The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response

by Peter Balakian

A History of International Human Rights and Forgotten Heroes

In this national bestseller, the critically acclaimed author Peter Balakian brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Turkish government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history.

Awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best scholarly book on genocide by the Institute for Genocide Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Middle East, War, World History, World War I

524 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2003

About the author

Peter Balakian is an American poet, prose writer, and scholar. He is the author of many books including the 2016 Pulitzer prize winning book of poems Ozone Journal, the memoir Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Albrand award in 1998 and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize and a New York Times best seller (October 2003). Both prose books were New York Times Notable Books. Since 1980 he has taught at Colgate University where he is the Donald M and Constance H Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English and Director of Creative Writing.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of the stages of the Armenian genocide during World War 1 and how it sprang from deliberate government policies and a long history of oppression. I knew how it has been neglected in many ways in the world’s consciousness, but until reading this I didn’t understand why. I also didn’t understand how much it was a replay of the massacres of 20 years earlier. Bearing witness to this tragic tale is an important part of my enlightenment. However, reading this book was far from simply experiencing the evil of humans at their worst. Balakian also gives significant airplay to creative work and brave efforts by outsiders and by the Armenians themselves to stop the massacres or to provide relief for the victims. The author, who just this year was honored with a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, brings his skills in writing into effective play to bring many of their stories to life.

There is a lot of history tucked into this book. A preface reminds us how the Armenian people and culture emerged in eastern Anatolia thousands of years ago, how it was the first state to adopt Christianity (in 301 AD), and then after periods of being conquered in turn by neighboring Byzantine, Persian, and Russian Empires, the Armenians attained a small kingdom on the Mediterranean between the 11th and 14th centuries (Cilician Armenia). With the rise of the Ottoman Turkish empire in the 16th century, the Armenians somehow retained their identity under four centuries of their rule, maintaining prosperous professional and business classes despite their limited rights as “infidels”.

As the Ottoman Empire began to experience unrest with its Christian subjects in its European territories, its sultans began to get more oppressive to its Christian minorities in Anatolia, including its populations of ethnic Greeks and Assyrians as well as the Armenians. Small incidences of protest by Armenian intellectuals, such as over the double taxation they were subject to by both the state and Kurdish warlords, were becoming used as justification for localized massacres by the military and isolated pogroms by Turks stirred up by propaganda. In 1894-95, such massacres swept systematically through Turkey under orchestration of Sultan Ahmed Hamid II, resulting in about 100 thousand Armenians killed directly and an equal number indirectly.


Modern Turkey with the tiny Republic of Armenia on its eastern border

Historical map with hatched boundaries denoting provinces with predominant Armenian populations during Ottoman rule in the center, Cilician Armenia of the Middle Ages on the left, and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia in the upper right. Almost all these place names were new to me, but not not now.

The book’s narrative starts in the Boston area in the 1890’s. Right at the time American imperialism was beginning to emerge, a counterforce of humanitarian activism was being born. The New England Protestant missionaries of the 19th century had developed a great affinity for the Armenians, establishing missions, schools, colleges, and hospitals throughout Turkey. They were well placed to spread the word about what was happening and to help lead the relief effort. Allied with the missionary organizations in the U.S. were leaders steeped in human rights causes of abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. Balakian presents us a moving story of public speaking, fundraising, and journalism by people like Julia Ward Howe and Isabel Stone Barrows. Soon an international relief effort was mounted under the auspices of the American Red Cross and led by Clara Barton. This amazing effort included not only food, clothing, and medical resources, but also farming implements and supplies to help mitigate the impending famine. This new form of American leadership and precursor to disaster response agencies we have today is something to be proud of.

The political response was less effective. An American senator, frustrated in a lack of cohesive and effective response, is quoted as saying: “Has it come to this, that in the last days of the nineteenth century humanity itself is placed on trial?” No international pressures could change Hamid’s strategy to total denial of responsibility. Just 13 years later, in 1909 another set of massacres of 15-30 thousand Armenians took place in the Adana region north of today’s Syria. The rise of the so-called YoungTurks had led to establishment of a secular constitutional government led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and what happened in Adana was a violent reaction by populations who favored restitution of the theocracy and antagonism toward Armenians who expected to gain rights under the new regime. Later, any form of alignment between the oppressed Armenians and the CUP was doomed by the unfavorable outcome to the Ottoman empire from the two Balkan Wars of 1912-13. The loss of dominion over Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, and lands to Greece and the massive immigration of Muslim refugees from eastern Europe both greatly amplified a radical nationalism tied up with a perceived threat from the Christian minorities of Anatolia.

With the onset of World War 1 and excuses of national security, the Ottoman government had more freedom to pursue a more direct strategy of extermination of the Armenians. The stunning defeat after their ill planned invasion of Armenian regions of Russia in 1914 helped give birth to this strategy. With about 1 to 1.5 million Armenians dying from the program of government between 1915 and 1920, we are clearly in the same ballpark as the Nazi Holocaust. In many ways it served as a model for that Final Solution. As in Nazi Germany laws allowing deportation of any population suspected of sedition and seizure of their property paved the way for systematic resolution of the “Armenian Problem”. Balakian gives us a clear picture of the pervasiveness of the slaughter in 1915 throughout all provinces of Turkey, including the definitive smoking guns in the form of coded orders from the triumvirate among the “Young Turks” running the nation through the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP): Talaat Pasha (Ministry of Interior), Enver Pasha (Ministry of War), and Jemal Pasha (Ministry of Navy).

Under the organizing plan of a secretive security branch termed the “Special Organization” and help from regular military and police forces whole Armenian neighborhoods and villages were emptied, first of the able men under the guise of work gangs and then the women, children, and elderly under the typical deception of a temporary move for safety. The young men and leaders were usually killed soon in secluded locations, and the rest put on long transports by cart, trains, and/or forced marches to multiple remote killing sites. Many were killed with knives and crude weapons and disposed of in trenches or lakes, frequently in conjunction with rape of the women. Thousands of women were forced into sexual slavery in harems and kids stolen to be raised in Muslim families. But the majority died due to active neglect leading to starvation and exposure.

Among the many personal stories that put a human face to this history, that of Ambassador Morgantheu’s intense but failing efforts to stop the slaughter was especially heroic and moving for me. The story of Leslie Davis, an American missionary in the central Anatolian province of Harput, was even more dramatic, as he risked his life to monitor, protect, and harbor Armenians in the thick of unfolding events. His account to sneaking out a lake where tens of thousands were killed months earlier (Goeljuk,which is the origin of the Tigris River)and experiencing through his eyes human remains everywhere sticking up out of the sand or in piles at the bottom of ravines made me cry. As typical, the first to be disposed of were the intellectuals and prominent citizens, heading off any organized response of resistance. A professor at the local Armenian college (Donabed Lulejian) escaped from this fate after being tortured and harbored by the consulate captured the lakeside massacres in a moving prose poem with these lines from “A Handful of Earth”:

At least a handful of earth for these slain bodies, for these whitened bones! A handful of earth, at least, for these unclaimed dead …
There are our women with breasts uncovered and limbs bare. A handful of earth to shield their honor! There are our boys, naked and torn, with bullets in their hearts and in their heads: a handful of earth to cover them! There are our brides, disemboweled, hacked to pieces, with babies yet unborn:a handful of earth only, to screen from our eyes this sorrowful scene! There are our boys with feet cut away and heads battered against the stone…

I had learned some about the massacres in 1915 from Bohjalian’s “The Sandcastle” girls. That novel covered mainly the killings in the deserts near Aleppo, Syria, primarily of women and children that were already decimated from forced marches from distant villages. I needed this picture of the systematic orchestration of the genocide. I didn’t know that President Wilson’s counsel from his friends in the missionary societies contributed to America never declaring war on Turkey. Their argument that neutrality would allow the missions to remain in place and maintain preventative leverage and relief efforts. I also didn’t know that there were war crime trials after the war in which the government culpability was exposed. Only a few mid-level government participants were sentenced before the legal process was aborted by a new war for Turkish independence led by Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk).

Because America was not directly in the war against the Ottomans, it had no leverage in the slow European negotiations of peace. The politics of oil and business prospects made the fate of other areas of the former empire of more interest than the goal of a safe homeland for the Armenians. In 1918, the Armenian dominated regions over the border in Russian Georgia as a republic and many refugees from Anatolia migrated there. President Wilson directed two different American commissions to review the prospects of a reconstituted Armenia that included much of eastern Anatolia and parts of these Russian province under a proposed U.S. mandate. However, in this critical period Wilson was prevented from achieving such a goal by his concentration on the League of Nations, debility from a stroke, and the post-war isolationism of the Republican majority in Congress.

In reaction to the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which carved up the Ottoman Empire among the Allies and did grant Armenia a homeland , Turks rallied behind the revolutionary government of Kemal in fighting back. An early step in this Turkish War of Independence involved invasion of Russian Armenia and continuation of the plan to wipe Armenia off the map and history. The Bolsheviks countered this plan and, in the face of total obliteration, the Armenians opted to accept the offer of becoming the smallest republic in the Soviet Union. This was not much of a homeland for the millions of refugees of the diaspora. Only 71 years later in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, did this reduced Armenia emerge as an independent republic.

So why was this genocide forgotten? Part of it was the vast scale of human destruction from World War 1 and, as I noted, the greater interest by Europe and eventually the U.S. in the more lucrative parts of the Ottoman Empire. The denial of the genocide by successive Turkish governments continues to this day, and the dependence of the U.S. and later NATO on Turkey as an partner to hold the line against Soviet expansion kept the U.S. and Europe from pushing the issue significantly. With each event of commemorating the massacres, any American presidents who participated have been careful not to single Turkey out as responsible of genocide.

Somehow for most other nations when actions of heinous brutality fall back in former generations, they find a way to fess up to a past regime breaking bad (e.g. the U.S. as a slave nation and grossly destructive to the Native Americans). Recently, President Obama went to Hiroshima and at least expressed sympathy for the massive deaths we wreaked on civilians. Though it did not represent an apology, it does acknowledge what we did and the human destruction that was wreaked. Reading about this genocide and others and massive wartime deaths of civilians, I do feel regret on behalf of the “we” I feel for the human race. The professor who wrote about his community who were obliterated at the lake in Harput (and later died of typhus in 1918 after starting an orphanage) is honored by Balakian for putting his experience into lasting words that defy being erased:
Lulejian transformed his witness into a benediction, into a prayer for the dead, reminding us that if language can’t bring back the dead, it can insist on the sacredness of life, the civility of burial, and the dignity of memory.

[Lizziegolightly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every year it's the same shit, April 24 rolls around and the L.A. press tries to give a "fair and balanced" look at the ruthless slaughter of Armenian citizens of Turkey at the hands of the Ottoman regime. (That wasn't so fair, nor was it balanced, right?) Armenians across the world say it happened. Turkey says it doesn't and, in its denial, gives the impression that millions of people spread across the world with no link other than an -ian at the end of a name, are connected in some sort of conspiracy theory.

The Burning Tigris is a historical look at the events that took place inside the waning Ottoman Empire in the early portion of the 20th century. Balakian relies on historical documents to present his case that this was indeed Genocide.

What is ironic is that the documentation cited herein were from U.S. sources and that the U.S. quite openly assisted Armenians during this turmoil, yet the U.S. refuses to acknowledge that this was a Genocide. I humbly suggest that Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates read this book before dissuading congress members from voting for another Genocide Bill.

I humbly suggest that anyone who has any question as to whether or not Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenian citizens of the Empire read this book.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are 100 years removed from the Armenian Genocide, when the Turkish government massacred over a million Armenian Christians, along with hundreds of thousands of Assyrian and Greek Christians. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response is superbly grim in documenting this crime against humanity. Why read about it now? Same thing is going on today as ISIS massacres various religious and ethnic minorities in the same region. Balakian asks:

What is the role of the most powerful nation in the world when the ultimate crime is being perpetrated in plain view? Why was there no U.S. activist response to the Holocaust, or to Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia in 1978, or to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when in fact the State Department, media, and general public often knew what was happening in those killing fields? Why is US. policy evasive, sluggish, resistant to action (of various and creative kinds, not simply or only military intervention), and often tinged with denial? Why has there been so little political will at the top when media coverage and popular knowledge and empathy are often large and dramatic? Hey, It is not hard to figure out the common thread here.

A deeper understanding of these questions and of the history of America’s confrontation with genocide must begin with a study of the Armenian Genocide. For the Armenian Genocide is…the template for most of the genocide that followed in the twentieth century.



Aurora Mardiganian’s haunting stare comes across the years. She survived a terrible ordeal. Balakian documents the recurring pogroms against the Armenians in the 1890’s, 1900’s and then the forerunner of the “Final Solution”, the detailed effort to eradicate the Armenian people. What is interesting is that much evidence was gathered and smuggled out by Germans, whose leaders a generation later would use the success of the Turks as a model for their genocidal efforts. The Germans were able to gather information and photos as they built and operated much of the Turkish railway system and were attached to the Turkish Army. American diplomats and missionaries were also key to collecting and reporting the terrible events. Here is what is what like to live as an Armenian in Turkey (it was probably the same for all Christians):

Armenians were made vulnerable by other policies that often rendered them incapable of defending themselves. They were not allowed to own weapons, which made them easy prey for Turks and Kurds. Since only Muslims were allowed to join the army to defend Islam, Christians were exempt from military service; if this spared them from warfare, it also kept them out of positions of military power and removed them from the warrior class, with its knowledge and skills. Notwithstanding all that, Christians were also subjected to what was known as boy collection or devshirme, which meant that Ottoman officials would take children from their Christian families, convert them to Islam, and put them to work in the Ottoman military and civil service.

Christians also were forced to pay a special head or poll tax which was later converted into a military exemption tax to compensate for their exemption from the service. Armenians paid a “hospitality tax” to the vali (governor) that entitled “government officials, and all who pass as such,” to free lodging and food for three days a year in an Armenian home.

Another burden solely for the Armenians was the kishlak, or winter quartering obligation, which enabled Kurds and Turks to quarter themselves, their families, and their cattle in Armenian homes during the long winter months. The fact that the Kurdish way of life was nomadic and rough and the Armenian dwellings did not allow for much privacy made the intrusion unbearable, and knowing that the unarmed Armenians had neither physical nor legal recourse, a well-armed Kurd or Turk could not only steal his host’s possessions but could rape or kidnap the women and girls of the household with impunity. The dhimmi were also required to follow institutionalized codes of behavior. Armenians, for example, had to be deferential before Muslims in public; they could not ride a horse when a Muslim was passing by; they were to wear dress that made them easily identifiable; they were forbidden to own weapons.

The Turks had a plan and carried it out methodically. The Kurds were used against the Armenians and gained plunder and property. Americans were intimately familiar with the plight of the Armenians and gave money and support. As survivor accounts and eyewitness reports came to public knowledge through the press, the magnitude of the violence committed against Armenian women—rape and torture, abduction, slavery, and imprisonment in harems—appeared to be unprecedented in modern Western history and it affected Americans deeply. One strong point in the book are the accounts of many noteworthy women. Balakian calls them feminists but I don’t think the term was being used at the time of the 1890’s and 1909 massacres. Nevertheless, there are some very brave women taking action to raise awareness, funds, support and even going to Turkey to administer the aid. Clara Barton is a standout but there are several others of note. Christian missionaries were all over the place, bravely running schools and aid stations and saving lives, sometimes at the cost of their own. I did not think Balakian gave them as much page space as they deserved. I also did not care for his insinuations on the missionaries motivations. Finally, Balakian finds “progressives” and progressive ideas everywhere in this history, German progressives, British progressives, European, Turkish, Armenian, lots of American progressives. They are all just wonderful. Never knew there were so many freakin’ progressives around back then. Mind you, I might have described them and the ideas as “liberal” as is classical small “l” liberal. But what do I know.

Like Holocaust literature, this book is replete with grim reading. Here is just one account by a survivor priest named Balakian. He is being taken by a Turkish captain who expects the priest will be killed shortly. They are traveling a “road of bones”:

…but that winter floods had washed up the corpses from their shallow graves and scattered then everywhere. When the priest asked him if the remains were of the local Armenian population or of Armenians from far away, Shükri told him that “they were all from the local region.”

He went on to say that “this order was carried out most severely by district governor Kemal.” Balakian kept bantering with the Turkish captain, pretending to be an opponent of Armenian “extremists” and a Turcophile, and in this way kept the conversation going.

When Balakian asked Captain Shükri if the women were also massacred (because he thought the young ones might be spared and sent into harems), he was told that Kemal (the kaymakam of Boghazlyan) had the women and children massacred, including infants. Kemal even told the captain that he had “made a vow on the honor of the prophet: I shall not leave a single Armenian alive in the sanjak of Yozgat,” a statement that was confirmed at the fifth sitting of the trial on February 12 by Memhet Salim, the military commandant of Yozgat.

Shükri went on to tell Balakian how he and District Governor Kamal lured the Armenian women, children, and elderly onto the death march by having the town crier announce that they would be going to meet their husbands in Aleppo and ordering them to bring as much of their valuables and possessions as possible. The native women even made baklavas and coffee cakes to celebrate the reunion with their husbands. About four hundred women and children were sent out on foot or in carriages or oxcarts and taken on a five-hour journey to a place known as Three Mills, where they were fleeced of all their valuables by a group of Turkish women, who were sent in to find all the gold and jewels they had on and in their bodies The women were then massacred with axes, hatchets, scythes, sickles, clubs, pickaxes, and shovels,” Captain Shükri admitted, “in the name of holy jihad” and by “order of the government.”

As a priest Balakian was particularly interested in the role of in the massacres and asked Captain Shükri how a religious Muslim could order the murder of innocent women and not be accountable to God and his conscience. The Turkish captain told him that “a jihad was proclaimed...the Sheikh-ul-Islam had issued a fatwa to annihilate the Armenians as traitors to our state, and the Caliph ratified the fatwa.” When the Armenian priest continued by asking him how he “atone for his sins” in the “other world,” the captain answered: “I have already atoned for them as I’ve always done after such killings.... I spread out my prayer rug and pray, giving glory to Allah and the Prophet who made me worthy of personally participating in the holy jihad in these days of my old age.” The captain’s confessions not only corroborate the testimony given at the Yozgat trials, but also disclose something profound about how deeply the ideology of Islamic jihad was part of the psychology of the Turkish extermination program for the Armenians, as well as for the Greeks, Assyrians and other Christians in the Empire.

After the Allied victory, a brief period of war crimes justice gives a detailed record of the genocide. One official is hanged for the killings but the growing Kemalist nationalist movement means the trials will end soon. The suppression of the Turkish responsibility for the Armenian Genocide begins soon after. Oil politics are one reason. Another factor is the lack of a nation to take on the “mandate” for a newly established Armenia. Armenia is eventually established as part of the USSR after many more killings. To this day, the political pressure to not recognize the genocide continues. I was surprised to find out even Israel does not acknowledge “genocide”. And American politicians of both parties promise to say the “g”-word when they get into power but somehow don’t. Read about it in this book. Shameful.

A very strong recommendation for this sober account of the Armenian Genocide.

[Ninveh Albazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happened in Turkey between 1915 and 1918 is almost too much to handle. The Burning Tigris hits you straight in the heart. Peter Balakian provides excellent examples of eye witness accounts, international documentations and the Turkish Govt continued denial.

Turkey was once the cradle of Armenian and Syriac Christianity. The 1915 Genocide TYT carried out destroyed this sacred culture and religion. My great parents were from Baz village in Hakkari, Turkey. The Young Turks with the help of local villagers murdered numbers of Assyrians in Hakkari, my great grandmother being one of them. More massacres occurred after escaping to Urmia,Iran (another haven for Armenians and Assyrians).

This incredible book strikes the human soul. Many thank yous to the angels who helped the Armenians in their desperate time of need and thank you, Peter Balakian, for creating this book.

[Nick Coddington · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a history teacher and plan to use this book in the fall as part of a 20th Century World History course. The book is enjoyable, but disturbing as the reader discovers how much the US knew and how little we did during this period of time. The author provides excellent primary sources to support his position and detail events.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think all those in Congress afraid to call a spade a spade should really read this book.

[Br. Thanasi (Thomas) Stama · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you read this book, be prepared to realize there are things on a scale of horror that we cannot imagine yet the Armenian people went thru it. Not a thousand years ago. Not 500 years ago but only a 100 years ago. Violence that rivals, matches and even surpasses anything you can bring up.

I can only have a little peace knowing we will all have to go before the dreaded judgment seat of Christ including those butchers.

ISIS, Nazi Germans, Ottoman Turks what each of these groups have done or are doing is an abomination before God. I need to focus on my own sin and leave theirs' to God. Lord have mercy on us all.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of a particular set of crimes against humanity that should be more widely known. And never forgotten.

The brutality of the massacres and the callousness of the murderers is shocking. And the tepid reaction of the Western powers was pathetic. The Nazis learned from this episode how to perform a large-scale genocide and get away with it. Turkey continues to brazenly insist that the genicide never occurred, and that the Armenians deserved it. The US and other European nations have been shamefully reticent to make official and public condemnations—initially because they desired access to Mideast oil fields, and then later because they needed Turkey as an ally and buffer zone against Soviet Communism.

The book is a bit long but it’s a worthwhile read. At least check out Michael’s very helpful summary:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And thanks to B.J. for recommending this!

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Balakian's The Burning Tigris offers a sobering narrative of the Ottoman Empire's genocide of Armenians before and during the First World War. Balakian shows that, for all the general focus on the Ottomans' wartime atrocities, their government had a long and ugly tradition of massacring its Armenian populations, viewing this Christian minority as an easy scapegoat for the Empire's economic woes and political setbacks. The first round of massacres in the 1890s led to a massive international backlash, with foreign governments and humanitarian organizations decrying the systematic murder for which no name yet existed. When the Committee of Union and Progress took power in 1909, their initial calls for a more inclusive and tolerant Ottoman state gave way to fervent Turkish nationalism; the outbreak of World War I, with the Sultan issuing a call for jihad against Turkey's infidel enemies, made the marginalization of Armenians even easier. Oppression and second-class status gave way to displacement and outright murder as the war dragged on; Balakian shows that the genocide began in earnest following the botched Anglo-French attack on Gallipoli and a Turkish defeat against Russia in the Caucasus. Scattered acts of resistance by armed bands of Armenians provided further pretext; by 1915, orders issued forth to "relocate" Armenian populations near the front lines, and a world-historical crime set in motion.

Balakian documents the massacre in its harrowing details: the displacement of entire populations, systemic starvation and deportations, rape and plunder, casual and systematic murder, all executed (despite continued denials by the Turkish government) with the full of knowledge of Jemal Pasha's government. As the outrages continued, German officers serving with the Turkish army documented the massacre and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the Kaiser to pressure their ally into stopping the deportations. Meanwhile, American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau worked to aid refugees and convey to the world news of the "crime without a name" unfolding in the Empire; the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations also did their best within wartime strictures to limit the suffering. Despite these noble actions, the help of honorable Turks and Arabs and occasional resistance by the Armenians themselves, the mass murder ground on for years. By war's end over a million Armenians had perished, and many more displaced. Hopes of an independent Armenian state, briefly entertained by the Big Four at Versailles, collapsed in the face of power politics and force as Kemalist Turkey and the Soviet Union divided the territory among themselves.

Balakian's book is written for a general audience, for whom the Armenian genocide might be a footnote at best. He stresses the continuities between the Turkish mass murders and the Nazis, with Hitler explicitly citing the genocide as an inspiration for his Final Solution. He also demonstrates how modern Turkey continues to deny the genocide, censoring or even arresting scholars who push against the official line, while friendly Western historians parrot their insistence that the killings either never happened (Sean McMeekin) or were merely a legitimate counterinsurgency campaign, inflated by Allied propaganda (Edward J. Erickson). And the Turkish government has used its geopolitical leverage to keep the United States government on their side; an epilogue details how the Clinton Administration torpedoed legislation in the '90s to recognize the genocide. Since Balakian's book was published, the genocide has become better-known outside of Armenia, with some signs of a "thaw" in Turkish scholarship allowing discussion of wartime atrocities (ironically, one of the leading voices calling for a reckoning is a descendant of Jemal Pasha). On the other hand, the bitterness continues to poison Turkey's relations with Armenia and other neighbors, while also being used to justify Turkish repression of the Kurds and other minorities within its borders. One can only observe the cruel irony of denying genocide while also celebrating it.

[Berj Akian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and well written historical account of all the whole series of persecutions and massacres that made up the armenian genocide starting in the late 1890's and continuing for some 30 years.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author often lapses into a rather boring seriatim rehearsal of events surrounding Ottoman efforts to eliminate an Armenian presence in Anatolia. I found it useful in establishing some explanation for why America's interest in and knowledge of these events (particularly those of the 1890s, 1909, and 1915) has declined to almost nil after times of almost fever-pitch attention to and concern for "the starving Armenians", to wit: (1) isolationist Republican sentiment about US's post WWI global responsibilities; (2) economic potential of petroleum reserves in the former Ottoman Empire; (3) vast real estate holding of American Protestant missionaries in Anatolia; (4) The "Red Scare" and the "Cold War" reaction to (a) what the Bolshevik revolution had done to Russia's economic structures; (b) Turkey as an ally against the Soviet Union on whose southern boarder it lay; (c) the resultant state of Armenia falling behind the Iron Curtain. (5) Granting legitimacy to Turkey's claim for self-determination--Turkey for the Turks!--oblivious to the Turks' lack of a traditional/historical claim to a "homeland" in Anatolia that trumped claims of much longer standing by the Armenians (and, for that matter, the Greeks and Kurds).

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide approaching, it is as good of a time as any for people to educate themselves on what has been noted as the first genocide of the twentieth century. This book focuses on the response of the United States to this event, which constituted "America's first, major international human rights campaign." This response included the chronicling of events by the US foreign service and American missionaries (important given Turkey's subsequent vehement denial of the genocide), substantial fundraising efforts in America for humanitarian aid for the Armenians and the political struggles (both successes and failures) in the US as Americans were first presented with the dilemma of whether or not it is right to intervene on the grounds of crimes against humanity. It is said that denial is the final stage of the act of genocide against a people. As such, it is the duty of humanity to respect the memory of the victims in order that this final stage of genocide can be prevented where we failed to prevent the other stages of a heinous crime. On these grounds, I highly recommend this book or other books that seek to accurately portray the events of what has become a "forgotten genocide."

[Robtee · Rating 5 out of 5]

What the Turks don't want you to know so badly that the facts are not taught in their schools and you can go to jail for discussing it. And they want into the EU?

[Regina Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a speech a week before invading Poland, Hitler said to Reichmarshal Hermann Goering and the commanding generals at Obersalzberg, “Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Today, not only do many not speak of it, but strong debate occurs over whether a genocide actually took place. The current Turkish government vehemently denies it. I, like Peter Balakian, fall on the side that the Ottomon Empire enacted the first modern day genocide.
Most people think of the Armenian Genocide as the time between 1915 – 1922, when up to 1.5 million people were massacred. What Balakian does brilliantly is show that the “Armenian Question” took place over a much longer period and constituted a “continuum of destruction” that started in the last decade of the 19th century, ““Abdul Hamid’s policy of massacre began what social psychologist Irvin Staub has called a continuum of destruction. As Staub notes a progression of change in a culture and individuals is usually required for a mass killing or genocide. In certain instances – the Armenian Genocide – the progression takes place over decades or even centuries and creates a readiness in the culture.” (pg. 115) Beginning with Sultan Abdul Hamid, the government began disarming Armenian citizens to make it difficult to defend their families, an onerous taxation system was implemented, and words (Armenian, regicide, etc) were removed from usage. “So far did his paranoia carry him that he ordered his censors to expunge all references to H2O from science textbooks because he feared the symbol would be read as meaning ‘Hamid the second is nothing” (pg 49). After Hamid was deposed and the Young Turks took over the stage was set for the WWI period, where, with no international justice meted out, the policies and massacres only intensified, “As evidence became overwhelming, Ambassador Morgenthau - in his quintessentially direct way - repeatedly confronted Talaat Pasha about his government’s treatment of the Armenians…Morgenthau then tried to persuade Talaat by reminding of the economic consequences of wiping out the Armenian population. ‘These people are your businessmen. They control many of your industries. They are very large tax payers.’ ‘We care nothing about the economic loss’ replied Talaat.’ Talaat boasted to the Ambassador, “ I have accomplished more towards solving the Armenian problem in three months than Hamid accomplished in thirty years.” (pg 275)
“The name Armenia was in the front of the American mind…known to the American schoolchild only a little less than England,” said Herbert Hoover. In another area where Balakian excels, the reader is provided a tremendous amount of evidence of the amount of coverage the U.S. media gave the atrocities as early as 1890. Unlike the Holocaust under Hitler, Americans galvanized in such a way that brought about the country’s first efforts to provide international aid to Armenians. In fact, the Armenian Question motivated Clara Barton to take the American Red Cross into an international crisis for the first time. But, what Balakian leaves you with is a number of questions. Why was this event so different than that of the Jews in Germany? Was it the fact that there was a large and growing Armenian population in the U.S? Was it the fact that during the 1890’s the women’s suffrage movement and civil rights movement were coalescing and those leaders felt a kinship to the suffering Armenians? Or was it because it was Christians suffering rather than Jews? Or, was it a combination of several of those?
Finally, Balakian articulates a clear cut connection between Hitler’s famous statement and his knowledge of the implementation of the Armenian Genocide. It appears the key is Scheubner –Richter, who was killed at Hitler’s side in Munich. “Scheubner –Richter, an early Nazi party member, conveyed to Hitler after World War I his first-hand knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, which no doubt contributed to Hitler’s sense that a minority population could be dispensed of with impunity.” Pg 167. It is also known that Scheubner-Richter left a detailed record to the Armenian Genocide in the German Foreign Office and is found in the book Germany and Armenia.
Sadly, there are also the missed opportunities of the international community in stopping the slaughter or bringing those who participated to justice. “…the Turks had begun a series of courts-martial in Constantinople, aimed at bringing the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide to justice. The trials represent a mile-stone in the history of war-crimes tribunals. Although they were truncated in the end by political pressures, and directed by Turkey’s domestic laws rather than international tribunal, the Constantinople trials were an antecedent to the Nuremburg Trials following World War II.” (pg 231). But, the war weary British under Churchill traded 43 Turkish prisoners accused of perpetrating the Armenian massacres in exchange for British prisoners and the U.S., in much the same way that they turned their eye to Japanese atrocities against the Chinese over cold war alliances, were much more interested in a strategic alliance with Turkey against the Soviet Union.
I selected this book because I had an incredibly crazy period at work and feel like I’m pretty well versed in this subject. I thought it would be basically a review. I now regret that I checked the book out from the library because I would have marked this book up had I owned it. I will say, however, there are a couple of criticisms. First, Balakian can be incredibly repetitive. Secondly, he tends to overstate some facts. For instance, he says that the Armenian Genocide is the first time that “crimes against humanity” entered the vernacular. If he means it was the first time that “crimes against humanity was attempted to be prosecuted, that is probably accurate. But, the term has been used at least as far back as Lincoln related to the slave trade. While he doesn’t delineate his intention, I am giving Balakian the benefit of the doubt because I haven’t found anything blatantly inaccurate. Still, I think this is an excellent book on the subject, he even gives you literature if the reader is interested in the Turkish denial, for anyone interested in the subject. It is well structured, provides incredible context, and very easy to read.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are parts that can begin to feel repetitive, but overall I'm giving it 5 stars as it is well structured, well researched, and a comprehensive overview on an event that few books cover. Viewing the genocide through an American lens puts a lot of modern day tragedies, and the US response (or lack thereof) into perspective.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in my junior year of college, one of my teachers was a doctoral student of Armenian decent. Her family, in particular, was able to flee Yemen (or perhaps it was Lebanon?), thanks to her dad's work and claim asylum in Canada. Her stories about the pretending to be happy while crossing the most deadly line, where many people were shot, made me wonder who were the Armenians and what were they fleeing. She highlighted the fact that Armenians were hated for being Christian, and that because they were Christian, they were able to exercise more freedoms, such as getting plastic surgery and wearing crazy hair colors. People got plastic surgery just because they could and to flaunt the freedom that they had that Muslims didn't.

I didn't know anything about the Armenian Genocide. I saw this book at an American Association of University Women book sale, and I picked it up, hoping to learn more about why my teacher fled the country that she did, but instead I've opened up a new area that I didn't even knew existed. I will admit that I picked up the book based on the word "Armenian," hoping to learn more about that group of people.

Peter Balakian presents immense details and primary source material in this book. Particularly important is the epilogue, which includes information about Turkey's denial. Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide reminds me of the South's denial of slavery being a factor in the Civil War. Get it together, Turkey and the South! Now I understand why they say Turkey is known for human rights abuses.

Balakian does a great job describing the impact of the Armenian plight on the American people. He includes information from relief efforts, missionaries, generals, and the government, but what he doesn't particularly do is explain how the genocide impacted world events. For example, the Armenian Genocide of 1915 takes place during WWI. I don't think Balakian mentioned WWI at all, except in passing. After reading this book, I am particularly interested in how WWI affected the Genocide or how the Genocide affected WWI. Maybe I just passed over it and don't remember the explanation, but Balakian doesn't really contextualize it, as far as I remember. In our American history classes, we focused more on WWII, so I don't remember much about WWI. Balakian does a better job of contextualizing how the Genocide would affect future events, especially comparing it to the Holocaust, but it's almost as if the genocide was this thing going on in the background that everyone in Europe was trying a blind eye to even though the media reported the events. I understand that the book was specifically about the American response to the Armenian Genocide, but I wish there was more worldwide historical and cultural context. This book shows me that I clearly don't know the history of the Middle East, and I don't know anything about the history of Islam, even though I know Christianity and Islam frequently clashed. Balakian does provide maps, but I often felt like I had no idea what I was looking at, especially since I'm not well-versed in early twentieth century history. This may be more of the fault of the reader rather than the author. I may be asking him to write a completely different book that he had no intention of writing.

I'm left with the questions of how did the Armenians come into existence, and how did they become a part of the Ottoman empire? I mean, heck, where did the Turks come from if that region was historically Armenian? I suppose I should read another book about the Armenians.

Balakian is very repetitive. He uses the same quotes multiple times, particularly from Pat Harrison and Talaat and repeats many facts that he had said just a couple of pages before. I don't remember the first half being very repetitive, but the second half is the worst offender. It's almost as if the book was so big that the copyeditor started slacking and letting things slide.

The book is an eye opener, and I would recommend it to anyone who is curious about the Armenian Genocide and to people who are interested in government corruption and political muscle. If they are like me, they'll ask, "What the heck is Armenian?" Balakian presents a topic that is never taught in American schools but is something that should be included in history lessons.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Particularly searing when you read it on a slow journey through eastern Anatolia and Armenia, let me tell you.

This is a thorough and overwhelming account of the immediate causes and interesting ramifications of the genocide - making good use of first-hand accounts of the unbelievable barbarity of the massacres and of the political and social background. The diversions into the American response (with basically no consequences for the Armenians, other than a bit of welcome emigration) and German involvement (with such appalling consequences) are fascinating and the pre- and post-timelines are quite clearly and effectively laid out. Some other accounts over-egg the pudding with emotional bias but there's no need for that here, as the facts are documented, triangulated and indisputable. As a comprehensive introduction to the subject, this serves perfectly and is stylistically very palatable, though galling in its content.

There are some minor discrepancies in the agreed facts and in some of the sources uses here (the "10 Commandments" mentioned have been discredited in academic circles now, I think - not just Turkish ones) but the overall effect is utterly devastating.

The quibbles elsewhere about whether it really qualifies as a genocide are spurious. Greeks caught it too? Armenians fought back occasionally? Spare me.

Turkey has a rash of new or reworked museums in these eastern parts, quite high-quality productions including full English translations (although please, get a proofreader) and the rewriting and sanitising of history continues apace. Urartu is celebrated moderately, for instance, and there's occasionally a passing mention of the Armenia Kingdom (up to the Artaxids, BC, though by no means was that the end of Armenians in Anatolia) but then we segue smoothly into the Romans and Byzantines who were beaten by Selcuks and then Ottomans carving out the great homeland and then the Republic and here we are. No Armenians since about 55BC, apparently.

Interestingly the beautiful island monastery and 10th century church of Akdamar in Lake Van has been restored and promoted (unlike I think any other Armenian church or ruin in Anatolia - we might mention Ani but it's rather neglected). Lovely as Akdamar is, it seems a calculated move, effectively a vaccination against the damaging effects of actual history. In comparison, the old part of nearby Van is completely gone (flattened in the 1920s, but not a mention anywhere of what had happened there), the new town brisk and businesslike a few kilometres away, the main street named after the general and politician Karabekir who was an active reviser of the history, and please take a party-boat excursion to this island, have a picnic and marvel briefly at the relics of these ancient peoples, just as you would at Assyrian or Roman or Hellenistic ruins. There's a new and massive museum under slow development in Van and it will be extremely interesting to see how it deals with 1890 to 1930, if at all.

Anyway, read the book.

[poetic interludes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent documentation on the intentionality of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire. Balakian provides the reader with an incredibly reliable array of sources/testimony — written, eyewitness, photographic, and confessional. Still absurd how the Armenian Genocide, as well as the genocides of other Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire such as the Assyrians and Greeks, is denied to this day. The vast amount of evidence makes it one of the most documented genocides in history.

As a descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors, this book was a difficult one to get through. While reading about the intentional and brutal methods of mass torture inflicted on Armenians — mass rape, using railway carts to transport Armenians to death camps, etc — I couldn’t help thinking of my ancestors and their traumatic experiences.

There was a torture tactic against Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks which was particularly jarring to me. Members of the Ottoman killing squads partook in what they titled “the game of swords”. This “game” consisted of planting their swords, blade up, in a row at several-yard intervals. The members would then each grab a girl, ride on their horses on a controlled gallop, and throw a girl with the intent to impale her on one of the swords. This book consists of many brutal details of such torture tactics and mass killings imposed on Armenians by Ottoman Turks from 1894-1922.

Although the book is graphic, making it emotionally challenging, it is still an important read. As the famous Psychologist Carl Jung said, “The only real danger to humanity, is man himself”. We must study past atrocities to further understand our contemporary world, and to ensure we don’t repeat history.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thoroughly researched, with many references and author's notes. Convincing scholarship of a hideous movement to annihilate an entire ethnic group - the Armenians. This genocide served as the catalyst for the invention of that word, and the methods used by the Turks (the Ottoman Sultan, followed by the Young Turks) were taken to Germany by German officers who shared it with the Nazis - who then used these techniques as the foundation for answering the "Jewish question." Very powerful.
The secondary conclusions are that the US, while having many supporters among the American people, turned our backs on them because of the importance of maintaining favorable relations with Turkey for military reasons (against Cold War Russia) and for economic reasons (petroleum discoveries in the Middle East - among Muslim nations). Capitalism conquers morality in our American leadership.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine my surprise when I discovered America's response to the Armenian Genocide was outrage, anger, and what became the first nationwide humanitarian relief effort. American newspapers provided almost daily coverage of the atrocities; Armenian friendship societies sprang up all over the country, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars; it was a key platform in political campaigns; and it was the first international effort by the American Red Cross.

It's easy to be cynical about American policy abroad, especially in the last few decades. This book is a reminder that America's foreign policy was not always controlled by our business interests; that, once we mobilized as a nation to stop violence and holocaust because to not act was unthinkable.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping book on the Armenian Massacres of the 1890s and the Genocide during WWI. Depressing. Disgusting that Turkey still cannot own up to its guilt for its atrocities. Americans played a great role in providing aid to Armenians during that time, something that was soon forgotten in America. Diplomats stationed in Turkey played a courageous role; some of the most detailed chronicles of Turkish brutality are the result of consular documents. The accounts are so hideous that one has to read it with some detachment. But this is an important read; it is an event that we need to know about, and make sure that it never happens again.

[Claudia Karagianis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an Armenian, I found this a tough read emotionally but sadly, a necessary evil. Balakian is an excellent writer albeit long winded at times and intense on facts. I think for anyone who doubts the realty of genocide, particularly the Armenian genocide, read this book. Take your time with it as it is not an easy read to digest nor would I classify it as a beach read by any means. Ignore the Turk supporters who believe the genocide never occurred. They are the same morons who believe the holocaust was made up.

[Tim Stafford · Rating 3 out of 5]

comprehensive history of the Armenian genocide and American response. Writing is tedious but I am glad to know so much more about such events, the precursor of the Jewish holocaust but arguably more personal and cruel. The stories of mass rape, massacres by bludgeoning and crucifixion, are as horrifying as can be. It was a huge world event in its time (in America particularly) but thanks to Turkish denial and American government timidity (can't lose oil contracts! can't lose military bases!) has been put largely down the memory hole.

[Emlikescake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most books about atrocity, this is fascinating in a horrible, terrible way. Eye-opening, excellent read for anyone wishing to acquaint themselves with the Armenian Genocide. Talks about both the 1890s and 1915, easily accessible even for those without an in-depth knowledge of the region's history. Interesting angle with the American influence.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've come across on the Armenian genocide.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

An often overlooked and unacknowledged tragedy in our not-so-distant past.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading again. Full of accurate information and good scholarly research to tell the story of what happened the Armenians and how America handled it.

[Allie Gustafson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Armenian citizen has not forgiven
the slaughter of his father in the Kurdish mountains.
But he loves you,
because you also won't forgive
those who blackened the name of the Turkish people

A comprehensive account of historical context surrounding relations of Armenia with the bordering nations of what was Persia/Asia Minor/Caucasus. With eye witness accounts published in American newspapers, the blood of the Armenian people flowed. While a majority of the rhetoric by American international feminists and civil rights leaders focused on likening the Armenian population to those of the states, cries from the bayoneted and stabbed rang to the highest degree as they proved this was not something a Christian missionary can fix with their leverage.

Despite Americans overseas involvement yet non action, a feature in 1895 New York Times read that “Armenians seemed to be Near Eastern counterparts to Americans, which was to say they were often professionals, good entrepreneurs, and business men; they were Christian, a growing percentage of them Protestant… While—like all other immigrant groups— they faced domination, they fitted well into their new land and rose quiet quickly” (79). Yet the grim realities and massacres for the Armenians still endured from the 1890s to the 1910s. “It said the number was so large that the blood flowed from the church door” (66). “As survivor accounts and eyewitness reports came to public knowledge through the press [in the U.S], the magnitude of sexual violence committed against Armenian women— rape and torture, abduction, slavery, and imprisonment in harems— appeared to be unprecedented in modern Western history, and it affected Americans deeply” (65).

As National Armenian Relief Committee was amongst the first of international human rights efforts by activists within the U.S., garnering funds from bankrolled families like the Rockefeller’s. Yet “mere expressions of sympathy from the Committee of Foreign Relations, [Senator Call] went on, were not enough ‘while murder, outrage, and ferocity of such beasts of the forest do not possess are perpetrated upon these Armenian people.’”(73). Since it’s inception of their relationship, Turkey employed coercive tactics that kept the United States on a mission of no offense to the sultan. Despite their powers to the Red Cross Treaty of Geneva, the gesture of international relief did not exist.

One story that stuck with me was the occupation of the Ottoman Bank, one of the most important institutions in the Ottoman Empire and a representative of a booming commercial district it rested in. This occupation was a result of being ignored and foreign conventions all over. Activists made their pleas, manifestos and negotiations clear before they over took the bank, but when it was time it was chaos. It was said that “so inexperienced were the Armenians,” as they were prohibited from owning arms and weaponry “that, as they hit the floor to evade gunfire, the explosives they were carrying on their belts went off” and resulted in their death (105). In a 13 hour stand off, the activists called for international support to negotiate with Turkey. As the group of activists were granted security by the French ambassadors and sent on a boat to essentially what was exile, they heard screams within the villages. Due to the standoff, softas (mobs) and Turkish troops unleashed massacre in response to the occupation. But at the end of it all, “the authorities were more than surprised to find that only twenty-five and not two hundred Armenians had seized the bank, had left behind gun power bombs and dynamite, and had not touched a cent of money” (107). In combination with all the global powers around this time, the Armenians were left to fend for their own.

“With the prevention of massacres they have nothing to do. During the massacres in Armenian they called upon each other to recognize a sacred duty and then they contented themselves with this empty expression. As far as their sacred duty was concerned they let it be eaten by the dogs. It is probed that the Concert of Europe formed for the purpose of preventing bloodshed is an idle collation,” said American novelist Stephen Crane (131).

The burning Tigris tells tales of those Armenians that were sent into the desert or forced on the rocket terrain. “The continua images of Armenians marooned in remote, Rocky Mountain land scapes, helpless and perused by the sultan’s Calvary, are both realistic depictions of one aspect of the massacre and symbolic image of” religious persecution (127). Forced out of their homes, robbed, and raped, the Armenian villages were condensed to nothing. Connecting my own heritage and familial accounts of being sent into the desert and taking refuge in farms and churches along the way, only to be massacred more tells me that there is so much brutality than we can ever account for. When the Young Turks began their crusade, more than “4,823 houses in Adana (large Armenian population in city of Turkey) were burned to the ground, of which 4,437 were Armenian, on top of the countless villages surrounding the region (154). Those Armenians who once supported the Young Turks a year previously, the dagger slipped even deeper into massacre and pillage of Armenian life. “As the concept of Armenian massacre with impunity was hammered deeper and deeper into the social psychology of Turkish society, the Armenian Question was inculcated as an issue that could only be saved by unmitigated state-sponsored and state-sanctioned violence” (157). This was only the beginning of a road to genocide surrounding the start of the Balkan Wars, which resulted more gruesome the years previous.

At the height of 1915, the terms for the Armenians gave many inspirations to the Nazi regime of the 30s. As the genocide flushed through towns, the “pan-Turkish ideology envision the Armenian as an invasive infection in Muslim Turkish Society.” A Turkish physician Mehmed Reshid and appointment governor“would be responsible for the deaths and deportations of hundreds of thousand Armenians— likened the Armenians to “dangerous microbes… Known as the ‘execution governor,’ Dr.Mehmed Reshid tortured Armenians by nailing horseshoes for their feet and marching them through the streets, and by crucifying them on makeshift crosses,” (164). This instance was just one of many state sanctioned individuals carrying on a battle of racism into their own careers and livelihood to make right for their nation and torture the Armenians who “died not only of massacre, starvation, and disease, but were stuffed into caves and asphyxiated by brush fires—primitive gas chambers” (176). “Scholars and journalists at the time estimate that between eight hundred thousand and a million Armenians died in 1915 alone” which was not include the previous and new waves of massacres or those Armenians forced into harems, Muslim families, or those forced converted to Islam (179).

Despite the poor attempts of assistance and years of taunting forced extinction, the Armenian question brutalized yet drove future generations to make their voice heard across the world. As author Judith Herman reinstated about Turkey and the U.S. ongoing and present denial of genocide, "'secrecy and silence are the perpetrators first line of defense.' If that fails, "the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim.' And if he cannot silence his victim, 'he tries to m are sure that no one listens,' by either bluntly denying or rationalizing his crime," (373). From there on, Turkey and their allies have boiled the massacres simply as a non event of ongoing civil war, and the deportations were in line of sympathy for the Armenians, all while families of the millions homes were destroyed, stripped of all their possessions, raped, and yet still hoping beyond the marches of bayonets and sharp deaths. The quote Deborah Lipstadt, "'denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators, and is-- indeed-- the final stage of genocide'" (383).

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book discusses the Armenian Genocide, which occurred during the period of World War I. The genocide was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, now in modern day Turkey. Armenians were forced to endure several injustices prior to the start of the genocide. They were forced into labor, taxed illegally, crimes against them were ignored, and were generally the minority where they were living. There were also some land issues that involved the Armenians. Ultimately, there were massacres in Armenian villages, forced death marches through the Syrian deserts, and forced conversion to Islam amongst Armenian women and children. Of course, the Ottomans did everything possible to deny their actions and prevent news of these crimes from spreading. They were unsuccessful in that attempt, and the genocide was formally condemned by Russia, Great Britain, and France. The United States called this a genocide as early as the 1980s, and has been considered as such in the following years. The government of Turkey still denies the genocide happened and refuses to take any responsibility or accountability for it.

I firmly agree with the assessment that the actions perpetrated against the Armenian people was a genocide. I think the response of governments around the world during the World War I period were lacking and disheartening. I think Turkey's continued denial of these events are pathetic. A lot of people are up in arms about Turkey denying this happened because people living today should not be held responsible for the actions of people 100 years ago. There is still a collective responsibility of society to admit and accept injustices that were done and make a collective movement forward in an attempt to restore relationships or advocate for things like this not happening again to anyone else. Especially in the current climate that so many people are living in... Overall, the research on this book is well done and very informative. Certainly worth reading.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

An informative book about the first genocide of the 20th century. In what could be considered a foreshadowing of the Holocaust, the Turkish government orchestrated the massacre and deportation deaths (i.e. deaths to abuse and starvation) of between one million and two million children, women and men. Using German built railroads and rolling stock (such as cattle cars) with German military observers in government offices the Turkish government sought to make Turkey a homogeneous country in which only ethnic Turks lived. During the genocides (late 1800s and early 1900s) and thereafter the Turkish government has sought to deny it occurred.
In the epilogue Judith Herman's book on criminal behavior (Trauma and Recovery) is quoted. She notes that criminal behavior "is always defined by the perpetrator's compulsion to 'promote forgetting'. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If that fails 'the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim.' And if he cannot silence his victim 'he tries to make sure that no one listens' either by blatantly denying or rationalizing his crime." That is one takeaway from this work that people should remember in the current political climate.