In many human records there may be contradictions, and interpretations may be disputed by different parties. But a "statement", a single sentence attributed to a man; i.e., Hitler, whose opinions are now in utter . . disrespect, is a detestable piece of propaganda. It is ugly and loathsome to expect any gain from words, supposed to have been uttered by someone whose uniqueness in history has been to lead a great nation off to war, conquest and ruin. How can just ten words summarize a controversial phenomenon of the last century and the beginning of the present one?
Dr. Turkkaya Ataöv, Hitler and the Armenian Question
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ADDENDUM, 9-07: The original documentation is featured on this page.
The Hitler Quote is the one big gun the Armenians possess in their sparse evidence for the "Genocide." it always crops up when the Armenians list their reasons for their genocide's occurrence.
The idea, of course, is to link the “Armenian cause” to that of the Jewish victims of W.W. II, so that public opinion can more readily swallow the idea of a genocide.
The interesting thing is that this quote is always quoted... not quite the same. PBS's "The Great War" program, for example, reported the quote as: "Who remembers the Armenian massacres today." Below, you'll find Professor Gerard Weinberg's example, "Who today remembers the Armenian extermination?" Then there is the more customary, “Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?”
If Hitler made such a quote, I feel it should at least be quoted the way he was supposed to have said it!
This quote grabbed first major attention in the November 24, 1945 issue of The Times of London, (after debuting in a 1942 book, as you will read below) basing its attribution to Hitler in an address given by him on August 22, 1939. Officers of the Nuremberg Tribunal located the speeches’ original minutes, as an attempt was made to insert the quote into the proceedings; these were admitted as evidence, and nowhere was there
mention of Armenians.
There are a few interesting aspects to this all-important quote.
1) The 1939 speech alludes to Hitler's invasion of Poland. It had nothing to do with The Final Solution of the Jews, which would not be implemented for another three years, with the Wannsee Conference gathering. So if Hitler actually made this quote, the Armenian case is to be correlated with the plight of the Poles, not the Jews.
2) The Armenian reference doesn't tie in with the rest of the speech. It comes out of nowhere. (Read the widely varying versions here.)
3) If you read what came before from the above link, both versions attest to Hitler's having said, in so many words, "I have given the order, and will have anyone shot who utters one word of criticism." Hitler was a megalomaniac. The Armenian reference sounds like he was going out of his way to justify his actions. Did Hitler need such justification?
4) What was Hitler... a great social scientist? What did he know about the Armenian "Genocide" anyway? (Is it possible that Hitler's pappy was obsessed with the Armenians, reading his son bedtime massacre stories, as German Photographer Armin Theophil Wegner's dad is reported to have mysteriously done?) At any rate, if Hitler actually made this quote, we can now conclude he made two great blunders in his life, the other being the invasion of the Soviet Union. "Who remembers the Armenian massacres today"? Why, EVERYBODY remembers them! The Armenians and other Turk-haters have harped on the "genocide" issue, having made it a cause of their existence..! They have the wealth, power and obsession to even clutter up government parliaments hoping to pass meaningless resolutions, as if they were the only ones who have historically suffered. What is NOT remembered are the tons of other examples of man's inhumanity to man. Certainly, the massacres of Turks by Armenians are on this list. A dramatic example is one of a relatively contemporary genocide that actually succeeded. Hitler would have been more correct to have said, "Who remembers the TASMANIAN massacres today." (I believe the only Tasmanian survivor is the one from the Bugs Bunny cartoons; now you know why he's always infuriated.)
5) The Germans were very sensitive about being blamed for the Armenian massacres. Here is a passage from "The Literary Digest" for October 27, 1917, an article entitled GERMAN GUILT FOR ARMENIAN BLOOD:
NEVER has Germany been connected so intimately with the Armenian horrors as in the testimony of the Rev. Alpheus Newell Andrus, senior missionary for the Congregational Station at Mardin, Mesopotamia. The plan to extirpate the Armenian Christians from Turkey was "made in Germany and suggested to the Turks by German officials," he declares, with the further information that wherever the Armenians made a stand against their Moslem oppressors "it was German officers and German cannon that broke them up." The far-sighted Germans, he explains in the New York Evening Post, were looking forward to the time when "they expected to gain complete dominion in Turkey, and they wanted to eliminate the Armenian question by getting rid of the Armenian race."
Of course, the writer was a missionary, so we don't have to pay attention to his nonsense... it's all his ridiculous opinion. However, this is the kind of conclusion that made the Germans quake in their boots! Probably the ultimate reason why Talat Pasha's assassin was allowed to walk a free man. Imagine the impact this trial must have caused in Germany, with the reputation of the German nation on the line. No doubt the German press, just like the German defense attorneys, did all they could to give the Turks a black eye. Where was Adolf Hitler during all this? As a young man, he was probably reading all about how the Turks systematically planned to exterminate the poor, Christian Armenians. So even if Hitler made this quote.... it has no significance regarding whether the Turks were guilty of genocide!
The irony, of course, is that the evidence is overwhelming about this quote being fabricated, just like so many other pieces of "evidence" the Armenians have cooked up. Let's examine a few of these.
Armenian “Hitler Quote” Proven To Be Fabrication
“The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians”
by Dr. Heath W. Lowry
reviewed by Leon Picon
Speaking before the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh in 1983, Professor Richard Hovannisian of UCLA, the dean of Armenian-American historians, echoed a bit of the crumbling pseudo-history on which Armenians today base much of their claims of the ill-termed ~genocide of 1915.” He told his audience interalia:
“Perhaps Adolf Hitler had good cause in 1939 to declare, according to the Nuremberg trial transcripts, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?”
It is now obvious that Professor Hovannisian never checked the Nuremberg trial transcripts to which he attributes this Hitlerian quotation. Dr. Heath W. Lowry of the Institute of Turkish Studies, however, did go through the Nuremberg records painstakingly, and the results of his research are fascinating. Lowry shows quite conclusively that “the Hitler Quote,” which has taken on a life of its own among Armenian— and even Holocaust scholars—during the past forty years, does not appear at all anywhere in the Nuremberg transcripts.
Mr. Hitler gives a speech
“There is no proof [writes Lowry] that Adolf Hitler ever made such a statement. Everything written to date has attributed the purported Hitler quote, not to primary sources, but to an article that appeared in the Times of London on Saturday, November 24, 1945. Said article, entitled “Nazi Germany’s Road to War,” cites the quote and bases its attribution to Hitler on an address by him to his Commanders-in-chief six years earlier, on August 22, 1939, a few days prior to his invasion of Poland. According to the unnamed author of the Times article, the speech had been introduced as evidence during the November 23, 1945, session of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Hitler is quoted as having stated, 'Thus, for the time being I have sent to the East only my Death’s Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?’ However, this version of the address was never accepted as evidence in this or any other session of the Nuremberg Tribunal.”
The first appearance of this spurious “quotation” was in a book entitled What About Germany? written by an American newspaperman, and published in 1942. It is to this book and to the Times article—and only to them that the Hitler Quote is traceable; yet, while the quote has been used a myriad of times by Armenian scholars ad publicists, no one has attributed it to either of these sources. Nor is mention ever made of the fact that an attempt was made to have the quote inserted into the Nuremberg proceedings, but the Tribunal rejected the material as evidence because it was a “garbled merger” of two Hitler speeches obtained from questionable sources. The American newspaperman, undoubtedly Louis Lochner of the Associated Press, as Dr. Lowry documents, had a penchant for embellishing facts. Officers of the Nuremberg Tribunal, obviously aware of this, sought and fortunately located the original minutes taken of the Hitler speech (or speeches); these were admitted as evidence; and nowhere is there any mention of Armenians!
In taking on a life of its own, the spurious Hitler Quote has gone through several metamorphoses in the hands of Armenian publicists. Claiming that Hitler made this statement to justify his plans for the extermination of the Jews of Europe, Armenians have used the “quotation” to help them gain access to Holocaust programs and curricula. The fact remains that nowhere, even in the Lochner and Times versions of the Hitler speech of August 22, 1939, are Jews mentioned at all! Nevertheless, Armenians have been successful in persuading members of the United States Congress to read into the Congressional Record statements linking the Hitler quote to the Holocaust. Dr. Lowry has done us a service by detailing the lack of knowledge of a number of members of our Legislative Branch and their blind acceptance of the output of the Armenian Assembly.
Dr. Lowry’s article, which appeared in Political Communication and Persuasion, Volume 3, Number 2 (1985), is compact and well-documented. An appendix to the article contains excerpts from the Congressional speeches on the Armenians. Were it not so tragic, it becomes amusing to read these excerpts just to see the degree to which Members of Congress can garble a single quotation and distort its alleged purport. It is with justification that Lowry concludes his article with a plea to the Congress:
“Finally given the serious problems facing our nation, e.g., the arms race, unemployment, and budget deficits, in conjunction with the fact that as this study has repeatedly demonstrated, history is clearly not the forte of many U.S. Congressmen and Senators, it is not impertinent to suggest that the Congress would be better served if its members were to confine their activities to the business at hand and leave the writing of history to the historians.”
It is of more than passing interest to observe that with the publication of Heath Lowry’s research another of the props sustaining the Armenian claims of “genocide” collapses. Now, after more than forty years since its fabrication, the “Hitler Quote” has been exploded. The central problem still remains, however. The mythology that has been developed around the events of 1915 has been repeated so often that large segments of even educated people have come to to accept the mythology as History. One can only hope that as solid research continues to be conducted on this period of history by dispassionate scholars, truth will sift down and displace the mythology at all educational levels. It has been said that myths die hard. The Myth of the “Hitler Quote” should have died in infancy.
From ATA-USA, Fall 1985-Winter 1986
(Holdwater adds: it is precisely because of the impeccable research Dr. Heath Lowry was conducting during these years that the Armenian propaganda commando units eventually directed their artillery against the professor, in an attempt to discredit him. Unlike the "pseudo-history" of professional Armenian "Genocide" scholars such as Professor Richard Hovannisian, the only thing that matters is the quality of the research itself. The first work of Dr. Lowry's that I read were his examinations in "The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story," and I was genuinely impressed with his thoroughness.)
ADDENDUM: Subsequent to the writing of the above, I encountered Professor Lowry's work on the Hitler Quote, in its entirety... it has been provided, below.
Politically, "Hitler" is a magic word that conjures up an all too true image of undisputed evil. He is quoted on the Armenian Question for polemic and political purpose, to tie the Turks to Hitler's evil. In the modern world nothing defames so well as associating your enemies with Hitler. This is all absurdity, but it is potent absurdity that convinces those who know nothing of the facts. It is also a deliberate distortion of history.
Justin McCarthy
An Armenian Historian's Doubts
HISTORIAN OF ARMENIAN DESCENT SAYS FREQUENTLY USED HITLER QUOTE IS NOTHING BUT A FORGERY
Baden-Baden, W. Germany - Dr. Robert John, a historian and political analyst of Armenian descent from New York City, declared here that a commonly used quotation of an alleged statement by Adolf Hitler concerning the Armenian massacres was a forgery and should not be used.
Dr. John demonstrated how he had traced the original document in the Military Branch of the National Archives of the U.S.A. after being handed a folder bearing the quotation at a rally outside the United Nations building in New York following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
The quotation: “Our strength is in our quickness and our brutality.... For the time being I have sent to the east only Death’s Heads units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children... Who talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”
Dr. John showed slides of this document, undated and unsigned, with some words cut out of the last page. The statement was supposed to have been made at a meeting of the top German staff of the Obersalzberg on August 22, 1939. The document was released to the international press covering the Nuremberg War Crimes trials on Friday, November 23, 1945. The trials had commenced that Monday. The document was one of several made available to the press that day. Two-hundred-fifty copies were given to press correspondents, but only five copies were given to the 17 defense counsels - 24 hours before the Court convened on Monday!
Much later in the trial, the German defense lawyers were able to introduce the most complete account of the address, taken down by German Admiral Hermann Boehm, which runs to 12 pages in translation. There is no mention of the Armenians or the rest of the “quotation.”
Dr. Robert John said he believed that the document was introduced to create a climate of hate which was needed to stifle the protests of eminent American jurists such as Sen. R. Taft and Chief Justice Harland Stone. He had discussed it with Gen. Telford Taylor, who had said, “I know the document you mean, I don’t know its provenance, and I have not used it in my own work.”
“We all believe that violence breeds violence,” said Dr. John. “There has been an increase in Armenian violence since this false inflammatory statement was given publicly. Films like ‘The Day After’ are a form of violence, and should not be shown to children - who are unable to evaluate their content. Films about the “Holocaust” are a form of violence and are harmful to us as well as to Jews. There is a high probability that the
surprising violence and brutality shown by the Israelis towards the
Palestinians, may be a result of being frequently exposed to these old scenes. Just as parents who abuse their children have often been abused themselves.”
Dr. John briefly traced the history of atrocity propaganda, particularly from the British — and later — American view. Real atrocities certainly occurred, but the deliberate fabrication and dissemination of atrocity stories increased the probability of their occurring. “Hate hurts the hater and hated. We are still living in the haze of distortions and actual horrors which occurred so long ago.” he commented.
“The time has come to stop psychologically damaging ourselves and our children by “Holocaust studies” and Holocaust” museums,” he continued. “The Armenian, the Jew, or the African, should not damage their development with a continual conditioning of hate, neither should spurious guilt be visited upon others. These negative preoccupations and obsessions are obstructing our evolution.”
Dr. John, whose paper is entitled “Information and Misinformation,” hails from Armenian parents who moved from New Julla, Iran to India. His father changed his name from Hovhanes to “John,” and subsequently the family moved to England. Dr. John studies law in England and holds a doctoral
degree in political science from London University. He is presently a contributor to the London, England based The Middle East Magazine monthly, and in addition to giving lectures, is a frequent contributor to numerous magazines and publications. He is also the author of Palestine Diary, and specializes in Middle Eastern issues, including the Palestinian issue.
The REPORTER
“America’s Leading Armenian Newspaper,” August 2, 1984
Evidence the Quote Might be Valid
The following is from a letter published in The New York Times, June 1985:
Hitler Remark on Armenians Reported in '39
To the Editor:
Robert John, in his letter of June 8, maintains that the reference to Hitler's comment "Who today remembers the Armenian extermination?" is a dubious one. The only dubious matter may be his research.
In detailed and careful articles that appeared in the scholarly quarterly Issued by the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich in 1968 and 1971, Winfried Baumgart has demonstrated that the account by Adm. Hermann Böhm, on which your correspondent relies, is an abbreviated and inaccurate one — perhaps not so surprising in that Böhm was a great admirer of Hitler as opposed to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the author of the more detailed account.
The reference to the Armenians occurs in a document handed secretly to the British Government on Aug. 25, 1939; It was published by the British Government In the official series "Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-39," volume VII, 1954; the ribbon copy of the actual document as handed to the British Ambassador in Berlin in 1939 may be seen in Ambassador Neville Henderson's papers in the Public Record Office at Kew.
Since the record shows that the British Government received the document containing the reference to the Armenians on Aug. 29, 1939, your correspondent's suggestion that those who issued It did so with a deliberate intent to deceive the world In 1945 reflects on his rather than their motives.
Anyone seriously interested In the issues surrounding Hitler's speech of Aug. 22, 1939, In which he mentioned the "Vernichtung der Armenier," the destruction of the Armenians, can find the evidence summarized, with detailed references to the sources In my book "The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II, 1937-39," pages 610-612.
GERHARD L. WEINBERG
William Rand Kenan Jr. Prof. of History
University of North Carolina
Chapel HIll, June 12, 1985
Holdwater says: Boy, the professor was rather harsh with Professor Robert John, was he not? "Reflects on his rather than their motives," implying John's findings had to do with dishonesty. I hope Prof. Weinberg wasn't socking it to Robert John because John appears to have been pro-Palestinian. (ADDENDUM: It appears John was the co-author The Palestine Diary, for which Arnold Toynbee wrote the foreword.)
At any rate, this is the only "evidence" I've come across over the years that cast doubt in my mind. I'm not one to hide anything that appears valid, because the truth is all that matters.
---------------------
Stop the presses! A while after writing the above, I encountered the following from an Armenian web site:
Historian Finds Hitler's Statement On Genocide
WASHINGTON (Noyan Tapan) American historian, Robert John, while researching through the American military archives in Washington, came across an original, primary source with Adolf Hitler's infamous quote "Our strength lies in our intensive attacks and our barbarity...Who today remembers the genocide of the
Armenians?"
The document once again proves, Hitler made that statement at a meeting of the highest officials of the Third Reich which took place on August 22, 1939, in Salzburg.
Yet another re-wording of the famous Hitler quote!
If this account is true, it looks like Armenian historian Robert John has reversed himself completely. And he had to go all the way to the ... American military archives??... to do so. If this is really the case, it would appear Dr. John dismissed the words of Gerhard Weinberg, who mentioned exactly where the Armenian reference occurred, all the way back in 1985.... in his rude reply to Dr. John, that Dr. John was undoubtedly aware of. Perhaps Dr. Weinberg's explanation is not as clear-cut as it sounds.
And look at this! I thought the word "genocide" was coined by Rafael Lemkin of Poland in 1944... according to this Armenian report, Adolf Hitler was on record to have used the word "genocide" before anyone else!
ADDENDUM (3-05):
A reader named Mike wrote he communicated with Robert John, and the professor passed on his original letter, and the reply to Dr. Weinberg, which The New York Times also published. When I have the time, I'll scan one or both and put them up.*
There doesn't seem to be as much for Weinberg's "evidence" as first met my eye.
MUCH more importantly, the news service which provided the Jan. 24 2002 item on John's reversal (Azbarez Online, "Armenian Daily Newspaper") is a false one, according to Robert John himself. I see the organization's byline reads, "ASBAREZ provides this news service for academic research or personal use only." Of what value is a news service that prints "facts" without verifying them?
I suspect whomever came up with this "forgery" that Andonian would have been proud of was perfectly aware Robert John wasn't simply an "American" historian, but an Armenian-American one. They knew that the rare Armenians who provide contrary evidence to the genocide con are particularly harmful, and someone planted this doubt-casting falsification, singing "The Armenian AND? Anthem," all the way. Disgraceful.
=================================
* Okay, here it is, a month later and I got around to the task. Please bear in mind the quality of the copies was poor, and there may be errors in the "translation."
Here is the first letter of Dr. John's, appearing in The New York Times on June 8, 1985:
Did Hitler Say It?
To the Editor:
The Turkish Ambassador challenges Armenian use of “the purported Hitler quotation — "Who today remembers the Armenian extermination?" He writes: "But Hitler is not known to have made such a statement! The proceedings of the Nurernberg tribunal, usually given as the source, establish that no document that includes this quotation was introduced there."
I have researched this question and Included my findings in a paper I gave at the Orwellian Symposium at Baden-Baden, West Germany, in August 1984. Its title was "Information and Misinformation — Can We Free Ourselves?"
The "official" use of the quotation by the Armenian community came to my attention following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. It was contained in a brochure handed out at a protest demonstration outside the United Nations in New York. I subsequently traced its author to Boston and spoke to him by telephone. He told me that the quotation was to be found In The Times of London for Nov. 24, 1945, in an account of the proceedings of the Nuremberg tribunal; and he invited me to let him know of any findings that might reflect upon it.
Years later. in the military branch of the National Archives in Washington, I held the original of the document in my hand. It consists of three typewritten pages, with one or two words physically cut of the last page. It was handed to the tribunal by the journalist Louis Lochner and purports to be an account of a speech given by Hitler to his service chiefs at Obersalzberg on Aug. 22, 1939.
It contains the quotation; “Our strength is in our quickness and our brutality... For the time being I have sent to the east only my Death’s Head units, with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children... Who talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?"
A copy of this “document,” with copies of other official documents, was issued to the international press covering the Nuremberg War Crimes trials on Friday, Nov. 23, 1945, the end of the first week of the trials. Quotations from it appeared the next day in The Times of London, The New York Times and, I am sure, other major newspapers. No account of it appears in the proceedings of the trials, but in the proceedings for the Monday morning following, there is a protest by German defense counsel about documents being issued to the press, some of them undated and unsigned.
Moreover, under questioning, Colonel Storey admits that 250 copies were issued to press correspondents, but only 3 copies were given to the 17 defense counsel — 24 hours before the court reconvened on that Monday.
(With?) the document in the archives is an appraisal by the U.S. Provost Marshal, with notes on further information that would be required to authenticate the document. Those seem never to have been obtained because, although the document bears an official number, and was issued to the press as authentic, it was not used officially by the prosecution. When I mentioned it to Gen. Telford Taylor, he said: “I know the document you mean, I do not know its provenance, and I have not used it in my own work.”
I later wrote to Louis Lochner, inviting him to tell for the record what he knew about the material, but be did not reply and died soon after.
Much later in the trial, the German defense lawyers were able to introduce the most complete account of Hitler’s address, taken down by Gen. Adm. Hermann Böhm, which runs 12 pages in translation. There is no mention of the Armenians or the rest of the "quotation."
One must suspect that the document was released to create a climate of hate and revulsion to stifle the protests of eminent American jurists such as Senator Ruben A. Taft and Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, whose comments on the trial I recommend. Armenian have quoted the document in good faith. One cannot say the same for those who issued it.
ROBERT JOHN
Life Member of the Honorshie
Society of the Middle Temple
Inns of Court, London
New York, May 27,1985
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I am impressed with the extent of research Dr. John went through. And I am now totally unimpressed with Dr. Weinberg, who appears to have mainly relied on surface impressions (does it sound like he has gone through as much trouble?), perhaps because it is in his interest to authenticate what now looks like an utterly phony quote. And I don't follow the reasoning behind why Böhm's translation, which seems to be pretty hefty at 12 pages (Dr. Weinberg described these as "abbreviated and inaccurate") should be dismissed because Böhm "was a great admirer of Hitler," as the professor asserted. It seems to me Böhm would have made sure to have recorded as precise an account as possible, precisely because he was so gaga over Der Fuehrer.
But the reason why I am no longer as cuckoo for Weinberg's puffs is because finally I can see "The Other Side" of his claims; here is Dr. John's printed reply, from July 6, 1985:
To the Editor:
Quoting Hitler?
The documentation of Prof. G. L. Weinberg for the alleged Hitler remark seemed impressive. However, I have now examined this publication "by the British Government in the official series 'Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-39,' volume VII, 1954," in the spirit of being prepared to accept new evidence.
It is essentially the same document to which I referred in my letter of June 8; this one, writes Sir G. (Ogilese?)-Forbes from the British Embassy, Berlin, on Aug. 22, 1939, "was communicated to me by Lochner of the Associated Press of America. His informant is a staff officer, who received it from one of the generals present at the meeting" (Page 237).
Both "documents" contain such statements as "Goring jumped on a table, thanked bloodthirstily and made bloodthirsty promises. He danced like a wild man." (page 259).
This "document" would not satisfy the U.S. Provost Marshal at Nuremberg as acceptable in court, and it has not been substantiated since Winston Churchill said, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." We must hold historians to the highest standards of proof in sorting them out.
ROBERT JOHN
Life Member of the Honorshie
Society of the Middle Temple
Inns of Court, London
New York, May 27,1985
"In the spirit of being prepared to accept new evidence." Bravo, Dr. John! That is precisely what a real historian must do, dispassionately examine all of the evidence, and be prepared to "revise" one's findings, as better information comes to light.
Compare with that other Hitler-Quote affirmer the Armenian Genocide Juggernaut frequently refers to, Kevork B. Bardakjian, whose June 16 letter was printed side by side with Dr. John's. Bardakjian offered "smoke and mirror" statements, to the effect that Hitler gave a second speech that day (convenient!) and that the Nuremberg prosecution couldn't verify the quote because a few of the players had already been executed. Nervous that the precious quote was in danger of slipping away in light of authentic evidence, Bardakjian referred us to the "confidential" interviews Hitler gave in 1931, that only mysteriously surfaced after the genocide hooey took on a second life in the mid-1960s. (After the 50th Anniversary commemoration.) Hitler diaries, anyone?
"We must hold historians to the highest standards of proof," Dr. John correctly points out. I don't believe the "Senior Lecturer in Armenian" at Harvard, Kevork Bardakjian, can be trusted as a disciple of that principle. Unfortunately, Bardakjian gives us the ammunition to question his credibility, when he uses, in typical "Dadrian" style, a word like "annihilation" to describe the fate of the Armenians. Looking up that sensational word in the dictionary, we'll remember it basically means to make disappear "without a trace." The Armenians, even the Armenians concede, had a million survivors. (From a pre-war population of some 1.5 million, that can hardly describe an annihilation, particularly if nearly all those Armenians died for the same reasons everyone else was dying from: famine, disease, and combat. Such dishonesty.)
One rare conclusive reference that Hitler has been known to make about the Armenians was from a December 12, 1942 speech where he called the Armenians "unreliable" (UNZUVERLASSIG) and "dangerous" (GEFAHRLICH).
ADDENDUM (10-05):
Did Kevork Bardakjian have a change of heart?
Kevork Bardakjian is known as an authority on the Hitler Quote business for many years, as you observed above. A self-described "journalist" by the pseudonym Ari Ararat wrote the piece below, which was entitled, SECOND ACT OF THE COMEDY AZG. (To read the "first act" on this page, click here.)
Nevertheless, it is seen that the news agency being under Dashnak orientation did not take lessons from this tragic practice. Lately, the newspaper gave place to the interview made by Melenya Bagalyan, one of the reporters, with Kevork Bardakciyan, an Armenian intellectual. This interview, which is published on June 11, 2005, caused to upset the
theses of the diaspora.
In the interview, Bardakciyan admits clearly that the statement of Hitler saying that "who remembers the murdered Armenians?" could not be found out despite all the searches in the archives. The revelations made by Bardakciyan about the issue are extremely striking: "… I have conducted researches for eighteen months in order to reach an evidence of this statement. I could not find out valid evidence proving that Hitler said such a statement. Hitler, however, made a special 2-3 hours speech to his staff before the attack against Poland and prevented taking notes. And what were said in this meeting are quoted by some ones to other ones after the meeting and as far as they were kept in mind. The opposition against Hitler rearranged the content of the talks and delivered to the British and American embassies…". The following is known; the UK and USA are involved in the war. And whether Hitler said this statement or not depends to which side you support sentimentally.
It can be clearly said at this point that Bardakciyan is actually in a scientific marginality which is far from the responsibilities of being an intellectual. In anyway, such works having abundant contradictions which cannot be proved scientifically will continue to indicate that the superficial mentality of the Armenian intellectuals cannot surpass the vicious circle of genocide. In this situation, beyond the social clichés, the real intellectual should ask himself/herself absolutely this question: "Can any claim deprived of evidences be considered as true?"
Until further notice, please accept the above with a grain of salt.
ADDENDUM, July 2007:
Erkin Baker contacted Mr. Whitney Harris, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, reporting that Harris's secretary called to say that Mr. Harris has no recollection of any reference to an "Armenian" quote by Hitler, and that it never came up while Harris was on duty. Baker hastens to add, however, that the prosecutors took turns during the trials.
From the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington:
Now what in the world could have possibly compelled this museum to have put up such a dubious quote? Their researchers must have been aware of the controversy behind the Hitler Quote, and (if they were professional) that the scholarly evidence was solidly against the quote's validity. What are the forces at play that would allow this museum to display the quote as though it were a proven fact? Have they no idea that once people get the notion the museum values "genocide politics" over "truth," other claims in the museum could also come under doubt?
(Thanks to Reader Conan)
Ironic Addendum: Former museum director Walter Reich, as quoted in the August 31, 1997 Washington Post: "In all of its activities, the Holocaust Museum is fiercely devoted to historical authenticity. It takes immense pains to guard against errors or misrepresentations. This is a responsibility of all museums; it's ours all the more so because Holocaust deniers, driven by antisemitic animus, are ready to pounce on any errors or distortions."
Supplementing the above, to get an idea of the forces at work:
"When the Holocaust Council was formed in 1980, the Armenians were represented by Seth Moomjian [possibly Set Momjian], a first-generation Armenian-American whose parents had been orphaned in 1915 in Turkey. Moomjian served as an adviser to President Carter, a representative to the United Nations, and also a White House representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission! In 1980, Moomjian pledged $1,000,000 to the Holocaust Museum. However, on September 24, 1981 he backed down on this pledge, and offered instead a payment of $100,000. For a long time no money was forthcoming. When in December 1988 an earthquake devastated Armenian Republic the Armenian community grabbed this event as an excuse not to fulfill its pledge, they claimed that the earthquake victims needed money. As a result only part of the pledge was fulfilled." (From Ayhan Ozer's "Facts and Discussion Points in the Armenian Allegations"; read more on the Holocaust Museum.)
Here are segments of what Hitler ACTUALLY said during the "Hitler Quote" speech, to his Supreme Commanders and Generals in Obersalzberg.
What does Hitler really teach us? Let's see now... the Armenian "Genocide" was created as a propagandistic reason to help justify the Allied carving up of the Ottoman Empire. Nobody cared to ask World War I's victor (the Allies) whether the truth was told or not. This is why the Western World still believes in the truth of the Falsified Armenian "Genocide," today.
"It is not right that matters, but victory." You go, girl. Ironically, the same contention is valued by the Armenians' allies in the genocide industry.
The graphic was taken from this site
Note: Some of the footnote placements below will be missing.
The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians
DR. HEATH W. LOWRY
Communication and Persuasion
Volume 3, Number 2, 1985
Abstract
This article traces the history of a purported Adolf Hitler quote which cites the precedent of the world’s lack of reaction to the fate of Armenians during the First World War as justification for his planned extermination of European Jewry in the course of the Second World War. By a detailed examination of the genesis of this quotation the author demonstrates that there is no historical basis for attributing such a statement to Hitler. Likewise, the author traces the manner in which this purported quote has entered the lexicon of U.S. Congressmen, and the manner in which it continues to be used by Armenian-Americans in their efforts to establish a linkage between their own history and the tragic fate of European Jewry during the Second World War. The author concludes with a plea to policy-makers that they focus their activities on the responsibilities of their offices and leave the writing of history to the historians.
A casual perusal of the pages of the Congressional Record (CR) of both the House and the Senate, on or about April 24, 1984, reveals a bipartisan group of our elected officials condemning the failure of the Republic of Turkey to acknowledge and assume responsibility for the “genocide” of the Armenian people allegedly perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in the course of the First World War. In 1984, a total of sixty-six such statements, fifty-seven by members of the House and nine by Senators, were read into the Congressional Record. Of these sixty-six tributes in support of Armenian Martyrs’ Day remembrances, exactly one-third—twenty-two— contained one or another version of a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler in which he purportedly responded to a query about his planned annihilation of European Jewry, by quipping, ”Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?”
The Hitler Quote: Its Source and Its Avowed Focus
While the quiver of anti-Turkish invectives utilized by Armenian spokesmen contains a number of arrows, none is more frequently unleashed than this charge that Adolf Hitler was encouraged by his perception that the world had not reacted to alleged Ottoman mistreatment of its Armenian population during the First World War. He thus felt justified in going forward with his plan to exterminate European Jewry during the Second World War.
Given the widespread utilization of this quotation by Armenian spokesmen and their supporters, perhaps we should not be too surprised at the fact that it has found its way into the lexicon of our lawmakers. Even the dean of Armenian-American historians, Professor Richard Hovannisian of UCLA, stated in a 1983 address to the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, “Perhaps Adolf Hitler had good cause in 1939 to declare, according to the Nuremberg trial transcripts, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?"[1] Is it any wonder, then, that the following list of elected U.S. officials repeat the same charge?
Senator Rudi Boschwitz, R-Minn.; Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Senator Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio; Congressman Les Aspin, D-Wis.; Congressman Howard Berman, D-Calif.; Congressman Thomas Bliley, R-Va.; Congressman Edward Boland, D-Mass.;
Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Congressman Jim Courter, R-N.j.; Congressman Mervyn Dymally, D-Calif.; Congressman Edward Feighan, D-Ohio; Congresswoman
Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y.; Congressman Hamilton Fish, R-N.Y.; Congressman William Ford, D-Mich.; Congressman Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn.; Congressman William Green, R-N.Y.;
Congressman Richard Lehman, D-Calif.; Congressman Bruce Morrison, D-Conn.; Congressman Nicholas Mavroules, D-Mass.; Congressman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; Congressman James Shannon, D-Mass.; and Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
It is noteworthy that sixteen of the above-listed officials (with the exception of Boxer, Courter, Dymally, Feighan, Ford, and Schumer) all clearly state that Hitler made his statement in support of his planned extermination of European Jewry. Equally noteworthy is the fact that the three senators, Boschwitz, Levin, and Metzenbaum, and four of the members of the House, Berman, Gejdenson, Green, and Waxman, who made this linkage are themselves Jews.
Nazi propaganda celebrates Pearl Harbor
The problem with this linkage is that there is no proof that Adolf Hitler ever made such a statement. Everything written to date has attributed the purported Hitler quote, not to primary sources, but to an article that appeared in the Times of London on Saturday, November 24, 1945. Said article, entitled, “Nazi Germany’s Road To War,” [2] cites the quote and bases its attribution to Hitler on an address by him to his commanders-in-chief six years earlier, on August 22, 1939, a few days prior to his invasion of Poland. According to the unnamed author of the Times article, the speech had been introduced as evidence during the November 23, 1945, session of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Hitler is quoted as having stated, “Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my Death’s Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”[3] However, this version of the address was never accepted as evidence in this or any other session of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Furthermore, the Times article of November 24, 1945, was not the earliest mention of Hitler’s alleged statement on the Armenians. Rather, this quotation, and indeed an entire text of a Hitler speech purportedly made at Obersalzberg on August 22, 1939, was first published in 1942 in a book entitled What About Germany? and authored by Louis Lochner, a former bureau chief of the Associated Press in Berlin. [4]
On the opening page of his work, Lochner cites an unnamed informant as his source for a document called “Contents of Speech to the Supreme Commanders, and Commanding Generals, Obersalzberg, August 22, 1939.” He further states that he obtained
a copy of this speech (a three-page typed German manuscript) one week prior to Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland.
This “document,” the provenance of which has never been disclosed, investigated, and much less established, is the real “source,” and indeed the sole source, of Hitler’s purported remark vis-â-vis the Armenians. In its historical debut, as published by Lochner, the “quote” reads as follows:
I have issued the command—I’ll have anybody who utters one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space [lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? [6]
Of particular interest is the fact that while this “quotation” has appeared in literally hundreds of publications in the past forty years, not a single one has ever cited Lochner book as its source. Likewise, no work has ever suggested that this statement made its first appearance, not in the course of the 1945 Nuremberg trials, but rather in the 1942 wartime publication of an American newspaperman.
Of equal interest, assuming for the moment that Lochner’s unnamed informant did in fact supply him with an authentic copy of Hitler’s Obersalzberg remarks, is the total absence in this text of a single direct or implied reference to the Jewish people. Obviously, it is an anti-Polish polemic; the single reference it contains to the Armenians is clearly made in that context. In Lochner’s version, Hitler states,
Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space [lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
Here there is no ambiguity in his meaning. If Hitler actually made this statement it obviously referred to his impending invasion of Poland and to the fate he envisioned for its citizenry; it had absolutely nothing to do with his plans for the Jews of Europe. This fact in and of itself belies the allegations of those sixteen members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives who in their statements in conjunction with the April 24 remembrance of Armenian Martyrs’ Day, insisted that Hitler’s remarks expressed the rationale for his slaughter of the Jews.
Interestingly enough, of the twenty-two elected representatives who incorporated the alleged Hitler quote into their Congressional remarks, only one, Congressman William Ford (D-Mich.), correctly identified the time and context of the statement attributed to Hitler. Ford said, “Even Adolf Hitler used past events to shape his own policies. In 1939 as he was beginning his invasion of Poland, Hitler ordered the mass extermination of its inhabitants, commenting, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ “ 8 In contrast, most of his colleagues displayed their lack of knowledge about the subject they purported to address by the use of phrases such as:
When Adolf Hitler was planning the extermination of the Jewish people. . .. (Aspin)
When Hitler first proposed his final solution.... (Boschwitz)
...on the eve of the extermination of the Jews. (Berman)
Hitler’s statement concerning the final solution for the Jews of Europe.... (Bliley)
Hitler who while planning the extermination of millions of Jews was asked.... (Boland)
We can only be haunted by the words of Adolf Hitler, who said, in embarking on this “crazed attack” on the Jews, ‘Who after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ (Ferraro)
In speaking of the consequences of the Jewish Holocaust, Adolf Hitler once remarked.... (Fish)
Hitler, before beginning his Holocaust against the Jews.... (Gejdenson)
When Hitler was about to begin the Holocaust.... (Green)
Questioned about his policy of Jewish genocide, Hitler said.... (Lehman)
Looking at the Armenian genocide as a precedent for his own Holocaust perpetrated against Europe’s Jews.... (Morrison)
Etc., etc., etc.8
The Hitler Quote and the Nuremberg Trials
Having established that the first published appearance of Hitter’s alleged remark on the Armenians occurred in the 1942 Lochner book, we will now examine the history of its subsequent appearance in the course of the Nuremberg trials. It is necessary to state at the outset, however, that contrary to Professor Hovannisian in the above-mentioned quote, and a whole body of scholars writing on the Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials transcripts do not in fact contain the purported Hitler quote. Instead, the Nuremberg transcripts clearly demonstrate that the tribunal rejected Lochner’s version of Hitler’s Obersalzberg speech in favor of two more official versions found in confiscated German military records. These two records are, respectively, detailed notes of the August 22, 1939, meeting taken down by Admiral Hermann Boehm, Chief of the High Seas Fleet, who was in attendance; 10 and an unsigned memorandum in two parts which provides a detailed account of Hitler’s August 22, 1939, remarks at Obersalzberg. This document originated in the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmact [0KW]) files and was captured by American troops at Saalfelden in Austria. This was the chief document introduced by the prosecution at Nuremberg as evidence in the course of the session concerned with the invasion of Poland. ~ In addition, a third eyewitness account of the Obersalzberg meetings is found in the detailed diary kept by General Halder. [12]
These three versions, the first two of which are in fact preserved in the transcripts of the Nuremberg Tribunal, are internally consistent one with the other in regard to the wording of Hitler’s Obersalzberg speech. Of primary importance in the context of this study is the fact that none of these three eyewitness versions contains any reference whatsoever to Armenians.
The noted historian of the Second World War, William Shirer, reconstructed his account of the Obersalzberg meeting strictly on the basis of the Boehm notes, the Halder diary, and the captured memorandum. [13] In explaining his failure to incorporate the “Lochner version,” he wrote with characteristic understatement, “it may have been embellished a little by persons who were not present at the meeting at the Berghof.” [14]
An examination of the Nuremberg transcripts from the afternoon session of November 26, 1945, enables us to piece together the actual sequence of events which led to the Times of London article on November 24, 1945, which, as has been stated, is the source of all post-1945 references to the alleged Hitler quote.
From these records it becomes apparent that a total of three documents dealing with the August 22, 1939, speech were discussed in the course of the November 26, 1945, session of the tribunal. Called, respectively, US-28, US-29, and US-30, two of the three were subsequently introduced as evidence and preserved in the records of the trials: US-29 (Document Number 798-PS) and US-30 (Document Number 1014-PS). The third document, US-28, was not introduced as evidence by the prosecution. An examination of the Nuremberg transcript provides the following detail in regard to these three documents. The prosecutor, Mr. Alderman, introduced the subject thus:
In this presentation of condemning documents, concerning the initiation of the war in September 1939, I must bring to the attention of the Tribunal a group of documents concerning an address by Hitler to his chief military commanders, at Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939, just one week prior to the launching of the attack on Poland.
We have three of these documents, related and constituting a single group. The first one I do not intend to offer as evidence. The other two I shall offer.
The reason for that is this: The first of the three documents came into our possession through the medium of an American newspaperman and purported to be original minutes of this meeting at Obersalzberg, transmitted to this American newspaperman by some other person; and we had no proof of the actual delivery to the intermediary by the person who took the notes. That document, therefore, merely served to alert our Prosecution to see if we could find something better. Fortunately, we did get the other two documents, which indicate that Hitler on that day made two speeches, perhaps one in the morning, one in the afternoon, as indicated by the original minutes, which we captured. By comparison of these two documents with the first document, we concluded that the first document was a slightly garbled merger of the two speeches.
On 22 August 1939, Hitler had called together at Obersalzberg the three Supreme Commanders of the three branches of the Armed Forces, as well as the commanding generals bearing the title Commanders-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber).
(...?)
succeeded. In the files of the 0KW at Flensburg, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces), there were uncovered two speeches delivered by Hitler at Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939. These are documents 798-PS and 1014-PS in our series of documents.
In order to keep the serial numbers consecutive, if the Tribunal please, we have had the first document, which I do not intend to offer, marked for identification Exhibit USA-28. Accordingly, I offer the second document, 798-PS, in evidence as Exhibit USA-29, and the third document, 1014-PS, as Exhibit USA-30. [15]
Once again we must note the obvious: Neither of the Obersatzberg speeches introduced to the tribunal as evidence by Alderman (US-29/798-PS and US-30/1014- P5) contains any reference to Armenians.
Dr. Ottom Stahmer, the defense counsel for Hermann Goring, took exception to Mr. Alderman’s presentation, stating, “The third document which was not read is, according to the photostatic copy in the Defense’s document room, simply typewritten. There is no indication of place or time of execution.” [16] This led to the following exchange between the president of the tribunal and Dr. Stahmer:
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we have got nothing to do with the third document, because it has not been read.
DR. STAHMER: Mr. President, this document has nevertheless been published in the press and was apparently given to the press by the Prosecution. Consequently both the Defense and the defendants have a lively interest in giving a short explanation of the facts concerning these documents.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal is trying this case in accordance with the evidence and not in accordance with what is in the press, and the third document is not in evidence before us. [17]
The discussion was then joined by Prosecutor Alderman who made the following response to Dr. Stahmer’s charge that “the third document” (U5-28) had been “leaked” to the press, and had already appeared in print:
On the other question referred to by counsel, I feel somewhat guilty. It is quite true that, by a mechanical slip, the press got the first document [US-28L which we never at all intended them to have. I feel somewhat responsible. It happened to be included in the document books which were handed up to the Court on Friday, because we had only intended to refer to it and give it an identification mark and not to offer it. I had thought that no documents would be released to the press until they were actually offered in evidence. With as large an organization as we have, it is very difficult to1 police all these matters. [18]
As the reader has doubtless discerned, US-28, the document provided to the prosecution by ‘an American newspaperman,” which was not introduced as evidence after the original minutes of the Obersalzberg meeting were found, is the source of the alleged Hitler statement on Armenians. Aided by the passages quoted above from the Nuremberg transcript for November 26, 1945, we can now account for the story which appeared in the Times of London on Saturday, November 24, 1945. To make his deadline the unidentified Times reporter based his story on a leaked document on the assumption that it (US-28) would have been introduced in evidence by the time his story broke on Saturday. As the transcript clearly attests, the reporter’s expectations in this regard were not fulfilled. The results were far-reaching: The world has been misled for almost forty years into thinking that the Nuremberg transcripts provided the Times reporter with his source for the quote attributed to Hitler, “Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” Armenian spokesmen have been free to argue that Adolf Hitler justified his planned annihilation of the Jews on the world’s failure to react to the alleged Ottoman genocide of the Armenians during the First World War. The Armenian success in this regard is clearly reflected in the April 24, 1984, Congressional Record.
In truth, no document containing the purported Hitler statement on the Armenians was introduced or accepted as evidence in the course of the Nuremberg trials. In fact, the actual minutes of Hitler’s August 22, 1939, Obersalzberg speeches (recovered from the files of the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces at Flensburg), as well as the detailed notes compiled during the speeches by Admiral Hermann Boehm, Chief of the High Seas Fleet, and the record preserved in General Halder’s diary, are all totally devoid of anything resembling this alleged quote. In short, contrary to Richard Hovannisian and a host of other Armenian spokesmen, the Nuremberg transcripts through their preservation of US-29 (798-PS), US-30 (1014-PS), and the notes of Admiral Boehm (which are corroborated by the relevant passages from the diary of General Halder), in no way authenticate the infamous Hitler quote. On the contrary, by establishing the actual texts of Hitler’s Obersalzberg speeches they demonstrate that the statement is conspicuously absent from Hitler’s remarks. The assertion that Hitler made a reference to the Armenians in any context whatsoever is without foundation.
What About Lochner’s What About Germany?
Was Louis Lochner the “unidentified American newspaperman” who provided the Nuremberg prosecutor with the purported transcript of the Obersalzberg meeting (US-28 or L-3, as it is variously known), which contains the alleged Hitler quote on the Armenians? And, in fact, was the version of the August 22, 1939, Obersalzberg speech published in Lochner’s 1942 book and that supplied by the “unidentified American newspaperman” at Nuremberg one and the same document?
The answer to both these queries is a resounding “yes.” As regards the identity of the “unidentified American newspaperman,” in a later book (Always the Unexpected) ,[19] Lochner quotes with some pride a passage from W. Byford-Jones’s Berlin Twilight [20] regarding his role in supplying this document to the Nuremberg Tribunal. It reads:
My coming with Louis Lockner [sic] had made the visit more exciting because he was no ordinary observer at the historic trial of the major war criminals. He had told me how he was responsible for the delivery of one of the most sensational of innumerable documents to prove Nazi conspiracy. This document, which described how Hitler maliciously planned the beginning of the Second World War by an attack on Poland. . . was given to Louis Lockner in Germany just before America came into the war, by a confidant of Colonel-Genera! von Beck, and, having first written on top of it “Em Stuck gemeine Propaganda” [A piece of filthy propaganda] (to protect himself if the Germans searched him), he smuggled it to America. [21]
Since Lochner related the same story in the 1942 What About Germany? in regard to his initial receipt of the purported Obersalzberg transcript, there can be no doubt that he was Alderman’s “unidentified American newspaperman.”[22]
Furthermore, all three known versions of the speech containing the “who remembers the Armenians” passage (see Appendix 11) — Lochner’s 1942 What About Germany? version; US-28 (or L-3), the document discussed at the November 26 session of the Nuremberg Tribunal; and the one quoted in the Times of London article of November 24, 1945 — are identical copies of the same document, i.e., the one which Lochner in 1956 finally identified as having come into his possession from a confidant of Colonel-General von Beck. [23] An awareness of Beck’s role in the purveyance of this version of the speech may lend insight into the differences between the Lochner version, which was not accepted by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and the two sets of minutes of the Obersalzberg meetings that were accepted by the Nüremberg Tribunal and the Halder diary account (see Appendix III); Nuremberg documents US-29 [798-PS] and US-30 [1014—PS]; Admiral Boehm’s minutes of the meetings; and General Halder’s minutes of the meetings.
Was Der Fuehrer an expert on fellow Aryans,
the Armenians?
By August 1939 General Beck was the acknowledged leader, along with Halder, of that faction of the German officer corps plotting against Hitler and the Nazis.[24] If, as Lochner claimed, he had received his version of the Obersalzberg speech via Beck, i.e., if it were leaked to him as an American newspaperman by forces opposed to Hitler, this could well account for Shirer’s assessment of the Lochner version as “embellished a little by persons who were not present at the Berghof.” [25] His assessment is in fact a gross understatement. A comparison of the Lochner version with the Nuremberg and Halder versions, shows that the former contains far more than a little “embellishment.” Passages which would have lent themselves to stronger anti-Hitler propaganda found in the Lochner version, are totally missing from the Nuremberg and Halder versions. These include the following phrases, each of which if published in the West, would have effectively portrayed Hitler in an extremely negative light to his allies (or potential allies), to the neutrals, and to the rest of the world:
Mussolini is threatened by a nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince.
After Stalin’s death — he is a very sick man — we shall demolish the Soviet Union.
The [Japanese] Emperor s a counterpoint of the last Czar. Weak, cowardly, undecided.
I got to know those wretched worms, Daladier and Chamberlain, in Munich.
[The peoples of the Far East and Arabia] are at best lacquered semi-apes who crave to be flogged.
Carol of Roumania is a thoroughly corrupt slave of his sexual desires.
The King of Belgium and the Nordic Kings are soft jumping jacks.
I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad.
[I have given] orders to send to death mercilessly, and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Who, after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? [26]
In short, a comparison of the Lochner and Nuremberg versions of the August 22, 1939, Obersalzberg speech strongly suggests that the one leaked to Lochner by the confidant of Beck was a strongly doctored version designed for propaganda purposes. This interpretation is supported by the fact that General Halder’s detailed diary entries for August 22, 1939, contain none of the above passages. Halder was, by that date, firmly in the ranks of the anti-Hitler German officers, and presumably he would have had no interest in censoring his own diary had Hitler in fact made such statements.[27]
While it may never be possible to completely reconstruct the reasons behind these addenda to the Obersalzberg speech and the manner in which they were made, nor why Lochner was chosen as the conduit to transmit them to the West, one thing is certain: The only versions of the Obersalzberg speech containing any reference to the Armenians derive from a single source — Louis P. Lochner.
Thus, not only is the provenance of US-28 (L-3) doubtful, but the actual transcripts of Hitler’s Obersalzberg speech (US 30/1014-PS, Boehm, and Halder) are at total variance with the text of the Lochner version vis-ã-vis the alleged Armenian statement (compare Appendices II and II). Therefore, one cannot help but share the opinions of the Nuremberg prosecutor and William Shirer, and reject the Lochner version.
Why Has the Lochner Version Assumed the Importance That It Has?
Why and how such a spurious quotation of forty-five years ago became so important that it has been cited by no fewer than twenty-two members of the U.S. Congress in 1984? The answer is complex and closely linked to American ethnic politics. Taking advantage of the flurry of press interest aroused by the activities of Armenian terrorist groups, activities which in the past decade have resulted in the assassinations of over thirty-five Turkish diplomats,[28] Armenian-American spokesmen have stepped up their ongoing campaign of vilification against the Republic of Turkey which they allege was responsible for the “genocide” of more than 1.5 million Armenians during the First World War. Unhampered by the limitations of logic or truth, these spokesmen attempt to justify current Armenian violence against innocent diplomats (none of whom were living in 1915), as a natural response to Armenian suffering in the course of the First World War.
In terms of logic (or the lack thereof), this is comparable to the descendants of peoples who suffered under the last Russian czars running around shooting Soviet diplomats today. Both the Soviet Union and the Republic of Turkey began their existence as revolutionary states in the wake of the First World War, the former emerging from the ashes of the Russian Empire, while the latter was created from the ruins of the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire, the political entity in existence at the time of the alleged genocide.
A significant portion of Armenian propaganda efforts in recent years has been devoted to establishing a linkage between their own historical experiences and those of European Jewry during the Second World War. The cornerstone in their case has long been the spurious Hitler quote, “Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?” Certainly, the argument that Hitler himself cited the world’s lack of reaction to the fate of the Armenians and was encouraged by it, must be very poignant to Jews. The following examples will serve to illustrate the mileage hitherto obtained by Armenian’ Americans in this regard:
1. Under the tutelage of an Armenian-American Congressman, Charles Pashayan, Jr. (R- Calif.),[29] sixty-six elected U.S. Representative made speeches on or about April 24, 1984 (Armenian Martyrs’ Day), condemning the Republic of Turkey, a NATO ally, for failing to acknowledge its responsibility for the “genocide” of the Armenians which allegedly transpired a decade before the Republic came into existence.
2. As noted earlier, seven of the twenty-two members of the U.S. Congress (three Senators and four Congressmen) who used the alleged Hitler quote in the course of their April
24, 1984, remarks were Jewish.
3. Utilizing the “linkage” conveniently provided by the spurious Hitler quote, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council has agreed that the Armenians were the victims of the twentieth century’s first genocide and therefore deserve inclusion in the planned memorial. Indeed Elie Wiesel, himself a Holocaust survivor and Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, in a 1981 speech delivered in the Capitol rotunda stated “Before the planning of the final solution Hitler asked, ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ He was right. No one remembered them, as no one remembered the Jews. Rejected by everyone, they felt expelled from history.” [30]
In a similar vein, Congressman Glenn Anderson, in his April 24, 1984, remarks, discussed the inclusion of the Armenians in the planned Holocaust Memorial in the following terms: “Toward this end, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, established by an act of Congress in 1980, has unanimously resolved to include the Armenian genocide in its museums and education programs.”[31]
4. During the past two years a number of state boards of education have adopted into their programs Holocaust curricula which include detailed treatment of the Armenian “genocide” as the precursor of the Jewish Holocaust. The curricula adopted by the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey all stress the spurious Hitler quote as the tie that binds the Armenian and Jewish experiences. In New Jersey, the curriculum was actually prepared and published by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League. This is, to say the least, ironic, as the continued repetition of the spurious Hitler quote, as it is used today, certainly defames the Turkish people.
5. On September 10, 1984, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution (House Joint Resolution 247) designating April 24 as a National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man, and requesting the President of the United States to issue a proclamation calling upon the American people to observe such a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, “especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry who were victims of the genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923.””
This resolution, both by naming April 24 Armenian Martyrs’ Day, and by specifically naming only Turkey as the “perpetrator” of a “genocide,” does nothing less than brand one of the United States’ NATO allies with the historically controversial charge of genocide. In regard to the label itself, the fact remains that there was no country of Turkey in existence between the years 1915 and 1923; rather, the governing power in the region was the multinational state known as the Ottoman Empire.”
House Joint Resolution 247 was submitted by Congressman Tony Coelho (D- Calif.) and 233 co-sponsors. Of interest to us is the fact that Coelho, who represents the “heartland’of California’s Armenian community (the Merced-Fresno region of the San Joaquin Valley), cited the purported Hitler quote in urging his colleagues to vote for passage of the H.J. Res. 247. [34]
In addition to his own utilization of the quote, Coelho also entered a letter from California’s Armenian-American Governor, George Deukmejian, supporting the resolution’s passage in the record. In support of H.J. Res. 247, Deukmejian wrote, “One cannot ignore the chilling words of Adolf Hitler before he began his reign of terror during World War Il, ‘Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” [35]
At the time of this writing the U.S. Senate is considering the adoption of their half of this joint resolution.
Leaving aside the larger question of whether or not the fate of the Ottoman Armenians in 1914-1915 was in fact anything that could conceivably be termed genocide, and focusing only on the matter at hand, the spurious Hitler quote, we find that three things come immediately to mind.
The first is the obvious danger inherent in partisan ethnic politics as currently practiced in the United States. To appease a handful of potential voters, some American politicians are willing to allow themselves to be used as tools of ethnic pressure groups, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the information they are fed.
Secondly, one cannot help but marvel at the patience of the Republic of Turkey, which, beleaguered by economic and social problems of its own, also has to cope with misinformed American politicians lecturing her on her own history. It is safe to say that if the U.S. Congress spent as much time hammering at the Federal Republic of Germany (another NATO ally) for the well-documented events which transpired forty years ago in that nation’s history, as they spend lecturing the Republic of Turkey for actions alleged to have occurred seventy years ago in the Ottoman Empire, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would long since have lost a member.
Finally, given the serious problems facing our nation, e.g., the arms race, unemployment, and budget deficits, in conjunction with the fact that as this study has repeatedly demonstrated, history is clearly not the forte of many U.S. Congressmen and Senators, it is not impertinent to suggest that the Congress would be better served if its members were to confine their activities to the business at hand and leave the writing of history to the historians.
APPENDIX I. Excerpts from Congressional Speeches on the Armenians
SENATOR RUDY BOSCHWITZ, R-Minn. (CR—Senate, 4/25/84, p. S4852): When Hitler first proposed his final solution, he was told that the world would never permit such a mass murder. Hitler silenced his advisers by asking, “Who remembers the Armenians?”
Today, I join my colleagues in answering Hitler by pledging the truth.
SENATOR CARL LEVIN, D-Mich. (CR—Senate, 4/24/84, p. S4703): But, regrettably it was soon forgotten, not by the surviving Armenians, but by most of the rest of the world. So that when Adolf Hitler planned his invasion of Poland and the destruction of the Jewish people, he was able to scornfully state, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
SENATOR HOWARD METZENBAUM, D-Ohio (CR—Senate, 4/24/84, p. S4719): Three years ago, in a speech given here in the Capitol rotunda, Elie Wiesel, Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, made a telling point.
Professor Wiesel said: “Before the planning of the final solution Hitler asked ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ He was right. No one remembered them, as no one remembered the Jews. Rejected by everyone, they felt expelled from history.”
CONGRESSMAN LES ASPIN, D-Wis. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2977): Two decades later, when Adolf Hitler was planning the elimination of the Jewish people, he is reported to have said, “Who remembers the Armenians?”
CONGRESSMAN HOWARD BERMAN, D-Calif. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2982): It should be a source of concern to all of us that to this day Turkey does not acknowledge, despite eyewitness accounts, either the facts or its historical responsibility; for the line from Armenia to Auschwitz is direct. The holocaust of European Jewry has its precedence in the events of 1915 to 1922. “Who stills talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians,” Hitler told his generals on the eve of the extermination of the Jews. The horrendous events of World War II overshadowed the Armenian genocide, and it is only recently, through the peaceful efforts of the Armenian groups, that the rest of the world has once again begun to recognize the col!ectiye agony of the Armenian people.
CONGRESSMAN THOMAS BLILEY, R-Va. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2979): Mr. Speaker, I know that the actions of the Ottoman Government did not lead directly to the forced starvation of the Ukraine by Josef Stalin, the gas chambers of Auschwitz, the gruesome slaughter of the Cambodians, ldi Amin’s death campaign in Uganda, and the more recent actions in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe, but I know that human nature, even a warped and infamous human nature, needs the comfort of believing that it can get away with something before it proceeds. As an example I would cite Adolf Hitler’s statement concerning the final solution for the Jews of Europe when he said, “Who now remembers the Armenians?” If more proof is needed then we can all look up Idi Amin’s frequent statements of his adoration for Adolf Hitler as a man who knew how to handle a problem.
CONGRESSMAN EDWARD BOLAND, D-Mass. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2975): The silence with which the community of nations greeted the decimation of the Armenian people may have emboldened those who would later perpetrate similar acts. It certainly had an effect on Adolf Hitler who, while planning the extermination of millions of Jews was asked how the world would respond to a program of mass murder. In reply Hitler said “Who remembers the Armenians?”
CONGRESSWOMAN BARBARA BOXER, D-Calif. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2977): Th repeated denials of these well-documented crimes of the Ottoman Turkish regime call to mind the Nazi maxim that a big lie if often repeated becomes truth. Hitler himself cited the Armenian massacres as evidence that humanity cares nothing for the murder of people.
CONGRESSMAN JIM COURTER, R-N.J. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2977): But there can be no doubt that this ignorance of history’s darker events aids those who perpetrate them, and those who would do so in the future. It is known that Hitler cited the fact that the Armenian genocide was little known, little discussed and little remembered in his time. We can only imagine the conclusions he drew from this fact.
CONGRESSMAN MERVYN DYMALLY, D-Calif. (CR—House, 4/12/84, p. H2924): Today, historians argue about the number of Armenians actually killed. Others claim that no genocide took place at all. This is a devastating conclusion to the survivors, whether they be Americans, Lebanese, Egyptians, French or citizens of any other country. ... If we deny the Armenian Genocide—a historical event that has been well documented—we echo the words of Adolph Hitler who said, “Who still talks nowadays, of the extermination of Armenians?”
CONGRESSMAN EDWARD FEIGHAN, D-Ohio (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2971): But only twenty years after the fact, the century’s first genocide was the “forgotten genocide.” As Hitler paused on the edge of his own reign of terror, he asked “Who remembers the Armenians?” And no one had. A world blind to the lessons of history saw them repeated on a wider scale.
CONGRESSWOMAN GERALDINE FERRARO, D~N.Y.* I have dwelled on the Armenian genocide not because it is unique as flagrant abuse of human rights, but precisely because it is not unique. The world knew about the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews — and failed to act. Those failures spread the shame of these unspeakable crimes against humanity far beyond those directly responsible for them.
The events in Turkey in 1915, and in Germany in World War II, and in Cambodia in the 1970’s are of course not directly related. The madness and brutality of the perpetrators of each genocide had their own tragic basis.
But there is a strong tie in the world’s silence in the face of each of these horrors. We can only be haunted by the words of Adolph Hitler, who said, in embarking on his “crazed attack” on the Jews, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Now, today, years too late for the millions killed in the Nazi gas chambers and Khmer Rouge execution centers, we stand to say that we speak of the annihilation of the Armenians. And of the Jews, and of the Cambodians. We stand to remind the world of these crimes against humanity, that we may prevent future crimes.
CONGRESSMAN HAMILTON FISH, R-N.Y. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2982): In speaking of the consequences of the Jewish Holocaust, Adolf Hitler once remarked: ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ Indeed it is our responsibility to do just that; remember that which we would rather choose to forget.
CONGRESSMAN WILLIAM FORD, D-Mich. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2981): Even Adolf Hitler used past events to shape his own policies. In 1939 as he was beginning his invasion of Poland, Hitler ordered the mass extermination of its inhabitants, commenting, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Humanity’s failure to remember the genocide of an entire people scarcely 25 years earlier gave Hitler the go ahead to exterminate millions of innocent people.
CONGRESSMAN SAM GEJDENSON, D-Conn. (CR—House, 4/25/84, p. [1766): In the now infamous quote, Adolf Hitler, before beginning his Holocaust against the Jews, referred to international indifference in the face of the Armenian genocide. “Who,” he asked, “remembers the Armenians?”
CONGRESSMAN WILLIAM GREEN, R-N.Y. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2972): When Hitler was about to begin the Holocaust and a member of his staff asked him what the world would think, Hitler is reported to have replied, “Who remembers the Armenians?"
CONGRESSMAN RICHARD LEHMAN, D-Calif. (CR—House, 4/12/84, p. H2793): Questioned by an aide about his policy of Jewish genocide, Hitler said: “Who after all now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?”
CONGRESSMAN BRUCE MORRISON, D-Conn. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2979): Adolf Hitler took advantage of the world’s amnesia, looking at the Armenian genocide as a precedent for his own Holocaust perpetrated against Europe’s Jews. Hitler said, in a chilling remark made in 1939, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
CONGRESSMAN NICHOLAS MAVROULES, D-Mass. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2979): Sadly, however, the Armenian genocide would be surpassed by the Nazi holocaust in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Adolf Hitler, in an attempt to explain away his maniacal slaughter, would ask with a laugh: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
CONGRESSMAN CHARLES SCHUMER, D-N.Y. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2976): It is of paramount importance that we do not let this tragedy be forgotten with the passage of time. This act of inhumanity, based on religious and nationalistic grounds, was as terrible as any manmade catastrophe to that time; yet, only two decades later, Hitler could ask, “Who remembers the Armenians?” Perhaps if the world had paid more attention to the plight of the Armenian massacre, later tragedies could have been averted.
CONGRESSMAN JAMES SHANNON, D-Mass. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2973): This act of wholesale annihilation set the stage for Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Jewish people. He justified his plan to doubting co-conspirators with the reasoning that no one remembered the Armenian genocide which had taken place only 15 years earlier.
CONGRESSMAN HENRY WAXMAN, D-Calif. (CR—House, 4/24/84, p. H2981): This day serves to remind us that this first genocide of our century served as a precedent for the holocaust of World War II when more than 6 million people were destroyed by a government leader who responded: “Whoever cared about the Armenians?” when it was suggested that the world opinion would not allow the Nazis to get away with their attempt to eliminate the Jewish people.
Excerpts from the Nuremberg Versions of the August 22, 1939, Obersalzberg speech Dealing with the Planned Invasion of Poland
APPENDIX II
Lochner, 1942, p. 2
Our strength consists of our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter — with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. Its a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command — I’ll have anybody who utters one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Iebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
NCA, Volume VII, p. 753
Our strength is in our quickness and our brutality. Ghenghis Khan had millions of women and children killed by his own will and with a gay heart. History sees only in him a great state builder. What weak Western European civilization thinks about me does not matter.
I have given the order and will have every one shot who utters even one word of criticism that the aim of the war is not to attain certain lines, but consists in the physical destruction of the opponent Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my “Death’s Head units” with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?
The Times,
November 24, 1945, p. 4
Our strength is in our quickness and our brutality. Genghis Khan had millions of women killed by his own will and with a gay heart. History sees in him only a great State-builder, What the weak European civilization thinks about me does not matter.
I have given the order and will have everyone shot who utters one word of criticism....
Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my Death’s Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?
APPENDIX III
US-30 (1014-PS)
TMWC, Vol. II, pp. 290-291
NCA, Vol. III, pp. 665-666
OCFP, Vol. VII, pp. 205-206
Destruction of Poland in the foreground. The aim is elimination of living forces, not the arrival at a certain line: Even if war should break out in the West, the destruction of Poland shall be the primary objective. Quick decision because of the season.
Boehm, August 22, 1939 TMWC, Vol. XLI, p. 25
The goal is the elimination and destruction of Poland’s military power even if war should begin in the west. A swift, successful outcome in the east offers the best prospects for restricting the conflict.
Halder, August 22, 1939
DCFP, Vol. VII, p. 559
Aim: Annihilation of Poland—elimination of its vital forces. It is not a matter of gaining a specific line or new frontier, but rather the annihilation of an enemy, which constantly must be attempted by new ways.
I shall give a propagandistic cause for starting the war—never mind whether it be plausible or not. The victor shall not be asked, later on, whether we told the truth or not. In starting and making a war, not the Right is what matters but Victory.
A suitable propaganda cause will be advanced for the conflict. The credibility of this is unimportant. Right lies with the victor.
Solution: Means immaterial. The victor is never called on to vindicate his actions. We are not concerned with having justice on our side, but solely with victory.
Have no pity. Brutal attitude. 80 million people shall get what is their right Their existence has to be secured. The strongest has the right. Greatest severity.
Quick decision necessary Unshakeable faith in German soldier. A crisis may happen only if the nerves of the leaders give way.
We must shut and harden our hearts. To whomever ponders the world order it is clear that what is important are the war-like accomplishments of the best...
We can and must believe in the value of the German soldier. In times of crisis he has generally retained his nerve, while the leadership has lost theirs.
Execution: Harsh and remorseless. Be steeled against all signs of compassion!
Speed: Faith in the German soldier, even if re verses occur.
First aim: advance to the Vistula and Narew. Our technical superiority will break the nerve of the Poles. Every newly created Polish force shall again be broken at once. Constant war of attrition.
New German frontier according to healthy principles. Possibly a protectorate as a buffer. Military operations shall not be influenced by these reflections. Complete destruction of Poland is a military aim. To be fast is the main thing. Pursuit until complete elimination.
Once again: the first priority is the swiftness of the operations. To adapt to each new situation, to shatter the hostile forces, wherever they appear, and to the last one.
This is the military goal which is the prerequisite for the narrower political goal of later drawing up
new frontiers.
Of paramount importance are the wedges (which must be driven) from the southeast to the Vistula, and from the north to the Narev and the Vistula. Promptness in meeting new situations; new means must be devised to deal with them quickly. New Frontiers: New Reich territory. Outlying protectorate territory. Military operations must not be affected by regard for the future frontiers.
Notes
1.. The entire text of Hovannisian’s 1983 speech was read into the Congressional Record — Senate, pp. S471 3-5471 5, by Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.)on April 24, 1984, as part of his remarks entitled, “69th Anniversary of Armenian Martyr’s Day.’ Hovannisian’s use of the alleged Hitler quote appears on p. 54714. On p. S4704 Levin notes that the Hovannisian speech and similar fact sheets and articles which he entered into the Record were provided him by the Armenian Assembly.
Ironic the one quote this professional
speech-giver is most remembered for is
one he likely never said
2.. The Times, Saturday, November 24, 1945, p. 4. While the alleged Hitler quote on the Armenians normally appears bereft of source (as in the example cited above by Hovannisian), when “documented’ the Times article is invariably given. The unidentified author of the Times article claims that his story was based on “An address by Hitler to his commanders-in-chief on August 22, 1939 — a few days before the invasion of Poland — was read at yesterdays hearing of the Nuremberg trial [November 23, 1945].”
3.. Italics added.
4.. Louis P. Lochner, What About Germany? (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1942), pp. 1-4 (hereafter cited as Lochner, 1942).
5.. Lochner, 1942, p. 1.
6.. Lochner, 1942, p. 2 (italics added).
7. Lochner, 1942, p. 2.
8.. Congressional Record—House, p. H2981 (April 24, 1984).
9.. See Appendix I for the use of the alleged Hitler quote in the remarks of the sixteen U.S. lawmakers.
10.. The minutes of the August 22, 1939, Obersalzberg meeting kept by Admiral Boehm were submitted as evidence at Nuremberg in defense of Admiral Raeder. As such they are part of the trial transcript and appear in Volume XLI of Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (hereafter cited as TMWC), Nuremberg, November 14, 1945—October 1, 1946, pp. 16-25 (New York: AMS Press, 1971). Boehm’s minutes were marked as Document Raeder-27 (hereafter cited as Boehm, August 22, 1939).
11.. The documents confiscated from the 0KW were two in number. They were accepted by the Nuremberg prosecutors as the official minutes of the August 22, 1939 Obersalzberg meeting. As such they are preserved as part of the trial transcripts: TMWC, Volume II (New York: AMS Press, 1971), pp. 285-293. Given the trial numbers of US-29 (798-PS) and US-30 (1014-PS), respectively, these documents were also published in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (hereafter cited as NCA). There, US-29 (798-PS) appears in Volume III, pp. 581-596, and US-30 (1014-PS) in the same volume on pp. 665-666. Likewise, they appear in Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918—1945, Series D (1937-1945), Volume VII (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956) (hereafter cited as DCFP), pp. 200-206. In subsequent citations of these documents I shall cite the appropriate page numbers from each of the three publications listed above.
12.. General Franz Halder’s notes from the August 22, 1939, Obersalzberg meeting, while not submitted as evidence at Nuremberg, were subsequently published in DGFP, pp. 557-559 (hereafter cited as Halder, August 22, 1939).
13.. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 529-532. See in particular his detailed description of the documents in question on p. 529 (hereafter cited as Shirer, 1960).
14.. Shirer, 1960, fn. p. 529.
15.. This passage is taken from the transcript of the Nuremberg tribunal: TMWC, Volume II (New York: AMS Press, 1971), pp. 285-286 (italics added). The document discussed (but not submitted as evidence) by Prosecutor Alderman as Exhibit USA- 28 was subsequently published in NCA, Volume VII, pp. 752-754, where it was given the number L-3 (Note Shirer, 1960, fn. p. 529, mistakenly lists its number in this publication as: C-3).
16.. TMWC, Volume II, p. 291.
17. TMWC, Volume II, p. 291 (italics added).
18.. TMWC, Volume II, p. 292.
19.. Louis P. Lochner, Always the Unexpected (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956), p. 287 (hereafter cited as Lochner, 1956).
20.. Lieutenant-Colonel W. Byford-Jones, Berlin Twilight (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.,
1946), pp. 174, 176-77.
21.. Lochner, 1956, pp. 287-288 (italics added)
22.. Lochner, 1942, p. 405. What is harder to account for is the fact that neither the Nuremberg prosecutors nor William Shirer was aware of the fact that Lochner had originally published his document in 1942. In Lochner, 1956, p. 314, the author tells us that his WhatAbout Germany? appeared in print on October 15, 1942, and that “it was on the best-seller lists for a considerable time.’ Despite this fact, the present study is the first to establish that US-28 (L-3), the document discussed but not introduced as evidence in the course of the Nuremberg trials, was supplied to the prosecutors at Nuremberg by Lochner, and had in fact been published by him in 1942.
23.. Lochner, 1956, pp. 287-288.
24.. Shirer, 1960. For Beck’s role as an organizer of the anti-Hitler conspiracy, see pp. 309, 366-375, 387, 422, 488.
25.. Shirer, 1960, fn. p. 529.
26.. See Lochner, 1942, pp. 1-4, and NCA, Volume VII, pp. 752-754.
27.. For a description of Halder’s role in the anti-Hitler conspiracy, see Shirer, 1960, pp.
374-375, 378-379, fn. 380, 381-382, 404-408, 411-413, 422, 426, 517, 530, 558-559.
28.. For an analysis of the manner in which Armenian spokesmen use the activities of terrorists to further their cause, see Heath W. Lowry, “Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Armenian Terrorism: ‘Threads of Continuity,” in International Terrorism and the Drug Connection (Ankara: Ankara University Press, 1984), pp. 71-83.
29.. It was Pashayan who “took the special order’ on April 24, 1984, under which the various members of the House of Representatives made their speeches on Armenian Martyrs’ Day. See Congressional Record—House p. H2967 (April 24, 1984).
30.. Quoted in the April 24, 1984, remarks of Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), which were published in the Congressional Record—Senate, p. 54719 (April 24, 1984).
31.. Quoted in the April 24, 1984, remarks of Congressman Glenn Anderson (D-Calif,), which were published in the Congressional Record—House, p. H2970 (April 24, 1984).
32.. Congressional Record—House, p. H9227 (September 10, 1984).
33.. The most authoritative scholarly work dealing with the Ottoman population of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centures is Justin McCarthy’s Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire (New York and London: New York University Press, 1983). This demographic study shows (pp. 47-88) that Armenian deaths during the period in question did not exceed 600,000 and resulted from the same wartime conditions of starvation, epidemic disease, and inter-communal warfare which accounted for the loss of 2.5 million Muslim lives in the same period. The author provides no breakdown of the percentage of deaths experienced by either group resulting from the various causes he discusses.
34.. Congressional Record—House, p. H9228 (September 10, 1984).
35.. Congressional Record—House, p. H9228 (September 10, 1984).
A couple of other Hitler Quotes, more relevant to the Armenian "Genocide":
(1) ...(I)n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
(2) No matter what an amount of talent employed in the organization of propaganda, it will have no result if due account is not taken of these fundamental principles. Propaganda must be limited to a few simple themes and these must be represented again and again. Here, as in innumerable other cases, perseverance is the first and most important condition of success.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by James Murphy, February, 1939
A Theodore J. O’Keefe points out, in a criticism of the Holocaust Museum's willingness to bend facts ("A Challenge from the USHMM: A Revisionist Response"), that other versions of the Hitler Speech do not "report that the 240-pound Hermann Goering leapt on a table top and danced wildly to celebrate those alleged words of the Fuehrer, a part of this vulgar forgery given to Lochner that the Museum chose not to quote. Nor—as one does not learn moreover from the Museum’s scanty and misleading caption—did journalist Lochner rush to broadcast Hitler’s monstrous plans to the world. Instead, he delivered the "reports" (as the Museum calls this forged version of Hitler’s speech) to an official of the British Embassy in Berlin—as his contacts in the German resistance had asked him to do."
In their desperation even an evil man like Hitler became a moral witness to the Armenian Cause
(Hai Tahd)
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© Holdwater
www.tallarmeniantale.com/hitler-quote.htm
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