By STEFAN IHRIG
A month earlier the socialist parliament member Karl
Liebknecht had submitted a written question to the German chancellor in which
he mentioned that Armenians had been “butchered in the hundred thousands”:
would Germany would do something for the remaining Armenians now? Liebknecht’s
question had come on the heels of a similar request made a few weeks earlier by
the Catholic and Protestant Churches of Germany to the chancellor. He had
replied that Germany would ensure that nobody suffered from persecution on
religious grounds. Political Germany, the Churches and Liebknecht knew that
this answer was an outright rejection. People at the time understood what was
happening not so much as a religious matter, but rather in terms of national or
racial
persecution.When Liebknecht’s question was finally answered in
parliament, it turned into a rather disgraceful performance by Germany’s
parliamentarians… And yet, behind closed doors political Germany knew
Liebknecht was right. Since May 1915 German diplomats in the Ottoman Empire had
bombarded their Constantinople embassy and Berlin with reports of genocide in
progress; many of these diplomats begged their superiors to intervene for the
Armenians, to stop genocide, in vain.
