Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Is History Repeating Itself?

 

 IS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF, AGAIN?  YOU BE THE JUDGE!

By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, November 17, 2020

With a lot of help from my Internet Friends! 

DISCLAIMER:  I am ashamed to admit that I was totally unaware of the Turkish/Armenian Genocide of over One Million Armenians.  I can’t be the only one that is why I have written and posted this Nugget for the Noggin involving a horrible chapter of world history. 

I heard only a few sentences of a Glenn Beck’s broadcast on 11/17/2020 where he made reference to Adoloph Hitler engaging in a genocide of the Jewish people, not only in countries that Germany conquered but also German Jews as well.  Part of Hitler’s justification involved Turkey who did something very similar to the Armenians living in Turkey and the world looked the other way.  Was that true?  I must admit that I had not heard of the Turkey/Armenian genocide. It is a subject certainly not taught in any school classrooms that I attended.  That should come as no surprise when you consider what IS and what is NOT being taught in our history classes in most of our schools.  Therefore, I did my homework.  There were two very interesting Internet sites that made reference to (1) the Turkey/Armenian genocide and then (2) Hitler’s use of the genocide and the lack of any world outrage to do the same thing to the Jewish people he encountered wherever he went including his own country, Germany. 

This is the longest Nugget I have ever uploaded to my Blog and I feel the subject is too important not to post it.  I am fully aware that most people will never take the time to read it all but they should!  Why?  Because HISTORY DOES REPEAT ITSELF AND HERE IS LIVING PROOF THAT IT DOES AND HOW IT COST MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD THEIR LIVES!  There is a second and more harrowing reason I have copied and pasted these two articles, I see it happening again and like before, no one is paying attention and no one seems to care.  Christians are the 2020 target.  They are being murdered all over the world and the world turns a blind eye.  Christianity is being attacked in America, something I never thought I would ever see and Americans and the world have turned its collective blind eyes to the situation.

AMAZINGLY there are people today, some very important people including college professors, who do not believe that the WWII Holocaust actually occurred in spite of news reels, photographs and eyewitness testimony.  To them, it never happened.  Just like to many, including the country of Turkey, the Turkey/Armenian genocide never happened.  Just like the murdering of 2020 Christians around the world has never happened.

Without any specific authority to do so, the Governors across America are taking steps to supposedly fight the COVID-19 virus that they, without any medical training, are doing by locking down economies and forbidding people to even attend church services and properly bury their dead.  At the very same time these Governors have no problems with groups like ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter gathering in great numbers to not only protest but also destroy cities and businesses.  Then as if by some miracle when Joe Biden appears to have won the Presidency, these Governors find no harm in mass gatherings of people to celebrate his apparent win.  Who knew the COVID-19 virus was so thoughtful that it will not infect ANTIFA, BLM or Biden’s supporters?  What a wonderful virus to be so considerate. 

I looked up the definition of IGNORE and found that it means,  NEGLECTDISREGARD, OVERLOOKSLIGHTFORGET mean to pass over without giving due attention.  The world IGNORED what Turkey did to the Armenians.  The world IGNORED what Germany did the population of every country it conquered but especially their own Jewish German citizens.  The world is IGNORING the systematic destruction of people of faith.  And now America is IGNORING the blatant disregard of civil liberties by our own elected Governors and Mayors. 

SPECIAL NOTE:  If you checkout the following annotated Internet links, you can locate the footnotes that verify all the information contained within the articles.  The following hopefully will provide the reader with a very valuable lesson from world history that should be both taught and never forgotten! 

From The History Channel:  https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide  The Armenian genocide was the systematic killing and deportation of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, during World War I, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. Today, most historians call this event a genocide: a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government still does not acknowledge the scope of these events. 

The Roots of Genocide: The Ottoman Empire

The Armenian people have made their home in the Caucasus region of Eurasia for some 3,000 years. For some of that time, the kingdom of Armenia was an independent entity: At the beginning of the 4th century A.D., for instance, it became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion.

But for the most part, control of the region shifted from one empire to another. During the 15th century, Armenia was absorbed into the mighty Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman rulers, like most of their subjects, were Muslim. They permitted religious minorities like the Armenians to maintain some autonomy, but they also subjected Armenians, who they viewed as “infidels,” to unequal and unjust treatment.

Christians had to pay higher taxes than Muslims, for example, and they had very few political and legal rights.

In spite of these obstacles, the Armenian community thrived under Ottoman rule. They tended to be better educated and wealthier than their Turkish neighbors, who in turn grew to resent their success.

This resentment was compounded by suspicions that the Christian Armenians would be more loyal to Christian governments (that of the Russians, for example, who shared an unstable border with Turkey) than they were to the Ottoman caliphate.

These suspicions grew more acute as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. At the end of the 19th century, the despotic Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II – obsessed with loyalty above all, and infuriated by the nascent Armenian campaign to win basic civil rights – declared that he would solve the “Armenian question” once and for all.

“I will soon settle those Armenians,” he told a reporter in 1890. “I will give them a box on the ear which will make them…relinquish their revolutionary ambitions.”

The First Armenian Massacre

Between 1894 and 1896, this “box on the ear” took the form of a state-sanctioned program.

In response to large scale protests by Armenians, Turkish military officials, soldiers and ordinary men sacked Armenian villages and cities and massacred their citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered.

Young Turks

In 1908, a new government came to power in Turkey. A group of reformers who called themselves the “Young Turks” overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid and established a more modern constitutional government.

At first, the Armenians were hopeful that they would have an equal place in this new state, but they soon learned that what the nationalistic Young Turks wanted most of all was to “Turkify” the empire. According to this way of thinking, non-Turks – and especially Christian non-Turks – were a grave threat to the new state.

World War I Begins

In 1914, the Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (At the same time, Ottoman religious authorities declared a holy war against all Christians except their allies.)

Military leaders began to argue that the Armenians were traitors: If they thought they could win independence if the Allies were victorious, this argument went, the Armenians would be eager to fight for the enemy.

As the war intensified, Armenians organized volunteer battalions to help the Russian army fight against the Turks in the Caucasus region. These events, and general Turkish suspicion of the Armenian people, led the Turkish government to push for the “removal” of the Armenians from the war zones along the Eastern Front.

Armenian Genocide Begins

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals.

After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water.

Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot. 

At the same time, the Young Turks created a “Special Organization,” which in turn organized “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out, as one officer put it, the liquidation of the Christian elements. 

These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses. 

Records show that during this “Turkification” campaign, government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish “harems” or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.

Did you know? American news outlets have also been reluctant to use the word “genocide” to describe Turkey’s crimes. The phrase “Armenian genocide” did not appear in the New York Times until 2004.

Armenian Genocide Today

After the Ottomans surrendered in 1918, the leaders of the Young Turks fled to Germany, which promised not to prosecute them for the genocide. (However, a group of Armenian nationalists devised a plan, known as Operation Nemesis, to track down and assassinate the leaders of the genocide.)

Ever since then, the Turkish government has denied that a genocide took place. The Armenians were an enemy force, they argue, and their slaughter was a necessary war measure.

Today, Turkey is an important ally of the United States and other Western nations, and so their governments have been slow to condemn the long-ago killings. In March 2010, a U.S. Congressional panel voted to recognize the genocide. And on October 29, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that recognized the Armenian genocide. 

DID HITLER USE THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AS A INCENTIVE TO TERMNATE THE JEWS?

Judge for yourself:

Here is the Internet link regarding Hitler’s reactions:  https://www.meforum.org/3434/armenian-genocide-hitler    It is well known by genocide scholars that in 1939 Adolf Hitler urged his generals to exterminate members of the Polish race.  "Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?" Hitler asked, just a week before the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland.   However, while it is generally agreed that Hitler was well aware of the Armenian genocide, some genocide scholars and historians of the Ottoman Empire have questioned whether he actually made the above statement or even intended to exterminate portions of the "Polish race."

Still, there is evidence that the massacre of the Ottoman Armenians helped persuade the Nazis that national minorities posed a threat to empires dominated by an ethnic group such as the Germans or the Turks. Furthermore, these minorities could be exterminated to the benefit of the perpetrator with little risk. Indeed, it was German officials who had smuggled out of the Ottoman Empire the leaders of the Young Turk regime, culpable for the deaths of over a million Armenians and a million or more other Christian minorities such as the Assyrians and Greeks.   Diverse historical evidence suggests that Hitler viewed the Armenians and Poles as analogous; in several ways, his statement about the Armenians was consistent with his other beliefs and writings.

A number of clues point to the possibility that Hitler's "final solution" was inspired by the Turkish massacre of its Armenian population in 1915. His infamous 1939 question, "Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?" although hotly debated concerning its authenticity, is only one indication leading to that conclusion.

The Assassin's Leak

The historical context of Hitler's statement and the manner in which it came to Western attention has long been problematic. On November 24, 1945, The Times of London published an article stating that Hitler referred to the extermination of the Armenians during an address to his commanders-in-chief on August 22, 1939, a statement that was read at a hearing of the Nuremberg trial. Hitler's speech asserted that the aim of the war is not to attain certain lines, but consists in the physical destruction of the opponent. Thus, for the time being, I have sent to the East only my "Death's Head units" with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way, will we win the vital living space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?

The anti-Nazi writer Louis Lochner, a former bureau chief of the Associated Press in Berlin, quoted Hitler's statement from an original Nazi document before the Nuremberg trials had even convened.  Lochner had a variety of sources within the Nazi government and had been interned from December 1941 to May 1942 before being exchanged for German diplomats interned in the United States. After his release, he published What about Germany? containing the quote mentioning the Armenians.  The quote was used in the November 1945 The Times article, which cited the ongoing proceedings of the Nuremberg trials.

Two additional copies of the memorandum describing Hitler's speech were found immediately after the war in the files of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German High Command, OKW), but neither contained the Armenian quote. Nor was either military document signed as would be expected for an official record of a meeting. These incongruities led Nuremberg prosecutors to conclude that there had been two Hitler speeches on August 22 and that the Lochner version containing the quote was a merger of notes from both. As a result of the disparities, objections were made by lawyers for two Nuremberg defendants, Hermann Göring and Erich Raeder, to the authenticity of the OKW versions and to the inclusion of the Lochner document in evidence. The key issue for the defense was not the Armenian quote per se but rather the term "brutal measures," which they claimed was never used by Hitler although they conceded that he had used "severe" expressions.

Since the prosecution had other records of the meetings, as well as one introduced by defendant Raeder, the Lochner document was included in the trial record but was not introduced as evidence. In the context of the Nuremberg trials, the overriding issue was not the Armenian quote but Hitler's call for a brutal war of aggression against Poland. But defenders of the Ottoman Empire regard the court's decision as key: The military versions of Hitler's speech without the quote are viewed as more reliable, and the Lochner version as suspect or tainted.

The question of Lochner's source for the document, and hence the quote, has therefore been the crux of intense historical interest. Lochner himself indicated only that he had obtained it from "Mr. Maass" without saying who the original source was at the August 22, 1939 meeting. But subsequent research had shown that the Lochner and The Times versions have a clear chain of transmission. The original source of Hitler's speech on the Poles and the Armenians and of its transmission to The Times was Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, a German military intelligence organization, and a leading figure in the military opposition to Hitler. Canaris became involved with several conspiracies against the dictator, including a July 20, 1944 assassination plot. Another member of the German resistance, Hans Bernd Gisevius, confirmed that Canaris took notes of the speech even though it was "forbidden to do so."

Canaris's notes were passed to three men, all of whom were executed before the Nuremberg trials convened and thus could not be questioned: Hans Oster, Ludwig Beck, and Hermann Maass. Historian Kevork Bardakjian concluded that Canaris likely passed the notes to his deputy, Oster, who then transmitted them to Beck, a conservative general and former chief of the General Staff, who had long opposed Nazi influence on the German military and foreign policy. Beck probably instructed Maass, formerly general manager of the Reich Committee of German Youth Associations, to give the document to Lochner due to Beck's role as a "leader of the German resistance." Like Canaris, Beck was involved in a number of conspiracies and was executed after the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, in which he had a leading role. Finally, historian Winfried Baumgart has argued that Canaris's notes also appear to have been the source of the two unsigned documents in the German high command files.

Gisevius and Oster believed that the invasion of Poland gave them a unique chance to get rid of Hitler and ensure peace with Poland. Canaris's opposition to Hitler was wide-ranging. An official with British intelligence boasted of having "buil[t] … up" Canaris as a potential assassin of Hitler. In 1944, the Gestapo found documents revealing Canaris to be conspiring with Catholics and the West against Hitler. The admiral was executed in a concentration camp on April 9, 1945, for plotting a coup against Hitler, along with Oster.

Turkish Historians on the "Armenian Quote"

Hitler's citation of the Armenians in his August 22, 1939 meeting has been an important concern for Turkish historians and pro-Ottoman analysts. Türkkaya Ataöv of Ankara University, with the apparent endorsement of the Turkish government, has contended that the Armenian quote does not appear in Nuremberg documents and is a forgery. He goes further to assert that no Armenian genocide took place, that Armenians had collaborated with the Nazis, and that Turks had welcomed Jews.

Similarly, Princeton University professor Heath Lowry suggested in 1985 that the lack of clear evidence that Hitler's alleged statement about the Armenians was "authentic" should have put an end to attempts to recognize the Armenian genocide in exhibits of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, resolutions of the U.S. Congress, or in the curricula on the Holocaust established by state boards of education. The logical outcome, Lowry argued, was that the Armenian genocide was simply a type of "propaganda" and "vilification against the Republic of Turkey." Finally, Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has contended that any attempt to link the anti-Armenian massacres and the Holocaust rests "on a shaky factual foundation." But Lewy has conceded that the document containing Hitler's statement about the Armenians might "represent an embellishment of points made in the speech" by Hitler to his generals in August 1939.

In contrast, in a notable 1995 article in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Lifton argued that Lowry was being professionally irresponsible in claiming that the Armenian genocide was simply a "ludicrous" Armenian claim. In their view, it was the more recent claim that Hitler did not refer to the Armenian genocide that lacked an evidentiary basis. Moreover, they demonstrate that Lowry, like historian Justin McCarthy, had engaged in a pattern of protesting academic characterizations of the Armenian genocide that was welcomed by the Turkish government. According to Inside Higher Education, McCarthy once called the Armenian genocide a "meaningless" idea and served on the board of a grant-making organization in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Turkish Studies, which has ties to the Turkish government. McCarthy argues that the Armenian case is dissimilar to the Holocaust and resembles the U.S. Civil War.

One of Lewy's preferred sources for Hitler's speech were the copies from the OKW, used by Nuremberg prosecutors to demonstrate command responsibility for numerous crimes in Poland. Lewy has argued that Hitler's statement about the Armenians was not "accepted as evidence by the Nuremberg Tribunal," citing Lowry to this effect. Ankara University's Ataöv similarly asserted: "Hundreds of thousands of captured Nazi documents were assembled as evidence in the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. One cannot find the oft-repeated Hitler 'statement' among these documents." The idea that the Hitler quote is a forgery and that it does not appear in the Nuremberg trial documents is frequently repeated on websites dedicated to denial of the Armenian genocide.

While the Lochner document was not used at Nuremberg, even Lowry admits that volume VII of the compilation of evidence against the Nazis, entitled Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, reproduced the statement. That compilation contained in its introduction a description of the document series as the tribunal's "documentary evidence demonstrating the criminality of the former leaders of the German Reich." This means that the document was introduced as evidence before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg even if it was not used on a specific day of the trials. The Lochner document with the Armenia quote was also included in the 1961 publication of foreign policy documents by the German Foreign Office.

The Armenian Genocide as Nazi Precedent

As part of a larger effort to deny or downplay the Armenian genocide, some historians have claimed that Hitler did not cite the Armenians as an example of the impunity of perpetrators. They have also denied that the Armenian genocide provided the inspiration or any form of precedent for the design and conduct of Nazi aggression and genocide.

One method has been to suggest that the Nazi program of extermination was a late creation. Thus, for example, Lewy suggested that Hitler did not order exterminations in Poland—or mention the extermination of the Armenians—because "by August 1939, Hitler had not yet decided upon the destruction of the Jews."

This argument is unpersuasive for several reasons. First, as has been shown, there are compelling reasons to believe that Hitler's statements about extermination in 1939 indeed cited the Armenians and were aimed at the Poles. Hitler's intentions toward the Jews had been spelled out across many statements, including in the notorious January 1939 speech in which Hitler "prophesied" that another world war would result in the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Second, Hitler had repeatedly engaged in virulent anti-Polish and anti-Slavic rhetoric prior to August 1939. Third, Hitler's decision to destroy Poland as a nation, while allowing some Poles to survive, was entirely consistent with his political philosophy that nations played out a chaotic struggle for life in an unforgiving world, as shown by history. Finally, there was the tacit acquiescence of the major powers in the Turkish model of ethnic cleansing and genocide. These may have provided Hitler with reasons to adopt it for Poland and the East.

To what extent was the Armenian genocide understood as a model by Hitler? In a 1931 interview, he told a German newspaper editor that when deciding Germany's future, one should "[t]hink of the biblical deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages (Rosenberg refers to them) and remember the extermination of the Armenians." Hitler and other contemporary European leaders admired Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a national leader who won for the Turkish people the living space it needed from the Slavs and the British. Speaking in 1925, Hitler "dwelt at length on patriotism and national pride and quoted approvingly the role of Kemal Atatürk of Turkey and the example of Mussolini, who had marched on Rome" a few weeks prior.

The parallels between Hitler and Atatürk were also noted at the time. The influential Foreign Affairs journal published an article in the 1930s stating, "Just as in Italy since 1922, and as in Germany since early in the present year, the conduct of political affairs in Turkey rests today on the personality of a leader. … By means of a clever scheme … the President, while constitutionally without undue influence, becomes the real autocrat.'" It argued that with the end of foreign "influence," Turkey "had become an almost homogeneous state" in "national and religious" terms, so that its "Christian minorities hardly existed any longer." In early 1939, the German socialists had also pointed out the similarity between the Nazis and past leaders of Turkey. Three days after the speech reported by Canaris, Hitler wrote to Mussolini that he hoped that the Turks could be persuaded to join Italy, Japan, and Russia in an anti-British coalition. He planned to hand over parts of the southern Soviet Union to Turkey in due time.

The fate of the Armenians was also understood within Nazi ideology. A key influence on Hitler was the Prussian-educated British writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain. His work Foundations of the Nineteenth Century sold 250,000 copies by 1938 and secured his fame in Germany. Volume 1 of this work offered a model for Germany, arguing that Turkey was "the last little corner of Europe in which a whole people lives in undisturbed prosperity and happiness," and blaming non-German world powers (Britain and France) for encouraging an Armenian rebellion, in response to which "the otherwise humane Moslem rises and destroys the disturber of the peace."

In 1927, leading Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg had published a booklet calling Chamberlain the "apostle and founder of a German future." In 1938, Rosenberg published a collection of speeches in which he commented that in 1921, after the Turkish minister Talat Pasha was murdered in Berlin by an Armenian, a campaign was waged in the "international press" to release the killer due to the history of struggle between Armenians and Turks. Rosenberg endorsed the Turks' resistance to Armenian claims for autonomy ("den armenischen Staat im Staat"), comparing the Armenians to the Jews, because he claimed the Armenians engaged in espionage against Turkey as the Jews did against Germany. He "praised Talat Pasha … [and] minimized the [Ottoman Christian] genocide."

Rosenberg also introduced Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter to Hitler. Scheubner-Richter had been the German vice-consul in Erzerum and documented the planning and implementation of the murder of Armenians by the Young Turks in the name of Islam and pan-Turkic ideology. Scheubner-Richter's relationship to Hitler was so close that he was killed standing next to Hitler and Rosenberg during the failed Munich "Beer Hall" putsch of 1923. Hitler then dedicated the first part of Mein Kampf to his "irreplaceable" fallen comrade. Armenian-American historian Vahkan Dadrian has argued that Scheubner-Richter had a "direct" influence on Hitler that may have included introducing him to the example of how the Ottoman Armenians (then called the "Jews of the Orient") were deported from their villages, worked to death, starved, and frozen to death during exposure to harsh winter conditions. Mike Joseph has called Scheubner-Richter the "personal link from [the Armenian] genocide to Hitler."  Scheubner-Richter's reports regarding the genocidal solution to the Armenian question foreshadow and may have inspired Hitler's later ideas and rhetoric regarding the Jews as did his descriptions of Turkish methods, including provocations and allegations of terrorism and revolution. Prior to his death, Scheubner-Richter urged that Germany be "cleansed" of alien peoples by "ruthless" measures.

Other high-ranking Nazis were also well-placed to learn how the Armenian genocide occurred and to inform Hitler. Franz von Papen became Hitler's vice chancellor after serving as chief of staff of the Fourth Turkish Army during World War I and was responsible for managing German-Austrian and German-Turkish relations under the Nazis. Rudolf Hess, deputy inspector of concentration camps under Himmler, had served in the Ottoman-German forces fighting the Russians during World War I. Hans von Seeckt was chief of the Ottoman General Staff in 1917 and 1918 and "laid the groundwork for the later emergence of the Third Reich's Wehrmacht" and "embraced Hitler and his ideology."

The similarity of the genocidal methods employed by the Nazis and the Ottomans is also inescapable. Parallels between Ottoman and Nazi theory and practice include the central place of race in the self-conception of the fascist elites and the notion of relocating ethnic minorities to reservations. Hitler often expressed his belief that race was the dominant independent variable in history and that it had to be dealt with directly by any ethnonationalist leader who wanted to be successful.  "When the race is in danger of being oppressed," he wrote, "the question of legality plays only a secondary role."

Both the Ottomans and the Nazis also used the concept of ethnic "cleaning" or "cleansing." While the Young Turks implemented a "clean sweep of internal enemies—the indigenous Christians," according to the then-German ambassador in Constantinople,  the Nazis implemented a "housecleaning of Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, and the nobility."  The official who announced the ethnic cleansing plan for Poland may have been aware of similar policies of the internal security officials of the Ottoman Empire, which resulted in "hundreds of thousands of the Ottoman Empire's Muslims, Christian Armenians, and Orthodox Greeks [being] expelled or murdered."  Hitler himself used "cleaning" or "cleansing" as a euphemism for extermination  and described his rule as being characterized by an "unheard of cleansing process."  On December 12, 1941, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that "with respect of the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep." Finally, the impunity with which the Armenians had been slaughtered—the essence of Hitler's August 22, 1939 remark—was reinforced by the international community's failure to prevent the massacre of other peoples, including later massacres by the Italians using poison-gas and machine-guns in Ethiopia.

Conclusion (Not my conclusion, but the conclusion of the author Hannibal Travis)

Numerous ideological and political influences led from the Armenian genocide to the rape of Poland and the Holocaust. Chamberlain, Hess, Rosenberg, Seeckt, Scheubner-Richter, and von Papen all likely played a role in prompting Hitler to use Turkey's example as a model for Poland. Hitler compared the two cases in his 1939 speech, which, like most evidence that the Holocaust took place, was not relied upon in the tribunal's judgment.  Subsequent efforts to discredit the speech by defenders of the Ottoman Empire should not, however, blind us to the manifold connections between the Armenian genocide and that perpetrated by the Nazis.

Hannibal Travis is the author of Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq and Sudan (Carolina Academic Press, 2010) and "The Assyrian Genocide: A Tale of Oblivion and Denial," in Rene Lemarchand, ed., Forgotten Genocides: Denial, Oblivion, and Memory (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

My final note in regard to all of the above:   What will people write in the history books about 2020?  We are all IGNORING the obvious!  How many millions of people are going to die reportedly from the COVID-19 Virus?  My question and the question that everyone ought to be asking, especially the national news media folks, is who created the virus? China did!  Was it intentional? It was certainly NOT created by accident!!!  I believe it WAS intentionally created as a weapon to be used by the Chinese military whenever needed for whatever reason they thought it would be effective.  Was it intentionally released upon the world?  This is just my opinion but I believe that it was.  China has made it very clear that it wants to control the world.  They have no desire to attack America, its #1 enemy with military force and instead released the virus that attacked our economy, our faith in all that is right and just, and has now created an environment where we are now attacking each other.  No military attack could have been as short lived and more effective than what China has done and yet THE WORLD HAS IGNORED WHAT IT HAS DONE!  Like the example set by Turkey and then Germany, Communist China will never be punished for what it has done, ever, unless something changes.  Where is the news media?  Why are they not demanding answers to these questions?  Everyone is IGNORNING it for the same reason that no one ever challenged Turkey or Germany – they don’t want to “upset the apple cart!”  We are in a State of War, like it or not!  The problem is that no one knows for certain who the enemy is, an unseen virus, China, or both.  I personally believe it is both! 

What exactly would YOU have done in the early 1900s and then in the 1930s if you had known about Turkey and/or Germany?  Would you have spoken up?  Would you have taken action?  What are you going to do about China and the Virus in 2020?  Are you going to speak up or are you going to do what MILLIONS already have done, blame President Trump for the virus?  Are you going to take action?  Or are you going to do what people have done for decades upon decades – just ignore it and hope that it will eventually go away and no one will ever talk about it again; at least until the next time when they will do what they have always done, compare it to disasters of the past that they chose to ignore!

In my mind, there is no difference between Turkey and the Armenians; Germany and the Jews and now China and the World!  NONE!  What say you?

Monday, November 9, 2020

LITTLE KNOWN TIPS

 

LITTLE KNOWN TIPS

FOR ANYONE IN SALES

By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, November 10, 2020

Something occurred today and it triggered a tip that I once taught to real estate agents in my old office.  I say old office, because I fully retired from real estate in 2012.  The following are little known tips that you learn mostly from experience and because you either did them or you were taught not or how to do them correctly.  Yes, they are from the real estate industry but they apply to anyone in a sales position.  So here we go, my list of little known tips, Nuggets for the Sales Noggin; they are given in no particular order but rather as I think of them:

Your Watch.  If you are like me you have come to rely on the watch on your wrist to do far more than just tell you the time.  It can notify you of all sorts of activities and accomplishments and even incoming calls, text messages and emails.  Your watch could cause your probable buyer or seller to immediately lose interest in you before they get the chance to decide to buy or sell.  Why?  You looked at your watch.  The moment you do, you send a subconscious signal to the buyer/seller that you have more important things to do with your time and they are of no interest to you because you are too busy.  My advice:  take off your watch BEFORE you ever meet with a probable buyer and/or seller.

Your Phone.  If I had a nickel…  People simply do not appreciate how annoying a smart phone can be when you are talking with or in a group.  People constantly look at their phones even in the midst of a conversation with someone and it is absolutely annoying when they do to some people, maybe even the people that surround you as you look at your phone.  If you do it in front of a customer, you stand the chance of losing them.  People tend to want to share whatever latest video or photo is on their phone.  Don’t do that in a business setting, EVER!  My advice to sales people is to leave your phone in your car when you are meeting someone that could buy or sell or refer business to you.  YOU DO NOT WANT THEM DISTRACTED BY YOUR OWN BEHAVIOR!  IT’S ANNOYING!  Or did I already say that it was annoying.  In the event that you have a real, not contrived, a real emergency that awaits your attention, tell your customer that you have an emergency that may result in a call and that you are placing your phone on the table in the even that call should occur.  That call needs to be really important for you to do this.  YOU DO NOT WANT YOUR MEETING INTERRUPTED BY A PHONE CALL OR A TEXT MESSAGE – EVER!!!!!  People have made sales for hundreds of years without a phone and you can and should do that now. 

Parking in the driveway:  You might think that driveways are for parking cars and you would be correct.  But every home/family has its priorities.  Husband’s car on the same side of the driveway.  Wife’s car on the same side of the driveway.  Children’s cars in the same spots.  When you park in a driveway you may, with the emphasis on the word may, you may be taking someone’s spot who may not be home when you arrive.  Then when they arrive, they park elsewhere and when you leave, they move their car or cars back to where they originally belong.  It is a very small point but a valid one when you upset someone because you took their “reserved” (in their mind) parking spot. Park on the street until you are told to do otherwise. 

Park on the street.  This may not always be possible but try the best you can to avoid the driveway until you have no alternative left.  If you have a buyer or seller in your car and you are going to park on a street in a hilly area, believe it or not, it makes a difference where you park. Park your car with its nose pointing up the hill.  Why?  My advice:  When your customer gets out of the car the car door will be easier to open when you are parked heading up the hill as compared to being more difficult opening the weight of a car door against the direction it would prefer to open.  It’s just another subliminal message the customer may or may not pick up on.  You do not want negative feelings to occur even before they get to the front door.  Learn to remove ALL obstacles, even the ones you can’t see. 

Cleanliness of car and personal work space.  This should be common sense but I have seen the cars that some real estate agents have used and they were not pretty to look at.  Look at your own car.  Is there junk lying on the seats and floor?  Does it look like it hasn’t been vacuumed out in quite a while?  Look at your desk and surrounding areas.  This may not be as important if you NEVER bring a customer to your work area but if you ever do, you do not want to start the conversation with an apology about the orderliness of your work area or in the case of your car, the lack of neatness in your car. 

Greeting customers by their name at the front desk.  Almost every business has a “front desk” where someone greets visitors to the office.  Don’t let your customer become just another visitor to your business/office.  Advise the person who greets the visitors that you have a customer that should arrive at a certain time and how much you would appreciate it if they greet them by their name. Hearing your name come from the lips of another person is the sweetest sound on the planet.  We actually had a wooden Butler looking figurine at the front of our office holding out a tray.  Agents could quickly make up signs welcoming Mr. & Mrs. Smith.  It’s was personal and it was eye catching and the customer knew they were important.  I actually had one ask if they could keep the sign.  It also creates in the person who works at the receiving area that they are part of your team effort to satisfy the customers. 

Establishing your work hours for communications.  I personally believe this is crucial to good business practices.  I had agents complain that their customers call them at every hour of the day and night.  Why?  For one reason the agent tell customers, “I’m always available, you have my number.”  What do customers do with the number?  They call the agent, any time as instructed.  At some point when you are developing a relationship with your customer, tell them how you work.  Tell them when is a good time to call.  More importantly, let them know UP FRONT that it is not only permissible, it is expected that you will be involved in other matters (like eating supper with your family, going to church, whatever) and that if they leave you a message, that you typically return calls immediately but certainly within say 3 or 4 hours (in case you are busy playing golf).  People know how to follow rules but you get to set the rules.  Just don’t make them sound like rules or a checklist type situation. 

Pay attention to how you act and how you approach the front door.  You may think it is not important what you do when you get out of your car and that no one is watching but trust me, if it is a homeowner, they are watching because they are expecting you to arrive and want to know when you do.  If you are in real estate, make the exit from your car business like and with a purpose.  I would teach my agents to have a clipboard with note paper.  As they would get out of their car, they should look up the street and take a note, look down the street and take a note.  Look at the home through the eyes of a buyer that would see the home for the very first time and take notes.  If there is something that just stands out that needs repair, take an extra second to stare at it and take a note.  All this time, the homeowner is probably watching you go through this routine.  Then when it comes time to talk about the home, the owner, if they had watched you may comment on things that need repair instead of you bringing the subject up.  Subjects like cracked windows, improperly fitting window shutters, areas that need painting, etc. 

Wait to be seated.  This is far more important than you could ever realize unless you have already thought about it.  Almost every family has designated chairs where members of the family typically sit.  YOU DO NOT WANT TO SIT IN ONE OF THOSE CHAIRS.  Family members make decisions while people are sitting in “their” chair, “their space.”  Ask the customer where it would be okay to put your stuff down and sit.  Let them decide for you, do not assume you can just sit anywhere.  This becomes even more problematic when you are seated in the Kings Chair or the Queens Chair and one of them is not present and then comes home and you are in their chair.  Not good.  Sounds childish but subconsciously it is very important. 

Don’t lunch with friends or team members.  Having lunch with friends and team members is always a good thing to do but not if you want to use the time to actually accomplish some excellent work.  My advice would be to call and set up a lunch appointment with a member listed in your database of potential customers, people who you could do business with or people who could refer business to you.  It is a much better use of your time PLUS you could write off all or a portion of your lunch bill as being a business expense.  Check the IRS regulations for what is eligible. 

Don’t eat your lunch.  IF you are lunching with a potential buyer or seller or someone you are seeking business from or who may give you referrals, use the lunch as an excuse to get together but don’t use the time to eat a big lunch.  Order something very light that you may or may not even eat.  You want to focus on the reason you requested the lunch and you don’t want to be talking with food in your mouth or worse, all over your face and clothing.  Small detail but could prove to be very important.  Make your lunch dates an organized event without appearing to be organized to the customer.  If you want to be different, invite a customer or person that could provide you with referrals to breakfast.  Very few people ever get invited to breakfast.  More importantly people are not typically set up to be super busy at breakfast time so you may find them more relaxed and receptive to what you want to achieve. 

Don’t drink after you are dressed to meet a customer.  Can’t tell you the number of agents who return from an appointment and talk about how they were embarrassed because they spilled a drink on themselves on the way to the appointment.  They had to apologize to the customer for their appearance, never a good thing to have to do.  Avoid eating or drinking just before meeting a customer.  You may even want to have available to you a quick change of clothes if you are subject to being clumsy. 

ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WILL DO! ALWAYS!!!  NO EXCEPTIONS!!!  This should be obvious yet if there is one trait I am certain of, a great many people do not live by this code.  It really does not need any further explanation. 

NEVER BE LATE, EVER!!!!!  Just like always doing what you say you will do, be where you are suppose to be with time to spare.  If you are late, you automatically have one strike against you! Some people don’t care if you are late but you can’t take the chance the person you are about to meet is one of those people.  NEVER BE LATE!  GOT IT!!!  EVER!!! 

Where and How you stand at a front door.  Who knew this could be important?  An FBI agent conducted a class on dealing with people.  The class was one of the most interesting I have ever taken.  He emphasized that a person’s front door represents the gateway to their life.  It is THEIR space and they will protect it at all costs.  If you stand inches away from the front door, squarely facing the door, you have created a barrier to their escape through the front door.  You are not arresting anyone; you just want to talk to them so don’t barricade their possible exit from the home.  The agent suggested that you wear your name tag so people know that you are the person they expected to have come to their home or even office.  Ring the bell or knock on the door or both, then take at least two steps back and turn your body about 45 degrees to either side.  It is best that your side with your name badge be the closest side to the door so the owner can see that you are not a barrier and who you are by your name tag.  By turning slightly to one side, you are giving the impression that the pathway out of their home is still open to them and not blocked by your body.   Small detail but very important. 

Don’t appear to be staying overnight.  Agents tend to bring way to much luggage to meetings.  Travel light.  Take only what you must have.  Don’t give the appearance that you are going to take up residence in the home or office.  Leave all your luggage in the car or at home. 

Avoid using handouts, initially.  If you want customers to make eye contact (very important) and listen to what you are saying, do not give them anything to read.  Use your time with them wisely by developing relationships that are eye-to-eye.  You can give them whatever you want later in the meeting when eye-to-eye is not as important. 

Pets.  You had better learn to like all pets very quickly if you meet people in their homes.  Their pets are just as important to them as their children, or almost as important.  Yes, they can be a nuisance, mine is.  Annie goes nuts whoever comes to our home.  Once she sees them and they acknowledge her, she goes about being just Annie.  Most pets are that way.  Be prepared to meet all types of pets when you are in sales that involve going to a person’s home. 

Assume nothing!  EVER!  Hate to dredge up an old line but here goes.  When you “assume” something, you make an “ass” out of “U” and “me”.  If that doesn’t say it all nothing ever will.  Don’t ever assume the customer knows what you are talking about, what the abbreviations you use everyday mean, how to get to where you are to meet, when you are to meet, who will be at the meeting, who should be at the meeting.  Then when you are happy that all bases are covered, double check that everyone has the identical understanding. 

LOUD ANNOUNCEMENT!  If you are in real estate, NEVER ASSUME A HOME IS GOING TO BE EMPTY WHEN YOU SHOW IT.  When you first enter the home, loudly announce your presence.  Even then you may surprise someone upstairs or in a back room.  I know this because there were two people in an empty home that I showed, and ……………  You can fill in the blank. 

The Box in the Trunk.  Decades ago, I learned the hard way that “stuff happens” and you rarely expect to have the stuff happen when it does.  An “old timer” told me that I should always have a box in my trunk that contains items that are essential that you might otherwise never think of.  Like what?  Glad you asked.  The following items were in my real estate agent sales car: 

·   Toilet paper, just in case.  Never assume every home you show has toilet paper in the holder

  • ·  Paper towels.  Spill and other accidents tend to happen when you are least prepared.  Be prepared!
  • ·      Pens
  • ·      Note paper
  • ·     Contracts.  In the age of technology, the use of actual paper is more rare.  But if you still use paper contracts, never be caught without one or two.
  • ·     Something for kids to do.  If you have ever worked with customers who bring their small children, you know that they need something to do.  Give it to them
  • ·      Replacement batteries.  Do I need to explain why?
  • ·      First Aid Kit.  Always a good item no matter what you use your car for.

·     If you live in the “north country” you may also want to carry a blanket.  I can assure you that I was caught in a blizzard just outside Birmingham, Alabama where the traffic did not move for hours.  I would have given you anything for a blanket as the gasoline gauge in my car was closing in on EMPTY!

·      Anything else you can think of that you might like to have at a moment’s notice. 

Add tips as you think of them.  Make them part of your everyday business practice.  Even more importantly, become a mentor to newer agents/employees.  Show them that you care about them and the reputation of the same company you all work for or for the industry in which you work.  Many times people get so competitive that they keep such things to themselves as if they were gold.  It is just as important to grow your industry as it is your own business.  Become a mentor for others.