Ämnet för min C-uppsats handlar om diskussionen om vad som kan ...

the annihilation. General von Lossow, the German military attaché in Turkey, had in a privateconversation confessed the following to Wirsén: “The Armenian massacres are world history’sgreatest bestiality.” 137The military reports and dispatches sent by Wirsén were extracted from former classified data,kept in the War Archive in Stockholm. These dispatches were mainly on the status of theongoing war efforts and the reports of the different fronts in which the Ottoman Army wasinvolved. Almost all his reports are structured in the same manner, beginning with a detailedreport in regard to the military operations and the situation on different fronts, and they end witha general description of the situation in the country. 138 It is mostly in these general descriptionswhere Wirsén mentions Turkish actions against the Armenian population, which in their turnaffect the war efforts. Judging from the published pictures in the book, taken in different parts ofthe Ottoman Empire, Wirsén did travel around in Turkey, collecting some of the informationstated in his reports by his own observations, while he also used a great deal of official Germanand Turkish military intelligence information as well as unofficial accounts provided by Germanmilitary personnel.The military reports are of great importance, since the Swedish Military Attaché, as arepresentative of a neutral state, was allowed to visit the fronts and gather information about theongoing campaigns and actions in Ottoman Turkey. He also received military intelligence reports,dispatched not only by the Turks but also by the Germans and Austrians serving in the OttomanArmy. The reports were ciphered and relayed to Sweden and provided the Swedish ForeignOffice and Chiefs of Staff with first hand intelligence information about the events insideOttoman Turkey. The studied reports will also disclose that Wirsén took the liberty torecommend Stockholm about certain actions towards both Turkey and Germany, which suggeststhat his analytic reports were of importance to the Swedish foreign policy making.1.4.5 Swedish Embassy, Foreign Department, and GovernmentThe diplomatic communiqués and reports, dispatched by the Swedish Embassy personnel in theOttoman Empire, included in the Foreign Ministry Files (“Utrikesdepartementet, HP-serien”) arekept almost entirely in the National Archive in Marieberg, Stockholm. These reports, mostlymarked as classified, if anything would indicate whether the Swedish Government and ForeignMinistry were informed about the massacres, as well as how they were described and perceived.In order to gather the information studied in this paper, several volumes and series of archivalmaterial were investigated. Initially, the search started with the classified diplomatic dispatchessent by the Embassy to the Foreign Ministry during 1915 and 1923. The documents in questionwere divided in two distinct series, entitled Utrikesdepartementet 1902 års dossiersytem, respective137 Wirsén, 1942, p. 226.138 See Krigsarkivet, Generalstaben. It is noteworthy that the following material has been classified as militaryand state secret, but that can hardly be the reason for its anonymity, since these documents have been publicfor the last thirty years or so.31