The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, Wolfgang Gust, ed. (hardcover)

The 1915-1916 annihilation of the Armenians was the archetype of modern genocide, in which a a state adopts a specific scheme geared to the destruction of an identifiable group of its own citizens. Official German diplomatic documents are of great importance in understanding the genocide, as only Germany had the right to report day-by-day in secret code about the ongoing genocide. “The documents collected here illustrate clearly the shared responsibility of the Kaiserreich, the most important ally of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The documents were not intended for public use. They are therefore largely undisguised and so vivid that the reader often shudders when reading them,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote. The motives, methods and after-effects of the Armenian Genocide echoed strongly in subsequent cases of state-sponsored genocide. Studying the factors that went into the genocide of the Armenians not only gives us an understanding of historical genocide, but also provides us with crucial information for the anticipation and possible prevention of future genocides.