In the U.S., efforts to secure that declaration were dismissed as the attempted settling of some ancient tribal feud, a dispute that America had no business being a part of. But it had every reason to exert its moral authority by characterizing Turkey’s actions against the Armenian people in clear and unambiguous terms. This was the first modern genocide, so devious and effective in its design that even Adolf Hitler spoke of it admiringly. Almost every Armenian knows the line by heart. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler said in his infamous Obersalzberg speech in 1939, one week before the German invasion of Poland. Failing to call genocide by its name enabled and encouraged the growth of a genocide denialist industrial complex, funded by Turkish interests. For decades, Armenian Americans — who number anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million, depending on the source — found themselves fighting against an offensive dictated by Ankara and launched from its K Street beachhead in Washington, D.C. Lobbyists and former members of Congress — some of whom once championed recognition of the Armenian Genocide as elected officials — worked tirelessly to prevent it from happening.