Kriegsverbrechen – Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit – Völkermord? Zeitgenössische Völkerrechtler und die Deportation der christlichen Minderheiten in Anatolien während des Ersten Weltkrieges

This presentation concentrates on the role that the deportation of Christian minorities in Anatolia during the First World War played in the context of the history of law. Terminologies and the use of legal notions by contemporaries will be a special focus, because this is still helpful in the context of present-day discussions. Therefore a contextualisation as precise as possible is important, when the topic of deportation and genocide is addressed. At the same time it is important not to confuse historical and legal appraisals. In this presentation the general discussion as to the prospects and potential of a judicial punishment of violations of international legal norms before as well as during the First World War will therefore be included as much as the attitude of jurists in regard to the position of the Ottoman Empire within the international community of law abiding states. Finally this presentation will also focus on discussions at the end of the war around the trials in Istanbul and the purpose of the Paris Peace Conference. In this context and following ideas of Mahmood Mamdani the discourse on law can be shown to have served not only as a way of giving victims a voice, but also as a language of power already at the beginning of the 20th century.

From the Sea to Paris and back: On the interdependence of economic warfare, weather conditions and the submarine campaign 1916-1917

Starting of from Avner Offer’s comment that the First World War was not only a war of steel and gold, but also of bread and potatoes (1989: 1) and my own research on British as well as Australian preparations for economic warfare and based on sources from the entente as well as the central powers but also from the United States, Canada and Australia, may presentation will focus on the interdependence of the measures taken by entente as well as central power authorities in the second half of 1916. Already a year before both sides had become aware that this war would not only be decided on the battlefield, but that the issues of primary as well as secondary resources would be decisive. Accordingly measures that could strike the enemy in this field were discussed and put into place more and more and this at time, when weather conditions caused a reduction of harvest all over Europe, Northern America and Argentina.