Tall Armenian Tale

 

The Other Side of the Falsified Genocide

 

  Vahakn Dadrian's Shoddy Scholarship Under Fire  
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Hilmar Kaiser... has drawn attention to "misleading quotations" and the "selective use of sources" in Dadrian's work, and he has concluded that "serious scholars should be cautioned against accepting all of Dadrian's statements at face value."[10] I concur in this judgment.

Guenter Lewy. Letters, The Middle East Quarterly; [10] Hilmar Kaiser, "Germany and the Armenian Genocide, Part II: Reply to Vahakn N. Dadrian's Response," Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 9 (1996): 139-40.


Since so many scholars have chosen to sacrifice their credibility by accepting Vahakn Dadrian's vicious propaganda at face value (such as Erik-Jan Zürcher, Robert Jay Lifton, and too many others), it is only just to highlight truer intellectuals who know a con job when they see it.

From time to time, I have run into reports of reviewers calling Dadrian on his shoddy scholarship. For example, an Armenian site reported an article appeared in the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in 1997-98, written by Nachum Orland, reviewing Dadrian's German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. The Armenian report claimed:

"After discussing the sources, purposes, and details of the book, Orland concluded that Dadrian’s argument about German responsibility in the genocide lacked logic, while noting that the topic of Germans and the Armenian Genocide had its appeal."

These are the kinds of reports that wlll be featured on this page. (Note what follows are mainly from "Armenian genocide" believers, so they are not necessarily real scholars either; but at least they have some standards.) If readers run into Western critiques of Dadran's poison, please let us know. Many are afraid to criticize Dadrian, for fear of sounding like a "denialist." The more people refuse to be intimidated, the truer scholars will be tempted to come out of their shells.

 

 
Medardus Brehl, Bochum University



In Bochum University's web site, the official magazine of the Genocide Institute “Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung” carried book reviews from 2004. (The issue number couldn't be found, but it's from pages 138-141.) The reviewed books included Peter Balakian's The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, Merrill D. Peterson's Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After, and Co-Editor Jay Winter's America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915; of the latter, Mr. Brehl cites Dadrian's chapter (
“The Armenian Genocide: an interpretation”) as follows (translated from the German):


…In the third and with a vast 51 page article, Vahakn Dadrian attempts an overall interpretation of the Armenian Genocide, where he brings very few new ideas in comparison to his former works offered on this subject.

Dadrian repeats his thesis that the Genocide was at the end to read as a result of escalating interetnic [internal? -HW] conflicts which was the annihilation of the non-dominant ethnic groups by the dominant one, under the conditions of the war.

Dadrian reads the Genocide as an end product of a self dynamics of conflict constellations and leaves the ideological and motivational basis of the Young Turkish Genocide politics completely out of sight. Same as Winter, who describes the Genocide as a side product of another power structure of the war, Dadrian describes the Genocide as an extreme form of [missing-HW].

Alltogether, the attempts for a theoretical and historical placement of the interpretation of the Genocide of 1915/16 are to be seen as highly unsatisfactory.

In some areas there is an alarming proximity of some lines of argumentation of the Turkish denial policies…

It would be desirable for the question of the responsibility of the "Great Powers" to be answered scientifically. Especially a study of the importance of Germany for the ideological preparation, planning and the execution of the Armenian Genocide is — not only because of its collaboration as alliance partner with the Ottoman Empire in WWI — is long overdue.

Medardus Brehl, Bochum



Thanks to Dr. Oylar Saguner

Meredith Hindley, The American University 



Meredith Hindley of the American University reviewed on April 13, 1997 Vahakn N. Dadrian's German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. Ms. Hindley did not care for Dadrian's methods of assigning German guilt:


…..Using Turkish and German state archives, Dadrian has constructed a case for German complicity in the Armenian genocide — and it is precisely his intent to build a case. The volume consists of two long legal briefs, each of which is approximately eighty pages, with supporting appendices. Dadrian chose to construct the volume in this manner because he wanted to identify by a preponderance of evidence those Germans engaged in criminal acts and those who abetted the crimes. This format is more than a rhetorical strategy: Dadrian explicitly challenges German authorities on a legal and historical basis to assume moral responsibility for Germany's role in the Armenian genocide.

This format has two distinct consequences for the reception of Dadrian's work. First, the lack of a narrative structure or a basic explanation of the events surrounding the Armenian genocide severely hampers the advancement of Dadrian's argument. The reader works too hard to understand the events being discussed and their implications. Consequently, the book lacks the power of works on the Holocaust that also document perpetrators, collaborators, and criminal acts, but which do so in a compelling, readable manner. Second, the legal-brief format and overt moral agenda raise questions about Dadrian's use of evidence. By its very nature, a brief utilizes only those facts that support a case and reduces opaque relationships to black-and-white terms. Dadrian's work is very black and white — where appropriate, he identifies individuals as either perpetrators or co-conspirators and details the natures of their crimes. There are no gray areas. Dadrian also makes a weak attempt to connect the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust by using an appendix to list prominent Nazis who served in Turkey at the time of the former. While avoiding a blanket indictment of all Germans, Dadrian's linkage of the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust in this manner implies an argument of continuity which he neither supports nor adequately explores. Moral indictments of participants in historical events should be accompanied by judicious handling of evidence.

Yet despite the volume's flaws, the reader cannot help but be troubled by Germany's actions regarding the Armenian genocide. In a position of superior power, Germany made a conscious decision to support the genocidal program of its weaker ally. Germany was not a perpetrator, but it remains far removed from the position of bystander.




Thanks to Dr. Oylar Saguner

 

 

 


 

 

 
Further reading:

Sizing Up Dadrian: "Too Much Theory... Too Little Facts."

Dr. Malcolm Yapp's Review of Dadrian's Genocide History



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THE PURPOSE OF TALL ARMENIAN TALE (TAT)
...Is to expose the mythological “Armenian genocide,” from the years 1915-16. A wartime tragedy involving the losses of so many has been turned into a politicized story of “exclusive victimhood,” and because of the prevailing prejudice against Turks, along with Turkish indifference, those in the world, particularly in the West, have been quick to accept these terribly defamatory claims involving the worst crime against humanity. Few stop to investigate below the surface that those regarded as the innocent victims, the Armenians, while seeking to establish an independent state, have been the ones to commit systematic ethnic cleansing against those who did not fit into their racial/religious ideal: Muslims, Jews, and even fellow Armenians who had converted to Islam. Criminals as Dro, Antranik, Keri, Armen Garo and Soghoman Tehlirian (the assassin of Talat Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders, along with Enver and Jemal) contributed toward the deaths (via massacres, atrocities, and forced deportation) of countless innocents, numbering over half a million. What determines genocide is not the number of casualties or the cruelty of the persecutions, but the intent to destroy a group, the members of which  are guilty of nothing beyond being members of that group. The Armenians suffered their fate of resettlement not for their ethnicity, having co-existed and prospered in the Ottoman Empire for centuries, but because they rebelled against their dying Ottoman nation during WWI (World War I); a rebellion that even their leaders of the period, such as Boghos Nubar and Hovhannes Katchaznouni, have admitted. Yet the hypocritical world rarely bothers to look beneath the surface, not only because of anti-Turkish prejudice, but because of Armenian wealth and intimidation tactics. As a result, these libelous lies, sometimes belonging in the category of “genocide studies,” have become part of the school curricula of many regions. Armenian scholars such as Vahakn Dadrian, Peter Balakian, Richard Hovannisian, Dennis Papazian and Levon Marashlian have been known to dishonestly present only one side of their story, as long as their genocide becomes affirmed. They have enlisted the help of "genocide scholars," such as Roger Smith, Robert Melson, Samantha Power, and Israel Charny… and particularly  those of Turkish extraction, such as Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek, who justify their alliance with those who actively work to harm the interests of their native country, with the claim that such efforts will help make Turkey more" democratic." On the other side of this coin are genuine scholars who consider all the relevant data, as true scholars have a duty to do, such as Justin McCarthy, Bernard Lewis, Heath Lowry, Erich Feigl and Guenter Lewy. The unscrupulous genocide industry, not having the facts on its side, makes a practice of attacking the messenger instead of the message, vilifying these professors as “deniers” and "agents of the Turkish government." The truth means so little to the pro-genocide believers, some even resort to the forgeries of the Naim-Andonian telegrams or sources  based on false evidence, as Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Naturally, there is no end to the hearsay "evidence" of the prejudiced pro-Christian people from the period, including missionaries and Near East Relief representatives, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Bryce, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and so many others. When the rare Westerner opted to look at the issues objectively, such as Admirals Mark Bristol and Colby Chester, they were quick to be branded as “Turcophiles” by the propagandists. The sad thing is, even those who don’t consider themselves as bigots are quick to accept the deceptive claims of Armenian propaganda, because deep down people feel the Turks are natural killers and during times when Turks were victims, they do not rate as equal and deserving human beings. This is the main reason why the myth of this genocide has become the common wisdom.