Lepsius went on to give a short history of Armenian-Turkish relations under the sultan, with specific reference to his fears about secession. (The empire had been losing territory continuously since the early nineteenth century.) Lepsius also talked about Great Power interference in the Ottoman Empire. He ended with the reforms that had been enacted just as World War I broke out:

Two European inspectors general were meant to be responsible for supervising the reforms. It never came to that. War broke out and both reformers were sent home. I was in Constantinople in 1913. During the negotiations, the Young Turks were extremely upset that the Great Powers were again concerned with the question of Armenian reform. And they were doubly embittered when the question was settled in a manner hoped for by the Armenians as a result of the agreement between Germany and Russia. At the time a statement came from the Young Turkish side: “If you Armenians don’t keep your hands off the reforms, something will happen in comparison to which Abdul Hamid’s massacres were child’s play.”

Next to take the stand was Lieutenant General Otto Liman von Sanders, who was such a renowned military leader that his very presence in the courtroom made the trial significant. He was also the direct link between Germany’s war effort and the Ottoman command. In fact, he had been arrested by the British during the occupation. His first priority at the trial was to clear Germany’s name. Two major indictments against the Germans stood. First of all, there were reports that German soldiers had participated in the rounding up and killing of Armenian civilians. Second, since the German government was well aware of the atrocities, and since it was the more powerful partner in the alliance with the Turks, by not stepping in and halting the killings, it was complicit. (In fact, Germany did intercede when doing so served its needs. The ongoing construction of the Berlin–Baghdad railway line underwritten by Deutsche Bank employed many Armenian railroad workers, who were protected.)

More sinister motives could be traced back to before the war, when German theorists considered Anatolia a vast unexploited territory waiting to be cleared of Armenians and other problematic indigenous peoples. With railroads and irrigation, Anatolia could become a fertile breadbasket for Germany. (As in the case of the United States and Africa, railroads were opening up substantial areas for settlement, agriculture, and mining. Indigenous peoples were seen as a problem to be solved.) These expansive theories were a favorite theme of the German philosopher Paul Rohrbach and related to notions made popular by General Friedrich von Bernhardi. Bernhardi had popularized the term Lebensraum in his 1911 book Germany and the Next War, in which he stated simply, “Without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy budding elements and a universal decadence would follow.” “Lebensraum,” “natural selection,” “decaying races”—these were all ideas that German social philosophers subscribed to and would form the foundation of Adolf Hitler’s thinking in the coming years.³

Liman von Sanders, like most Germans, especially those in the military, had little respect for the Turkish leadership or their armed forces.⁴ Like most Europeans, he believed that the Turkish government was essentially corrupt. For Germany, Turkey was a resource to be exploited, inconveniently guarded by a wily old sultan and his retinue of crooked functionaries. It is true that the Kaiser had lavished praise on the Ottomans when visiting Constantinople fifteen years earlier. But for all his speeches about friendship between the countries and his love of Islam, the real relationship between Germany and Turkey was economic, and was secured by military men like Liman von Sanders. The Ottoman Empire was a client state of Germany and, as such, subordinate.

Now that the war had been lost, there was no longer any reason to pretend to admire the people of Turkey or its leaders. Never very happy with his relationship to the Turkish military, especially Enver Pasha, von Sanders was finally free to say what he thought. He took pains to shift any blame for massacres away from Germany and onto Turkey. He told the court:

In my view, everything that took place in Armenia and that is summarized with the term “Armenian massacre” needs to be separated into two parts. The first part is in my opinion an order of the Young Turk government concerning the Armenian deportations. For this the Young Turk government can be held responsible, for this order in itself, for the consequences only in part. But the other part is comprised of the battles that took place in Armenia, because in the first place the Armenians defended themselves vigorously, didn’t want to accede to the disarmament ordered by the Turkish government,⁵ and because, second, as has been proven beyond any doubt, they partly came out on the side of the Russians against the Turks. This naturally led to battles and, as is commonplace, to mowing down the inferior side. I believe these are matters that do need to be distinguished from each other. The government ordered the deportation, and indeed in response to both the highest military and civilian authorities, both of which considered the clearance of eastern Anatolia to be necessary on military grounds.

Liman von Sanders circumvented the unasked questions: Why didn’t you stop the deportations when you understood that they were homicidal? In what way did German artillery abet the destruction of Armenian strongholds? And why was Talat, an exile convicted of war crimes, granted safe haven in Germany?

Liman von Sanders denied vehemently that any German soldiers had committed atrocities. He expanded on this theme:

I would like to emphasize that the army leaders and commanding generals in the Caucasus were always Turks, because so much that is false and incorrect in this question [of guilt] has been asserted against the Germans. These army leaders and the civil authorities reported to Constantinople precisely what I have said previously, and the execution of the deportation order that was issued then fell into the worst conceivable hands!… Concerning ourselves, I can say—because as Herr Dr. Lepsius has been kind enough to point out, we have been subjected to boundless suspicion—that no German officer ever participated in a measure against the Armenians. To the contrary, we intervened when we could.

While Liman von Sanders defended Germany, he condemned Turkey. Of course, this is exactly what Tehlirian’s defense attorneys wanted. The general’s testimony established (1) that the government of Turkey had planned and executed the destruction of Armenian civilians, and (2) that there were dedicated death squads (the Special Organization) that had been directed by the Committee of Union and Progress (and Talat) to commit the most horrific atrocities.

Recently opened East German archives indicate, however, that German officers actually were involved with the Turks, in a way that modern statecraft might describe as “counterinsurgency.” The Germans assisted the Turkish army in destroying Armenian “strongholds” with Krupp heavy artillery. These operations focused on leveling Armenian neighborhoods and towns. The German leadership decided to ignore the deportations, despite their brutality. If the Turks wanted the Armenians out of the way, the Germans would not interfere.

Although Germany’s leaders denied responsibility for assisting the Young Turks in their destruction of the Armenians, new evidence proves otherwise, and the parallels between the murder of one million Armenians and six million Jews thirty years later are numerous. Two ancient peoples, primarily identified by their religion, were methodically exterminated in what would be defined as “genocide.” Though Raphael Lemkin was responding to the Jewish Holocaust when he coined the term in 1943, he specifically cited the destruction of the Armenians as a prime example. In fact, Lemkin had carefully followed Tehlirian’s Berlin trial of 1921 and pondered the ethical dilemma created by Tehlirian’s actions.⁶