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The Armenian Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust are often thought to
be separated by a large distance in time and space. But Stefan
Ihrig shows that they were much more connected than previously
thought. Bismarck and then Wilhelm II staked their foreign policy
on close relations with a stable Ottoman Empire. To the extent that
the Armenians were restless under Ottoman rule, they were a problem
for Germany too. From the 1890s onward Germany became accustomed to
excusing violence against Armenians, even accepting it as a foreign
policy necessity. For many Germans, the Armenians represented an
explicitly racial problem and despite the Armenians' Christianity,
Germans portrayed them as the "Jews of the Orient." As Stefan Ihrig
reveals in this first comprehensive study of the subject, many
Germans before World War I sympathized with the Ottomans'
longstanding repression of the Armenians and would go on to defend
vigorously the Turks' wartime program of extermination. After the
war, in what Ihrig terms the "great genocide debate," German
nationalists first denied and then justified genocide in sweeping
terms. The Nazis too came to see genocide as justifiable: in their
version of history, the Armenian Genocide had made possible the
astonishing rise of the New Turkey. Ihrig is careful to note that
this connection does not imply the Armenian Genocide somehow caused
the Holocaust, nor does it make Germans any less culpable. But no
history of the twentieth century should ignore the deep, direct,
and disturbing connections between these two crimes.
Early in his career, Adolf Hitler took inspiration from Benito
Mussolini, his senior colleague in fascism-this fact is widely
known. But an equally important role model for Hitler and the Nazis
has been almost entirely neglected: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of modern Turkey. Stefan Ihrig's compelling presentation of
this untold story promises to rewrite our understanding of the
roots of Nazi ideology and strategy. Hitler was deeply interested
in Turkish affairs after 1919. He not only admired but also sought
to imitate Ataturk's radical construction of a new nation from the
ashes of defeat in World War I. Hitler and the Nazis watched
closely as Ataturk defied the Western powers to seize government,
and they modeled the Munich Putsch to a large degree on Ataturk's
rebellion in Ankara. Hitler later remarked that in the political
aftermath of the Great War, Ataturk was his master, he and
Mussolini his students. This was no fading fascination. As the
Nazis struggled through the 1920s, Ataturk remained Hitler's "star
in the darkness," his inspiration for remaking Germany along
nationalist, secular, totalitarian, and ethnically exclusive lines.
Nor did it escape Hitler's notice how ruthlessly Turkish
governments had dealt with Armenian and Greek minorities, whom
influential Nazis directly compared with German Jews. The New
Turkey, or at least those aspects of it that the Nazis chose to
see, became a model for Hitler's plans and dreams in the years
leading up to the invasion of Poland.
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Catan
(16)
R1,150
R887
Discovery Miles 8 870
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