Armenian Genocide
...rest’s on the shoulders of the government of the Ottoman Empire. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was a dictatorial regime that was headed by three leaders that had immense resources at their disposal. Enver was the Minister of War, Talaat was the Minister of the Interior, and Jemal was the Minister of the Navy. The CUP looked towards Germany as a model nation and soon the Empire was flooded with German war propaganda. Turkish officers were trained at military schools in Germany and soon their military was all but run by the Germans. The general population of the Ottoman Empire must also shoulder some of the blame. After all it takes a mass of people to organize the extinction of an entire race.
The government secretly and deliberately divided into a three-part plan, which consisted of the deportation, execution, and starvation of nearly one and a half million Armenians. The deportation phase of the plan was the most intricate part. Beginning in April 1915 and often with only three days notice Armenians were forced to abandon their homes and nearly all earthly possessions. Many people were herded onto cattle cars and shipped eastward. Still there were many more that were forced to walk hundreds of miles to the Syrian Desert forming huge convoys comprised of mostly women and children. Exposure and exhaustion claimed nearly 75% of the deportees. At strategic points along the route Kurdish horsemen and killing squads were unleashed upon the Armenians. These men were order to save their bullets for the ongoing war effort, so they used crude swords to butcher the starving and defenseless Armenians. Finally the government had made no attempt at trying to house or feed the traveling convoys.
The genocide implemented by the Ottoman Empire was the answer to the “Armenian Question” and consisted of a few basic reasons for their animosity...
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