848) Atrocity Propaganda, 1914-1919

James Morgan Read's "Atrocity Propaganda, 1914-1919" (Yale Univ. Press, 1941, reprinted 1976) is an enlightening work. On p. 187, the author observed:

"Lying is an act of conscious deception. Much of British atrocity propaganda was unconscious deception built upon erroneous reports and impressions."

Yet, when it came to the Armenian chapter, excerpted on this page, Read mainly preferred to read the British misinformation, and other propagandistic sources, as on-the-level. Why was this? Justin McCarthy provides a clue, in his excellent report on British propaganda:

"...[N]ot long after the war the Wellington House campaign against the Germans was studied, described, and often censured by scholars. In fact Bryce and Toynbee together had written a very similar but shorter book about so-called German Atrocities in Belgium. That book contained the same sort of thing seen in the Armenian Blue Book: 'X, Y, and Z' and unknown and fraudulent sources. After the war, the Belgians investigated and found that the book was almost completely lies. The Belgians had wanted it to be true, but they reported their findings accurately. Yet no one has looked into the propaganda directed against the Turks. After all these years, no one has decried this propaganda. If one reads the basic books on the British Propaganda Ministry, and there are quite a few books on the subject, they never discuss the campaign against the Turks, only the Germans. I believe the reason that no one has researched the topic and uncovered the lies told of the Turks is that no one cared. They were just Turks."

In other words, the reason boils down to one word: prejudice.

(Here is one example, examining Lord Bryce's dishonesty, where the case is based on charges against Germans, and the Turks are once again a non-entity.)

James Morgan Read, while at least making some attempt at fairness toward the end of his report, is obviously another of these prejudiced people. The fact that the New Jerseyite was a Quaker, and the son of a Methodist Minister, most likely did not help. (He also served as Associate Professor of History at the University of Louisville back in the 1930s; unfortunately, well before Prof. Justin McCarthy joined this university's faculty, deprived of potential guidance regarding what is required of a true historian.)

When it comes to Turks, they were automatically guilty... because everyone "knows" Turks are barbarians at heart. And this comes from an author who is keenly aware of the deception of war propaganda. Dr. Read actually cites sources as the Blue Book, Lepsius, and most inexcusably, Aram Andonian, as valid sources incriminating the Turks. And as late as 1941... it's simply shocking. (Although, on the other hand, what is so shocking about this attitude? As most of us who know the truth are bitterly aware, these same sources are still being pointed to as valid today, in the early 21st century. By the way, for genocide aficionados, evidently Dr. Read was the first historian to have speculated that the Nazi gas chambers had perhaps not existed [based on his article appearing in The Christian Century, a Chicago weekly, under the title "Trials for War Criminals," May 30, 1945]. Remember, those of you who love to apply unfair labels: he was only speculating during a time when the facts were not known.)

Here we go, with the book excerpt regarding Armenians; note there are two sets of footnotes, one from the book, and the clickable ones leading to an analysis of some statements. Thanks to reader M. Mersinoglu.



P. 216 (partial):



The other atrocity story of prominence in October, 1915, was that of the Armenian massacres. Although the French took some notice of these events in the Near East, most of their information came from the British who by reason of their Dardanelles expedition were more directly concerned with Turkish politics. Although sporadic notices appeared in the press of both countries from May to September, 1915,[31] and although the real tribulations of the Armenians began with the policy of wholesale deportations initiated on April 8,[32] [1] the intensive preoccupation with the question of Turco-Armenian relations did not arise until the middle of October, when the forced migrations were actually drawing to a close.[33] [2] From mid-October onward, the “Armenian massacres” were a standard article of propaganda until they dropped out of sight about the time the United States entered the War. In those eighteen months the face of the oppressed Armenians was an ever-recurrent motif; they were a small, oppressed people like the Belgians, and if the alleged German crimes in Belgium could not be matched for enormity, they were surpassed in quantity by the Turks. The Times professed to be thoroughly shocked: “We had thought that no deeper stain than the crimes of Belgium could sully the German ruler and the German people. We were wrong. The Armenian massacres are an even more appalling example of the German delight in organized murder and wholesale lust.” [34] The Turkish people could not be held responsible for these things. “European travelers have often commended the



31. N.D.A.Z., June 7, 1915, commented on a Havas report of Armenian massacres of May 24. Temps. September 11, 1915, quoted the Daily Telegraph on the burning of an Armenian village by the Turks in which "all the inhabitants were burned almost [?] alive." [3]
32. Great Britain, Foreign Office, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce (London, 1916), p. 645. This important collection of documents, edited by A. J. Toynbee, is described on p. 218.
33. On November 6, 1915, an order was sent to the local authorities in Turkey to refrain from further deportations. [4]
34. Times, September 30, 1915.

P. 217:


Balfour made another Declaration, to
German-Americans

honesty and the kindliness of the Turkish peasantry, and our soldiers have said that they are fair fighters,” [35] commented Lord Bryce. The Turkish rulers were different; they were animated by the spirit of Sultan Abdul Hamid whose formula was: “The way to get rid of the Armenian question is to get rid of the Armenians.” The culpability of the Germans resulted from a sin of omission; it was their “callous equanimity,” said Lord Bryce to his fellow peers, that allowed these things to happen. [36] [5] Two days later came word that the Germans had protested against the Turkish actions on August 31— “Turkish methods have sickened even Prussian stomachs” — but it was pointed out simultaneously that the move should have been undertaken long before. A week later Lord Bryce, addressing a gathering at the Mansion House in the interest of a fund for the Armenian survivors, said that the Germans could have stopped the massacres, had they so desired. [6] Mr. Balfour appealed to German-Americans who were anxious to “save what remained of Germany’s good name,” to “use their influence to check the further continuance of these purposeless barbarities.” [37] There was general agreement in England that Germany was not trying to stop the Armenian massacres for fear of embarrassing her allies. [38]

The accusations against Germany were not confined to sins of omission; direct complicity in the crimes was also charged. German consuls were charged with having encouraged some of the worst massacres, German officers were implicated; indeed, in some of the massacres, it was alleged, German artillery officers had taken direct part. Charges of active promotion of the Turkish crimes were put in headlines: “German Aid to Murder.” [39]

In the meantime Lord Bryce was receiving more information about Turkish misdeeds, which he released from time to time. [40]



35. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, p. xxviii.
36. lbid., p. 14.
37. Times. October 8, 16, 19. I915.
38. Manchester Guardian, October 26, 1915. From August to October the German government kept warning the Turks to desist, at least if their assurances to Morgenthau, the American ambassador in Constantinople, can be believed. U.S. Foreign Relations, 1915 Supplement, pp. 985-987. On October 8, 1915, Bernstorff submitted to Lansing the copy of a memorandum sent by the German government to Turkey on August 9 and of the answer of the Imperial Ottoman government assuring its ally that measures would be taken to prevent the repetition of the excesses. Ibid., p. 990. [7]
39. Times, September 30, November 27, 1915; January 4, February 8, 1916; Temps, November 30, 1915.
40. Times, December 15, 1915. Many of these accounts were communicated to Bryce by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, which Bryce seemed to consider reliable and objective. [8] Bryce wrote to friends and acquaintances everywhere asking for material. Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, p. xvi.

P. 218:


Moorfield Storey was a lawyer from
Boston, a city most sympathetic to
Armenians. He hated imperialism,
and championed civil rights. How
interesting that even the most en-
lightened of men rarely questioned
their own anti-Turkish prejudice.


Finally he entrusted Arnold Toynbee, “a young historian of high academic distinction,” with the task of editing the documents in his possession and presenting them to the foreign office, which published them as a voluminous Blue Book in December, 1916. The 150 documents constituted “one long catalogue of horrors for which hardly any parallel can be found either in ancient or modern history.” [11] Not only Lord Bryce but H. A. L. Fisher, Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, and Mr. Moorfield Storey, ex-president of the American Bar Association. testified to the validity of the evidence collected, although Professor Murray spoke of the tendency of oriental races ‘to use hyperbolical language..” [42]

No mention of German complicity was made in the Preface of the report written by Lord Bryce, who asserted that “all that happened in 1915 is in the regular line of Turkish policy.” Nor did Toynbee in his analytical summary at the end of the volume make any reference to German inspiration. Statements in the documents themselves, however, definitely ascribed responsibility to Germany. Because of their anonymity these statements were less impressive. [43]

The Germans were most indignant about this new “Hetzpropaganda,” [44] although they had not hesitated during the preceding February to report Moslem charges of atrocity against the Serbs. [45] They met the English accusations of Armenian massacres with countercharges of atrocities committed against the Turks. [46] The Turks were, in fact, assiduously turning out counterpropaganda, reaching countries as far distant as Persia and the United States [9] with charges that Persian nationalists were being hanged by “English and Russian savages,” and that a “Persian Liberal” in Tabriz had been “cut in two with a big knife” at the instigation of the British consul. [47] But the Germans could not afford to defend themselves



41. Times, December 14, 1916.
42. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, p. xxxi.
43. Ibid., pp. xxvi, 18, 637-653.
44. Zeitungskontrolle, Englische Presse. The digest is replete with English accounts of Armenian atrocities in the latter part of 1915.
45. N.D.A.Z., February 4, 1915.
46. New York World. October 27, 1915, cited by Buchanan, “European Propaganda and American Public Opinion,” p. 360.
47. D.R.P.P. (November 29, 1915), p. 21.
P. 219:


against these charges merely by saying that the Turks were victims of atrocities too. When the Times charged that Consul Rössler in Aleppo had directed some of the massacres, the story was branded a “shameless lie” [10]; on the contrary, it was stated, the German consuls and missionaries had done everything in their power to exercise a moderating influence. Since the Armenians had been disloyal, some punishment had to be inflicted by the Turkish government, and England, which had never protested against the massacres of Jews by her Russian ally, had no reason to complain. [11] Moreover, said the Kölnische Zeitang, English indignation was being used to cover up the illegal invasion of Greece, since Belgian atrocities were no longer sufficiently arousing. In the spring of 1917 a Swedish officer who had been in Armenia [11b] during the deportations testified that there had been no cruelties whatsoever involved in the strict measures which the Turkish government had been forced to take against the Armenians. [48] This was welcome testimony, appearing after a long period of silence in the German press as a result of official instructions reading: “Concerning the Armenian question it is best to keep silent. The conduct of the Turkish authorities in this matter is not particularly laudable.” [49] [12] Obviously official Germany was disturbed by the actions of its ally, and with reason. It has become a matter of record that the Turks did pursue a policy of wholesale extermination against the Armenians. Whereas the estimates of the British were successively smaller, varying from the figure of 800,000 victims mentioned by Bryce in his speech in Parliament [50] to the 200,000 listed in the report of the commission on Responsibilities at the Peace Conference, [51] a reliable and documented German account of 1919 placed the number of those who perished at “approximately one million.” [52] [13] A former governor of Constantinople and Imperial Ottoman naval minister has admitted that the deportations



48. Frankfurter Zeitung, October 8, 1915; N.D.A.Z., October 8, May 17, 1915.
49. Mühsam, Wie Wir Belogen Wurden, p. 79. These instructions were issued on December 23, 1915. On October 7, 1915, instructions had gone out to the German press to handle the question “with the greatest care” and to stress constantly the fact that the Turks had been greatly provoked by the Armenians, Ibid., p. 76.
50. Hansard, 5th Series, H. L., XIX, 1003.
51. Violation of the Laws and Customs of War, p. 30. The introduction to these tables indicates that the figures are not “exhaustive or complete.” Toynbee’s summary. The Treatment a Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, p. 651, places the figure at 500,000.
52. Johannes Lepsius. ed., Deutschland und Armenien 1914-1918,
Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Potsdam, 1919), p. 1xv.
P. 220:


cost 600,000 lives. This Turkish apologist attempts to palliate the slaughters by charging the Armenians with having killed more than 1,500,000 Turks and Kurds between the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the reoccupation of Erzerum by the Turks at the end of February, 1918. [53] [14]

The British deductions concerning Germany’s responsibility contained only a small amount of truth. Instructions to the German press at the end of 1915 did state that Germany could not afford to jeopardize her friendly relations with Turkey by mixing in her internal affairs. [54] This restraint might be interpreted as a sin of omission. Whatever indirect responsibility Germany bore, there was certainly no official German inspiration of or participation in the deportations and massacres. The proof of this appeared in Toynbee’s summary in the Blue Book, as well as in the documentary collections of Lepsius and Andonian published after the war. [55] [15]

To be sure, many of the ordinary people in Turkey thought that the Germans had ordered the massacres. [56] Moreover, most Turks assumed, as their German apologists never tired of repeating, that the Armenians were being punished for their disloyalty and rebellion. Certain “revolts” of the Armenians had taken place but most of them came after the deportation policy had started and were the result, not the cause, of cruelties committed by the Turks. Three minor uprisings took place before the deportations were initiated. [16]



53. Djemal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statesman 1913-1919 (New York, 1922), pp. 280-289.
54. Mühsam, p. 76. A month later, on November 10, Bethmann sent a telegram to Constantinople containing orders to the German representative to make his influence felt in favor of the Armenians, “mit allem Nachdruck.” Lepsius, op. cit., p. 197.
55. Ibid., pp. lv—lviii, 331-339, brings evidence to refute the three specific cases mentioned in the British press and official reports. His collection also includes a mass of material to show that by 1917 at least the German officials in Turkey were taking heroic measures to alleviate distress among the Armenians. Aram Andonian, Documents officiels concernant les massacres arménians (Paris, 1920), does not make the Germans responsible for the massacres at any point.
56. Lepsius, op. cit,. pp. 331-339. Report of Neurath to Bethmann of November 9, 1915.
57. N.D.A.Z., June 7, 1915. Frankfurter Zeitung. November 20, 1915, cited by D.R.F.P., November 30, 1915. The English editor of this digest was struck by the report, which originated in a Russian paper, “as up to the present the Armenians have always been referred to as the innocent victims of Turkish persecution.” Djemal Pasha, p. 299, insists that the Armenians at the crucial moment in the Dardanelles campaign “were ordered by the French and English commanders-in-chief of the Forces in the Eastern Mediterranean to rise.”

P. 221:

Two of them were nothing more than rows of gendarmes with deserters. The only one of any consequence was the trouble in Van — apparently a case of self-defense on the part of the Armenians. [17] In all these “revolts” the maximum losses which the Turks suffered amounted to not more than three hundred soldiers. The oath of the Mutessarif of Musch at the burial of seven Moslem gendarmes who had been killed was almost fulfilled: “For every hair of your head, I will have a thousand Armenians slaughtered.” [58]

The question of the brutality meted out to the Armenians in addition to the slaughtering may seem academic. For arousing emotions, however, it was important to stress such aspects even more than ordinary massacres. Newspapers spoke of “the ordinary way” of getting rid of women and children as burning them alive, [59] and Armenian leaders [18] reported that “the headmen of the villages were subjected to revolting tortures. Their fingernails and their toenails were forcibly extracted; their teeth were knocked out, and in some cases their tongues were whittled down.” Bastinadoing men until they bled to death was not uncommon, according to a report communicated to Lord Bryce by the American Committee for Armenian and Serbian Relief. [60] A professor, according to an account in the Daily Chronicle, had had his hair torn out as well as his fingernails extracted. [61] How many of these enormities actually occurred is impossible to say. Probably some perverted Turks carried third-degree methods to inhuman lengths. It is only fair to add, however, that the Turks were given a clean bill of health in Parliament during the Dardanelles campaign. They were praised by an English officer for “the clean, manly manner in which they fight.” [62] It is also necessary to add that the general impression after reading pages of harrowing details concerning such enormities, as gathered together in the Blue Book, is that most of them were based on hearsay evidence. [63] Finally, the testimony of one pro-Turkish Englishman counterbalances



58. Ibid., p. lxix.
59. Temps, November 30, 1915,
60. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, pp. 85, 367.
61. Quoted in Temps, October 11, 1915.
62. Hansard, 5th Series, H. C., LXXV (November 11. 1915), 1446.
63. Almost every page of the report contained phrases such as “some said,” “I was told,” etc., despite Bryce’s statement that “by far the larger part” of the information came from eyewitnesses. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, p. xxvii.

P. 222 (partial):



somewhat the black record which has been made out to the Turkish account. Mr. Pickthall points out that:

The Turks have never even, put their case before the world, . . . their language — to say nothing of their religion —has always been a bar to European understanding. And so a race which has produced a literature worthy to be compared with that of ancient Greece (in the opinion of a modern Greek, no partial critic) has come to be regarded as uncultivated and “incapable of civilization”; a nation famed for tolerance, to be regarded as fanatical. [64] [18]

The Armenian atrocities remained a subject for indignation as late as June, 1917, but the high point of their public interest had been reached in late 1915 and early 1916. A lull followed, such as had preceded the Caveli case in the previous year. An article appeared in the Nineteenth Century for September, 1916, which stated that atrocity stories were no longer the subject of comment:

The Bryce Report came out many months ago, and we talk less and read less now about German atrocities. When all that it is possible to say about such things has been said many times over, people cease to speak much about them. But that does not mean that they have ceased to take account of them. And quite apart from the question whether these stories are true, they constitute still today, as a matter of undeniable psychological fact, the most tremendous barrier between the two peoples. . . . [65]

To generalize in such matters was dangerous. The article immediately following described in vivid detail a long series of German atrocities in France; [66] and the outcry over Belgian deportations was beginning. It continued at white heat for the next six months.



64. Marmaduke Pickthall, “Massacres and the Turks: the Other Side,” Foreign Affairs, July, 1920, Special Supplement, p. xv.
65. Edwyn Bevan, “The Truth about Lies,” Nineteenth Century, LXXX (September, 1916), 617.
66. Wilson Crewdson, “French Heroes—German Barbarism.” Nineteenth Century, LXXX, 628.

Analysis of Certain Points



1. The temporary policy of "deportations" (which means banishment outside a country's borders; the Armenians were forced to resettle to another part of the country, and were not exiled) did not begin "wholesale" until May 27, 1915, legally going into effect on June 1. The first sign of the resettlement may be seen with this May 2, 1915 telegram. Perhaps the author is referring to limited population movements that took place earlier, including Muslims who needed to be moved out as a response to conditions of war. Obviously, "April 8" can not signify the beginning of the "genocide" (a propagandistic synonym for "resettlement" or "relocation") because as everyone knows, "April 24" famously takes the credit for that.

2. Kind of corroborating what even Vahakn Dadrian has written, pointing to 1916, as to "when the genocide had all but run its course.” There were limited relocations that still kept going on, based on the whim of local officials, but most of the movements were already done with by the end of 1915. Makes one wonder what Armenian propagandists are talking about when they commonly refer to the "Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923."

3. Even an author sophisticated in the ways of war propaganda is giving credence to the reports published in newspapers of the Turks' wartime enemies. Not that these newspapers needed the excuse of war to publish accounts thoroughly hostile to the Turks. Western readers were already in the habit of clamoring for sensationalistic stories of barbaric Turks murdering innocent Christians, at least since the days of the late 19th century, what one Armenophile (Richard Davey) labeled as "the great Armenian horror boom." Practically none of these propagandistic newspaper reports came firsthand; they were nearly all based on hearsay. But even Davey warned, "surely it is not for us to endorse falsehoods and exaggerations without taking the trouble to verify them."

As Kamuran Gurun put it in The Armenian File: "...[T]he religious factor and political considerations have helped to establish an anti-Turkish climate. When conscious propaganda is added to this, then not only do we have biased news, but inaccurate news as well."

4. The first order to stop the relocations actually came in August, 1915. (Source: Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, 2005). Ironically, for a government accused of carrying out a policy of a "Final Solution," it was the weakness of the central government that prevented these orders from being followed efficiently, forcing Talat Pasha to send out several telegrams into 1916, reminding locals to cut it out.

5. Pro-Armenians, whether they be Lord Bryce or James Morgan Read, love to make simplistic conclusions without taking real history into account, or without insisting upon factual evidence. What happened to the Armenians in 1894-96 and 1915 did not happen in a vacuum (as the following exchange sheds light: "'Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian population to rebellion?' I [Sydney Whitman, from his book, "Turkish Memories," London, 1914] asked Mr. Graves [The British consul]. 'Certainly not,' he replied. 'I do not believe that a single Armenian would have been killed.'"); if it was the intention of the rulers to get rid of the Armenians in both cases, the majority of Armenians could not have survived. As for the Germans, they are off the hook regarding the massacres of "1915." But what makes the author think, given that the Germans were for all intents and purposes in charge of the Ottoman military, that they didn't not have a hand with the idea of moving out the dangerous Armenians from critical war zones... drawing upon the Germans' own historical experience?

6. Here, the erroneous assumption is being made that the Ottoman government was purposely in charge of exterminating the Armenians. No proof of such exists. If anything, internal Ottoman documents never meant to be publicized suggest the opposite: the central government took steps to safeguard Armenian lives and properties. The reason why they did not always succeed is because the ones who committed crimes were ones who had taken matters into their own hands. If the Ottoman government could not control these forces, why would anyone think the Germans would have been able to?

7. And the Ottoman government meant to do so wholeheartedly. Already having directives in place regarding crimes against Armenians (One appropriated document may be found in the British archives [cited in Salahi Sonyel's Shocking new documents, London, 1975: F.O. 371/9158 E.5523], where Article 21 read: "Should emigrants be attacked on their journey or in camps, the assailants will be immediately arrested, and sent to martial law court." Results of these courts.), Ottoman leaders were caught as off guard regarding the massacres that took place, and took immediate steps to resolve the situation. (For example, a 14 June 1915 message tells us they learned of 500 Armenians evacuated from Erzurum to have been killed by tribes between Erzurum and Erzinjan: "Incidents resulting in such killings will not be allowed to occur. For this reason it is absolutely necessary that every possible measure is taken to protect the Armenians against attacks by tribes and villagers, and that those who attempt murder and violence are severely punished.") The problem was that there was a desperate life or death war going on, where every man was needed at the multiple fronts. Adequate resources and manpower could not be allotted to adequately deal with the problem.

8. Naturally Bryce was going to consider the opinions of the missionaries and other bigots involved with the forerunner of the Near East Relief as reliable, because Bryce himself was a hopelessly partisan "Christian" bigot. "Bryce was aware of many biblical connections and religious legends and traditions... Bryce believed that the Turkish government ‘deserves to die’." Akaby Nassibian, "Britain and the Armenian Question, 1915-1923," 1984, pp. 37-38.

9. The one thing that Turks are awful at is propaganda. This very book lends witness to the fact, as you'll read on "p. 222": "The Turks have never even, put their case before the world, . . . their language — to say nothing of their religion —has always been a bar to European understanding." If Turks were good at propaganda, the "Armenian genocide" would not have become the accepted wisdom that it is today. Yet Read is making it seem as though this Turkish "counterpropaganda" had an effect in the ... United States?? How could it have even reached the United States? (The British cut the German cable to the U.S., maintaining the Entente view to be heard exclusively.) Did the Ottoman government have a kind of Wellington House branch operating on U.S. soil, as the British maintained with their own propaganda division? (By the way, how do we know the statements made about the Persians were not true?)

10. And a shameless lie it surely was. Rossler was a friend of Johannes Lepsius, and exhibited a great Christian sympathy toward Armenians. As quoted in a Taner Akcam paper, for example, the German consul accepted at face value Armenian propaganda claims such as there having been 2.5 million pre-war Armenians, that the convoys were at least 75% decimated, and that the bulk of the Armenian women and girls were carried off to Muslim "harems."

11. An excellent point: the fact that the British did not give two beans to the massacres perpetrated by ally Russia against the Jews provides huge insight as to how genuinely Britain cared for the welfare of their "Seventh" wartime ally, the Armenians. As Propagandist Arnold Toynbee himself shed light on Britain's ulterior motives: "The treatment of Armenians by the Turks is the biggest asset of his Majesty’s Government, to solve the Turkish problem in a radical manner, and to have it accepted by the public." (Memorandum dated 26 September 1919, F.O. 371/3404/162647, p. 2)

11b. The Swedish officer was not in "Armenia," which did not exist at the time, but in eastern Anatolia and probably in Mesopotamia, having followed parts of the Euphrates River. (Assuming we are talking about this Swede.) Yet another indication of bias, providing inaccurate geographical distinctions using "Christian code," instead of the reality.

12. The German press kept so "silent" regarding the Armenians, that when an American war correspondent turned to the German press to report the real non-genocidal truth (out of frustration, since Allied censors disallowed the truth), the Christian-sympathetic German press refused the non-genocidal reports.

13. Note how Read strives to cast doubt upon the 200,000 mortality figure, while attempting to legitimize religious fanatic Lepsius' ridiculous 1 million. (Incidentally, the Armenophile German Consul Rossler, from footnote 10 above, bought the British high-end claim of 800,000, not far from what his pal Lepsius concluded.) What Read provides in his footnote 51, Toynbee's guess of 500,000, best approximates the truth. (Based on a simple subtraction, as Armenians themselves concede there were one million survivors, and most "neutral" estimates agree on a pre-war population of 1.5 million.)

14. And here we have Read's attempt to call Djemal Pasha a liar, even though the vilified CUP official was amazingly honest in his memoirs, for the most part. For example, Djemal went with the more-or-less truthful Armenian mortality figure of 600,000. (Since Djemal picked the upper range of Read's mortality figures, one would have thought such would have awakened a dispassionate scholar to investigate the other end of Djemal's claim. Djemal, by the way, not having had anything to do with the Armenian "deportation" policy, appears to have been guessing; he prefaces the 600,000 figure with "let us assume," and also asserts 1.5 million was the total for the deported. A few pages later, his wording is "it is said" for not only the 600,000, but for the figure in the paragraph below, Muslims killed by Armenians.) The reason is that the partisan author is horrified to consider that the poor, innocent Armenians could have been responsible for slaughters of the "don't count as humans" Turks; the fact that Dr. Read read the testimony of the Russian officer Lt.-Col. Twerdokhleboff, regarding the inhumanity of the Armenians (provided in detail Djemal Pasha), and casually ignored it all, is very telling.

(Djemal was also off in his other calculation for 1.5 million victims of the Armenians; Armenians, along with some Russian help, did away with over half a million Ottoman "others" who did not fit into the preferred racial profile of those who would go on to inhabit the Armenians' hopeful future independent state. Since most Armenians, as well as most of the 2.5 million other Ottomans, died of famine, disease and other war-related reasons, what this means is that many more "Turks" were murdered by Armenians than the other way around.)

15. The author Read does a great job of displaying his unapologetic partisanship, along with damaging his credibility, by citing the Andonian forgeries as actual evidence. Even the British (Malta Tribunal) and Germans (Tehlirian trial) rejected these crude forgeries in 1921, yet here is Read pointing to their credibility a full generation later. (But everything is relative; it's not as embarrassing as a certain "renowned scholar's" doing so over three generations later.)

16. Yes, there is no going beyond "Turkish cruelties" in James Morgan Read's partisan mind. There were many revolts taking place before "April 24," that is, before "the deportation policy had started"... the reason why the relocation program militarily needed to be necessitated in the first place. Here are only a few, taking place in Van. The first of the Van revolts broke out just days after Russia had declared war, as this New York Times report tells us. Makes sense; the Armenians were armed and ready, waiting for their opportunity to strike, while the Ottoman nation was at its weakest during war, just as their terrorist organization charters (at least in the case of the Hunchaks) had specified. (The "Three minor uprisings" is a superb example of the durability of Armenian propaganda. The exact claim was utilized in PBS 's 2006 propaganda show.)

17. Once again, if the Van revolts took place before the "deportations," this could not be called a case of "self-defense." A 1915 French newspaper report clearly spelled out that Van operations took place "at the beginning of the war," and referred to the matter as an "insurgency." Ambassador Morgenthau himself is on record, in a May 25, 1915 telegram to his government, for pointing out 10,000-25,000 Armenian fighters at Van... two days before the "deportations" were ordered! Note Read goes on to say here that "In all these 'revolts' the maximum losses which the Turks suffered amounted to not more than three hundred soldiers." Horrifying! In Van alone, the Armenians cruelly murdered tens of thousands of people. Note also, however, that Read cautiously added the word "apparently" before claiming Van's "self-defense." He is at last beginning to find the objective part of himself...

18. Genuine truth-seekers are not going to accept the word of "Armenian leaders," scandalously on record for unscrupulous Dashnak-style "end justifies the means" tactics, including brazenly lying for Hai Tahd, the Armenian Cause. Nor can second or third-hand obtained newspaper reports be deemed as credible. At this point of his chapter, Dr. Read is finally shedding light on the other side of the coin, even to the point of exposing the hearsay of the Blue Book, a source he has used numerous times in this chapter to support his arguments (thus discrediting himself!). But he finally salvages his reputation somewhat, by demonstrating a little objectivity, and for that he deserves credit

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© Holdwater

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