Immediately prior to World War I , Lossow was a lieutenant colonel and a general staff officer without a specific assignment . On mobilization in August 1914 , he was assigned to be the chief of the general staff of the II . Bavarian Reserve Corps . Lossow served with the corps until July 1915 , when he became the German military attaché in Istanbul ( then still called Constantinople in German records ) in the Ottoman Empire , where he assisted the Ottoman Army and the German military mission in planning the ongoing response to Allied landings in Gallipoli . He also provided valuable testimony concerning the Armenian Genocide in its later stages , in which he wrote that " On the basis of all the reports and news coming to me here in Tiflis there hardly can be any doubt that the Turks systematically are aiming at the extermination of the few hundred thousand Armenians whom they left alive until now . " He remained in the Ottoman Empire for the rest of the war , becoming in April 1916 the " German Military Plenipotentiary at the Imperial Embassy in Constantinople . " Despite the title , he was junior to many of the German officers in the Ottoman Empire serving as advisors to and commanders of Ottoman military formations
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Otto von Lossow