Mirak-Weissbach Seeks to Restore the Legacy of Otto Liman von Sanders in New Book

While he was a brilliant strategist, the author points out again and again that the general was an honorable man; while he was trained to obey orders, he was a fundamentally decent man who many times ignored the Ottoman leaders’ orders to round up Armenian, Greek or Jewish residents.

He served the leaders of the Committee for Union and Progress, the triumvirate of Enver, Jemal and Talaat. In the book, he is quoted as someone who has an intense dislike for Enver, in particular, because of his stupidity as well as his lust for blood.

By this point, “emergency deportations” of Armenians had been launched, and the mass arrests of April 24, 1915, had taken place.

“As head of the military mission, Liman was responsible only to the kaiser, who had cautioned him to avoid international political issues. That he had frequently argued against deportations on political grounds was not only ironic; as a German officer trained in the Prussian military tradition, he must have grasped the link between politics and war,” she writes on page 48.

One of the first times he stood up for a minority group was when he stopped the expulsion of Greeks from the town of Urla.

Next he reported the mass roundups of the Greeks and Armenians to the German government, though he had been told by the Kaiser’s government that he should not interfere with the internal goings-on in the Ottoman Empire. However, again and again he raised the alarm and whenever asked to help with those efforts, he declined.

Mirak-Weissbach writes, “His report on [the town of] Aivalik is explicit on this point; he rules out the use of violence unconditionally. Ultimately it was always the moral choice of the soldier that counted; he had to decide whether or not to follow orders violating these principles.”

In his military position there, he came into direct conflict with Gen. Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf, the German chief of staff of Enver.

Before long, the Armenian Genocide got fully underway by the Young Turks. Smyrna in particular was a target by the central government as it was a city dominated by the Greeks. The government focused on the Armenian and Greek populations for arrests and forced marches.

“As such deportations infringe on the military sector — those liable for military service, the use of railroads, health measures, unrest among the population of a town close to the enemy, etc., — I informed the vali that without my permission, such mass arrests and deportations would no longer be allowed to take pace. I informed the vali that weapons would be used to prevent such a situation, should it be repeated. The vali then gave in and told me that it would not happen again,” the author quotes Liman von Sanders.

In fact, he knew better than to appeal to the triumvirate’s humanity, instead appealing to the waste of resources in rounding up minorities.

He often met up with Johannes Lepsius, a German missionary who was active in trying to help the Armenians.

After providing honorable service to his government, at the end of World War I, in which his country was defeated, Liman von Sanders boarded a British ship to go home. Little did he know that instead of being treated as an officer of high rank, as he expected, he was arrested as a prisoner and dropped off in Malta, where he was imprisoned.

Mirak-Weissbach details how the British were trying to prove the general’s role in the very thing he was trying to thwart, the Armenian Genocide. It is easy to forget that the defeated Ottoman Turkish government also held trials in absentia for the Committee for Union and Progress triumvirate who had given the orders for the Genocide, and where in fact each was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1919.

The British government said they were waiting for proof of the general’s complicity from the French but as the months went by, no evidence was brought forth. In the meantime, the general’s mental and physical health deteriorated. Again and again, he proclaimed his innocence.

She writes, “As to the claims that he had mistreated the Armenians, Greeks and Syrians, Liman listed the missives (and dates) he had sent to the Swedish embassy in Constantinople, refuting such slanders,” (page 90).

And on the same page, she quotes one of his letters. “Now that the War Office after five months declares it does not really know the reasons for my arrest, which took place through the Governor of Malta on orders of the War Office, I deem it now a duty of honor on the part of the War Office to have the competent authorities bring about the speediest clarification so that I will not be unjustly held one day longer and to send me an immediate decision.”

He was released and sent home fairly soon after that. He made it to Berlin in time to testify at the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, who had been arrested for assassinating Talaat Pasha.

Still, despite his efforts to do the right thing as much as he could, his name was tainted because he committed perjury when he said that no German officers were complicit in the Genocide.

She quotes him on page 150, “For our part, I can say — because we, as Dr. Lepsius was good enough to note, have been so grossly maligned — there was not a single German officer involved in any of the actions taken against the Armenians. The fact of the matter is that we intervened whenever and wherever we could.”

Of course, that statement was not true, but again, Liman showed his loyalty to the army.

Mirak-Weissbach does an admirable job in trying to remind Armenians as well as Germans of the honor and dignity that Liman von Sanders brought to his role.

A German General and The Armenian Genocide: Otto von Sanders Between Honor and State is available from the publishers or from Amazon.