The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian population of Anatolia was completely whipped out at the beginning of the 20th century. Rouben Paul Adalian writes about the Armenian genocide and documents the who, how, and why this evil act was committed. The Armenians had been in the area since the 11th century. Over 3000 years they had been settled in the area between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, stretching down to North Africa. The genocide on the Armenians by the Ottomans may not rival the Holocaust in numbers, but it sure did in cruelty, and this all came about because of internal problems in the Ottoman government that were more or less taken out on the Armenians.

This genocide is the most cruel I have looked at in depth so far in this class. The Ottomans basically had a three part plan. They were going to deport the Armenians, execute them, or starve them. This proved to be successful. The Ottomans thought out and performed the deportation very thoroughly. Villages and towns were emptied at a blink of an eye. Most Armenians were forced to walk to the Sybian Desert. Others were transported by trains, wagons, and some farmers got to take their mules. Most did not make it to the desert, especially if they walked. Actually only about a fourth of the Armenians finished the journey to the desert because of exhaustion and dehydration. Some were shot for trying to take a drink out of the river. There was no housing, nor was there any feeding of the ones deported. It is actually noted in the chapter that they consciously made it almost impossible to survive. The cruelest part of the whole deal might be that neither age nor gender mattered. Everyone received the same abuse. Not only was the journey itself tough, you were subject to getting attacked and beaten also. If you did make it, which was rare, you were worked to death. The heat was just too much and eventually the Armenians were not more.

The Ottoman Empire was declining. They were panicking because there was beginning to be competition for