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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
GENERAL HARBORD SUBMITS REPORT ON ARMENIA MISSION
On Oct. 16, 1919, Maj. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) James G. Harbord submitted the final report from his intelligence mission to Armenia to the American Peace Commission (alternately known as the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the Paris Peace Conference). The report detailed a months-long investigation into political and military conditions in postwar Europe, particularly how war and genocide against the Armenians affected American efforts towards peace in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe.
Col. (later Maj. Gen.) Ralph Van Deman served as the intelligence officer with the American Peace Commission, and he had advised on preliminary peace negotiations with several European nations prior to the armistice in November 1918. Van Deman was appointed chief of all counter-espionage activities within the Paris Peace Conference. After the war, many of the reports by military attachés stationed across Europe were passed to the Military Intelligence Division in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, the Peace Conference committees did not have the authority to examine these records for successive counterintelligence operations within Paris. Consequently, the American Peace Commission offered an ambitious program to amass accurate intelligence on particularly troubled regions of Europe.
Ellis L. Dresel, a military attaché to Berlin from 1915–1917 who later served as chargé d'affaires (embassy chief in the absence of an ambassador) to Germany, was selected as chairman of the new program under the American Peace Commission. This unique committee reviewed reports from military attachés in different sectors of Europe before they were presented to the multinational delegation in Paris. The committee established “missions” to collect information in key regions of Europe, including the troubled areas of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. These missions were principally directed by the commission and primarily consisted of American government and military personnel. Colonel Van Deman, Maj. Royall Taylor, and Maj. Delancey Kountze served as U.S. Army representatives for this program.
One of these missions was the American Mission to Armenia, headed by General Harbord. Turkey and Armenia represented an especially fraught problem for the Peace Conference. Between 1915–1917, the Ottoman Turks had massacred between 600,000 and 1,500,000 Armenians, more than half of the Armenian population in northwest Asia. Thousands more were deported, sold into slavery or marriage to the Turks, or forcibly converted to Islam. Harbord had served as Gen. John J. Pershing’s chief of staff from 1917–1918 and, later in the war, commanded the 4th Marine Brigade and the 2d Infantry Division before taking over the American Expeditionary Force Services of Supply. Harbord’s military prestige, experience, and integrity prompted his appointment as leader of the Armenia Mission.
On Oct. 16, 1919, General Harbord submitted his final report to the American Peace Commission. The report summarized the mission’s expedition through Armenia and Asia Minor and included a lengthy history of the Armenians and their relations with the Turks and Russians; interviews of government officials, victims, witnesses, and perpetrators of the genocide; and recommendations for the Peace Conference to limit further conflict in the region. The report found the only way to maintain peace between nations at the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was to specifically include Armenians in mandates and relief aid ordered for the whole of Asia Minor and the former empire, as aid solely for Armenia could potentially lead to further bloodshed.
Furthermore, in “certain regions where the temptation to reprisals for past wrongs will be strong for at least a generation,” the report recommended an occupying military force be deployed to maintain order and support the establishment of native constabularies. It outlined reasons for and against the United States taking on this mandate and concluded: “If we refuse to assume [responsibility] … we shall be considered by many millions of people as having left unfinished the task for which we entered the war, and as having betrayed their hopes.”
"Conditions in the Near East: Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia" can be read in its entirety at https://www.loc.gov/item/20026422/.
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| Date Taken: | 10.13.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 10.13.2023 16:52 |
| Story ID: | 455770 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 797 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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