Αφιεώνεται στον Φίλη και τους λοιπούς κεμαλιστές της Αθήνας: O Χίτλερ, ο Κεμάλ και οι γερμανοτουρκικές σχέσεις 
Hitler, Ataturk, and German-Turkish Relations
Posted By Edward Kanterian
An Interview with Stefan Ihrig
Special for the Armenian Weekly
The following interview with Stefan Ihrig, author of Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler (due
out in December 2015), was conducted by Edward Kanterian, Senior
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kent. Ihrig is the Polonsky Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
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Cover of Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler
Edward Kanterian—Mr.
Ihrig, we know that Mussolini was a major role model for Hitler. But it
is much less known that Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern
Turkish Republic, was another major source of inspiration for Hitler.
You have recently published a book exploring this. Why was Hitler
interested in Atatürk?
Stefan Ihrig—It
all goes back to the early 1920’s. Germany was still in shock about
losing the war and afraid of a punitive peace treaty imposed by the
Entente. In a mood of nationalist depression, events began to unfold in
Anatolia that stirred the passion and dreams of German nationalists.
Under Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk] the Turks were resisting their own
“Turkish Versailles”—the Treaty of Sèvres. They took on all of the
Entente as well as the Greek Army and even defied their own government
in Constantinople. What was happening in Anatolia was like a nationalist
dream-come-true for many in Germany. German nationalists, and the Nazis
especially, thought that Germany should copy what the Kemalists were
doing. Hitler was very much inspired by Atatürk and the idea of the
“Ankara government” in his attempt to set up an alternative government
in Munich in his Beerhall Putsch of 1923. Retrospectively, in 1933, he
called Atatürk and the Kemalists his “shining star” in the darkness of
the 1920’s. The Nazis and Hitler, in a political sense, had grown up
with Turkey and Atatürk. It was a fascination that would not go away and
transformed into something of a cult in the Third Reich.
E.K. —So the main attraction was the fact that Atatürk had resisted the Entente?
S.I. —Yes,
resisting the Entente and revising a Paris peace treaty fascinated the
Nazis. But this was not all. There was also the fact that Turkey had
“rid itself” of most of its minorities, first of the Armenians during
World War I, and second of most of the Greeks in the Treaty of Lausanne
population exchange. And finally, for the Nazis, what was happening in
Turkey in the 1920’s and 1930’s was a successful restructuring and
reconstruction of the country along nationalist/racial lines. For them
it was an example of what a purely national state could achieve under a
strong leader.
E.K. —The
Turkey which had “rid itself” of the Armenians was of course the Turkey
of the Young Turks, whose regime ended in 1918 and in which Atatürk
played only a minor role. So the Nazis’ fascination also extended to the
Young Turks? Presumably they were attracted by both the Young Turks’
and Atatürk’s Turkocentric conception of the Turkish state, which
excluded the multiethnic society that had existed hitherto in the
Ottoman Empire? Is there any direct link between the demographic and
exclusionary policies of Atatürk and that of the Nazis?
S.I. —The
Young Turks were not very important for the Nazis. But “ethnic
cleansing” and the Armenian Genocide before the War of Independence was,
for the Nazis, a major precondition for the success of Ataturk in that
war. And the expulsion of the Greeks was a second precondition, in the
Nazi view, for the further success of rebuilding Turkey along national
lines. Both were for the Nazis something of a “package deal.” What was
important for them was that the ethnic minorities—which they and other
German nationalists perceived to be like “the Jews”—were gone. In the
Nazis’ view of the New Turkey, all this would not have been possible had
Turkey not “rid itself” of the minorities. In this fashion, the Nazis
and other German nationalists were able to portray Atatürk’s New Turkey
as something of a test case of large-scale ethnic-racial
reconstruction—a test case that for them signalled the power of such a
new national state purged of minorities; a test case that not only
re-affirmed their own beliefs in the power of ethnically cleansed states
but showed various ways of how to achieve this.
Stefan Ihrig (Photo: www.stefanihrig.com)
E.K. —To
what extent was the Kemalist state ideology an inspiration to the
Nazis? Presumably they ignored the fact that Atatürk aimed to build a
republic in which the parliament, representing the people, was the main
source of power?
S.I. —The
Nazi vision of Atatürk’s New Turkey was a highly selective one. Almost
everything that conflicted with Nazi ideals and goals was either
downplayed or ignored. The emancipation of women was one such topic; it
was mentioned in passing but not deemed more noteworthy. Atatürk’s
rather peaceful foreign policy was purposefully misunderstood. When it
comes to the state of government under Atatürk, the Nazis saw a powerful
leader governing through a one-party system, which for them was the
only viable alternative to what they perceived as decadent Western
democracy.
E.K. —What was the Nazis’ attitude towards the “Armenian Question” in Turkey?
S.I. —In
the Nazi discussion of the Turkish War of Independence the Armenians
did not play a major role. Again, the Nazis had their own vision of
Atatürk’s rule and times. What was paramount for them was post-1923
Turkey, which they portrayed as something of a mono-ethnic paradise.
They simply refused to see any remaining minorities, such as the Kurds,
for example, and the conflicts that still existed within the Turkish
state. What made the Armenians, on the other hand, so important for the
Nazi discourse on Atatürk’s New Turkey was the specific German tradition
of seeing them as “the Jews of the Orient.”
E.K. —Can
you give some examples how Armenians were seen as “the Jews of the
Orient” in the German discourse? Was this something that happened only
after the First World War or even before?
S.I. —This German tradition has its beginnings in the late 19th century.
Around the same time as modern racial anti-Semitism gained ground, a
perception of the Armenians as racially similar or equivalent to the
Jews of Central Europe as portrayed in anti-Semitic discourse was put
forward. The Armenians were typically described as exploitative
merchants praying upon the kind and hard-working Turkish population.
This perception mainly focused upon the perceived parasitic,
treacherous, and non-productive behavior of the Armenians. That
Armenians carried out all kinds of crafts and labor—that many were, for
example, farmers—was simply ignored in these discourses. In the growing
racial and racialist literature from the late-19th century
up until the 1930’s, the Armenians were portrayed as a parent or sister
race of the Jews. Often they were even described as “worse than the
Jews.” This of course provides for a special German background to the
perception of the events of 1915/16 that is particularly chilling in
light of the further trajectory of German history.
E.K. —This brings us to your new book, which you have just completed, Justifying Genocide, which will be published by Harvard University Press later this year. How did you come to write this book?
S.I. —When
carrying out my research on the Nazis and Turkey, I came across a large
debate about the Armenian Genocide. This debate took place in the early
1920’s and is totally forgotten today. Yet, it was one of the largest
genocide debates of the 20th century.
It truly was a “genocide” debate, even before Raphael Lemkin coined the
term, because it was all about intent and extent of the “annihilation
of a nation.” I tried to reconstruct this debate and to find out why it
lasted so long. You have to envisage a four-and-a-half years long debate
including the first post-war discussions about what had happened, the
heated reception of the publication of Foreign Office documents on the
Armenian Genocide in 1919 already, a strong back and forth between those
condemning what happened as a “murder of a nation” and others denying
this. Furthermore there were assassinations, first of Talat Pasha in
1921 and then of another two prominent Young Turks in 1922, all of which
took place in Berlin and were much discussed in the press of the time.
I wanted to see where all the discursive building blocks employed in
these discussions came from, and thus I explored the German relationship
with the Ottoman Armenians since the late 1870’s. As it turns out,
since Bismarck’s time already the Armenians were assigned a very cynical
role in German foreign policy: They were regularly sold out in order
for Germany to gain political advantages and a more favorable position
in the Ottoman Empire. This continuous selling out of another Christian
people led to German discourses justifying mass murder already in the
1890’s, culminating in the propaganda during World War I as well as with
shocking justificationalist essays during the debate of the early
1920’s.
E.K. —Hitler’s
rhetorical question “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation
of the Armenians?” made in August 1939, apropos the war of annihilation
which he was about to start in the east, is well known. This suggests
that Hitler was at least inspired by the Armenian Genocide. In your new
book, you aim to demonstrate that the Holocaust and the Armenian
Genocide were indeed much more connected than previously thought. How
exactly?
S.I. —The
ongoing debate about recognition and denial has held the Armenian
Genocide in a hostage situation for almost a century and has also led to
it being often only a marginal footnote of broader European and world
history in our accounts and analyses of the time. Yet, it was immensely
important at the time, also and perhaps especially so in Germany. Not
only was Germany closely connected to it as a state and an ally of the
Ottomans, but so were many of its people as diplomats, officers, and
soldiers. The fact that the Ottoman Empire had garnered so much
attention in the German public and political sphere already before 1915
also connected Germany to the Armenian Genocide more closely. And
finally, the great German genocide debate of the early 1920’s brings the
whole matter within a mere decade of Hitler’s ascension to power. The
Armenian Genocide was both chronologically and geographically speaking
much closer to Germany and the Third Reich than is usually alleged; my
book illustrates this in many facets.
‘As it turns out, since Bismarck’s time already the Armenians were assigned a very cynical role in German foreign policy: They were regularly sold out in order for Germany to gain political advantages and a more favorable position in the Ottoman Empire. This continuous selling out of another Christian people led to German discourses justifying mass murder already in the 1890’s, culminating in the propaganda during World War I as well as with shocking justificationalist essays during the debate of the early 1920’s.’
E.K. —There are not many German historians who have researched the Armenian Genocide. What might be the reasons for this?
S.I. —The
topic continues to be one riddled with difficulties and potential
dangers. If you are a historian working on Turkish and Ottoman history,
you did not want to offend the very people you needed in order to get
access to your sources. Another reason was that many of the German
sources from the military archives were lost during World War II. Then
there was the suspicion that broader discussions of the Armenian
Genocide and its relation to Germany could be used to relativize the
Shoah. And finally, the official Turkish denialist campaign has conveyed
the lasting impression or rather has sown the confusion suggesting that
the topic is just too difficult and unapproachable. However, in recent
years many have worked on the German side, providing new studies on
particular aspects and also providing new narratives. I am sure we will
reach a critical mass in the field soon which will lead to a broader
re-evaluation of the Armenian Genocide within German, European, and
world history.
