We possess, however, certain general accounts which reached Europe and America at an earlier date, for the most part, than the individual narratives, and they are printed here in advance of the rest---partly for the chronological reason, and partly because they give a broad survey of what happened, which may impress the general features upon the reader before he approaches the detailed testimony of the sections that follow.

The photos of Armin T. Wegner are among the few that capture the bleak struggle to survive facing Armenian deportees. As a second-lieutenant in the German army stationed in the Ottoman empire in April 1915, Wegner took the initiative to investigate reports of Armenian massacres. Disobeying orders intended to stifle news of the massacres, he collected information on the genocide and took hundreds of photographs of Armenian deportation camps, primarily in the Syrian desert.

You can purchase it here and read few words on him on Yad Vashem website.

The Armenian population that remained in the Ottoman Empire after the 1895 massacre supported the 1908 revolution of the Committee of Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, who promised liberal treatment of ethnic minorities. However, after its revolution succeeded, the Young Turk government plotted elimination of the Armenians, who were a significant obstacle to the regime's evolving nationalist agenda.

In the early stages of World War I, in 1915 Russian armies advanced on Turkey from the north and the British attempted an invasion from the Mediterranean. Citing the threat of internal rebellion, the Ottoman government ordered large-scale roundups, deportations, and systematic torture and murder of Armenians beginning in the spring of 1915.

By 1917 fewer than 200,000 Armenians remained in Turkey. Whatever the exact dimensions of the genocide, Armenians suffered a demographic disaster that shifted the center of the Armenian population from the heartland of historical Armenia to the relatively safer eastern regions held by the Russians. Tens of thousands of refugees fled to the Caucasus with the retreating Russian armies, and the cities of Baku and Tbilisi filled with Armenians from Turkey. Ethnic tensions rose in Transcaucasia as the new immigrants added to the pressures on the limited resources of the collapsing Russian Empire.

Armenia's traditional enemy in the twentieth century has been Turkey. Among outstanding sources of conflict, the most painful and long-lasting has been the Turkish refusal to recognize the deportations and massacres of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as a deliberate, state-sponsored act of genocide.

Austria-Hungary was an ally of Germany during World War I and had diplomatic representatives in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the Armenian Genocide. We own the twelve-volume facsimile diplomatic records series Österreich-Armenien, 1872-1936: Faksimilesammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke, edited by Artem Ohandjanian. Among the public and university libraries in this country only the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum owns this. We also have a microfilm roll on Austrian records entitled Haus-, Hof- & Staatsarchiv Wien aus: PA XII/467 Turkei, and four issues of Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, the register of documents of the Austrian archives. Finally, it should be mentioned that we have recently purchased Die K.U.K. Streitkräfte im Ersten Weltkriege 1914-1918 (issue 2 of Österreichische Militärgeschichte [1995]), which includes a study of all Austrian military units that served in the Ottoman Empire in World War I, as well as Joseph Pomiankowski's Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches (Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag, 1928), which is an account of his time at the Ottoman Army's General Headquarters during World War I. He was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's plenipotentiary military representative to the Ottoman Empire during World War I and supreme commander of all Austro-Hungarian forces within the Ottoman Empire.

» German Records

The German Empire was the main ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Ottoman armies were organized along the German model, and the Ottoman navy was reinforced by two German ships at the outside of World War I. During the course of the war the Ottoman Empire received 5 billion marks of loans and credits from Germany. Finally, German diplomats were located in the major cities of the Ottoman Empire, German officers were attached to all of the Ottoman armies, and German missionaries were present inside the Ottoman Empire. We have 270 microfiche sheets from the Political Archive of the German Foreign Office concerning Germany and the Armenians, as well as an additional 9 rolls of microfilm from the German Foreign Office. No other library in the United States has this material (for more information on this microfilm and microfiche, see the Appendix of the pdf file detailing our microfilm and microfiche holdings). We also have Vardges Mikaelian's Armianskii Vopros i Genotsid Armian ve Turtsii (1913-1919): Materialy Politicheskogo Arkhiva Ministerstva Inostrannykh del Kaizerovskoi Germanii: Sbornik (Erevan: Izdatelstvo "Gitutiun" NAN RA, 1995), which is a comprehensive index in Russian to the holdings of the German archives on the Armenians from 1913-1919, as well as A Catalogue of Files and Microfilms of the German Foreign Ministry Archives, 1867-1920, which was published by the American Historical Association Committee for the Study of War Documents.

Johannes Lepsius' Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918: Sammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Germany and Armenia, 1914-1918: A Collection of Diplomatic Documents) in its 1919 original and 1986 reprint is also a part of our collection. We also have memoirs of important Germans during the Genocide (such as those of Paul Leverkuehn, the adjutant to Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, German Vice Consul at Erzurum in 1915 and co-commander of an Ottoman guerilla force operating in the Caucasus; and Count Johann Bernstorff, Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and 1918) and of those important in the period before (such as those of Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter, German Foreign Minister 1910-1912; and Prince Bernhard von Bülow, German Chancellor from 1900 to 1909). Finally, we also have a microfilm copy of Ernst Jäckh's papers from 1908 to 1917, when he was deeply involved in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Not only are his own papers included in this microfilm roll, but the papers of the German naval attache to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Hans Humann, as well as an unpublished autobiography of Talaat Pasha, one of the ruling triumvirs of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, are included as well.

» British Records

The British were at the forefront of world diplomacy from 1793-1949 (from the British-funded coalitions against Revolutionary France to the creation of NATO). Events on every continent of the world were within their purview, and Armenia was no exception. During the Armenian Genocide the British government (as well as the French and Russian) warned the perpetrators that they would be held accountable. The British also collected reports substantiating and describing Armenian Genocide. These reports were published as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, and we have the 1916 original, the 1972 Beirut reprint with the key to names (because of fear of retribution against informants still in the Ottoman Empire) withheld in the original, and the 1990 reprint. We also have two sets of published British diplomatic records: Anita L.P. Burdett's Armenia: Political and Ethnic Boundaries, 1878-1948: Documents and Maps (Archive Editions, 1998), 2 volumes; and Anita L.P. Burdett's Caucasian Boundaries: Documents and Maps, 1802-1946 (Archive Editions, 1996), 2 volumes. We also have British Foreign Office Dossiers on Turkish War Criminals, a collection of British documents published by Vartkes Yeghiayan on various perpetrators and agents of the Armenian Genocide who were rounded up by the British and interned on the island of Malta pending trial. Unfortunately the internees were given to Mustafa Kemal's Nationalist Government in order to secure the release of British officers and soldiers illegally held by the Nationalists. Finally, we also have the actual microfilm copies of the British records on the Malta internments.

Finally, we also have memoirs (such those of Major-General L.C. Dunsterville, the commander of a small British force in the Caucasus in 1919; and Viscount Grey of Fallodon, British Foreign Minister at the time of the Armenian Genocide) and biographies (such as that of Lord Curzon, British Foreign Minister at the time of the First Republic of Armenia) of influential Britons.

» Russian Archival Records

The two major dialects of Armenian, Eastern and Western, roughly corresponded with the division of Armenians in their historic homeland after 1828 (with the exception of a small number in Persia): Eastern Armenians and Eastern Armenia were located inside the Russian Empire while Western Armenians and Western Armenia were located in the Ottoman Empire. During the course of the nineteenth century the Russians brought Caucasia and Transcaucasia fully under their control. During that time a commission was appointed to bring together all the local and regional records the Russians had on the peoples of these areas. We have the 146 microfiche sheets of this "report" as Proceedings of the Caucasian Archaeographical Commission, 1866-1904 (Archive Editions, 1996). We also have records specifically relating to Russia and the Armenians for the nineteenth century in Russian translated by George A. Bournoutian as Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia, 1797-1889: A Documentary Record (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998).

Previous to this, we have Ts.P. Agaian's Prisoedinenie vostochnoi Armenii k Rossii: Sbornik documentov, tom II: 1814-1830 (The Unification of Eastern Armenia to Russia: A Collection of Documents, Volume 2: 1814-1830) (Erevan: Izdatelstvo Akademii nauk Armianskoi SSR, 1978), a volume of Russian records on the Russian conquest of Eastern Armenia. Finally, we have recently acquired Dr. Bournoutian's translated volume on Armenians and Russia, 1626 to 1796: A Documentary Record (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001), to accompany our two volumes of Ashot Ioannisian's (Ashot Hovhannisyan) Armiano-Russkie otnosheniia v pervoi treti XVIII veke; sbornik dokumentov (Armeno-Russian Relations in the 18th Century) (Erevan: Izdatelstvo Akademiia nauk Armianskoi SSR, 1964-1967), two volumes of eighteenth-century Russian records dealing with the Armenians, as well as A.N. Khachatrian's Armianskoe voisko v XVIII veke (The Armenian Army in the 18th Century) (Erevan: Izdatelstvo AN Armianskoi SSR, 1968), which contains Russian (and some Armenian) documentary records on Armenian soldiers in the eighteenth century.

» French Archival Records

The Armenians have had a special connection with France. The last king of Cilician Armenia died in France and was buried in Saint Denis along with members of French royalty (to whom he was related). France sought to be the protector of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, a category which included Armenian Catholics. France also intervened militarily in Cilicia after immediately after World War I, although French troops were abruptly and ignobly withdrawn in the face of Kemalist pressure. We have Arthur Beylerian's Les Grandes Puissances l'Empire Ottoman et les Arméniens dans les Archives Françaises, 1914-1918 (The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and the Armenians in the French Archives) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983), a collection of 757 documents on the Armenian Genocide from various French archives. Finally, we have just acquired the published correspondence of the French consul at Diyarbekir during the Hamidian massacres: Gustave Meyrier, Les massacres de Diarbékir: Correspondence diplomatique du Vice-Consul de France 1894-1896, ed. Claire Mouradian and Michael Durand-Meyrier (N.p: Éditions L'Inventaire, 2000).

» Turkish Materials

It is important to monitor Turkish-sponsored historiography not only because the Western Armenians lived under Turkish rule for hundreds of years but also because of the efforts made in recent years by the Turkish government to influence the teaching and writing of history. We have the parliamentary records (in thirty-one volumes) of the Ottoman parliament from 1909 to 1920 (plus one volume for 1877), as well as Vahakn Dadrian's rare analysis of that parliament Haykakan Ts'eghaspanut'iwnê Khorhrdaranayin ew patmagitakan k'nnarkumnerov (The Treatment of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Parliament and Its Historical Analysis) (Watertown, MA: Baikar Publications, 1995), and a twelve-volume history of the early years of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (the parliament of nationalist Turkey and the modern republic). We also have an eight-volume history of the elite Turkish school known as the Mülkiye (it had different names in its long existence first under the Ottoman Empire and then in modern Turkey) as well as biographies of its graduates, giving researchers an invaluable tool for tracing perpetrators and agents of the Armenian Genocide. There is no library in the world that has all the above material (Ohio State University has all but Dr. Dadrian's book). We also have the published archival series Ottoman Archives Yildiz Collection: The Armenian Question in three volumes, Bilâl Šimšir's British Documents on Ottoman Armenians (from 1856 to 1895) in four volumes, and the four-volume set Aršiv Belgelerine Göre Kafkaslar'da ve Anadolu'da Ermeni Mezâlimi, 1906-1922 / Armenian Violence and Massacre in the Caucasus and Anatolia based on Archives, as well as a reprint of Hüseyin Nâzim Paša's 1897 two-volume report to the sultan entitled Ermeni Olaylari Tarihi (History of Armenian Events). Bašbakanlik Osmanli Aršivi Rehberi, an overview of the Prime Minister's Archives in Turkey, is also a part of our collection. Finally, one volume of the published correspondence of Ziya Gökalp, the main ideologue of Ittihad ve Terakki, the ruling party of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, is in our library.
Immediately after World War I, a repentant Ottoman government held trials of the perpetrators and agents of the Armenian Genocide. Although the major figures had fled abroad, there were convictions, and even hangings, by the courts-martial, which in all but one instance only took testimony from Muslims. Transcripts of the trials were published in the Ottoman Government's official newspaper Takvîm-i Vekâyi, of which we have complete but unpublished translations into German and modern Turkish, and partial published translations into English by Vartkes Yeghiayan (The Armenian Genocide and the Trials of the Young Turks) (La Verne, CA: American Armenian International College Press, 1990) and Vahakn Dadrian ("A Textual Analysis of the Key Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal Investigating the Armenian Genocide" Armenian Review 44, no. 1/173 [Spring 1991], pp. 1-36, and "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal" International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 4 [November 1991], pp. 549-576), as well as into German by Taner Akçam (Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die türkische Nationalbewegung Armenia and the Genocide: The Istanbul Trials and the Turkish National Movement] [Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996]).

We also have a collection of Turkish schoolbooks, for researchers interested in how the Turkish government's view of history is enforced in Turkish schools, and a complete run of the Turkological bibliographic serial Turkologischer Anzeiger. Finally, we have collections of Beleten and Belgeler (the official periodicals of the Turkish Historical Association), Hayat Tarih Macmuas, New Perspectives on Turkey, Osmanli Araštrmalari/The Journal of Ottoman Studies, OTAM, Toplumsal Tarih, the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, and Türk Dünyasi Araštirmalari.

» American Missionary Records

Under the aegis of the ABCFM (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions), American Protestant missionaries became very active in the Ottoman Empire among the Armenians. In fact, by 1914 its Turkish "field" was the largest single area of American missionary activity in the world. Besides the biographies and autobiographies of missionaries (such as E.D.G. Prime's Forty Years in the Turkish Empire; or, the Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell [New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1876] and Edwin W. Martin's The Hubbards of Sivas: A Chronicle of Love and Faith [Santa Barbara, CA: Fithian Press, 1991]) and hardcopy reports (such as James L. Barton, comp., "Turkish Atrocities": Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey [Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1998]) that American missionaries wrote that shed light on the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire before and during the Armenian Genocide, we also have some duplicate rolls of the ABCFM microfilm records held at Harvard University. These 7 rolls consist of missionary biographies and official histories of missions. Also of note, researchers interested in the reaction of the missionaries to the Genocide and their relations with the successor state, Republican Turkey, should consult Suzanne Moranian's Ph.D. dissertation The American Missionaries and the Armenian Question: 1915-1927, a copy of which is in our library.

» U.S. Diplomatic Material

U.S. missionary relations with the Ottoman Empire have already been mentioned, but those relations are not the only ones that can be researched in our library. U.S. relations with the Ottoman Empire during World War I also were not like those of the Germans. The United States never went to war with the Ottoman Empire, (although diplomatic relations were severed by the Turks at the urging of the Germans in 1917) and some Americans were inside the Ottoman Empire for the duration of the war. Finally, the United States was considered for a mandate over independent Armenia at the end of World War I, and one of the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres was that President Wilson be the arbiter of its boundaries. We have a comprehensive microfilm collection of U.S. diplomatic material, and it consists of: Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Aleppo, Syria 1835-1840 (1 roll); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Alexandretta, Turkey 1896-1906 (1 roll); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Baghdad, Iraq 1888-1906 (2 rolls); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Batum, Russia 1890-1906 (1 roll); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Beirut, Lebanon 1836-1906 (23 rolls); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Constantinople, Turkey 1820-1906 (24 rolls); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Erzerum, Turkey 1895-1904 (2 rolls); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Harput, Turkey 1895-1906 (1 roll); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Sivas, Turkey 1886-1906 (2 rolls); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Teheran, Iran 1883-1906 (2 rolls); Diplomatic Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Trebizond, Turkey 1904-1906 (1 roll); Records Relating to Internal Affairs of Asia 1910-1929 (3 rolls); Records Relating to Internal Affairs of Persia 1910-1929 (5 rolls); Records Relating to Internal Affairs of Russia and U.S.S.R. 1910-1929 (40 rolls); Records Relating to Internal Affairs of Turkey 1910-1929 (32 rolls); Records Relating to Political Relations Between the U.S. and Turkey 1910-1929 (6 rolls); Records Relating to Political Relations Between Turkey and Other States 1910-1929 (24 rolls); Records Relating to Relations Between Russia and U.S.S.R. and Other States 1910-1929 (2 rolls); Records Relating to Internal Affairs of Armenia 1910-1929 (8 rolls); Records Relating to Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan, 1910-1929 (1 roll); and Records Relating to the Political Relations Between Armenia and Other States 1910-1929 (2 rolls). We also have a microfilm roll from the Woodrow Wilson papers which includes the Full Report of the Committee Upon the Arbitration of the Boundary Between Turkey and Armenia and its appendices, as well as eighteen rolls of the General Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, 1918-1931 and the forty-seven rolls of "Inquiry Documents" (Special Reports and Studies) produced by the United States Inquiry Commission, which prepared reports used by the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, including the report writen by General Harbord, who headed an American military mission to the Republic of Armenia. On microfiche we have the Chadwyck-Healey collection The Armenian Genocide in the U.S. Archives, 1915-1918. We also have U.S. archival materials in book form, namely fifteen volumes of Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (for 1895, 1903, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1942, 1945, and 1946); the report of the U.S. Consul (based in Harput) Leslie A. Davis on the Armenian Genocide in the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet (he toured the region extensively, taking notes and photographs), which was edited by Susan K. Blair and published as The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, 1989); and the three-volume (so far) set of United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide published as a special series by the Armenian Review.

Supplementing the archival materials, we also have books such as Lawrence Gelfand's The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917-1919 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963) and Harry N. Howard's The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry into the Middle East (Beirut: Khayats, 1963), which discuss official American researches into the conditions of the Armenians in the Middle East and in the Republic of Armenia.

» Armenian Genocide Survivor Accounts

We have about 300 survivor's stories in various formats--books, articles, manuscripts, videotapes, and audiotapes, which includes transcripts and tapes of the Armenian Genocide Oral History Project conducted in the 1970s. Some were written by the survivor directly (such as Les Memoires de Mgr. Jean Naslian [Vienna: Imprimerie Mechithariste, 1951; Beirut: Editeur Mgr. Jean Naslian, 1951), some by their children or grandchildren (such as Virginia and Victoria Haroutunian's Orphan in the Sands [N.p., 1995]). Some were published immediately after the fact (such as Esther Mugerditchian's From Turkish Toils: The Narrative of an Armenian Family's Escape [New York: George H. Doran Company, 1919]), while others were published much later (such as Der Nerses Babayan's Pages From My Diary [Glendale, CA: Abril Printing, 2000]), and we also have some that have never been published, such as Hagop Kalayjian's Memoirs of Hagop K. Kalayjian. We have memoirs in English, French, Armenian (such as Gabriel Tagworean's Gorsh gaylê katgher ër, 1915: Vkayut'iwnner u tpaworut'iwnner [Cairo: Tparan "Husaber," 1953], and Italian (such as Raffaele Gianighian's Khodorciur: Viaggio di un pellegrino alla ricerca della sua Patria [Venice: Casa Editrice Armena, 1992]). These memoirs are not only important for researching the Armenian Genocide, but also for researching the historical and social conditions of Western Armenia, and, in many cases, for researching the immigrant experience to America.

» Village Histories

Since Western Armenia no longer exists as an Armenian-populated area, researchers need to turn to memoirs and village histories to learn about the organization of life in the towns and villages of Western Armenia. These village histories also trace inhabitants and family connections of Armenians of these regions, and the publication of some were sponsored by compatriotic associations of survivors, or children of survivors, from a particular region, determined to keep alive their experiences or those of their parents. We have such many village histories, both Armenian (in Armenian, such as the massive 3-volume Patmut'iwn Hay Tomartsayi, and English, such as Chomaklou: The History of an Armenian Village) and Turkish (such as Malatya, 1830-1919). We also have the Ottoman Salnames (official yearbooks) for the Trabzon Vilayet (Trebizond Province) for 1869-1877 and for the Angora Vilayet (Ankara Province) for 1907, and a partial run of T'ëodik's Amenun tarets'oyts' ê yearbooks. Finally, we also have partial runs of compatriotic association periodicals such as Nor Sebastia and Varak.

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