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.

Did Germany Actually Win the War?

My post for this week is inspired by the following quotation, which I read only two days ago for the first time. It surprised me at first and then struck me as somewhat perceptive. Now, however, I see the authors as having emphasized Germany's "victory" too much:

In strategic terms Germany had won the Great War. Its industrial base remained intact; it lost little territory of value; it now fronted on one major power (a debilitated France) rather than three (France, Austria-Hungary, and Russia). Its industrial strength, its geographic position, and the size of its population gave it the greatest economic potential in Europe, while the small states of Eastern Europe and the Balkans were all open to German political and economic domination.[1]

The authors, Murray and Millett, go on to discuss the Dolchstoss (stab in the back) myth that emerged with the armistice and Versailles treaty, suggesting that the reality of the peace settlement was quite different from the myth that persisted into the 1920s.

Considering each of Murray and Millett's points, we can both determine the extent to which they are valid claims and include that points that they do not consider. First, the claim that Germany's "industrial base remained intact"[2] seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. While the Ruhr region remained under German sovereignty, the coal of the Saar region was ceded to France, leaving Germany without an important power source. Moreover, in losing urban regions in the east -- particularly those around Danzig -- other important industrial bases were lost. Thus, while the most important industrial region was intact, there were important losses, and these losses were made more severe by the reparations regime imposed on Germany under the Versailles treaty. It is somewhat unfair to consider this lost territory as lacking value.

Second, it is true that Germany how had only one major power on its frontiers, rather than three. Austria-Hungary had been an ally, so its dissolution actually might have been considered more of a threat were it not for the inherent weakness of the successor states that emerged. France, which already had a smaller population that Germany, had now an even smaller population due to combat losses. Most importantly, there was now a cordon sanitaire separating Russia and Germany, consisting of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Any assault on Germany from the east would afford quite a bit of warning for Germany going forward, which was a major defense advantage.

Third, while the economic potential for Germany certainly existed after World War I, as noted above, the reparations regime and, more importantly, the means by which Germany sought to fulfill its obligations -- specifically the printing of money, resulting in hyperinflation -- had catastrophic effects for Germany during the 1920s until implementation of the Dawes Plan to stabilize Germany's currency. As a result, any real economic potential of Germany was gravely compromised by the terms of the peace.

Finally, there is the question of a sphere of influence for Germany among the new states in central and eastern Europe. This seems to have been largely true in 1919, although with the emergence of fascist Italy in 1922 as a regional power, this potential for Germany to establish a sphere of influence was somewhat diluted. Moreover, the terms of the Versailles treaty and subsequent League of Nations resolutions prevented Germany from pressing its hard to heavily in the region. For example, while ethnicity and internal Austrian political trends dictated that Germany's influence would be strong in the new Republic of Austria, attempts at political union were squelched and even economic cooperation was frowned upon as an attempt at German expansion.[3]

Therefore, I think it's safe to conclude that, while Germany was successful in maintaining its continued existence, its ability to preserve itself was compromised. That said, considering the alternatives that could have been foisted upon Germany, including its complete dissolution -- it was, after all, less than 50 years old as a state -- it was at least technically preserved, although the extent to which such a state could persist in the long term given the crippling reparations imposed on it is questionable.

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     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2001), 3.
     [2] Ibid.
     [3] Steve Beller, A Concise History of Austria (New York: Cambridge UP, 2007): 197-230.

Political Destabilization in WWI Germany

It is axiomatic that World War I had tremendous impacts on Germany, and these effects were political, economic, and social. These effects were, to a very large extent, interrelated, since economic causes often underpin political and social changes. However, in terms of the long-term effects of the changes wrought by Germany's involved in WWI, I believe the political changes were the most important.

In his book, Michael Howard notes that tension arose in the last two years of the war between the High Command, which attained control over the German economy in 1917 to assure full economic mobilization, and the Reichstag, i.e., the popularly elected legislature, which controlled government spending.[1] The most popular political party in Germany was the Social-democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which had finished first in election in Germany since its legalization in 1890, but it had been prevented from holding political power on the basis of Germany's constitution not guaranteeing proportional representation. A combination of factors in early 1917, including the Russian Revolution and the entry of the United States into the war, caused a split in the SPD on the basis of ongoing support for the war.[2] While the newly formed United SPD opposed the war on principle, the remaining SPD sought to turn the situation with the High Command to its advantage by asking Chancellor Bethmann for democratic reforms. Instead, Theobald von Bethmann was pushed out of the Chancellery in favor of Georg Michaelis, who supported the High Command's position and helped them to consolidate their power under the Banner of the Fatherland Party.[3]

On short order in 1918 came the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Russia and the March offensive in the west by General Ludendorff. When it ultimately failed, the High Command appealed to U.S. President Wilson for peace on the basis of the latter's Fourteen Points. Michaelis was replaced by Prince Max of Baden, who immediately sued for peace. In this environment, the SPD was able to push their earlier democratic reforms, including proportional representation, through successfully, with an SPD member, Philipp Scheidemann, even entering the cabinet in the fall as the de facto Foreign Minister.[4] The long-brewing mutiny in the military begin in Kiel on November 4, the Kaiser fled the country on November 8, and the following day, Scheidemann proclaimed Germany to be a republic. The new government was dominated by the SPD and signed the armistice ending the war on November 11, with the new Chancellor Friedrich Ebert telling the press that the revolution was over.[5]

Thus, Ludendorff's offensive in early 1918 can be seen as a last-ditch attempt by the High Command to prevent the inevitable -- a truly democratic government led by the SPD that would make peace without annexations, proving that the whole effort of the war had been for naught. The High Command's actions thereafter provide further proof of the nature of the offensive. Of course, the new SPD-led government would lay the groundwork for future disaster, not only in signing and then continuing to defend the humiliating Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 -- which would come to be known as the "stab in the back" to which Hitler would often refer -- but also in empowering the right-wing Freikorps militias in using them to put down the Bolshevik-inspired rebellions that occurred in the same year. As historian David Blackbourn has written, however, the SPD did manage to institute several important social reforms, as well as prevent right-wing authoritarian takeovers like that in Hungary, which experienced similar left-wing revolutionary activity.[6] To that extent, although the fight against authoritarianism ultimately failed in Germany, it was successful in the short term owing to the efforts of the SPD.

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     [1] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford UP, 2007), 1584, Amazon Kindle.
     [2] David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918 (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), 486.
     [3] Ibid, 487-89.
     [4] Ibid, 491.
     [5] Ibid, 492.
     [6] Ibid, 493.