Book Review: Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler

In June 2016 the German Parliament adopted a resolution declaring the killings of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 a genocide.The resolution once again raised questions about the depth and extent of Germany's role in the Armenian Genocide.In the last twenty years there have been a number of books and articles which explored the German responsibility in the Armenian Genocide.With his second monograph, Stefan Ihrig, Polonsky Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, takes an important step in enriching the existing interpretations.The book is consisted of four parts divided into fifteen chapters and covering a period from 1878 to the Holocaust.It opens a new perspective on the role that Germany played in the making of the Armenian Genocide and how it was discussed in Germany.It is worth noting that reading of the previous book by Stefan Ihrig 1 will make understanding of the second one much easier.There are not only references to that book and a few, albeit important, thematic repetitions but also a number of arguments that can be better understood after reading the first book.This book has a number of objectives which aim to reframe the German understanding and exploitation of the Armenian Question by providing two closely intertwined contexts-the German and the German-Ottoman.The other objective of the book, as it was also the case with the first one, is about comprehending the process of learning-how the Germans learnt from the Ottomans, and how the Ottomans learnt from Germany, how they empowered each other by providing political, military, diplomatic and most importantly moral support.This particularly concerns the German help that was extended to the Ottomans.Although the book is not about the Armenian Genocide, it successfully integrates the Armenian Genocide into world and twentieth-century history.If approached from these perspectives, the book has clearly met its objectives.If the author tried to approach the problem in the context of only WWI or WWII, little could have been clear about the German roots of anti-Armenianism and the binding features of the German-Ottoman alliance.Instead, the author broadened the chronological spectrum, which allowed him to widen the context and provide more evidence.It brings into the fore the roots of German anti-Armenianism and Armenia-related paranoia and builds an entire argument based on the assumption that Germany's role needs to be seen as one which justified the Armenian massacres in the 1890s and later the Armenian Genocide in 1915.These approaches laid foundation for, what the author claims, "the great German Genocide discourse" in the early 1920s.The book argues that throughout the period under consideration, the printed discourse in Germany was mostly pro-Turkish, which rationalized the massacres against the Armenians.The Armenian massacres in the 1890s were widely covered in the German press, which used the term Völkemord long before Lemkin coined it in English.The book extensively discusses the parallels between Jews and Armenians which were widely known in Germany.Popular intellectuals and right wing press presented Armenians under negative circumstances,

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