Indeed, there were Jews in the German army in the First World War – 12,000 of them were killed in action for the Fatherland – but hands up those readers who know that, even as the Germans were fighting for their lives in 1916, the authorities undertook a "Jew census" in the army after provocations from small anti-Semitic parties in Berlin.
On the eastern front, 92,451 Russian prisoners died in German captivity. "They are not to be given water at first," a 1914 German 8th Army order read. "While they are in the vicinity of the battlefield it is good for them to be in a broken physical condition." The Untermenschen idea was already there, it seems. At least 9 per cent of Germany's 158,000 soldiers in Russian camps, it should be added, also died.
Amid such a charnel house, the Ottoman genocide of one and a half million Armenians – still outrageously denied by Turkey, although it taught Hitler how to destroy the Jews of Europe less than three decades later – provides a terrible historical continuity.
Did those German-Jewish soldiers of the First World War have the slightest inkling of what was to come? They must have known of the German army's cruelty towards civilians, even if they could not then read the words of the angry, gas-blinded corporal from the Somme who asked after the armistice: "Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay their hands on the Fatherland?"
But the Armenian genocide took place far from Europe and Fisk presents no data at all regarding whether if any Jewish German soldiers, if at all, were there at the time of the killings which, I may add, were done by Turkish soldiers.
Posts
6 comments:
Really. Are you not seeing too much into his words ?
I read the same article yesterday and for not one second did I think that the author was linking the Armenian holocaust with German Jewish soldiers. In his latest book, Fisk does however provide details of German troops who were part of the Armenian massacres and were later in WW2. Lloyd, London
Perhaps. But having known Fisk and a reader of his despatches, I seem to be extra careful as well as circumspect with the man. Of course, if we read it that Fisk thinks the Jews foolish for not seeing the viral antisemitism coming with its roots already there in WW I, well, then all the best to him.
Well it's always good to hear and see another perspective. I know he attracts criticism, but I always found him to be very fair, brutally so. I don't think for a second that 'Fisk thinks the Jews foolish for not seeing the viral antisemitism coming'. I imagine, if he had thought that, he would have written it. Lloyd.
I would not touch the issue of the Armenian genocide with a ten-foot pole if I were you: you might learn that Committe of Union and Progress that was directly involved in the Armenian Genocide and the Young Turks revolution in general had quite a few Jews and Doenme (converted Jews, see also this) among them. I am not sure, but some claim that even Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha - the former assassinated for his involvement in the Armenian genocide - were also Doenme, but it could be an anti-Semitic canard (on the other hand, the neocon historian Bernard Lewis, who used to say there was a genocide all of a sudden went into a denial mode and now claims there was no genocide; could it have to do with him discovering some unpleasant facts about the Jews/Doenme involvement?) There is even some evidence that Ataturk himself could be a Doenme.
I'll read the Fisk article: I like his writing a lot. He is, of course, an scathing critic of Israel, but he is very fair.
Donmeh. Ah, you're into conspiracy theories, now?
Not really. I stressed that some of the stuff is in the realms of unchecked rumors and innuendo. However, that there were many Jews and Doenme in the CUP is not a conspiracy theory but an easily checked fact. So, while after reading Fisk article I can not see how you arrived at your reading, there still remains a point of some Jews responsibility for their role in a government that perpetrated a genocide (this is, of course, without mentioning other predominantly Jewish movements that were implicated in mass deaths in the last century, most notably the Bolshevism.) If anything, Fisk was wondering to what extent the Jewish soldiers were aware of the dormant anti-Semitism of Germans and how it will soon rise and destroy their community. On this I don't know enough to judge. However, you might want to read some of these passages in "Why Jews" by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, where they speak of the responsibility of Jewish radicals for the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany. It feels a bit like blaming the victim, of course, but needs to be discussed nonetheless, I think.
P.S. By the way, there were Jewish soldiers in the German army during WWII as well, but I know even less about that.
P.P.S Another issue is the continuing shameful stance of Israel and some prominent Jewish intellectuals with respect to the Armenian genocide. My understanding is that tt has many reasons, some strictly pragmatical - relationships with Turkey, some ideological - "the Holocaust industry", and I suspect some may have to do with Jewish involvement.
Post a Comment