Heinrich Himmler considered moving to Turkey in the early 1920s. And Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, admitted in his memoirs that he first killed while serving in the Ottoman Empire in WWI. Make no mistake: The Young Nazis were serious fanboys of the Young Turks, Chris Bohjalian, American writer of Armenian descent, writes in Boston Globe.                 

In his words, the Armenian Genocide was committed by Young Turks, but the Germans, who were the allies of the Ottoman Empire, witnessed the crimes. “The cables from the German diplomats from Aleppo to Erzurum that chronicled the slaughter are as clear as the photographs that German medic Armin Wegner took of starving children and dying women. And while some of those Germans were aghast at what they were witnessing, others clearly were inspired,” Bohjalian writes.

According to the author, on the commemoration day of the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, U.S. president will likely find yet another euphemism for the word “genocide,” “Trust me, some poor White House speechwriter’s thesaurus is looking pretty dogeared right about now,” he notes.

Furthermore, Bohjalian stresses that the Holocaust might have occurred even without the precedent of the Armenian Genocide. “But as historian Stefan Ihrig proves in his book “Justifying Genocide,” the Young Nazis were there when the Young Turks were at work.” According to him, that is exactly why today America must stop mincing words when it comes to the Armenian Genocide.