Real atrocities
Sir: Osman Streater (Letters, 3 November) dismisses evidence concerning the treatment of Armenians in Turkey during the first world war on the grounds that it was British propaganda just like that concerning German atrocities in Belgium. He refers your readers to a book published on the subject 25 years ago. Since then, it has been (re)established beyond doubt that the Belgian atrocities were real.
He further suggests — a familiar argument — that atrocity propaganda during the first world war was a reason why people were subsequently slow to believe in Nazi crimes. The real reason for such scepticism is precisely the opposite: that the governments responsible for atrocities during the first world war, abetted by sympathisers abroad, brazenly denied them on the grounds, now repeated by Mr Streater, that they were merely propaganda. Interested readers might wish to consult Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven University Press, 2007), who also discusses the wider question of postwar denials.
Robert Tombs Cambridge
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