20.02.2014

The Zoryan Institute (Toronto), has published the English edition of “The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916”. The book includes hundreds of telegrams, letters and reports from German consular officials in the Ottoman Empire to the Foreign Office in Berlin. The documents provide unequivocal evidence of the genocidal intent of the Young Turks and the German government’s official acquiescence complicity.

The exceptional importance of these documents is underscored by the fact that only German diplomats and military officials were able to send uncensored reports out of Turkey during World War I. Apart from the Americans, who remained neutral in the war until April 6, 1917, German diplomats and their informants from the missions or employees of the Baghdad Railway were the most important non-American eyewitnesses of the Genocide.

These documents, meant strictly for internal use and never intended for publication, are remarkable for their candid revelations. Even as allies of the Ottoman Empire, German officials still felt compelled for moral and political reasons to report and complain about the atrocities being committed against the Armenians by their Ottoman ally.

German journalist, historian and translator Wolfgang Gust, who compiled and edited the book, tells that he was shocked when he knew that Germany kept silence, while mass killings took place at one side of Europe. Gust mentions: “This genocide is not planned or implemented by Germans, but it is allowed by them. The imperial Germany was the closest ally of Young Turks, and had a formal military alliance with them. A question arises, was imperial Germany an effective power in the Armenian Genocide, or perhaps, the author of that idea, as it is claimed by many German historians”.