page_title: Armenian Genocide
section_title: Armin T. Wegner
hierarchical_section_title: Armenian Genocide / Eyewitness accounts and reports / Austrian and German joint mission / Armin T. Wegner
caption_attribution_description: English: Armin T. Wegner, 1916 in Bagdad
context_page_description: The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1923. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported from Constantinople to the region of Angora, 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.
  The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases—the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. Most Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.
context_section_description: German aspiring writer Armin T. Wegner enrolled as a medic during the winter of 1914–1915. He defied censorship by taking hundreds of photographs of Armenians being deported and subsequently starving in northern Syrian camps and in the deserts of Deir-er-Zor. Wegner was part of a German detachment under field marshal von der Goltz stationed near the Baghdad Railway in Mesopotamia. He later stated: "I venture to claim the right of setting before you these pictures of misery and terror which passed before my eyes during nearly two years, and which will never be obliterated from my mind.". He was eventually arrested by the Germans and recalled to Germany.
  Wegner protested against the atrocities in an open letter submitted to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson at the peace conference of 1919. The letter made a case for the creation of an independent Armenian state. Also in 1919, he published The Road of No Return ("Der Weg ohne Heimkehr"), a collection of letters he had written during what he deemed the "martyrdom" (German: "Martyrium") of the Armenians.
  Destination Nowhere: The Witness is a documentary film produced by J. Michael Hagopian that depicts Wegner's personal account of the Armenian Genocide through Wegner's own photographs. Prior to the release of the documentary, Wegner was honored at the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan for championing the plight of Armenians throughout his life.
caption: Armin T. Wegner
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