Armenian Genocide In Germany

The Ottoman Empire faced devastating losses at the First Balkan War in 1912. The problem originated, when Ottoman Turks crossed the Black Sea straits and that resulted into uniting the Balkan states into the ‘Balkan Union,’ that agreed to defeat the Ottoman Turkey. Bulgaria and Serbia ruled the Balkan Union, who aspired to conquer Macedonia because Macedonia was already at war with Italy, thus it was weak. Later, Greece and Montenegro advanced against Turkey with military forces. Within weeks, there was destruction of Turks forces in Balkan peninsula. Russia played a role in the ceasefire, by using their influence on Serbia (Akhsanov, Rustomova and Motygullina 2015, 17). This event has two important aspects for the Ottoman Empire. The first …show more content…
German saw the advantages of the genocide because “integral part of German military strategy at the outset of the conflict was to mobilize some of the different national and religious groupings against the Entente by sponsorship of nationalist revolt and jihad” (Bloxham 2005, 119). Mobilization of different nationals would potential support Germany during the World War I, hence Germans wanted the conflict of Armenian to spread because it allowed Germans to used it to their benefit. German contributed to the genocide through policies that showed acceptance of the Young Turks’ brutal acts towards Armenians. Sanction of the Armenian genocide by Germany extended to include rewards and aids to Turkish officials closely involved in the killings. These rewards or decoration of Turks showed Germans approval of the genocide (Hindley 2000, 2). The deported Armenian resulted into employees in the construction of the Baghdad railway (Bloxham 2005, 121). The importance of the Baghdad railway for Germans was that it connected Berlin to Baghdad, that is where Germans wanted to establish a port in the Persian Gulf. Hence, German received labor battalions to help them complete their project. German noticed the genocide was creating economic disasters for the empire, therefore Germans exploited Ottoman Empire’s market because Germans attracted skilled Armenian investors and trade deals with Armenians (Bloxham 2005, 128). To maintain the alliance between German and Ottoman Empire it required trust, thus German refused to prevent the genocide. German did not want the blame of interfering in Ottoman Empire’s internal affair or known as accomplices, which was the “primary interest, and that of the German Foreign Office, was to protect the German name” (Bloxham 2005, 126). German would censor the information of the genocide and