Balancing Act: Bombing the Auschwitz Rail Lines

The inherent conflict between the strategic and humanitarian concerns of the Allies as the war drew to a close is perhaps best symbolized by certain aspects of the Holocaust. One of the major ethical debates that has arise out of the Holocaust is the decision by the Allied forces not to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz, the single deadliest of the Nazi extermination camps. While a consensus has arisen since the end of the war that bombing the rail lines was impractical and could actually have done more harm than good, a persistent minority of voices has insisted that the Allies should have done anything possible to prevent or delay the extermination process.

The majority position on this question was well stated by Peter Novick, in his book The Holocaust in American Life. He points out that the precision of Allied bombers was such that perhaps as many as a third of the bombs dropped on the camp would have hit prisoners' barracks. Moreover, experience with the strategic bombing had indicated that bombing of rail lines was actually quite ineffective. Novick concludes, "the current received version -- a fruitful opportunity, fervently pressed and frivolously dismissed -- must contend with the strong possibility that this ambivalently presented suggestion was a well-intentioned but misbegotten idea that we can perhaps be grateful was turned down."[1]

The minority position is represented by David Wyman, in his book The Abandonment of the Jews. Wyman focuses much of his argument on the bombing of rail lines specifically to prevent the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and elsewhere in the summer and fall of 1944. He lays the blame at the feet of the Roosevelt administration and specifically the War Refugee Board. Conversely, he rejects arguments about the feasibility and efficacy of bombing the rail lines and the preference of the Operational Plans Division to bomb industrial targets. "In reality, Auschwitz was part of those target systems," Wyman writes. "OPD was either uninformed or untruthful."[2]

For my own part, I come down on the side of the majority position as expressed by Novick. In either case, the debate brings to the fore the matter of whether a balance can struck between strategic and humanitarian goals. I don't think that they can: strategic goals or concerns will always override humanitarian goals. In considering this question, I often think of the current situation in North Korea. On the one hand, North Korea is easily the most repressive state in the world today. Its leadership cares so little about its own people that the country has regularly experienced famine while the ruling elite lives in luxury. It is a situation that virtually calls out for humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and any attempt to intervene militarily in its affairs would almost certainly be answered with the deployment of these weapons. The strategic concerns must outweigh the humanitarian concerns.

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     [1] Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1999), 58.
     [2] David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 297.

The War in 1943: Allied Victories and Outproduction

While I am cautious to state that I do not believe that the whole of the Allied victory in World War II can be attributed to a handful of causes, I do nevertheless believe that two of the factors Richard Overy lists in his book were more decisive than the others: the Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk; and mass production on the Allied side. Whereas the Soviet victories early in 1943 provided much needed momentum for the Allied military cause, mass production allows the Allies -- particularly the Soviets -- to produce far more materiel than Germany, even if it was arguably inferior materiel.

While Germany's gains on Soviet territory in the first six months following the invasion in June 1941 were enormous, the Germans were stalled by winter, and the Soviets were able to mount a counteroffensive. However, the Wehrmacht still had sufficient strength to launch a second offensive in the spring of 1941, ultimately driving to Stalingrad. In contrast, the loss at Stalingrad, including the surrender of Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army, was a crushing blow to German morale.[1] Perhaps more importantly, it forced the Nazis to fully mobilize their economy for the first time since the war began. The subsequent need to supplement domestic workers with slave laborers from Slavic countries belied the notion of Aryan racial supremacy.

If morale was badly damaged by the loss at Stalingrad, the loss at Kursk was a coup de grace. In addition to this effect, Kursk provided an object lesson in Overy's second important point -- i.e., that mass production by the Allies would ultimately result in victory for their side. In the battle, which involved more tanks than any battle before or since, sheer superiority of numbers was essential to the Soviet victory. Soviet mass production would continue apace, augmented by ongoing British and American war production, while the strategic bombing took a toll on Germany's only recently maximized production. In fact, the highest-quality German tanks had not yet rolled out from the factories.[2]

Kursk also drove home a point that all the counter-production of full mobilization in Germany could never counter -- superiority in numbers of people. Although the Wehrmacht had superior numbers of soldiers to the British, the American and Soviet militaries had far more. While the U.S. would need time to train its soldiers and the Red Army was somewhat crippled by the initial Barbarossa offensive, by early 1943, both these issues were no longer factors. Plus, Germany had lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and while the Soviets had lost even more, they had virtually endless population stocks from which to draw.[3]

In conclusion, the Allied victories at Kursk and Stalingrad and the ability of the Allied economies, particularly that of the USSR, were decisive factors in the Axis losing the war. Of course, other factors contributed significantly, but I feel that these issues at the very least knocked Germany out of the war, although defeating Japan required additional contributions.

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     [1] Jay W. Baird. "The Myth of Stalingrad," Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (1969): 201
     [2] Valeriy Zamulin, "Could Germany Have Won the Battle of Kursk if It Had Started in Late May or the Beginning of June 1943?" Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 27 (2014): 607
     [3] Mark Harrison, "The Economics of World War II: An Overview," in The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison, edited by Mark Harrison (New York: Cambridge UP, 1998), 14-15.

Perkonkrusts and the Final Solution in Latvia

Andrew Ezergailis, the author of what remains the standard work in English on the Final Solution in Latvia, gave his book the subtitle The Missing Center.[1] He chose this subtitle to represent what he felt was a noticeable absence in the discussion of collaboration by Latvians with Nazis. On the one hand, Ezergailis argued, some scholars tried to argue that the Latvians were rabid collaborators who couldn’t wait to lay their hands on their defenseless Jewish neighbors; on the other hand, other scholars depicted the Latvians as selfless rescuers who, with a very small number of exceptions, disagreed with Nazi Jewish policy and would have resisted more had the choice to do so not been deadly. The truth, Ezergailis wrote, lay somewhere in between.

Defenders of Latvian honor rightly pointed to a significant history of tolerance of Jews in Latvia, both during its period as a province of the Russian Empire and also during its brief period of independence between 1918 and 1940. Despite this relatively peaceful history in Latvia before the German invasion on June 22, 1941, the Jews of Latvia nevertheless suffered horribly during the Nazi occupation, with more than 75% of the almost 100,000 Latvian Jews murdered during the German occupation -- a percentage exceeded only in Lithuania and Poland.[2] The factors that contributed to this firestorm of extermination were multiple, but central was the role played by Latvian auxiliaries, who were drawn from a variety of sources, including the Perkonkrusts (Thunder Cross; PK) ultra-right-wing militia. PK was a conscious choice of the Nazis as a collaborator to assure the liquidation of the Jewish population, as shown by the pre-war contacts between the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) intelligence division of the SS and PK, the split in PK in the early days of the Nazi occupation roughly along predominantly anti-communist and anti-Jewish lines, and the percentage of the early death toll committed by members of the PK, notably the renowned Latvian airman Herberts Cukurs.

Latvia and Perkonkrusts Before June 1941

Perkonkrusts had emerged during the period in which Latvia was an independent state. January 1932 saw the rise of the Ugunskrusts (Fire Cross) organization founded by Gustavs Celmins,[3] a veteran of the Latvian War of Independence, ultra-nationalist member of the student fraternity Selonija, and sometime political attaché. The organization encountered opposition from the government and was banned in April 1933, after which point it morphed into PK and operated for another year. The organization, using the slogan "Latvia for Latvians," was virulently anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic, as well as anti-German, given the historical role of Baltic Germans in Latvia's ruling elites.[4]

With the seizure of power by Prime Minister Karlis Ulmanis in an authoritarian coup in May 1934, PK was also banned and many of its members arrested. Celmins fled abroad.[5] Latvia continued to be ruled by Ulmanis through the first year of the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, but he was forced to resign in July 1940, one month following the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union. For nearly the next year, the nation was subjected to severe repression under Soviet rule, the height of which occurred on June 13-14, 1941, just one week before the German invasion, when the NKVD ordered in a single night of terror the mass arrest and deportation of approximately 15,000 Latvian citizens.

Unsurprisingly, given this very recent experience with repression at the hand of the Soviets, a German military campaign to push out the Soviets was by and large quite welcome.[6] Moreover, its tolerant history notwithstanding, Latvia following the experience of Soviet rule had a not insignificant population who were now receptive to the anti-Semitic trope of Judeobolschewismus. While a thorough discussion of the history of this anti-Semitic archetype -- not to mention the history of Bolshevism itself in Latvia, which was not insignificant[7] -- is beyond the scope of this essay, it is nevertheless important to recognize that the year of Soviet rule that Latvians experienced contributed significantly to increased anti-Semitism in the country. While some found the Nazis’ use of the Judeo-Bolshevik threat to be a ridiculous throwback to the Nazi past, others -- particularly PK members who had long argued such a connection – believed the propaganda wholly.

The occupation of Latvia by Germany, beginning in June 1941 as part of the larger Operation Barbarossa, had included anti-Semitism within its larger context. In preparation for a coming clash of ideologies, the Nazis sought to cultivate the cooperation of anti-Soviet activists in the areas to be occupied long before the invasion began, and Latvia was no exception. There was no shortage of populations from which collaborators could be drawn. In addition to several leading figures of the independent Latvian military, who had fled to Germany in the previous one to two years, there was also a large Baltic German population that had only recently be relocated to Reich territory under the Heim ins Reich population transfer program of the SS. Finally, and most relevant because of the pre-existence anti-Semitism of PK, Gustavs Celmins himself had relocated to Germany in 1940 and was joined there by several high-ranking PK members.[8]

Perkonkrusts as a Pre- and Post-Invasion Collaborator

To determine whether PK was a conscious choice of the Nazis for collaborations requires first demonstrating pre-invasion communication between the parties. The assumption of substantial pre-invasion collaboration had always been assumed on the basis of Celmins's arrival in the country one week after the invasion with the Wehrmacht as a Sonderführer.[9] However, despite widespread claims of such collaboration in the secondary literature, documentation of bona fide pre-invasion collaboration has been extraordinarily scarce. Moreover, with PK having been banned by the Nazi occupation authorities in August 1941, less than two months into the occupation, the window of opportunity for collaboration seems to have been quite short.

One important piece of evidence is that the Nazi party was aware of the existence of PK in Latvia in its earlier heyday, as shown by mention of the group in a two-part article published in late 1933 in the party newspaper Ostland, the organ of the Bund Deutscher Osten in Berlin. In these articles, PK is referred to as a possible ally of the Nazis, although its anti-German attitude is criticized and attributed to “a mistaken perception of National Socialism as a danger to the Latvian state.”[10] Nevertheless, it is also presciently noted that, given French cooperation with the Soviets, Latvia and PK would soon have to come to terms with Germany.[11] With PK having been pushed underground the following year, how the organization re-emerged has been difficult to determine.

            Important clarification was offered by Freds Launags, who joined PK at the beginning of the Nazi occupation and collaborated with the SD before eventually joining the anti-Nazi underground, spearheading resistance to the returning Soviets. Launags ultimately emerged in Stockholm after the war, where he volunteered for anti-Soviet intelligence work. He emigrated to the United States and was ultimately cultivated as an operative for the CIA. At a debriefing in the 1950s, Launags clarified the extent of pre-invasion collaboration.[12]

            Launags recounted how, while living under Soviet occupation in 1940, he helped to form a secret anti-Soviet resistance group, posing as a communist in hopes of infiltrating the government to moderate its policies. He went underground when the NKVD cracked down on resistance in early 1941. He claimed to have been recruited for more formal anti-Soviet espionage by a PK member named Feliks Rikards in April 1941, after which point PK contacts with Germany began to arm the underground with smuggled German arms. When the war with Germany broke out, Launags began moving toward Riga, offering assistance in routing out communists along the way. He arrived in Riga on July 4, at which point PK had already been reconstituted and had established an operating office. Gustavs Celmins was at that time in Berlin requesting the formation of a Latvian SS unit.[13]

            Launags’s testimony, while valuable, must be approached with caution. Certainly, were he directly responsible for war crimes, he would have denied any involvement; situating himself within a political, rather than armed, wing of the movement would have sufficiently exculpated him from participating in the extermination of Latvia’s Jews. Nevertheless, his testimony about the creation of subgroups within PK corroborates quite closely and independently several other sources on the topic, none of whom cite Launags.

Perkonkrusts Splits Into Factions 

Launags recounted that PK was being divided into subgroups when he arrived in Riga. One of the groups was Sondergruppe R (for Rikards), to which Launags was attached and for which his chief job was interrogating communists. Sondergruppe R eventually became known as the Latvian Card Index, and it operated throughout the war as an intelligence-gathering arm of the SD targeted against communists. The other, more famous, subgroup was Sondergruppe A, commonly referred to the Arajs Kommando (AK) and named for the Latvian policeman Viktors Arajs, which was deployed against Latvia’s Jews.[14]

Thus, already by Launags’s arrival in Riga, PK was being divided into wings targeting, respectively, communists and Jews – both of which were traditional PK enemies. Although PK would be banned outright in six weeks, the recruitment process for the AK would indicate how important PK was to the persecution of the Jews. Arajs himself seems to have appearance unsummoned at the police headquarters in Riga on July 1, where he met Walter Stahlecker, head of Einsatzgruppe A, which had been attached to Heeresgruppe Nord with the invasion on June 22 to execute political opposition, including male Jews between 15 and 50 years old. Stahlecker authorized Arajs to form a commando, and three days later, the following call was published in Tevija, a nationalist newspaper: “All nationally-thinking Latvians -- members of Pērkonkrusts, students, officers, Home Guards [“Aizsargi”], and others, who wish to take an active part in the cleansing of our country from harmful elements, can register themselves at the Headquarters of the Security Kommando at Valdemars Street 19, from 9-11 and from 17-19.”[15]

Several mysteries surround the appearance of Arajs, as well as his specific mention of PK in his call to arms when it had been banned seven years earlier; in contrast, the Aizsargi had only been banned with the Soviet occupation a year earlier. One possible explanation is offered by Ezergailis, who notes (albeit in a footnote) that a document exists showing that Arajs himself had been a PK member. Ezergailis writes, “Under Ulmanis [Arajs] had to deny this association to keep his position as a policeman […] At the same time, however, we can not [sic] completely eliminate the possibility that the Germans knew of Arajs' early association with the Perkonkrusts and that he therefore was preselected for the job.”[16] It is also possible that, upon the Germans occupying Riga, Arajs simply reported to the police station to determine the situation and volunteered for duty with the Einsatzgruppe. Significantly, Roberts Stiglics, whom Stahlecker appointed police chief in Riga, had like Celmins returned to Latvia with the Germans. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Stiglics and Arajs were acquainted via police work and that the former called upon the latter.[17]

Conversely, Richards Plavnieks protests that Arajs could not have been a PK member. He notes that, while the initial 1975 indictment against Arajs from his trial in West Germany included the charge that Arajs was a PK member, the charge was removed in the indictment’s final form.[18] Moreover, Plavnieks asserts that the mistaken identification of Arajs with PK is largely the result of mistaken testimony from Jewish eyewitnesses, who, while well able to identify their persecutors on a personal level, would have been less able to determine the specific taxonomy of the Latvian far right.[19] However, Plavnieks does not engage the document that Ezergailis uses to substantiate the possibility of Arajs’s membership. As a result, Plavnieks’s claim that, “[b]ecause he belonged to the police force during the Kārlis Ulmanis dictatorship under which Pērkonkrusts was a banned organization, Viktors Arājs incontrovertibly could not have been a member, at least not as of 1934”[20] seems naïve, if not almost quaint.

            Because PK had been divided into Sondergruppen R and A, the ban on the organization in August 1941 had less of an effect than might otherwise be thought. Sondergruppe R, per Launags’s testimony, was subsumed into the SD as the Latvian Card Index, and this information is broadly corroborated by multiple sources. Sondergruppe A, or the AK, would go on to participate broadly in crimes against humanity, targeting mainly the Jews of Riga and the countryside of Latvia. Matthew Kott notes that the Latvian Card Index itself split into wings led by Rikards, who formed the clandestine resistance to the Nazis and subsequently to the Soviets, and Celmins, who was ultimately arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and sent to a concentration camp.[21]

Members of Perkonkrusts Commit Mass Murder

Regardless of whether he was a PK member or not, Arajs nevertheless recruited among PK members, and while the testimony of Jewish survivors might be inaccurate for the reasons noted, other sources substantiate their number among the AK. For instance, Kott notes that PK members “exerted a disproportionate influence on the course of the Holocaust in Latvia,”[22] although he concedes that several sources have likely exaggerated the number. In addition, Katrin Reichelt, while stating that it is “very difficult if not impossible”[23] to prove the number of PK members among participants in the Final Solution, refers to the Operational and Situational Report of Einsatzgruppe A of August 1, 1941, in which Stahlecker favorably describes the organization, calling them “a moral elite, whose attitude is ready for battle thoroughly.”[24]

Among the most prominent PK members who served in the AK was Herberts Cukurs, who distinguished himself in the eyes of several survivors for his cruelty in the ghetto-clearing operation of November 30, 1941 – the first of two dates on which the majority of Jews in the Riga ghetto were shot at Rumbula. Although Cukurs’s PK membership before the war has been a matter of some dispute, several sources attest to his becoming a member in the days following the Nazi occupation. In addition, although there has been some disagreement with regard to Cukurs’s involvement in atrocities, it is unlikely that eyewitnesses would misidentify someone as well known among Latvians as Cukurs. Moreover, even Ezergailis, who has tended to defend Cukurs as condemned on the basis of very little evidence, is forced to concede that, “Although Arajs’ men were not the only ones on the ghetto end of this operation [Rumbula], to the degree that they participated in the atrocities there the chief responsibility rests on Herberts Cukurs’ shoulders.”[25] Finally, the mere association of Cukurs, Arajs, and AK in the two Aktionen at Rumbula demonstrates the participation of PK in the mass murder of Latvia’s Jews.

Conclusion

            In conclusion, PK was a conscious choice of the Nazi leadership generally and the SD particularly in perpetrating the Final Solution in Latvia. Not only can mutual and contacts between the Nazis and PK be substantiated from long before the German invasion of Latvia, but the division of PK under the Nazi occupation along anti-Soviet and anti-Jewish lines, a decision unlikely to have been taken without German approval, indicates an attempt to channel anti-Semitic energies toward a genocidal goal. Finally, although the focus on Herberts Cukurs here due to issues of space precludes a more thorough discussion of PK collaboration, the actions of the airman and his commander Viktors Arajs provide concrete evidence of participation in genocide. Although Ezergailis considered PK to be part of the “missing center” of his book’s title, the benefit of additional sources now indicates just how much of that center PK occupied.

---

[1] Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944: The Missing Center (Riga, Latvia: Historical Institute of Latvia, 1996)

[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jewish Population of Europe in 1933: Population Data by Country,” https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005161, accessed November 15, 2016; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Teaneck, N.J.: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 1220; Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Bantam, 1986), 403.

[3] Please note that all diacritical markings of Latvian names and words have been removed.

[4] Matthew Kott, “Latvia's Perkonkrusts: Anti-German National Socialism in a Fascistogenic Milieu,” Fascism: Journal of Contemporary Fascist Studies, 4 (2015), 180-81.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Richards Plavnieks, "Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War: The Cases Against Viktors Arajs and the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2013), 31-32.

[7] Among other factors, the Latvian Rifles, a unit of the Red Army, played a decisive role in the Bolshevik seizure of power, and Latvians were the single most over-represented minority among the peoples of the Russian Empire in the Bolshevik Party, ahead of both Jews and Ukrainians. See, e.g., Ezergailis, The Latvian Impact on the Bolshevik Revolution: The First Phase: September 1917 to April 1918 (New York: East European Monographs, 1974).

[8] Kott 188.

[9] I.e., a “special leader”; Ezergailis, ibid, 121-22.

[10] “Das Parteiwesen in Lettland,” Ostland: Wochenschrift für den gesamten Osten 14, no. 44 (October 27, 1933): 471, translation mine.

[11] “Das Parteiwesen in Lettland,” Ostland: Wochenschrift für den gesamten Osten 14, no. 46 (November 10, 1933): 495.

[12] "Biographic Debriefing of Clevland [sic] O. Hahn" (Hahn Debriefing), LAUNAGS, FREDS, Volume 1 (LAUNAGS, vol. 1), Second Release of Name Files Under the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Acts, ca. 1981 - ca. 2002 (Second Release of Name Files), Record Group 263: Records of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 1894 - 2002 (RG 263), National Archives at College Park, MD (NACP), pp. 24-281.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Quoted in Plavnieks, ibid, 35, translation his.

[16] Ezergailis 196.

[17] Ibid, 156.

[18] Plavnieks, ibid, 159.

[19] Ibid, 157-58.

                [20] Ibid.

[21] Kott, ibid, 190-91.

[22] Ibid, 189.

                [23] Katrin Reichelt, “Between Collaboration and Resistance: The Role of the Organization Perkonkrusts in the Holocaust in Latvia,” in The Issues of the Holocaust Research in Latvia, edited by Andris Caune, Aivars Stranga, and Margers Vestermanis (Riga, Latvia: Latvijas Vestures Instituta Apgads, 2003), 285

[24] Quoted in ibid, 286, translation hers.

[25] Ezergailis, ibid, 192.

WWII: Race and the Pacific War

To determine the extent to which racial identity played in a role in combat in the Pacific theater in World War II, it is necessary to examine the question from both sides of the conflict, i.e., from the standpoint of both the Japanese and the Allies. On the latter point, it is necessary to consider not only the racial attitudes of the U.S. military but also those of the British, French, and Dutch colonial authorities, Australian and New Zealand forces, and the Asian and Pacific Islander populations who found themselves under Japanese occupation. The conclusion can be drawn that, while not the primary factor driving the conflict, racial identity was an immensely complicating factor in an already complicated conflict.

From the Japanese side, the rise of ethnic nationalism in Japan has been well attested. Ronald Spector details this ascendance in his book on the Pacific war, referring for example to the concept of kokutai and how it permeated the Japanese military.[1] Assassinations politically motivated by nationalists occurred against the foreign minister in May 1932[2] and the prime minister by likeminded assailants two years earlier.[3] Once the war began, and Japanese ultranationalism was given free rein, its expression took two forms. On the one hand, violence in the form of atrocities committed against non-Japanese enemies, whether Chinese in the Rape of Nanjing or Americans in the Bataan Death March, was a clear enunciation of the superiority the Japanese felt over other peoples. On the other hand, as pointed out by Millett and Murray in the case of the Japanese conquest of Malaya, a British colony, the Japanese could act as "liberators" of fellow Asian peoples by ousting militarily the colonial rulers.[4]

From the Allied side, there was the obvious factor that certain Asian and Pacific populations were eager to collaborate with the Japanese because they were not the traditional colonial oppressor. More importantly, however, was the pre-existing conceptions that American, British, French, Dutch, Australia, and New Zealand forces had of Asian and Pacific peoples. In the case of the United States, these prejudices had been reinforced by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, with its subsequent renewal every 10 years until 1942, not to mention the sporadic violence committed against Asian and Asian-American communities along the West Coast of the United States and the internment of Japanese Americans during the war itself. As a result, as noted by Craig M. Cameron, atrocities committed by American soldiers against Japanese surrendering soldiers or POWs was very widespread. In dissecting John A. Lynn's quasi-defense of this behavior, Cameron notes that "the apologist notion that Allied soldiers acted only in response, in retribution, is one of the great fallacies to attaches to racist brutality: the displacement of brutality onto the victim."[5]

Perhaps no point of comparison regarding how race was a factor in the war is that with the European theater, particularly as fought between the Allies and Germany. Whereas Germany fought a war of extermination on the Eastern front, on the Western front, Germany abided by international treaties (with a few notable exceptions) in fighting the British and Americans, and the Allies conducted themselves correspondingly. In the same way that German soldiers felt free to commit atrocities in the east because of racist doctrine, American soldiers felt the same comparative freedom when fighting the Japanese. At least in the case of the Pacific war, race was not the cause of the war, but it was undoubtedly a factor.

=====

     [1] Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (New York: Free Press, 1983), Epub edition, 101-02.
    [2] Ibid, 109
    [3] Ibid, 123.
    [4] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 198.
    [5] Craig M. Cameron, "Race and Identity: The Culture of Combat in the Pacific War," International History Review, 27, no. 3 (2005): 558.

Strategic Bombing: A Moral Hazard?

To say that the Allied campaign of "strategic bombing" during World War II was controversial is ans understatement. With the exception of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it might be the single most debated purely military aspect of the war. While the initial reactions to the strategic bombings of Germany might have been quite positive from the standpoint of military assessments, time has tempered this uniform positivity; moreover, the moral aspect of the bombings has continued to be a concern for analysts.

Before the war was even over, proponents of strategic bombing such as J.M. Spaight, a one-time assistant secretary in the Air Ministry of the U.K., were justifying the tactic. In his widely distributed pamphlet Bombing Vindicated, Spaight relies heavily on tu quoque arguments along the lines of "Germany did x, so we are justified in doing y." Strictly from a logical standpoint, his argument therefore is flawed. Nevertheless, the distinctions he attempts to draw between combatants and civilians are important ones, particularly as it regards civilians working in military industries. Spaight writes, "To spare them might mean, however, that the lives of one's own fighting men were sacrificed. It is to save these men's lives to put a war-plant out of operation or to stop a trainload of munitions from reaching the front."[1]

However, this statement fails to recognize a key distinction in international law between combatants and civilians, i.e., that it is an accepted convention of warfare that combatants' lives are more expendable than those of civilians, if only because the first rule of warfare is that combatants will die, whereas only extraordinarily recently has warfare endangered the lives of large numbers of civilians. A moral calculus that states that one's combatants will suffer fewer deaths than one's enemy's combatants is wholly defensible; one that states that one's combatants will suffer fewer deaths by taking the lives of one's enemy's civilian population is less so.

In an assessment of strategic bombing written 40 years after the war was over, Kenneth P. Werrell of the U.S. Naval Institute offered some specifics of the strategic bombing campaign while specifically avoiding a moral justification. He noted that nearly one-quarter of bombs were dropped on non-strategic targets,[2] that the losses suffered by the RAF, particularly of officers, was hard to justify,[3] and that German production actually peaked during the strategic bombing,[4] although the latter point was perhaps a consequence of late full mobilization of the Nazis, which was not until after Stalingrad. The chief benefits, Werrell notes, besides negative effects on morale,[5] were the defeat of the Luftwaffe, the need of Germany to divert forces in response to the bombing, and the economic effects.[6] From his standpoint, the strategic bombing was clearly worth the lives that were lost -- military and civilian included.

That said, I can't help but wonder how assessments of strategic bombing such as Spaight's and Werrell's would have been affected had the Allies not won the war. If the U.K. had lost the Battle of Britain, would Spaight and Werrell justify the Blitz as one of the factors in that defeat? If the Axis powers had won, would Tojo and Momma have put Stimson and Macarthur on trial and hanged them? Certainly, to the victors go the spoils, but the mere fact that some of the people sentenced at Nuremberg committed crimes no more serious than those committed by the Allies (e.g., Doenitz serving 10 years for unlimited submarine warfare) is troublesome. In the end, it seems that, from a strictly military point of view, the strategic bombing campaign was justified, but I don't think it can ever be morally justified.

=====

     [1] J.M. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1944), 116.
     [2] Kenneth P. Werrell, "The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments," Journal of American History, 73, no. 3 (1986): 707.
     [3] Ibid, 708.
     [4] Ibid, 711.
     [5] Ibid, 712.
     [6] Ibid, 709.

Japanese Victories from China to Midway

Understanding why the Japanese were so successful in the early years of World War II requires a thorough exploration of the several campaigns in which Japan was involved during that period. Although period began with occupation of and campaigns against China, later actions undertaken against the European anti-Axis countries and finally the United States had their own explanations for the early successes. Japan owed its success in China to the lack of government unity in that country, while Japan's success in Hong Kong, Indochina, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Far East resulted from the colonial powers of these countries being either occupied by or at with war with Germany. Finally, Japan's success against the United States resulted from lack of preparedness and the element of surprise.

Japan had already established a colony in Korea and an occupation government in Manchuria by 1937. Thus, with the invasion of the Chinese heartland, war against China began in earnest. Although China had become a republic in 1911 under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, following Sun's death in 1925, power over the country had fallen into the hands of multiple warlords. In addition, civil war began in 1927 between nationalist forces led by Sun's Kuomintang political party and General Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party ultimate led by Mao Tse-tung. It was with the country being torn apart that the Japanese invaded China. As Millett and Murray point out, although Chiang and Mao entered a truce to resist the Japanese, the Japanese were able to exploit non-communist opposition to Chiang to strip him of power.[1] In addition, almost four years into the Japanese occupation, Chiang actually turned on the communist military units rather than concentrate on fighting the Japanese.[2]

Oddly, the key power supporting Chiang in 1937 was the Soviet Union, which supported him rather than the Chinese Communist Party, but the Soviets were unable to come to China's aid in 1941. This is a factor that was of enormous importance, since the Soviets had routed the Japanese in 1939 at Khalkin-Gol. According to historian Amnon Sella, the Japanese lost mainly because they had underestimated the Soviets in believing that the Purges of the 1930s had left the Red Army weak: "But as it turned out, the Red Army was better equipped than ever before, and quite prepared to improvise ingenious solutions to unaccustomed difficulties."[3] If the absence of the Soviets as a force to intervene in China was important, so was the inability of the British to adequately defend Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaya. The former, for instance, had to be defended in part because of civilian volunteers.[4] Finally, given the ongoing military occupations of French and the Netherlands by the Nazis, the ability of these countries to defend their colonies were severely compromised.

In the case of the United States, the reason for Japanese success really seems to have been the element of surprise. Since the goal of the Japanese in attacking Pearl Harbor was prevention of the U.S. ability to intervene in the defense of the Philippines and other Pacific possessions, as well as to assist the British and Australians in defending their territories, the attack can be considered a major success. Ultimately, only Wake Island among the initial attacked areas was successfully defended, mainly because, unlike other U.S. territories, it been recently fortified in anticipation of such an attack.[5] The Philippines were comparative less defended and relied heavily on the Philippine Army; Guam was not defended at all.[6]

Thus, the reasons for Japanese success varied on the basis of time, place, and enemy. The Chinese, although perhaps providing the largest possible resistance, was politically the weakest and thus was easily exploited. The war in Europe left European colonial possessions in the Pacific comparatively weakly defended, and even the U.S., which had not yet entered the war, had uneven defenses in place, which were fully exploited by the Japanese using the element of surprise at Pearl Harbor. Tellingly, once the U.S. entered the war with full resource commitment and awareness, the tide turned quickly against the Japanese.

===

     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 159.
     [2] Ibid, 164.
     [3] Amnon Sella, "Khalkhin-Gol: The Forgotten War," Journal of Contemporary History, 18, no. 4 (1983): 680.
     [4] Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (New York: Free Press, 1983), Epub edition, 331.
     [5] Ibid, 265-66.
 b  [6] Ibid, 266.

Radar vs. Signals Intelligence in British Successes

I feel that the intelligence work at Bletchley Park was more important to the U.K. success during 1940 than radar was. Essentially, I feel this way because radar, while certainly helpful, could only provide so much of an advantage. For instance, although Murray and Millett indicate an advantage for the U.K., at least in submarine warfare, owing to radar, writing that German U-boats did not yet have radar in 1942.[1] Therefore, radar-equipped British naval vessels were in a better position to communicate with each other. However, the down side to that advantage is that U-boats were also more difficult to detect in 1940 because they did not have radar in 1940, thus the comparative superiority of the Ultra program.

Given the need of the British navy to avoid U-boat packs lurking along convoy routes, Murray and Millett indicate clearly that signals intelligence would make a key difference.[2] In explaining how the Enigma code was first broken by Poland, which then presented its own findings to British intelligence,[3] the authors introduce the idea of the evolving nature of Enigma and its ability to work against itself. For instance, they write, "the British learned that the Germans were operating a weather ship off the coast of Iceland. In early May the Royal Navy mounted a well-planned cutting-out operation that captured the ship along with the Enigma keys for June. Two days later the Royal Navy […] captured U-110 […] and stripped the boat of all Enigma materials, including the keys for the highly secret 'officers only' traffic.[4] The Ultra program was no successful that even two investigations by Germany over lost campaigns failed because the Germans still believed that Enigma was unbreakable.[5]

Radar is not accorded that type of attention by Murray and Millett. Further, the Germans were ultimately able to get around British radar,[6] although this was long after 1940 and thus not a factor during the "standing alone" period. The authors do point out that the Germans' failure to comprehend the U.K.'s use of radar in 1940 was a key reason that Operation Sea Lion was abandoned.[7] However, this was clearly a matter of a failure on Germany's part, rather than an innovation on Britain's. Thus, the combination of Ultra's self-perpetuating nature (more intelligence yielding more intelligence) and its decisive role in the naval war demonstrate the superiority of codebreaking over radar as military innovations.

=====

     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 255.
     [2] Ibid, 243.
     [3] Ibid, 244.
     [4] Ibid, 245.
     [5] Ibid, 246.
     [6] Ibid, 256.
     [7] Ibid, 87.

Early War Victories of Nazi Germany

Understanding why the first nine months of the war went so well for Germany has to be broken down into constituent parts. The victories of the period are essentially three: over Poland, over Scandinavia, and over France and the Low Countries. The evidence suggests that the reasons for each of these three victories were quite different. Whereas the relative ease of the defeat of Poland could be attributed in large part to a combination of diplomacy and superior technology, the comparatively more difficult campaigns against Norway and France were respectively attributable to tactics and leadership.

In the case of Poland, with this campaign, Hitler likely knew that the invasion would lead to war, given the guarantees by the U.K. and France of Poland's sovereignty. For this reason, it was necessary for Germany to resort to diplomacy with the Soviet Union to prevent the possibility of a two-front war, which had been so disastrous for Germany in the previous war. On this point, Williamson Murray and Alan R. Millett write that Hitler took advantage of an opportunity follow the Nazi occupation of Prague to conclude a deal with Stalin before the U.K. or France could "In the meantime, the British, urged on by the French, dithered in dealing with the Soviets, and by July Hitler himself had reached out to Stalin. His overtures were warmly received."[1] Having neutralized the threat of intervention from the Soviets, the Germans could easily overwhelm Poland with its inferior technology.

Regarding Scandinavia, tactics were decisive, specifically Germany's use of paratroopers. Pressed for time to occupy Norway successfully before the U.K. could occupy the country's ports, from which Germany gained steel from Sweden important to building tanks, as well as other materiel. The edge that Germany required was Norway's airfields, from which attacks on British ships could be launched by the Luftwaffe. Murray and Millett point out the importance of paratroopers to establishing control over the airfields at Oslo and Stavanger: "Control of ports and air fields allowed the Wehrmacht to dominate the Norwegian countryside, as it quickly built up its forces […] Only at Narvik, far removed from Luftwaffe bases, did the Western powers mount an effective counteroffensive."[2]

Finally in France, Murray and Millett emphasize the importance of leadership. In describing the maneuvers of General Heinz Guderian at the Meuse on May 12, 1940, the authors assign primacy to Guderian's daringness to attack without full knowledge of French defensive positions, as well as pressure from his superiors to halt. They write:

The real explanation for the catastrophe along the Meuse lies in the quality of German leadership, from generals to NCOs. It has become fashionable these days to believe that battles do not matter, or that isolated historical facts (such as the victories along the Meuse) are of little significance, a matter of mere facticity, compared to the greater “unseen” social forces molding our world. The Meuse battlefield between 13 and 15 May would, however, suggest a different view of the world. A relatively few individuals wearing field-gray uniforms, in a blood-stained, smashed-up, obscure provincial town, diverted the flow of history into darker channels. The tired, weary German infantry who seized the heights behind the Meuse and who opened the way for the armored thrust to the coast made inevitable the fall of France, the subsequent invasion of Russia, the Final Solution, and the collapse of Europe’s position in the world.[3]

Although I might not agree with the extent to which the authors tie virtually everything that followed during World War II hinging on Germany's victory in France, it is clear that the abilities of a general such as Guderian to seize an opportunity, even in the face of resistance, and make a significant difference.

In conclusion, diplomacy, tactics, and leadership all played important roles in the stunning victories of Germany between September 1939 and June 1940. The non-aggression pact with the Soviets facilitated the invasion of Poland, paratroopers proved decisive in conquering Norway, and Guderian's leadership was instrumental in victory over France. Although the victories would soon end for Germany, this combination of advantages went a long way toward Hitler's domination of the continent.

=====

     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 14.
     [2] Ibid, 65-66.
     [3] Ibid, 75.

Austria and Appeasement

First discussion post for HIS-241: World War II -- several to follow.

====

I've been lucky to have come into this course having just finished HIS-240: World War I and HIS-220: Modern Europe before that. Therefore, I've considered the matters of WWI and appeasement fairly intensively and quite recently. Much of the discussion of appeasement begins with the Rhineland remilitarization or even focuses solely on the Munich conference on the Sudetenland, but arguably, appeasement began with the failed 1934 coup in Austria. Here, the failure of the United Kingdom and France to sanction Hitler and Nazi Germany after a clear act of aggression against a neighboring country was an indication that further aggression would not be countered in any significant way. The situation itself -- Austria falling prey to an attempt by Germany to overthrow its government in a coup led by Austria's Nazi party -- was a legacy of WWI.

Almost immediately upon taking power in 1933, Hitler sought to annex Austria. Despite widespread desire of Austrians for union with Germany, maintaining the existence of a weak rump Austrian state was a policy devised at the Paris Peace Conference to which the victorious allies adhered. As a result, despite a concerted terror campaign by the Austrian Nazis against the government of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss that was clearly being orchestrated from Berlin, the U.K. and France failed to address the attack decisively. They did, however, along with Italy, complain through their ambassadors in Berlin. Hitler responded to this complaint by referring to dispute between Germany and Austria as "an internal German affair and of no concern to others."[1] One diplomat in the British foreign office presciently stated that he believed that Hitler's attack on Austria would be the first of many.[2] Nazi terrorist violence continued into the following year, at which point the three powers issued a more stern warning to Germany.

However, the U.K. and France ultimately expected Mussolini, by now leader of Italy, to protect Austria's territorial integrity.[3] This action had the ultimately undesirable effect of pushing Austria into alliance with authoritarian states in central and eastern Europe, including Italy, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Already operating under an authoritarian system for the previous year, Dollfuss began to implement a corporate state on the model of fascist Italy. Had the U.K. and particularly France taken a stronger stand against Hitler at that time, the Nazi coup of July 1934 and the assassination of Dollfuss during the coup attempt might not have occurred; Hitler's military was still weak at that time and not a match for France. Although Italy ultimately threatened military force in July, which helped to cause the coup to fail and guaranteed Austrian independence for almost four more years, Austria remained under authoritarian rule and became increasingly conducive to being annexed by Germany.

The failure of the U.K. and France to issue stronger warnings to Germany over the issue of Austria in 1933 and 1934, particularly with the threat of the use of force, resulted in the subsequent aggressive actions undertaken by Germany. Although Hitler was chastened to some extent by his failure in July 1934, he nevertheless knew that the U.K. and France would not take military action. When Italy invaded Ethiopia two years later and was expelled from the League of Nations, it found a friend in Germany, and Austria was ultimately abandoned. Despite having won WWI, the reluctance of the U.K. and France to engage Germany militarily -- a likely result of the heavy casualties suffered in the war. Whether this strategy was logical is certainly open to debate. One of the key points of history to bear in mind is that historians look at it with the benefit of knowing how things ended. I don't think anyone can blame the U.K. and France for being wary of military action given the relatively recent experience of WWI. However, I do think that, once it was clear that Hitler had no intention of abiding by international agreement with the Rhineland remilitarization, it was time for the U.K. and France to take concrete action.

=====

     [1]  Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-1934: Europe’s First Containment of Nazi Expansion, translated by Sonia Brough (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 38.
     [2] Ibid, 38-39.
     [3] Ibid, 41.

Contra Lewy: The Armenian Genocide

In 1996, Gregory H. Stanton, a law professor, former Fulbright scholar, and employee of the United States Department of State, presented a briefing paper in which he promulgated his theory of genocide, which encompassed eight stages. Regarding the eighth stage, Stanton wrote that “every genocide is followed by denial,” and its characteristics range from getting rid of evidence to blaming the victims for their treatment. “They [the perpetrators] block investigations of the crimes,” Stanton continued, “and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile.”[1]

Certainly the behavior of the Ottoman government following the 1915-1916 genocide of Anatolian Armenians fits this bill. However, the denial stage of the Armenian genocide has persisted for a hundred years, with steadfast refusal to accept responsibility by governments of the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey. Moreover, an ongoing public relations campaign of denial by the Turkish government has swayed no small number of Anglo-American scholars. Among these scholars is Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In addition to a book on the topic published in 2005,[2] Lewy sought a wider audience by publishing an essay the same year in the neoconservative publication Commentary.[3] Although Lewy seems to make a compelling argument that the case of the Ottoman Armenians was not genocide, he relies on insinuations of disloyalty and selective or incomplete readings of primary sources to make his points.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the definition of genocide has been heavily debated. For his own part, Lewy appeals directly to Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe and contributed to the 1948 Convention on Genocide promulgated by the United Nations.[4] This convention is notable, particularly to Lewy, for its emphasis on "acts committed with intent."[5] Lewy's explicit claim is that the violence committed against Armenians in 1915-1916 does not constitute genocide due to a lack of intent or, to use Lewy's word, "premeditation," which forms as he says the "crucial problem to be addressed."[6]

Lewy begins his argument by outlining the history of the Armenian Revolution Federation (ARF), known in Armenian as the Dashnaks, to establish that violence against Armenians was committed within the context of anti-insurgency. After briefly summarizing Dashnak violence against Ottoman targets beginning with the party's founding in 1890, Lewy states that the Dashnaks resumed guerrilla warfare against the Ottomans with the onset of World War I, in which the Ottomans were matched against Russia, whom Lewy calls "the Armenians' traditional ally."[7] Citing a report to Washington of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., then the U.S. ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Lewy claims that no fewer than 10,000 guerrillas were active by April 1915, but perhaps more than twice that number.[8]

In a mere paragraph, Lewy misrepresents the history substantially. First, while Lewy suggests that Dashnak militancy against the Ottomans began with the start of the war, the record is somewhat different and the number of omissions alarming. In one of his books on the Armenian genocide, Taner Akçam (Clark University, Mass.), who has undertaken among the most thorough investigations of Ottoman documents to date, concludes on the basis of these documents "that the events in question do not in fact constitute an organized rebellion, and […] that there was no popular involvement"; in fact, Akçam demonstrates, the Dashnak leadership itself dissociated itself from the violence and offered its assistance to Ottoman authorities.[9]

Second, Lewy fails to mention the extreme violence meted out by the Ottoman government against Armenian civilians in the so-called Hamidian massacres in 1894-1896, in which hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians were killed by government forces. In discussing the violence in 1915, Donald Bloxham (Univ. of Edinburgh) notes, "If not all forms of resistance were at the time responses to genocide, most were based on past experience, including of discrimination and massacres."[10] Arum Arkun, executive director of the Tekeyan Cultural Center (N.J.), concurs with regard to the Armenian resistance in Cilicia and Zeitoun, on the Mediterranean, to which Lewy himself refers.[11] Arkun writes, "Any clashes that occurred were interpreted by both sides in light of their fears: for the Muslims, that the Armenians were ready to rebel and collaborate with Allied states potentially interested in occupying Ottoman territory; and for the Armenians, that the Muslims were planning another massacre."[12] Past behavior of Ottoman authorities played an important role in the actions of those Armenians who did rise up.

Finally, Lewy makes only oblique reference to the transnational nature of the ARF; he refers to Dashnak organizations in Sofia, Bulgaria, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, but he never explicitly acknowledges that these party organizations operated separately from each other. For instance, Lewy notes that the Armenian guerrilla Andranik Ozanian meeting with the Russian General Aleksandr Mishlayevsky in 1914,[13] but fails to mention that the Ottoman Anatolian-born Ozanian had left Ottoman territory ten years earlier and moreover had left the ARF in 1908.

Most disconcerting, however, is Lewy's treatment of the aforementioned Morgenthau message to Washington. The actual message, a telegram sent on May 25, 1915, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and classified as confidential, has been widely cited by defenders of the Ottomans in the same manner as Lewy does here. However, the presentation by Lewy is again incomplete. Before addressing the matter of Armenian guerrillas, Morgenthau writes, "The sharp oscillations in the treatment to which it [the Armenian community] has been subjected since the Turkish Revolution [i.e., the Young Turk revolution in 1908] have taken a markedly unfavorable turn by reason on the War."[14]

Morgenthau acknowledges that many Armenians likely compare their lot in the Ottoman Empire with the comparatively better lot of their people in Russia; given the recent memory of the Adana massacre in 1909, in which anti-Young Turk loyalists to the deposed monarch massacred thousands of Armenians, he comments that it would not be surprising if many Armenians and Turks both were suspicious of the government. He further states that the Armenians are no more willing or able to "give expression to their wishes."[15] Then, he notes that some Armenian attempts at desertion from the Ottoman military have been met with "savage repression" and that "entire villages have been destroyed, with the invariable accompaniments of murder, rape and pillage. A more systematic policy than has been customary in the past, appears to have been pursued, in the wholesale deportation of the population.[16] Morgenthau subsequently recounts the refusal of Red Cross aid for Armenian refugees by Turkish authorities.[17]

Only then does Morgenthau mention an Armenian insurgency. It is worth quoting the passage at some length:

In the Eastern regions of the Empire, although news is extremely scarce and unreliable, it would seem as if an Armenian insurrection to help the Russian had broken out in Van. Thus a former deputy here, one Pastermadjian who had assisted our proposed railway concessions some years ago, is now supposed to be fighting the Turks with a legion of Armenian volunteers. These insurgents are said to be in possession of a part of Van and to be conducting a guerrilla warfare [sic] in a country where regular military operations are extremely difficult. To what extent they are organized or what success they have gained it is impossible for me to say; their numbers have been various estimated but none puts them at less than ten thousand and twenty-five thousand is probably closer to the truth.[18]

The remainder of the telegram addresses the mutual fears of the Armenians and the government of one another, the unreliability of incoming information, and the disarming of Armenian and Greek soldiers in the military and their assignment to labor battalions. He notes in concluding that loss of life seems "to have been but a few cases."[19]

Clearly, Lewy has included only those parts of the telegram that most serve his purpose of depicting the Armenians as widely involved in a major insurgency. Besides omitting reports reflecting Ottoman violence against Armenians, he also fails to include Morgenthau's clear statements about the unreliability of the information in the telegram, although it is also worth noting that the estimate of the number of Armenian guerrillas under Russian military control at the time is accurate, and Garegin Pastermadjian was indeed one of the leaders, according to his own admission.[20]

Elsewhere in the essay, Lewy deploys writings from Morgenthau to explain that the Turks sought to expel its Armenian population because they "had come to consider the Armenians a fifth column."[21] Again, however, the telegram says more than what Lewy lets on. This second telegram, dated July 10, 1915, begins, "Persecutions of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions."[22] Moreover, the segment quoted by Lewy is directly followed thus: "Most of the sufferers are innocent and have been loyal to the Ottoman government. Nearly all are old men [and] women."[23] The penultimate sentence of the same paragraph reads, "There seems to be a systematic plan to crush the Armenian race."[24] Lest there be any mistake about the content of Morgenthau's communiqués during this period, a telegram six days later uses the phrase "race extermination" regarding the Ottomans' treatment of the Armenians.[25]

The obverse of the coin of Lewy's argument about sources is, as he writes, "no authentic documentary evidence exists to prove the culpability of the central government of Turkey for the massacre of 1915-16."[26] Here, Lewy pre-emptively attacks The Memoirs of Naim Bey by Aram Andonian, which he declares is "considered a forgery not only by Turkish historians but by practically every western student of Ottoman history."[27] Comparing the case of the Ottoman Armenians to that of the European Jews during World War II, he concludes, "Barring the unlikely discovery of sensational new documents in the Turkish archives, it is safety to say that no similar evidence exists for the tragic events of 1915-16."[28]

Unfortunately for Lewy, Akçam's exploration of the Ottoman archives did just that. In addressing one of the so-called Andonian telegrams, quoted in The Memoirs of Naim Bey, in which the Ottoman Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha defends the deportation of Armenians to ensure the posterity of Turks from perpetual treason, Akçam remarks, "The contents of this telegram are nearly identical to those of Talat [sic] Pasha's directive of 29 August 1915 to all provinces […] The similarities of the telegrams published by Aram Andonian to this and other extant Ottoman documents make a reexamination of the validity of the Andonian telegrams necessary."[29]

Perhaps Lewy's most grotesque gambit is to suggest that the continued presence of Armenians in some districts of the Ottoman Empire until the end of the war is counterevidence of genocidal intent. He writes, "This would be analogous to Hitler's failing to include the Jews of Berlin, Cologne, and Munich in the Final Solution."[30] Beyond the clear problems such a statement encounters with regard to simple logic (e.g., that there were survivors of the attacks on the World Trade Centers on Sept. 11, 2001, does not negate the intention of Al-Qaeda to kill everyone in the buildings) and to the complexities of Nazi deportation, labor, and extermination policy during World War II, the statement ignores the realities of Young Turk social engineering.

In his survey of the rise of the Turkish nation-state, Uğur Ümit Üngör (Utrecht Univ.) argues persuasively that the experience of losing territory, particularly in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, strengthened the ethnic nationalism of the Young Turks; this experience, "especially [in] the eastern provinces, would give birth to unprecedented forms of population politics and social engineering."[31] Mark Levene (Univ. of Warwick) expands on the economic motivations underlying this ethnic/social engineering -- specifically the creation of an ethnic Turkish middle class, remarking, "The physical destruction of Ottoman Armenians throughout Anatolia in this sense represented the intent to remove a communal group perceived to represent a domestic obstacle in the CUP's [Committee of Union and Progress -- the name of the Young Turks' political party] race for modernization."[32]

Most persuasively, Akçam uses Turkish documents to demonstrate that the removal of the Armenians and the genocide thereof was the most radical expression of a policy designed to leave no district under Ottoman control with a non-Turkish population of more than five to ten percent, thereby guaranteeing Turkish ethnic homogeneity throughout the empire.[33] Thus, the mere presence of Armenians in Constantinople or Smyrna, which Lewy states implies no intent of genocide, does nothing to belie this overall goal, provided that the remaining non-Turkish population in these cities was less than ten percent. In fact, given the removal of ethnic Greeks from these areas during the same period, any policy against Armenians was likely to be less thorough, particularly in comparison to eastern Anatolia, where the ethnic heterogeneity was much greater. Lewy ignores these factors in suggesting a lack of intent on this basis.

In conclusion, while to a layperson, Guenter Lewy might seem to make a strong argument that the treatment of Ottoman Armenians in 1915-1916 was not genocide, a more exacting examination of other scholars’ work and of the primary sources that Lewy cites result in the opposite conclusion. Lewy clearly misrepresents through selective quotation the reports of Ambassador Morgenthau, not only with regard to the intent of the Ottomans but also regarding the scale of Armenian insurrection at that time. Lewy is correct in his essay in urging the two sides in this historical debate to find common ground, but doing so requires an honest reckoning with the historical record.

References

Akçam, Taner. The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and

Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 2012.

Arkun, Arum. "Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide." In A

Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark, 221-243. New York: Oxford UP, 2011.

Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the

Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. New York: Oxford UP, 2005.

Levene, Mark. "Creating a Modern 'Zone of Genocide': The Impact of Nation- and State

Formation in Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 393-433.

Lewy, Guenter. "The First Genocide of the 20th Century?" Commentary, 61, no. 11

(December 2005): 47-52.

Morgenthau, Henry, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, May 25, 1915. In United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917, edited by Ara Sarafian, 32-34. Princeton, N.J.: Gomidas Institute, 2004.

Morgenthau, Henry, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, July 10, 1915. In The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide, edited by Alan Whitehorn, 293-294. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2015.

Morgenthau, Henry, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, July 16, 1915. NARA RG 59, 867.4016/76.

Stanton, Gregory H. “The 8 Stages of Genocide” Genocide Watch. Accessed May 1,

2011. http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf

Üngör, Uğur Ümit. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia,

1913-1950. New York: Oxford UP, 2011.

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of

Genocide. Human Rights Web. Accessed September 10, 2016. http://www.hrweb.
org/legal/genocide.html

---

[1] Gregory H. Stanton, “The 8 Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, accessed May 1, 2011, http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf

[2] Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005).

[3] Guenter Lewy, "The First Genocide of the 20th Century?" Commentary, 61, no. 11 (December 2005): 47-52.

[4] Ibid, 47.

[5] United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Human Rights Web, accessed September 10, 2016, http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html, Article II.

[6] Lewy, “First,” 48.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 2012), 163-64.

[10] Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 91.

[11] Lewy, “First,” 48.

[12] Arum Arkun, "Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide," in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark (New York: Oxford UP, 2011), 270.

[13] Lewy, “First,” 49.

[14] Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, May 25, 1915, in United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917, edited by Ara Sarafian (Princeton, N.J.: Gomidas Institute, 2004), 32.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 32-33.

[17] Ibid, 33.

[18] Ibid, emphasis mine.

[19] Ibid, 33-34.

[20] Armen Garo and Aram Torossian, Why Armenia Should Be Free: Armenia’s Rôle in the Present War (Boston: Hairenik Publishing, 1918).

[21] Lewy, “First,” 49.

[22] Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, July 10, 2015, in The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide, edited by Alan Whitehorn (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2015), 293-94.

[23] Ibid, bracketed material inserted by Whitehorn.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, July 16, 1915, NARA RG 59, 867.4016/76.

[26] Lewy, “First,” 50.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Akçam, 254 note 90.

[30] Lewy, “First,” 51.

[31] Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (New York: Oxford UP, 2011), 50.

[32] Mark Levene, "Creating a Modern 'Zone of Genocide': The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation in Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 407

[33] Akçam, 29-62.