“I have issued the command — and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. … Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” — Adolf Hitler

I recently visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum, where I saw a portion of this quote written on the wall in bold letters. Just over a year prior, I had learned about the Armenian Genocide in my college history class. The Young Turks, out of fear of betrayal, and in their attempt to overthrow the government of what was then the Ottoman Empire, carried out a systematic annihilation of the Armenian people. I’m sure I’d heard of this event in high school, but it had never impacted me the same way the story of the Holocaust did. Plus, no one ever talked about it, so I never saw the Armenian Genocide as a significant event in world history.

However, when I discovered in college that the Armenian nation was the first official Christian nation, and that scholars referred to their destruction as the first modern genocide, I started to wonder: “Why don’t we speak about the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Of course, very rarely in the course of history do we find one clear reason behind questions like these. There are many. On the scale of lives lost, the Holocaust was significantly larger than the Armenian Genocide. The Turks wiped out anywhere from 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians, whereas the Holocaust took the lives of nearly six million Jews. America also fought against Germany in World War II for over three years, whereas it spent just over a year engaged in World War I. In addition, very little of America’s involvement with World War I had to do with the Ottoman Empire, where the Armenian Genocide happened. Germany also admitted to the atrocities of the Holocaust after it lost World War II, whereas the Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.

But I think the principal cause behind America’s apathy towards the Armenian Genocide can be attributed to the media. The two main contributing factors are political pressure and media methods.

It’s no secret that America was fighting against Germany in World War II. During the war, most Americans viewed Nazism as directly opposed to American values. In 1938, American newspapers frequently reported about Nazi discrimination against the Jews, as Jews were required to label themselves and their businesses with the Star of David. In November of that same year, the Nazis carried out Kristallnacht, a night of violence toward Jews, as well as vandalism and destruction of buildings and places of worship associated with them. Until the end of the war, newspapers continued to report on the atrocities in Germany that later became known as the Holocaust. Such anti-Nazi articles undoubtedly helped fuel pro-war sentiment across America. Knowing that their troops were directly fighting against these atrocities, Americans had more reasons to support the war effort.

After the war, Holocaust survivors told their stories to the American press. Reporters saw firsthand the aftermath of the concentration camps, and Americans began to realize the full extent of the evil their troops had been fighting. The government had no reason to stifle or intimidate the press on its Holocaust reporting. Instead, it had every reason to promote this type of reporting, since it produced so much pro-America sentiment. Thus, from the sheer amount of reporting and emphasis on the Holocaust, Americans tend to be familiar with what happened to the Jews in Germany during World War II.

That has not been the case with the Armenian Genocide. Now, while the Turks were displacing, killing, and imprisoning Armenians, newspapers in the U.S. certainly did write about what was happening. In fact, many prominent newspapers had almost daily articles covering the atrocities in what was then the Ottoman Empire. Advertisers drew heart-rending illustrations representing the oppressed Armenians and requesting aid. Hollywood even created a movie detailing one Armenian girl’s suffering and escape. Philanthropists and foreign aid organizations raised money and sent aid to many of the victims and their families.

However, unlike the Nazi regime, which the Allies destroyed, the Young Turks, who had been persecuting the Armenians, succeeded in taking over the Ottoman Empire and setting up the Republic of Turkey. Not long after, the U.S. became allied with them. In early 1945, the Republic of Turkey declared war on Germany and Japan, joining the United Nations just before the war ended. After World War II, the Republic of Turkey helped the U.S. in its opposition to the Soviet regime.

Until the present day, the U.S. has sought a strategic alliance with Turkey, despite the country’s ties to Islamist terrorism, ongoing military coups, riots, and unrest. As a result of this alliance, the U.S. government refused until 2022 to formally call the Turkish atrocities toward the Armenians a genocide. Many in the government feared that since the Turkish government still refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, America’s formal statement would create an irreparable rift between the two countries. This political pressure, coupled with America’s refusal until recently to formally acknowledge the genocide, have resulted in the American public knowing little to nothing about the Armenian Genocide. A survey conducted back in 2015 revealed that just around 35% percent of Americans had heard of the Armenian Genocide, as opposed to the 84% of Americans who know at least something about the Holocaust. It seems that in this instance, Winston Churchill’s quote, “history is written by the victors,” may be extremely relevant. 

Another very likely reason for this lack of knowledge about the Armenian Genocide as opposed to the Holocaust is the type of media used to report both events. During the early 20th century when the Armenian Genocide happened, photography and television did exist, but they were not nearly as widely used as they were during and after World War II. The primary methods reporters and advertisers used to inform the American public about events in the Middle East were print and illustration. Some individuals did take photographs of the Turkish atrocities, but many were confiscated by the Young Turks and other perpetrators involved in the persecution of the Armenians. Thus, most Americans learned about the genocide through print or illustration.

Today, it is estimated that around two million photographs from the Holocaust exist. This can be attributed not just to the Allied soldiers who took pictures of the concentration camps they liberated, but also to the widespread use of cameras, photography, and television during this time in history. The number of photographs from the Holocaust is significantly higher than those taken during the Armenian Genocide. In addition, Americans were seeing these images not only in newspapers, but also on television screens. Cable TV was developed in the 1940s, and black and white TV became commonplace by the 1950s. Today, there exist hundreds, if not thousands, of movies and documentaries with real and interpretive footage from the Holocaust. In this way, Americans have much more access to visual information from the Holocaust than they do to visual information from the Armenian Genocide.

Psychologists have studied the effect of images on the human mind for years, and they have discovered something they now call the picture-superiority effect. People remember pictures significantly better than they remember words. The psychologist Allan Paivio theorizes that this effect happens because images are stored in the mind both as pictures and words which describe them, whereas words are stored in the brain with no additional information. No matter the reason, the picture-superiority effect in this case seems to have resulted in the American public remembering the facts of the Holocaust much more clearly than they remember the Armenian Genocide.

Hitler was clearly wrong in his analysis concerning the Holocaust. He believed that if no one remembered the Armenian Genocide, they also would not remember his annihilation of the Jews. But Americans should learn a lesson from this historical analysis. Media plays a massive role in how Americans remember history as well as what events they deem important. We live in a world that is full of information. From social media to news outlets to in-home entertainment, we are constantly bombarded with information about everything happening today, and it is all vying for our attention.

In our attempt to process all this information, let us remember that even small things, such as where our alliances lie and how we receive our news, can influence our memory of the past and present. How do we avoid falling prey to the same groupthink that the media tends to cause? Study history. After all, as Winston Churchill once said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

Evelyn Elliott serves as an intern at Family Research Council.