drpatwalsh

Were the Armenians ‘über-Jews’?

image004In his Irish Times (20/2/16) book review of ‘Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler’ by Stefan Ihrig,  Lawrence Douglas states:

“Ihrig brilliantly lays bare the ‘confluence’ between German anti-Semitic and anti-Armenian stereotypes. Jews and Armenians were treated as ‘Semitic cousins’, with the latter playing the role of ‘quasi-‘ or even ‘über-Jews’.”

The Nazi extermination of the Jews is the ultimate analogy drawn to demonise Ottoman Turkey in relation to the Armenians. The comparison is historically absurd and no historian worthy of the name would make such an analogy. But academia these days is heavily populated by those who substitute feeling and effect for truth and fact. So we are forced to ask the question: were the Armenians really what Stefan Ihrig calls ‘über-Jews’ in Nazi Germany?

Luckily we have a book by an Armenian about a very famous Armenian freedom fighter which helps us answer the question. The book in question is “‘Dro’ Drastamat Kanayan: Armenia’s First Defence Minister of the Modern Era” by Antranig Chalabian. Not only does it reveal that Ihrig’s “brilliant” work is utter nonsense but it also highlights the one actual and irrefutable link between the Armenians and Nazi Germany – and it is not Turkish. The book is published by the Indo-European Publishing House of Los Angeles (the significance of whose name will become apparent).

I first came across ‘Dro’ when writing a book ‘The Armenian Insurrection and the Great War’ which includes reprints of the celebrated Insurrectionary, Garegin Pasdermadjian’s writings in which ‘Dro’ features both in text as well as pictured, at the start of the Insurrection of 1914. Along with the famous General Andranik, ‘Armen Garo’ (Dr. Pasdermadjian) and ‘Dro’ were the most famous Armenian guerrilla leaders. I introduced ‘Dro’ with the initial  information I had learnt about him:

“Another character prominently featured in Pasdermadjian’s 1918 book, was General ‘Dro’ or Drastamat Kanajian. ‘Dro’ (who is pictured with Pasdermadjian on the book cover) went on to head the Armenian Nazi Legion of 22,000 in World War 2, with a large complement of SS in tow. ‘Dro’ apparently put his special skills of massacre learnt in the Armenian Insurrection at the Fuhrer’s disposal, whom he met on a number of occasions. It is said Hitler consulted him on a number of occasions and his nickname was ‘the Jew hunter’. When World War II ended the surviving Nazi Armenian soldiers along with their commander were admitted to the U.S, despite being wanted by the Russians for mass murder. ‘Dro’ lived out the rest of his life there, before dying in Massachusetts in 1956. His body was returned to the Soviet Republic of Armenia and he was given a State funeral.”

The bulk of this character sketch is confirmed in the Armenian biography of ‘Dro’. And there is much more.

Antranig Chalabian writes of ‘Dro’ in his biography of the Armenian Insurectionary:

“World War II changed the course of Dro’s life regardless of his will or intention, linking him to the Russian-German struggle as ‘a collaborator with Nazism’… It is not possible to accuse Dro of sympathising with the Nazi ideology… He was guided solely by the supreme interests of the Armenia and the Armenian nation.” (‘Dro’ Drastamat Kanayan: Armenia’s First Defence Minister of the Modern Era.p. 219)

‘Dro’ went round the German Prisoner of War camps and recruited the captured Armenians who had been drafted into the Red Army  into the Nazi Armenian Legion.  The Armenian 812th Battalion was created in December 1941 growing from 8,000 to 20,000 men. Christopher Walker argues that Dro’s intention was that the Nazi forces should fight for Hitler, culminating in an entrance into Yerevan to finally deal with the Turks.

Chalabian notes that the Armenian National Council published Nazi propaganda from a weekly newspaper, ‘Armenien’ and a radio station in Berlin from 1942. ‘Dro’s’ biographer asks:

“… Why did he collaborate with the Nazis? Simply because he and his comrades perceived the Armenian prisoners of war, the Armenians in the occupied territories, as well as the survival of the Armenians in their homeland to be in grave jeopardy.” (p.221). “Dro and his comrades saved the lives of around 40,000 Armenian prisoners of war by enlisting them in the German army.”(p.227)

Dro’s collaboration is a difficult issue for Armenians and it is a tricky job to write a sympathetic biography of the national hero without attempting to excuse his actions. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaks) considered establishing a distance from Dro from his Nazi collaboration but decided against it. Chalabian indeed notes that the Nazi collaborators from Armenia, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia would have been many more “… if Hitler had behaved a little differently… they could have shaken the anti-populist regime of the Kremlin’s dictator and his sycophants from its foundations… They hoped to advance side by side with the Wehrmacht… Toward Moscow, and to topple Stalin’s hated regime.” (p.222)

The Armenian recruits did not just come from captured Red Army soldiers of the Yerevan Republic but also from the large Armenian communities in the Balkans and Ukraine.

Dro and his Dashnak comrades went to Berlin for discussions with the Nazi high command as the invasion of Russia got underway. Chalabian notes:

“They were impressed with everything in the city; law and order was notable everywhere. Berlin was peaceful and life was as if normal.” (P. 243)

From there Dro was taken to Warsaw and then the Crimea. Dro visited the POW camps recruiting Armenians for the German army there. Whilst in the Crimea he witnessed the disposal of the bodies of hundreds of Jews in trenches the SS had had dug by locals. Although “people were not allowed to go anywhere near these trenches” Dro’s group was treaty specially by the Nazis and permitted access, according to Chalabian. (p.245)

However, Hitler never reached Yerevan to deal with the Turks and Dro fled west as the Red Army closed in on Berlin. He was captured in Heidelberg by the Americans. At first the Americans decided to send him back to the Soviets as a collaborator but then “they sent him to Mannheim, to a retention centre for high-ranking German commanders who were not considered Nazis. The retention centre was a former palace/estate, and the accomodation was very comfortable.” (P. 254) US Intelligence had use for him it seems.

It is most probably true that Dro was never an ideological Nazi. However, Armenians did work with the Nazis and attempt to secure a place for the Armenians in the new Hitlerite racial order. According to Simon Vratsian (Along Life’s Pathways), an influential wing of the Nazi Party wanted to classify Armenians as not “Indo-European”, but “listed among the Asiatic peoples, which meant a race unworthy of living. Dro and his comrades were able to recognise the danger… They put forth proofs that Armenians are of Indo-European origin and belong to the Arian race.” (p.224)

Apparently Armenian/Nazi connections had begun a generation before the Final Solution. The German-Armenian Union, formed in 1914, and predating the Nazis, included Artashes Abeghian, Professor of Eastern Studies at the University of Berlin who “conducted propaganda about the Aryan origin of the Armenians.” It was these people, including German academics, who later contacted Dro and decided to collaborate with the Reich from 1940, according to Chalabian (p.232). The German-Armenian Union “was formed by Johannes Lepsius” who is often cited as a “good German” speaking out against Ottoman treatment of the Armenians.

Chalabian also reveals that Dr Paul Rohrbach and Artashes Abeghian published a book in 1934 called ‘Armenian-Aryan’ in collaboration with Nazi intellectuals which “strove to prove that Armenians belong to the Aryan race and the Armenian language to the Indo-European family of languages.” (p.234) The year before, in 1933, “Goebbels had formally declared that the Armenians were Aryan.” (p.248)

These pieces of information revealed by Chalabian were probably only the tip of the iceberg. The author would have no interest in publicising any more details that he had found out about Armenian/Nazi links in his Armenian sources and it is surprising he revealed even these.

To return to the point of this article: How can it be asserted by Stefan Inrig and Lawrence Douglas that the Armenians represented “the role of ‘quasi-‘ or even ‘über-Jews’” in Nazi Germany when Dro and his Legion were welcomed into the ranks of the Third Reich and aspired to be and were accepted as a good racial type by prominent Nazi intellectuals. Could we imagine a Nazi Jewish Legion being accepted by Hitler or the Jews pressing for high racial status and being spoken for by Goebbels?

So what is all this nonsense about the Armenians being ‘über-Jews’? What idiots could write such rubbish if they had bothered to read anything beyond their ideological horizons.

Let us be fairer to the Armenians than Inrig and Douglas are to the Turks. Let us accept that the Armenians who collaborated with Hitler did so from the motivation of self-preservation rather than any ideological affinity with the Nazi philosophy. Let us leave aside the fact that this would have strengthened the Nazi war machine and have fatal consequences for the many minorities that the Nazis chose to exterminate and make them accessories to Genocide through such collaboration. Let us accept Chalabian’s argument that Dro and the Armenian Legion did such things because of their love for one section of humanity over all others and their desire to preserve their people/race, even if it meant legitimising the Nazi racial policy by acquiescence to it and engagement with it.

Let us, however, also take on board the understandings of another Armenian writer, Dr. Manuel Sarkisyanz, given as lectures in Heidelburg University to its South Asia Institute. In these lectures Dr. Sarkisyanz explains that Nazism did not come out of a vacuum. It indeed had substantial ideological forebears in its ant-semitism, expansionism and its Genocide and the practices to demonstrate such statecraft. And no where in the Armenian’s lectures do we read mention of the Ottomans as his inspiration for the Nazi regime. Manuel Sarkisyanz’s lectures have been published in book form by Athol Books. It is called ‘Hitler’s English Inspirers’.

 

22 comments

  1. Compliments to Dr. Pat Walsh, for an excellent “biopsy of Stefan Ihrig’s” nonsense that it was Ataturk who inspired Hitler. Stefan Ihrig (and regretably many Germans as well) are not aware of the 22.000 men Armenian Legion in the Nazi Army, including Ihrig who is applauded by so many sloppy scholars, who have not even taken the trouble to look into internet and see several articles and image photos of Armenians in the Nazi Army and the “heroism of Butcher Dro”, who like Antranig did not accept the Batum Treaty of Beace on June 4, 1918 between Ottomans and Dashnakist Armenians and carried on their cleansing operations in the Caucasus, until the Nationalist Turkish Forces had to take action and force Armenians to sign the Gunru/Alexandropol Peace Treaty on Dec.2, 1920. Well before that date Antranik had escaped to Paris and London, and Dro to Roumania, where he was hosted by the Roumanian Nazi Leader İon Antonesco and his teamsters of “Iron Guards” who had interned the Jews in Roumania before WW-II started in steel barges anchored in the Danube River.

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      • When “debating FACTUAL HISTORY” (not nationalism, faith, race and other inherited features) we must READ and CROSS CHECK “valid documents” (memorandums, treaties, official correspondence, books of heroes) and must abstain from childish palavers based on rumors. Gentlemen since you simply talk without a page of “authentic and irrefutable reading” you o not even know the Armenian population before WW-1 (1.280.000) and w I beg to b excused from aas counted and reported by official US records (Sate Dept. W.R.Anderson, 1-8-8) as 817.873. of 3.004.000 Armenian World Population at tht date. This excludes the 200.000 Armenians who died in fights against home country (League of Nation Official Gazette Sept. 1929) and 200.000 who died of epidemics and starvation in Armenia during their 30 month Dashnakist Republic (* From: “DRO” ISBN 978-1-60444-078-2 ‘Indo European Publishing, L.A. USA’ p.126 ) On p.38 of the Feb.12.1919 Memorandum given by the Armenian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference it is stated that 1.403.000 Armenians are alive in the Ottoman Empire (after killing 2 millions?). I beg to be excused from replying any longer further comments without an inch of evidence or politeness by fanatics or persons who are scared to learn and face facts of past tragedies created by big lilies and liars.

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      • Following “last time reply” posted:

        When “debating FACTUAL HISTORY” (not nationalism, faith, race and other inherited features) we must READ and CROSS CHECK “valid documents” (memorandums, treaties, official correspondence, books of heroes) and must abstain from childish palavers based on rumors. Gentlemen since you simply talk without a page of “authentic and irrefutable reading” you o not even know the Armenian population before WW-1 (1.280.000) and w I beg to b excused from aas counted and reported by official US records (Sate Dept. W.R.Anderson, 1-8-8) as 817.873. of 3.004.000 Armenian World Population at tht date. This excludes the 200.000 Armenians who died in fights against home country (League of Nation Official Gazette Sept. 1929) and 200.000 who died of epidemics and starvation in Armenia during their 30 month Dashnakist Republic (* From: “DRO” ISBN 978-1-60444-078-2 ‘Indo European Publishing, L.A. USA’ p.126 ) On p.38 of the Feb.12.1919 Memorandum given by the Armenian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference it is stated that 1.403.000 Armenians are alive in the Ottoman Empire (after killing 2 millions?). I beg to be excused from replying any longer further comments without an inch of evidence or politeness by fanatics or persons who are scared to learn and face facts of past tragedies created by big lilies and liars.

        2017-09-02 10:58 GMT+03:00 Pat Walsh :

        > Robert Seibert commented: “BS.. there were also 100,000 Jews fighting with > the SS Nazi’s also.. Get off your anti Christian Armenian BS propaganda > nonsense, Turks wiped out not only close to 2 million Christian Armenians > but also another million Assyrians and Greeks.. blood is on y” >

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  2. My compliments to Dr. Walsh as well. He says that General Andranik, ‘Armen Garo’ (Dr. Pasdermadjian) and ‘Dro’ were the most famous Armenian guerrilla leaders. According to military concepts guerrllas fight in their home against the invaders Therefore, I would prefer the term ” Terrrorist Leaders” ..

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  6. It is not pleasant or civilized to meet persons who have read absolutely nothing on the subject and react with the Dunning Kruıger syndrome, or use meaningless words, to show that they are smart (not correct) in a histporical dispute. .

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    • Persons who spare no time to read wide and deep enough to satisfy their desire to find and defend TRUTH oftenly take such smart or short cut “blah-blah” words of accusations based on yjeir imagination (like Ihrig who did not even know the Armenian Legion in the Nazi Army or that Hitler’s Qute was certified to be a lie by the Nuremberg Coırt in 1948 and later by Carlos Porter’s finding of original document (on internet WEB) which was not even typed on a German typrewriter, The original speech was quoted by Wiliam Shirer in his collosal book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, which Ihrig never heard of and finally the speech document has been found and taken in the US Army archives, it is the one in Shirer’s book. The first correspondent who wrote on the Dashnak’s left overs of the Armenian Legion in the Nazi Army, was Arthur Derounian or John Roy Carlsson, who wrote a long esay of his visit to Berlin in 1949, meeting Dashnaks, explaining their Berlin Blackmarket operations and finally the transfer of close to 20.000 Nazi Legion Armenians as “dsiplaced persons” to USA by special affidavits and tariffs. If you cannot find the “Armenian Affairs” Magzine Winter 1949-50, No.1 to read the full observations of Derounian, you can find some portions of the essay excerpted and quoted in “http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008/04/2429-new-e-book-genocide-of-truth-based.html” chapter 21. History is not written by feelings or likes/dislikes but it must depend as best on “cross checked original sources” and respected as valid until such time that the oppos,ite is proven by stronger documents. Turks know almost nothing on “non Ottoman sources” so they are incapable of making or using “Turkish propaganda”.

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  8. Whoever spent time putting this rubbish together, and whoever paid for this ridiculous research project – it is just another vivid example that no matter what the Turkish denialist machine does, it will always backfire as yet another pathetic attempt to rewrite history. The evidence and knowledge of what happened to Armenians from late 19th into the 1st quarter of the 20th century and who was behind it will never be erased, and any attempt by Armenophobe Turks and a few sleazy and corrupt so called academics to distort the facts behind the Armenian Genocide will garner more interest and attention from the public to bring Turkey to reckon with its past.

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  9. May I ask the commentator to submit even one page og “authentic, judicially valid document to assert internationally the existence of mass killings”? History is not written by rumors, sentiments, vague words such as denialist etc. Show your “legally valid dcocument”. The Queens Prosecutor in Malta had detained 144 Ottoman dignitaries for over 30 month, searching world wide documents to indicvt any of them… They found nothiing and had to return all dignitaries withoput even a legal charge. The League of Nations Official Gazette of September 1929 documents irefutably that Armenians collaborated with all enemies of the empire and 200.000 of them died in the fights against home country serving the enemies. The word “genocide” must be attested by verdict of the “author,zed court in the country of origin” or “an international tribunal”. UN definition is clear they ven have an office of OSAPG and undersecretary for “genocide claims”. But no one dares to go to the right door and authority and keep circulating these grand-ma tales because they “make a living by selling animosity and collecting donations” for the invented criminals. Sure, if any one can prove first the existence of “hell and devil”, he/she can then speak of genocide… Sorry, no empty words or unfounded racial or other types of ingrained animosity…

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    • For an educated man, Mr. Aya does not provide his own opinions but keeps parroting the Turkish governments’ typical position. To date 28 countries officially recognize the Armenian Genocide and the list is growing, irrespective of Turkish pressure. I am sure these countries base their position on “even one page og” as quoted by Mr. Aya.

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      • Dear Sir, I do not “parrot any body, other than authentic and officilly valid documents”. The rules of the U.N. are clear. Even the U.N. General Assembly “has no authority to vote for genocide”…. Hence, 28 countries is just to please some voters or benefit…If they had studied the “Armenian Original Books, Memoramdums” they would have acted differently. If you are determined and can sacrifice your years “for truth”, you can find more knowledge about my lonely efforts (of which Turkish governments or media have never heard in the past ten years) by clicking my name in the menu of “armenians-1915.blogspot.com”. If you can devote some ten years as I did in my very last yers, you may start reading (lso my books and) over 400 articles and comment at the blog so that all can see. It was my affection to the many Turkish Armenians I met and shared in my life (with absolute bilateral compassion), to discover what is the truth behind all these big mouth talks… I despise all liars and imposters of whatever nation or faith or race they are… All these calamities have been brought by “volunteers of heroism, depending on BIG POWERS who used them as tools”. If you would care to read Khatchaznouni’s 1923 Bucarest Manifest or the articles of Arthur Derunian (John Roy Carlson) ARMENIAN AFFAIRS winter 1949 you can learn more behind the Dashnak (ARF) aims, tactics, “potorig” etc. The world politics are still run by “great liars and crooks and millions of people are destroyed this very day…” We cannot stop these tides of those who are strong…During WW-1, twenty million people died… The Armenian losses are a drop in the glass, they are not even mentioned in ant world statistics…. What I am tying to do is to share my suspicion and fimdings… No heard feelings or prejudice please… Let us learn from “original documents and not propaganda talks or grand ma stories”…

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    • Regretably many persons who think they are wise-smart instead of being knoledgeable, classify persons (and hence facts) not by documents and evidences, but generallizations, “he is Black, he ,is Gypsie, he is Turk or Jewish etc..” Note the last sentence of this ar ticle dated November 1915:

      Below editorial which appeared in the “Reno Evening Gazette”, Nov.14, 1915 under the heading AMERICA and the ARMENIANS gave a full picture of not only yesterday complimenting previous article, but speaks of this very day:

      Suggest you also read the “Dunning Kruger Syndrome” before commenting on serious historical debates, “my grand ma told me opinions” instead of irrefutable documents. Full STOP…

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    • Reply Comment posted with Reno Evening Gazette excerpt Nov.14.1915.

      2017-07-31 13:22 GMT+03:00 Pat Walsh :

      > Robert Seibert commented: “These Turks will not stop with their history > revisionism, if not so many people murdered it would be laughable!” >

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  11. Mr. Aya’s piece reeks of Turkish propaganda, another attempt by Turkey’s barbaric government to deny the Armenian Genocide. While Turkish lobbyists attempt to spread lies and anti-Armenian sentiment, twenty-nine countries have already recognized the Armenian Genocide, as well as forty-eight US states. Nice try, but at least show some real documentation for your deceitful claims next time-oops, there aren’t any. Turkey run, Turkey hide, Turkey is guilty of GENOCIDE.

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  12. Thank you, Dr. Walsh, for your excellent research.

    The ones reading these comments with an impartial mind have undoubtedly discovered the way in which the “Turks” (principally Sukru Aya, on this page) have made their case is through reliable documentation (the kind that is devoid of conflicts-of-interest), and how these comments radically differ from the statements composed by the “Armenians” (“Robert Seibert” — it is not uncommon for Armenians to select pseudonyms that are “Jewish” — “Mark Revas,” “Vartan Arakel” and “Even Kirk”), which offer pompous declarations, meaningless points and outright racism. The latter’s purpose lies in discreditation of the facts. Since the world has come to agree on an “Armenian genocide,” given the obsession and the means of the latter group (as well as the negative way in which Turks are regarded in the West), these defenders of hatred believe the facts can be ignored.

    Notice how “Vartan Arakel” has offered this as his “evidence” for genocide: “To date 28 countries officially recognize the Armenian Genocide and the list is growing.” Mr. Aya countered, “28 countries is just to please some voters or benefit.”

    In other words, politicians never study the factual history, and the whole point of these genocide resolutions is to serve as a substitute for the evidence that is nonexistent. (It is very telling — and racist — how countries and U.S. states that have voted to recognize the “Armenian genocide” never care about the many other cases of exterminatory efforts throughout history; especially the way in which Armenians did away with 529,000 “Turks” from 1914-20, and the way in which Greeks and their Armenian allies extinguished 640,000 “Turks” from 1919-22. There are countless other examples. Why have the politicians of Massachusetts never cared to condemn Australia for Tasmanians?)

    Yet the last commenter did not care about how the worthless opinions of biased politicians (who consult strictly the propaganda their Armenian constituents prepare for them) cannot serve as “evidence.” Notice how “Even Kirk” —
    who is most likely “Robert Seibert” — wasted space on this comments section: “Twenty-nine countries have already recognized the Armenian Genocide, as well as forty-eight US states.” (He then had the audacity to add, “At least show some real documentation for your deceitful claims,” when Dr. Walsh had pointed to the book of an Armenian, and Mr. Aya’s responses are chock-full of honest sources.) The facts are simply meaningless for these dishonest haters.

    Unfortunately, Westerners are prejudiced, and prefer to choose sides; they have been brainwashed for over a century to regard Armenians as innocent victims, and Turks as mindless killers.. Those who are Turkish or of Turkish descent share a common characteristic: complacency, as well as ignorance. (Since the propaganda has also infiltrated Turkey
    — the very propaganda that still commonly claims it is illegal to speak of an “Armenian genocide” in Turkey — many Turks are also becoming brainwashed, and those in academia have become reluctant to challenge “genocide” prevarications, since speaking the truth on this subject has become a taboo. Opportunities in Western academia will be shut for them, if genuine Turkish scholars go against the tide.)

    Sukru Aya, who passed away recently, was a stunningly rare exception. Comments sections of “Armenian genocide” articles on the Web are therefore dominated by the dishonest haters. (The operators of such pages also are known to often delete truthful comments.) It is a horrendous situation.

    How many Pat Walshes are there? Hardly any. This is why he is a hero, and also why it is incomprehensible to become aware of how there are so few who care about defending the truth.
    .

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  13. Arrived at this via other Walsh articles. The last comment about “ Ho w many Walshes are there? Not many”
    Walsh is not a hero but a purveyor of nasty propaganda on behalf of Genocide deniers. The reason why there are not many of him is to do with apples. You see you only find few bad apples in a crate of good ones not many!

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