Germans Not Responsible for Massacres, Hun Writer Says.
Berlin, July 29. – What is described as “the truth about the Armenian massacre,” is revealed to the German public by the Tageblatt, which prints extracts of a report based on diplomatic documents which the Foreign Ministry commissioned Johann Lepsius to write.
The writer shows that the Turkish committee of Union and Progress deliberately decided to realize national ideas by assimilating or destroying the Armenians, who in Turkey number about 1,850,000. He describes the arrest and massacre of 600 Armenian leaders in April, 1915, and how the previous so-called Armenian rising was provoked as a pretext for Young Turk schemes. Lepsius repudiated the charge that Germany favored the crimes or that German officials incited the Turks to commit them, saying the Germany embassy was impotent.
Theodore Wolff, editor in chief of the Tageblatt, in connection with the book refers to the deportation of Belgian unemployed, saying that of 56,000 who were deported and treated as slaves, 15,000 perished in two months.