stereotypes startedto justify anti-Armenian violence (p. 64) whereby the image of Armenians as theASIA 2017; 71(3): 1039–1043Angemeldet | alp.yenen@unibas.ch AutorenexemplarHeruntergeladen am | 10.12.17 10:27“Jews of the Orient” (p. 74) was becoming an ever more popular discourse. (pp.76–77). The developments from the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 to the eve ofWorld War I are summarized in Chapter 4. From the Belgian atrocities of 1914 (p.95) to the Armenian Genocide of 1915, Chapter 5 discusses the German culture of“military necessities”. Civilian populations were seen through the notions of totalwar as potential combatants and collaborators (p. 96). The struggles of Max Erwinvon Scheubner-Richter, the German consul in Erzurum, against the deportationsand massacres of Armenians in 1915 are told in Chapter 6. In numerous alarmingreports and requests to the rather reluctant German embassy in Constantinople,Scheubner documented the horror of the deportations as “a policy of violentextermination” (p. 123). In Ihrig’s judgement, Germany was “guilty in failing tostop the Young Turks” (p. 134). In Chapter 7, Ihrig returns to the public debate inGermany. Although circumcised by censorship, the Armenian deportations werediscussed through different channels and on different occasions, and more impor-tantly, as Ihrig argues, increasingly in genocidal terms. The question “WhatGermany Could Have Known” is further discussed in Chapter 8. While Germanofficialdom “knew almost everything” (p. 157), most of the press was “aggressivelyagitating against the Armenians” (p. 157). Nevertheless, as Ihrig concludes, “eventhe most naive reader must have realized that something of note had happened tothe Armenians of the Ottoman Empire” (p. 185). After the defeat in 1918, anti-Armenianism was once again combined with anti-Semitism in revanchist stab-in-the-back myths (p. 187–189). Ihrig shows in Chapter 9 how a “fully fledged‘genocide language’” (p. 195) was established in a great debate on theArmenian Genocide. The German Foreign Ministry’s efforts to whitewash theGerman responsibility (p. 210) created a series of cross-paper debates in nationaland provincial newspapers that further contributed to the general knowledge ofthe Armenian Genocide (pp. 214, 219). Once Germany’s role was whitewashed, a“denialist backslash” (p. 220) took over the debates in 1920 with countlessincarnations of old anti-Armenian stereotypes. Ihrig explores in Chapter 10 the“media event” (p. 229) that took place after the assassination of Talat Pasha by anArmenian in Berlin, March 1921. Although this episode started with success fordenialism (p. 233), it became impossible after the sensational trial of Talat Pasha’sassassin Soghomon Tehlirian to deny the extent and intent of the genocide. InChapter 11, Ihrig retells in great detail how Tehlirian’s defense attorneys were ableto illustrate the jury (and the public) that Talat Pasha was responsible for the“systematic management” of the mass murder of Armenians (p. 257). While anti-Armenian newspapers tried to justify the massacres, many other newspaperscame to terms with the shocking reality of the Armenian Genocide (p. 266).Although what Ihrig calls a “pre-Lemkin definition of genocide” was establishedin the debates surrounding the Talat Pasha Trial (p. 271), as Chapter 12’s title puts1040 Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – ReviewsAngemeldet | alp.yenen@unibas.ch AutorenexemplarHeruntergeladen am | 10.12.17 10:27it, racial arguments about Armenians and the national tropes of “stab-in-the-back” led rather to “The Victory of Justificationalism” (p. 275). Genocide wasalready considered by many Germans, as Ihrig illustrates, as a “universal phe-nomenon” that could readily be committed against Europe’s own “foreigners”,namely Jews (p. 294). Chapter 13 turns to the intellectual history of racial andracist literature and explores how an “Armenian-Jewish conflation” was intellec-tually constructed in 1920s and 1930s. The so-called “Armenoid” race was increas-ingly depicted as similar, same, or even worse than as the “Jewish race”, bothassociated with the “lesser”, “Oriental”, or “Near Eastern” races (pp. 306–307).Many emerging Nazi ideologues, including Hitler, used to refer to Armenians as alesser race similar to Jews (p. 318). In Chapter 14, Ihrig summarizes his previousresearch on how the Nazis perceived Kemalist Turkey as a “postgenocidal wonder-land” (p. 320). The Nazi personality cult about Atatürk (p. 327) went on tocelebrate the annihilation of Armenians and the population exchange of Greeks(p. 331). The final Chapter 15 delivers “cumulative evidence” that implies that theNazis were aware of and influenced by the Armenian Genocide (p. 334). Ihrigdemonstrates how a complex of people epistemically connects the ArmenianGenocide to the Holocaust (pp. 333–338, 352). Thanks to “Turkish lessons”, asIhrig argues, the Nazis knew that war could create an opportunity and cover forgenocidal measures without facing international punishment or domestic outrage(pp. 353–354). Ihrig draws the conclusion that the Armenian Genocide and theJewish Holocaust are “intimately and directly linked” in German experience andknowledge (p. 357). The Epilogue closes the narrative circle by going back toFranz Werfel and his Forty Days of Musa Dagh which is considered a literarytestament of genocidal struggle and survival by both Armenian and Jewishgenocide survivors (pp. 364–369).This excellently written book covers diverse aspects of anti-Armenianism inGermany within a complex but well-structured narrative. The general contex-tualization of Ottoman and Turkish history could have surely profited from adenser engagement with the recent scholarship in Ottoman history, but Ihrigmostly keeps a safe distance and sticks to German discourses. A chance todiscuss the relationship between German Orientalism and anti-Armenianism is,however, unfairly dismissed by Ihrig (p. 60), implying that the latter was moresimilar to anti-Semitism and, thus, something else or even something worse. Onthe contrary, anti-Semitism (as well as anti-Armenianism) has always been partand parcel of Orientalism. Only few mistakes in the book caught my attention. Itwas, of course, Shakib Arslan, the former Ottoman deputy of Hauran and a closeassociate of Enver and Talat, and not “Şefik Arslan” (p. 274), who wrote an openletter to Johannes Lepsius. Walter Rößler, German consul in Aleppo, is twicementioned as the German consul in Adana (pp. 130, 352); the latter was, in fact,Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – Reviews 1041Angemeldet | alp.yenen@unibas.ch AutorenexemplarHeruntergeladen am | 10.12.17 10:27Eugen Büge. Recent studies of the Turkish-German revanchist milieu in post-warBerlin could have been used to provide a more vivid context on the Germanpublic debates. One of the most vocal anti-Armenian public figures, HansHumann, was not only an old friend of Enver Pasha, as Ihrig rightly notes, butwas also intimately linked to underground and propaganda activities of thefugitive Young Turk leaders in Berlin. Theodor Wolff and his BerlinerTageblatt’s editorial turn from pro-Armenian to anti-Armenian reporting (pp.211–213, 231, 233) was perhaps indeed the outcome of an alleged interview whichWolff conducted with Talat Pasha, as it is told by journalist Arif Cemil (Denker)who claims to have arranged this secret meeting. But such details do not takeanything away from the book’s main thesis that the Armenian Genocide waswell-known but politically justified in the German public discourse and evermore in racial arguments.Most importantly, Ihrig offers a subjective and discursive understandingof genocide. Although the term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin in1940s, the way the incidents of 1915/16 were framed both by pro-Armenianand anti-Armenian authors in Germany left no doubt that they were allreferring to (or justifying) an idea of a genocide. This is a very importantintervention that extends the analytical use of genocide in historical contexts.Ihrig correctly asserts that his “book is more about the discourses and therealities these discourses created than about the realities on the ground”(p. 8). Therefore, historians should be cautioned not to simply projectGerman racial discourses onto the minds of the Young Turk leadership andtheir local accomplices who most certainly had their own genocide dis-courses. Unfortunately, there is no theoretical discussion of how genocidediscourses are constructed and meditated, and how to deal with such dis-cursive realities. For example, Ihrig shows that the 1890s massacres ofOttoman Armenians were already discussed in “genocidal terms” (p. 38).This is an important observation, but does it make this “string of massacres”(p. 34) a genocide? Even more, how do we deal with public authors’ cognitiveand factual relativism based on their (pro-Armenian or anti-Armenian) pre-dispositions? The issue gets even more perplexing, because Ihrig takes – forgood reason – a very critical stand against the moral relativism in genocidedenials and justifications. For example, Tehlirian’s emotional court-roomtestimony on how he witnessed the murder of his family during theArmenian Genocide is told in great detail and with acknowledgement, butonly to be revealed, as an aside, to be a false testimony (p. 263). But howshould we deal with manipulated and manipulating discourses, not only incruel cases of genocide denialism and justification, but also when thesegenocide discourses were on the right end of the moral compass? In this1042 Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – ReviewsAngemeldet | alp.yenen@unibas.ch AutorenexemplarHeruntergeladen am | 10.12.17 10:27post-truth age, such complex considerations deserve more theoretical discus-sion than a straightforward moral contention.Despite the lack of theoretical discussion, Ihrig’s book’s intellectual meritswill find well-earned attention not only in the growing body of comparative,cultural, and global approaches in genocide studies, but also in the intellectualhistories of anti-Semitism. For comparative and complementary insights intoTurkish genocide discourses, I advise students of Armenian, Turkish, andOttoman studies to read Ihrig’s book in conjunction with Fatma Müge Go ̈çek’s(2015) Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violenceagainst the Armenians, 1789–2009. All in all, Ihrig conducted rich empiricalresearch on the “dark intellectual history of genocide” in Germany (p. 302)that is unlikely to be surpassed in its comprehensiveness. Justifying Genocideis a timely contribution to various fields and offers complex and thought-provoking arguments. Both specialist and non-specialist readers will find itaccessible and engaging.Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – Reviews 1043Angemeldet | alp.yenen@unibas.ch AutorenexemplarHeruntergeladen am | 10.12.17 10:27

Review of Stefan Ihrig, Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler

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Review of Stefan Ihrig, Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler

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