ABSTRACT
The documentation of a case of genocide that is subject to persistent denials by the perpetrator camp is in many respects a critical task. The task of documentation has a methodological primacy as well as a fundamental value in the overall picture of historical analysis. But documentation is an operational term; the results sought are dependent largely on the quality of the material at hand. In order for documentation to be compelling the sources upon which the documentary edifice is anchored are to be unimpeachable. The impulse to admit of the resolve to effectively liquidate the Armenians found its expression in a declaration by Talat indulging in a kind of twisted logic. The extraordinary significance of the testimony of German and Austrian officials whose attributes as witnesses are measured in terms of a body of facts is best characterized as evidence-in-chief.
