Religious Zionism is something many like to point out as an excuse to claim Jewish Religion and Talmud are somehow behind the motives for Zionism, it should not have to take much to realize that in order for antisemitism to gain ground it needs to call it self Anti-Zionism to the uneducated masses. No one is better at this than Religious Reichists and Religious Pan-Arab Nationalists. But what you may not expect is for these so-Called Religious Nazis to do be a success with the public opinion, and yet they are the Deists have insured that subcultures against the mainstream can always fall in to the trap of labeling anything to complicated for them to understand as Zionism. Pan-Arab Nationalists in almost all forms are much more quite than Reichists. This may have to do with keeping the public thinking all Nazism is Reichist. Religious Reichism is the most popular form of Reichism in today's Conspiracy Theory Occultism and the mainstream loves to reference them as the dominant opinion outside the mainstream. The most popular Religious Reichist is Brother Nathan. Brother Nathan http://www.realzionistnews.com/ is a Religious Reichist as most of what's left of the K.G.B have become, he hides behind the guise of an Eastern Christian, in the same way a Religious Zionist hides behind the guise of a Jew or how the Saudi Religious Pan-Arab Nationalists hides behind the guise of Muslim. Brother Nathan is not alone in his propaganda but he is the most Popular Religions Reichist. Brother Nathan makes the claim that Alex Jones censors much on his forum, ironically calling the cattle black it is ironic that Nathaniel Kapner complains about censorship in this forum when censorship is occurring on his website. Any time anyone can get a couple of good posts though defending Alex though automatic censorship occurs within minutes. Nathaniel Kapner is not only a Religious Reichist he is a propagandist of disinformation.
Anti Nazis. Nazi: Means National Socialist. National Socialism is not Socialism. National Socialism is Radical Nationalist Dictatorship. Nazism is a very misunderstood ideology of Evil and Propaganda. Anti Nazis let's Unite!!! Anti Nazis let's put an end to Nazism Forever!!!
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Islamo Punk: The David Duke Deception
Islamo Punk: The David Duke Deception: David Ernest Duke also know as Dr. David Duke is the privet owner of the Anti-Defamation League and the new Official mastermind of the Ku...
Friday, November 11, 2011
The R.A.D.L
http://www.facebook.com/groups/radl.org/
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) by it's very name is a oxymoron, because all this Lobby has done is prove to be a 'Major-Defamation Syndicate' on the one hand this lobby has a history of promoting truth and and helping many in need probably so that the one's they help can be viewed with suspicion by persons out side the mainstream, yet at the same time it has served as one of the top misinformation branches of deceptive global mediacracy. The A.D.L is a Zionist Lobby. According to our partners the Real Anti-Defamation League, the Anti-Defamation League http://www.adl.org/ is a complete fraud!!! RADL fights both Antisemitism and Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry, while opposing the dangerous syndicates of the world. While they defend perspectives such as Democracy and Republic we also defend Moralist standpoints such as 'Old Imperial China' Islamic Ummah' 'Native American Tribal System' the very things popular bigots have labeled Theocracy.
The Real Anti-Defamation League(RADL) is dedicated to defending good perspectives that are self evident whether recognized or not- RADL is also dedicated to the rightful condemning of wrong ideals such as Nazism and Anti-Religionism. RADL is likewise committed to informing the public of the corruption or abuses of good perspectives the RADL is likewise committed to informing the public of good actions and deeds that wrong ideals may just happen to carry out. RADL reserves the LEGAL RIGHT of Communitarian Law to use what the RADL acquires by copyright legal process... this means any past or present programs put out by the ADL they use they reserve the International Legal Right to use and put their stamp on while nullifying any and all alleged claims the ADL may put on them. They recognize The Holocaust as a Real event, in which 6, million persons were killed in Genocide many of them being Jewish. They also recognize the Armenian Genocide, 1.5 million Armenian persons were killed in Genocide. They recognize that Zionism is a form of Nazism and that Pan-Arab Nationalism is also a form of Nazism just as most will agree that Reichism is a form of Nazism. Theye recognize the so-called state of Israel as a Apartheid state and support the Palestinian struggle for liberation. They
recognize Martial Law and Internet censorship as crimes against humanity.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
C.I.A the 4th Reich MUST BE STOPPED
No More Nazism!!!
Nazism is still indispensable to the Deists, and for this reason we need to strongly oppose Nazism.
The Deists are dependent on Nazism to maintain and expand control over the World.
Lets start with what is easy Demand that the facts about the 3rd Reich S.S merging with the American O.S.S which is the founding of the C.I.A be made mainstream IN EVERY NATION IN THE WORLD. This information is not Secret it's only Censored from education and Media. LET for once the Facts effect Public Opinion and not propaganda.
Anti Nazis definition of the C.I.A
Capitalist. Imperialist. America
Nazism is still indispensable to the Deists, and for this reason we need to strongly oppose Nazism.
The Deists are dependent on Nazism to maintain and expand control over the World.
Lets start with what is easy Demand that the facts about the 3rd Reich S.S merging with the American O.S.S which is the founding of the C.I.A be made mainstream IN EVERY NATION IN THE WORLD. This information is not Secret it's only Censored from education and Media. LET for once the Facts effect Public Opinion and not propaganda.
Anti Nazis definition of the C.I.A
Capitalist. Imperialist. America
Deist Corporatocracy and Zionist American Party
It is clear that the Reason why Zionist-Israel is so valuable to the Deist Bankers is the location.
No Doubt there is a lot of Money involved in the Zionist-State and it is quite clear that the Lobby know as A.I.P.A.C has a lot to do with the way American foreign policy is handled. Zionism unlike Reichism and Pan-Arab Nationalism is much more valuable to the Deist Corporatocracy. Plutocracy of Deists = Zionist Interests over the Interests of Human Welfare. American Deists control the World using the Zionists as a foothold in the Mideast to ensure the expanding Westernism. The defacing of religious charter is something of a sport to theses Deists who have been behind all 3 forms of Nazism. Nazism makes Profits and it serves the Interest Rate. Without Debt and Interest the Deists Bankers can not expand there wealth and Banking Plutocracy.
No Doubt there is a lot of Money involved in the Zionist-State and it is quite clear that the Lobby know as A.I.P.A.C has a lot to do with the way American foreign policy is handled. Zionism unlike Reichism and Pan-Arab Nationalism is much more valuable to the Deist Corporatocracy. Plutocracy of Deists = Zionist Interests over the Interests of Human Welfare. American Deists control the World using the Zionists as a foothold in the Mideast to ensure the expanding Westernism. The defacing of religious charter is something of a sport to theses Deists who have been behind all 3 forms of Nazism. Nazism makes Profits and it serves the Interest Rate. Without Debt and Interest the Deists Bankers can not expand there wealth and Banking Plutocracy.
This Message is For America
This is not an attack on America this is just my Plea to Americans to halt the Hypocritical self Righteous attitude of Anti-Zionist American Conspiracy Theorists. You Americans act like the State of Israel is the Main-Adversary though the Zionists are the Strongest Nazis, the Zionists are YOUR Assassins, it's Your DEIST BANKERS that control Israel you do not fool me. Your NATION has been committing acts of Genocide before the Zionists even arose in fact you were killing off others before the Deist Bankers usurped your country. I wish the finger pointing from you would stop. Now I am aware that there are Good Americans. But I see that many of You are Judgmental Self Righteous Bigots, YOU found Israel!!! ONLY YOU give it POWER!!! I encourage you in these Progressive TIMES to Rid YOURSELVES of the Federal Reserve and the DEISTS than Run it. STOP blaming Talmud and Jewish Culture for YOUR MESSES. I do not Trust your Banks or Your Government. AMERICA please be Humble before God, God is aware of what you do.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
9/11 Truth NOW
People need to be made more aware of the ongoing, US Alliance-imposed Iraqi Genocide that as of December is associated with post-1990 and post-2003 violent and avoidable deaths totaling 4.5 million and 2.6 million, respectively, and refugees totaling 5-6 million – an Iraqi Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. In the 19th century and pre-WW1, Turkish provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra; 1914-1918, WW1, dismemberment of the Turkish Empire; British invasion in 1914; 1920, Arab revolt suppressed; Treaty of Sèvres made Iraq a British League of Nations Mandate; 1921, Kingdom under Faisal I; 1924, Iraq Assembly reluctantly agreed to British bases and British legislative veto; 1925, first oil concession; 1926, Iraqi government; 1930, 25-year alliance with Britain; 1932, British mandate terminated; Iraq joined League of Nations; 1933, Christian Assyrian revolt suppressed; Faisal I died; 1934, oil exports began; 1941, al-Gaylani ousted pro-British regent for infant Faisal II; defeated by the British; 1943, Iraq declared war on Axis countries; 1948, British
demand for extension of the 1930 alliance was rejected by the Iraqi parliament; 1948, member of the Arab League; involved in Israel-Arab war; 1955, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq formed pro-US Baghdad Pact; 1958, Kassem military coup, Faisal II killed; mid-1950s onwards, major Kurdish demands for autonomy; 1962, Kurds seized much of northern Iraq; 1963, coup dominated by socialist, pan-Arabist Ba’ath party; 1968, coup installed Bakr, followed by purges; 1979, accession of the C.I.A member known as Saddam Hussein followed by purges; extremely repressive régime; 1980-1988, Iran-Iraq War; Western weapons and poison gas used by both sides; huge death toll; 1988, poison gas used on Kurdish Halabja; 1990, Iran-Iraq diplomatic relations; 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait; sanctions imposed; 1991, US-led Gulf War; deaths; hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees; Kurdish de facto independence protected by UK-US airpower; 1991, renewed threat to Kuwait; weapons inspection; 2001, 9/11 atrocity prompted US threats (1990-2003 excess mortality and under-5 infant mortality 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively; [0.2 million Gulf War violent deaths]); 2003, after extensive UK-US PR build-up involving major lies about Iraqi weapons, Iraq was invaded by US-led Coalition and occupied; no “weapons of mass destruction” found; continuing resistance; Sunnis excluded from Kurdish and Shi’ite dominated indigenous political process; massive death toll (2003-2006 post-invasion excess mortality and under-5 infant mortality 0.5 million and 0.4 million, respectively; post-1990 and post-2003 violent and non-violent avoidable deaths totaling 4.4 million and 2.5 million, respectively, and refugees totaling 5-6 million – an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide.
While the Zionists and members of the C.I.A of the 4th Reich responsible for the deaths of 7,000 Western civilians in the last 40 years the Muslims have been blamed. The deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan total 2.5 million and 4.5 million in the first Gulf War alone.
9/11 Truth Movement statement on the Iraqi Holocaust on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the illegal and war criminal invasion of Iraq (2010): “The Iraqi Holocaust. Today, March 20th, 2010 marks the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. When we fight for 9/11 truth, we fight for peace and justice. May our work bring some hope to those who still suffer from this illegal war. Spread this article far and wide.The following succinct letter is being sent to media world wide on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the US alliance invasion of Iraq. It is the 7th anniversary of the illegal and war criminal invasion of Iraq by US, UK and Australian forces on 20 March 2003. What has been the human cost? As of 20 March 2010 post-invasion violent deaths in Occupied Iraq total 1.4 million (according to the eminent US Just Foreign Policy). Post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.8 million and post-invasion non-violent excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.1 million (based on 2006 revision data from the UN Population Division), this being identical to an independent estimate from under-5 infant deaths. Gulf War violent deaths totaled 0.2 million and excess deaths and under- 5 infant deaths under Sanctions (1990-2003) totaled 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively. In the period 1990-2010 Iraqi violent deaths totaled 1.6 million, non-violent excess deaths from deprivation totaled 2.8 million, under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention) totaled 2.0 million and refugees totaled 5-6 million. This is an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide as per Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (cf WW2 Jewish Holocaust, 5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation). STOP THE ILLEGAL WAR. PROSECUTE WAR CRIMINALS.”
The 9/11 Truth Movement is “comprised of 9/11 survivors and family members, building professionals, scientists, first responders, pilots, firefighters, police, scholars, lawyers, journalists and other media professionals, artists, politicians, intelligence and military personnel, whistle blowers, dedicated activists, citizens and many more. Every year since September 11, 2001, millions of people from around the world take time to investigate the discrepancies of the Bush Administration’s official story including reports such as the 9/11 Commission Report and the FEMA and NIST reports. As doubts grow and important questions remain unanswered, more people join the 9/11 truth movement each year… The questions we ask are serious. 9/11 has been used as a pretext for wars resulting in the death of far too many innocent men, women and children. It has also become the reason for unconstitutional laws like the PATRIOT ACT and other bills that were forced onto a blind and manipulated U.S. Congress. To ensure the word justice has a meaning for the generations to come, we demand a new and real independent 9/11 investigation” (see: http://world911truth.org/911-truth-network ) .
The 9-11 Truth Movement, “The Iraqi Holocaust”, World for 9-11 Truth, 20 March 2010: http://world911truth.org/the-iraqi-holocaust/ .
9-11 Truth NOW http://www.911truth.org/
Monday, March 21, 2011
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as the "hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics or culture". It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear."
Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an "uncritical exaltation of another culture" in which a culture is ascribed "an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality".
Xenophobia can mean a fear of or aversion to, not only people from other countries, but other cultures, subcultures and subsets of belief systems; in short, anyone who meets any list of criteria about their origin, religion, personal beliefs, habits, language, orientations, or any other criteria. While some will state that the "target" group is a set of persons not accepted by the society, in reality only the phobic person need hold the belief that the target group is not (or should not be) accepted by society. While the phobic person is aware of the aversion (even hatred) of the target group, they may not identify it or accept it as a fear.
Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an "uncritical exaltation of another culture" in which a culture is ascribed "an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality".
Xenophobia can mean a fear of or aversion to, not only people from other countries, but other cultures, subcultures and subsets of belief systems; in short, anyone who meets any list of criteria about their origin, religion, personal beliefs, habits, language, orientations, or any other criteria. While some will state that the "target" group is a set of persons not accepted by the society, in reality only the phobic person need hold the belief that the target group is not (or should not be) accepted by society. While the phobic person is aware of the aversion (even hatred) of the target group, they may not identify it or accept it as a fear.
Racism
Racism is the belief that the genetic factors which constitute race, ethnicity, or nationality are a primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that ethnic differences produce an
inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism's effects are called "racial discrimination." In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or receive preferential treatment.
Racial discrimination typically points out taxonomic differences between different groups of people, although anyone may be discriminated against on an ethnic or cultural basis, independently of their somatic differences. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term racial discrimination and ethnicity discrimination. There is some evidence that the meaning of the term has changed over time, and that earlier definitions of racism involved the simple belief that human populations are divided into separate races. Many biologists, anthropologists, and sociologists reject this taxonomy in favor of more specific and/or empirically verifiable criteria, such as geography, ethnicity, or a history of endogamy. The term racism includes both the belief in racial differences, as well as the discrimination associated with these beliefs especially but not limited to social darwinism. Although the term racism usually denotes race-based prejudice, violence, dislike, discrimination, or oppression, the term can also have varying and contested definitions. Racialism is a related term, sometimes intended to avoid these negative meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, in particular to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups. Racial discrimination refers to the separation of people through a process of social division into categories not necessarily related to races for purposes of differential treatment. Racial segregation policies may officialize it, but it is also often exerted without being legalized. Researchers, including Dean Karlan and Marianne Bertrand, at the MIT and the University of Chicago found in a 2003 study that there was widespread discrimination in the workplace against job applicants whose names were merely perceived as "sounding black". These applicants were 50% less likely than candidates perceived as having "white-sounding names" to receive callbacks for interviews. In contrast, institutions and courts have upheld discrimination against whites when it is done to promote a diverse work or educational environment, even when it was shown to be to the detriment of qualified applicants. The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the United States' long history of discrimination (i.e. Jim Crow laws, etc.)
Institutional racism (also known as structural racism, state racism or systemic racism) is racial discrimination by governments, corporations, cults, or educational institutions or other large organizations with the power to influence the lives of many individuals. Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism in the late 1960s. He defined the term as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin"
Homophobia
Homophobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards Homosexuals and Lesbians. and intersex people and behaviour. Definitions refer variably to antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, and irrational fear. Homophobia is observable in critical and hostile behavior such as discrimination and violence on the basis of aperceived non-heterosexual orientation. Homophobic Antipathy: Has 3 basic strands, #1 and most common and yet most denied is Darwinist Antipathy to Homosexuality, #2 and Most obvious is Western Christian Antipathy to Homosexuality, #3 and the most physiologically confusing and physiologically misunderstood is Competitive Antipathy to Homosexuality.
Antipathy of Darwinism: Is based on Might is Right, survival of the Fittest it is also the most common trend of Atheism, to this Day 99 Percent of Atheists and 78 Percent of Agnostics are Homophobic Darwinists.
Antipathy of Western Christianity: This Homophobia is the oldest and the original, it comes from Church Latin Dogma that hold that Rapists Child Molesters can be forgiven but not Homosexuals, it is inconceivable for a Western Christian to even think God loves Homosexuals and Lesbians.
Antipathy of Abrahamic Competitive Physiologically Controlled: Misconceptions of Religious Homophobia is fed by Western Christianity i.e Roman Catholicism and even more so Protestantism, in an effort to compete with Western Christianity and Now Social Darwinism, Jews, Eastern Christians and Muslims have sought to outdo the Homophobia of both Darwinism and Western Christianity. Originally Judaism, Islam and Eastern Christianity were not Homophobic at all, rather the Action was never favorable in Abrahamic Religion, but Homophobia and enforcing non-Abrahamic Religions to conform to this train of thought is not Something that these 3 Religions did until the 20th Century as a effort to compete against Darwinism and Western Churches, this new Bigotry that has come to Abrahamic Religions although contrary to their Creeds of Love, Mercy and Acceptance has gotten them more followers several Homophobic Bigots join these Religions every Day based on the assumption that these Religions are Homophobic like them.
Antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is prejudice against or hostility towards Jewish People and Judaism often rooted in hatred of their multi-ethnic backgrounds, culture, and/or the Talmud. In its extreme form, it "attributes to the Jews an exceptional position among all other civilizations, defames them as an inferior group and denies them the right to live in nations. A person who holds such views is called an "antisemite". Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from individual expressions of hatred and discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent attacks by mobs, or even state police, or military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Extreme instances of persecution include the First Crusade of 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the expulsion from Portugal in 1497, various pogroms, the Dreyfus Affair, and the Holocaust by Reichist Germany. While the term's etymology might suggest that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic peoples, the term was coined in the late 19th century in Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred"), and that has been its normal use since then.
Islamophobia
Islamophobia is prejudice against, hatred or fear of Islam or Muslims The term seems to date back to the late 1980s, but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to refer to types of political dialogue that appeared prejudicially resistant to pro-Islamic argument. In 1997, the British Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as the "dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, to the fear and dislike of all Muslims," stating that it also refers to the practice of discriminating against Muslims by excluding them from the economic, social, and public life of the nation. It includes the perception that Islam has no values in common with other cultures, is inferior to the West and is a violent political ideology rather than a religion. It is recognized as a form of intolerance alongside Homophobia and Antisemitism. A perceived trend of increasing "Islamophobia" during the 2000s has been attributed by some commentators to the September 11 attacks, while others associate it with the rapidly growing Muslims populations in the Western world, especially in Western Europe, due to both immigration and high fertility rate. In May 2002, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), a European Union watchdog, released a report entitled "Summary report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001", which described an increase in Islamophobia-related incidents in European member states post-9/11. Although the term is widely recognized and used, it has not been without controversy.
Anti-Armenianism
Armenophobia (also Anti-Armenianism, Anti-Armenism and Anti-Armenian sentiment) — fear or dislike of, or aversion to the Armenians; Armenia, is hostility toward or prejudice against Armenian people, Armenian culture and the Republic of Armenia, which can range in expression from individual hatred to institutionalized persecution. Several organizations have stated that difficulties currently experienced by the Armenian minority in Turkey are a result of an anti-Armenian attitude by the Turkish government as well as by pan-turkism and ultra-nationalist groups such as the Grey Wolves. Such sentiments are also prevalent in Azerbaijan as well, and stem from the loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, the Khojaly Massacre, and also for domestic political reasons. Modern anti-Armenianism often seems to lack a racial and cultural basis and appears to be based more on geopolitics and history, in addition to diplomatic and strategic interests, involving the modern states of Turkey and Azerbaijan, although these prejudices usually extend to the widespread Armenian Diaspora. The controversy and emotions surrounding the Armenian Genocide and Nagorno-Karabakh are two examples of intense anti-Armenianism in both countries. These facts do not themselves always imply a direct hate towards Armenians as a nation or ethnic group, as they tend to reflect the various historical and political tensions between these countries. Modern Anti-Armenianism is usually associated with either extreme opposition to the actions or existence of the Armenian Republic, belief in an Armenian conspiracy to fabricate history and manipulate public and political opinion for political gain, or belief that Armenia is attempting to unfairly annex land from neighboring states.
Bush Family
After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Reichist war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his "enemy national" partners. The documents also show that Bush and his colleagues, according to reports from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, tried to conceal their financial alliance with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a steel and coal baron who, beginning in the mid-1920s, personally funded Adolf Hitler's rise to power by the subversion of democratic principle and German law. Furthermore, the declassified records demonstrate that Bush and his associates, who included E. Roland Harriman, younger brother of American icon W. Averell Harriman, and George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, continued their dealings with the German industrial tycoon for nearly a year after the U.S. entered the war. For six decades these historical facts have gone unreported by the mainstream U.S. media and even today they are denied on Wikipedia as most Facts are. It would make sense that the United States would hide this after all the C.I.A is part of the 4th Reich, the C.I.A used to be the O.S.S before they merged there agency with the German S.S Gestapo. The essential facts have appeared on the Internet and in relatively obscure books, but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes. This information has also escaped the attention of "official" Bush biographers, Presidential historians and publishers of U.S. history books covering World War II and its aftermath.
- The in the Summer of 1942 this was reported in American News The unraveling of the web of Bush-Harriman-Thyssen U.S. enterprises, all of which operated out of the same suite of offices at 39 Broadway in New York under the supervision of Prescott Bush, began with a story that ran simultaneously in the New York Herald-Tribune and Washington Post on July 31, 1941. By then, the U.S. had been at war with Germany for nearly eight months.
- "Hitler's Angel Has $3 Million in U.S. Bank," declared the front-page Herald-Tribune headline. The lead paragraph characterized Fritz Thyssen as "Adolf Hitler's original patron a decade ago." In fact, the steel and coal magnate had aggressively supported and funded Hitler since October 1923, according to Thyssen's autobiography, I Paid Hitler. In that book, Thyssen also acknowledges his direct personal relationships with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Hess.
- The Herald-Tribune also cited unnamed sources who suggested Thyssen's U.S. "nest egg" in fact belonged to "Nazi bigwigs" including Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, or even Hitler himself.
- Business is Business
- The "bank," founded in 1924 by W. Averell Harriman on behalf of Thyssen and his Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. of Holland, was Union Banking Corporation (UBC) of New York City. According to government documents, it was in reality a clearing house for a number of Thyssen-controlled enterprises and assets, including as many as a dozen individual businesses. UBC also bought and shipped overseas gold, steel, coal, and U.S. Treasury bonds. The company's activities were administered for Thyssen by a Netherlands-born, naturalized U.S. citizen named Cornelis Lievense, who served as president of UBC. Roland Harriman was chairman and Prescott Bush a managing director.
- The Herald-Tribune article did not identify Bush or Harriman as executives of UBC, or Brown Brothers Harriman, in which they were partners, as UBC's private banker. A confidential FBI memo from that period suggested, without naming the Bush and Harriman families, that politically prominent individuals were about to come under official U.S. government scrutiny as Hitler's plunder of Europe continued unabated.
- After the "Hitler's Angel" article was published Bush and Harriman made no attempts to divest themselves of the controversial Thyssen financial alliance, nor did they challenge the newspaper report that UBC was, in fact, a de facto Nazi front organization in the U.S.
- Instead, the government documents show, Bush and his partners increased their subterfuge to try to conceal the true nature and ownership of their various businesses, particularly after the U.S. entered the war. The documents also disclose that Cornelis Lievense, Thyssen's personal appointee to oversee U.S. matters for his Rotterdam-based Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., via UBC for nearly two decades, repeatedly denied to U.S. government investigators any knowledge of the ownership of the Netherlands bank or the role of Thyssen in it. Brown Brothers Harriman sent letters to the government seeking reconsideration of the seizures by using false information.
- UBC's original group of business associates included George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, who had a relationship with the Harriman family that began in 1919. In 1922, Walker and W. Averell Harriman traveled to Berlin to set up the German branch of their banking and investment operations, which were largely based on critical war resources such as steel and coal.
- The Walker-Harriman-created German industrial alliance also included partnership with another German titan who supported Hitler's rise, Friedrich Flick, who partnered with Thyssen in the German Steel Trust that forged the Nazi war machine. For his role in using slave labor and his own steel, coal and arms resources to build Hitler's war effort, Flick was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to prison.
- The Family Business
- In 1926, after Prescott Bush had married Walker's daughter, Dorothy, Walker brought Bush in as a vice president of the private banking and investment firm of W.A. Harriman & Co., also located in New York. Bush became a partner in the firm that later became Brown Brothers Harriman and the largest private investment bank in the world. Eventually, Bush became a director of and stockholder in UBC.
- However, the government documents note that Bush, Harriman, Lievense and the other UBC stockholders were in fact "nominees," or phantom shareholders, for Thyssen and his Holland bank, meaning that they acted at the direct behest of their German client.
- Seized
- On October 20, 1942, under authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. Congress seized UBC and liquidated its assets after the war. The seizure is confirmed by Vesting Order No. 248 in the U.S. Office of the Alien Property Custodian and signed by U.S. Alien Property Custodian Leo T. Crowley.
- In August, under the same authority, Congress had seized the first of the Bush-Harriman-managed Thyssen entities, Hamburg-American Line, under Vesting Order No. 126, also signed by Crowley. Eight days after the seizure of UBC, Congress invoked the Trading with the Enemy Act again to take control of two more Bush-Harriman-Thyssen businesses - Holland-American Trading Corp. (Vesting Order No. 261) and Seamless Steel Equipment Corp. (Vesting Order No. 259).
- The documents from the Archives also show that the Bushes and Harrimans shipped valuable U.S. assets, including gold, coal, steel and U.S. Treasury bonds, to their foreign clients overseas between 1931-33, as Hitler engineered his rise to power.
Genocide of the Occupied Territories of Palestine
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and many other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory occupied by Israel from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria after the Six-Day War of 1967. They consist of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and much of the Golan Heights and, until 1982, the Sinai Peninsula. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are also referred to as Palestinian territories or Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Palestinian Authority, the EU, and the UN Security Council consider East Jerusalem to be part of the West Bank, a position disputed by Israel. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem by the Jerusalem Law. The significance of the designation of these territories as occupied territory is that certain legal obligations fall on the occupying power under international law. Under international law there are certain laws of war governing military occupation, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention. One of those obligations is to maintain the status quo until the signing of a peace treaty that the Zionists have repetitively violated, the resolution of specific conditions outlined in a peace treaty, or the formation of a new civilian government. A genocide is taking place in Gaza. On 2 September 2006, three citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded in Beit Hanoun. Before the end of day many more were massacred. An average of twenty Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed. The Zionist leadership is at a loss of what to do with the Gaza Strip they are desperate for a Final Solution and the sensational press in America is covering it up. It has vague ideas about the West Bank. The current government assumes that the West Bank, unlike the Strip, is an open space, at least on its eastern side. Hence if Israel, under the ingathering program of the government, annexes the parts it covets -- half of the West Bank -- and cleanses it of its native population, the other half would naturally lean towards Jordan, at least for a while and would not concern Israel. This is a fallacy, but nonetheless it won the enthusiastic vote of most of the Jews in the country. Such an arrangement can not work in the Gaza enclave -- Egypt unlike Jordan has succeeded in persuading the Israelis, already in 1948, that the Gaza Strip for them is a liability and will never form part of Egypt. So a million and half Palestinians are stuck inside Israel -- although geographically the Strip is located on the margins of the state, psychologically it lies in its midst. On Dec. 28, 2006, the Israeli human rights organization Betzelem published its annual report on Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. In 2006, Israeli forces killed 660 citizens, triple the number of the previous year (around 200). Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and have slain entire families. Since 2000, almost 4,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, half of them children, and more than 20,000 wounded. Genocide continues in the Occupied Territories even now.
Zionist policy makers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are finishing construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over, and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is gaining speed. Gaza is a Mega Prison with a large Cadge built around it. The living conditions are inhumane and their is no Fresh Water in Gaza. The West Bank suffers with constant bowdlerizing of Houses, Synagogues, Churches and Masques. Rabbis are beat on a daily basis, discrimination towards Christians and Muslims is very high. Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine at the hands of the Zionists has been going on since before 1948. And it is continuing even Now.
Zionist policy makers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are finishing construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over, and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is gaining speed. Gaza is a Mega Prison with a large Cadge built around it. The living conditions are inhumane and their is no Fresh Water in Gaza. The West Bank suffers with constant bowdlerizing of Houses, Synagogues, Churches and Masques. Rabbis are beat on a daily basis, discrimination towards Christians and Muslims is very high. Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine at the hands of the Zionists has been going on since before 1948. And it is continuing even Now.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust (from the Greek: ὁλόκαυστος holókaustos: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt"), also known as The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah, "calamity"; Yiddish: חורבן, Churben or Hurban, from the Hebrew for "destruction"), was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by The 3rd Reich of Germany throughout Reichist-occupied territory.Approximately two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust perished. Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' genocide of millions of people in other groups, including Romani (more commonly known in English by the exonym "Gypsy"), Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses and other political and religious opponents, which occurred whether they were of German or non-German ethnic organ. By this definition, the total number of Holocaust would be between 11 million and 17 million people. The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages.
Various legislation to remove the Jews from civil society, predominantly the Nuremberg Laws, was enacted in Nazi Germany years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the 3rd Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. The Third Reich required Jews and Romani to be confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were systematically killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Reichist-Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal state". Opinions differ on how much the civilian population of Germany knew about the government conspiracy against the Jewish population. Most historians claim that the civilian population was not aware of the atrocities that were carried out, especially in the extermination camps, which were located outside of Germany in Reichist-occupied Europe. The historian Robert Gellately, however, claims that the government openly announced the conspiracy through the media, and that civilians were aware of every aspect of the conspiracy except for the use of gas chambers. While the Holocaust was being carried out by the Third Reich White American Reichists were openly supporting Hitler none of them were tried for treason but many of them were denied the right to volunteer in the War. Yet Hitler's own Nephew was welcomed in the United States while Hitler was in Power and many of his family were granted Amnesty from the O.S.S after the War ended, at the same Time Japanese Americans who were loyal to the United States who also had cut off all ties with Japan were put in Concentration camps. At the same Time Japan offered refuge to Countless Jews at this time, The Empire of Japan saved the Lives of many Jews.
The fundamental aim of the Zionist movement has been not to save Jewish lives but to create a “Jewish state” in Palestine. On December 7, 1938, Ben Gurion, the first head of the Zionist ‘state of Israel’ declared “If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.”
On August 31, 1949, Ben Gurion stated: “Although we have realized our dream of creating a Jewish State, we are only at the beginning. There are still only 900,000 Jews in Israel, whereas the majority of the Jewish people still remains abroad. Our future task is to bring all the Jews to Israel.”
Of the two and a half million Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis between 1935 and 1943, less than 9% went to settle in Palestine. The vast majority, 75%, went to the Soviet Union. In the mid-70’s, more people emigrated out of ‘Israel’ than came in. The only surges of immigration to the Zionist state have occurred during anti-Semitic threats and persecution in foreign countries. It follows that for the Zionist state to achieve its goal of a Jewish world ghetto anti-Semitism must be promoted and encouraged, and as we have seen, by acts of violence if necessary.
“To attain its practical objectives, Zionism hopes it will be able to collaborate with a government that is fundamentally hostile to the Jews”. The use of anti-Semitism as a tool to coerce immigration to the Zionist state continues to the present day: Prime Minister Sharon has stated that anti-Semitism is on the rise and that the only hope for the safety of Jews is to move to Israel under the protection of the Zionist state. “The best solution to anti-Semitism is immigration to Israel. It is the only place on Earth where Jews can live as Jews," he said. Those who continue to call the so-called “state of Israel” the “Jewish State” are not only promoting Zionism which is contrary to the beliefs of true Judaism, but also endorsing the promotion of worldwide anti-Semitism. In doing so they are endangering the lives of traditional Jews and denying their civil liberties and human rights. When the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour (sponsor of the 1905 Aliens Act to restrict Jewish immigration to the UK), wanted the British government to commit itself to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, his declaration was delayed - not by anti-Semites but by leading figures in the British Jewish community. They included a Jewish member of the cabinet who called Balfour's pro-Zionism "anti-Semitic in result". In contrast, a great statesman like Secretary of State Colin Powell, a supporter of traditional Judaism, has the courage to separate Judaism from Zionism and to acknowledge that speaking out against the actions of the Zionist state is not “anti-Semitism”. The True Torah Jews call upon the leaders in Washington to disassociate the actions of the Zionist state from traditional Judaism by no longer referring to “Israel” as the “Jewish State” but as “the Zionist State” and to speak out against the Zionist actions which promote anti-Semitism.
Various legislation to remove the Jews from civil society, predominantly the Nuremberg Laws, was enacted in Nazi Germany years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the 3rd Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. The Third Reich required Jews and Romani to be confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were systematically killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Reichist-Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal state". Opinions differ on how much the civilian population of Germany knew about the government conspiracy against the Jewish population. Most historians claim that the civilian population was not aware of the atrocities that were carried out, especially in the extermination camps, which were located outside of Germany in Reichist-occupied Europe. The historian Robert Gellately, however, claims that the government openly announced the conspiracy through the media, and that civilians were aware of every aspect of the conspiracy except for the use of gas chambers. While the Holocaust was being carried out by the Third Reich White American Reichists were openly supporting Hitler none of them were tried for treason but many of them were denied the right to volunteer in the War. Yet Hitler's own Nephew was welcomed in the United States while Hitler was in Power and many of his family were granted Amnesty from the O.S.S after the War ended, at the same Time Japanese Americans who were loyal to the United States who also had cut off all ties with Japan were put in Concentration camps. At the same Time Japan offered refuge to Countless Jews at this time, The Empire of Japan saved the Lives of many Jews.
3rd Reich Support of Zionism
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of Zionism, recognized that anti-Semitism would further his cause, the creation of a separate state for Jews. To solve the Jewish Question, he maintained “we must, above all, make it an international political issue.” Herzl wrote that Zionism offered the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.” In his “Diaries”, page 19, Herzl stated “Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies.” Zionism was supported by the German SS and Gestapo. Hitler himself personally supported Zionism. During the 1930’s, in cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a network of some 40 camps throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine. As late as 1942 Zionists operated at least one of these officially authorized “Kibbutz” training camps over which flew the blue and white banner which would one day be adopted as the national flag of “Israel”. The Transfer Agreement (which promoted the emigration of German Jews to Palestine) implemented in 1933 and abandoned at the beginning of WWII is an important example of the cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism. Through this agreement, Hitler’s Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930’s to support Jewish development in Palestine and further the Zionist goals. Hitler and the Zionists had a common goal: to create a world Jewish Ghetto as a solution to the Jewish Question.
The Zionist so-called “World Jewish Congress” declared war on the country of Germany, knowing that it would affect their Jewish brothers residing in that country who would be left without protection. When others tried to help them escape to other countries, the Zionist movement took actions which caused those countries to lock their doors to Jewish immigration (read more in the books, “Perfidy” and “Min Hametzer”). As a result of the Zionist influence five ships of Jewish refugees from Germany arriving in the United States were turned back to the gas chambers.The fundamental aim of the Zionist movement has been not to save Jewish lives but to create a “Jewish state” in Palestine. On December 7, 1938, Ben Gurion, the first head of the Zionist ‘state of Israel’ declared “If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.”
On August 31, 1949, Ben Gurion stated: “Although we have realized our dream of creating a Jewish State, we are only at the beginning. There are still only 900,000 Jews in Israel, whereas the majority of the Jewish people still remains abroad. Our future task is to bring all the Jews to Israel.”
Of the two and a half million Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis between 1935 and 1943, less than 9% went to settle in Palestine. The vast majority, 75%, went to the Soviet Union. In the mid-70’s, more people emigrated out of ‘Israel’ than came in. The only surges of immigration to the Zionist state have occurred during anti-Semitic threats and persecution in foreign countries. It follows that for the Zionist state to achieve its goal of a Jewish world ghetto anti-Semitism must be promoted and encouraged, and as we have seen, by acts of violence if necessary.
“To attain its practical objectives, Zionism hopes it will be able to collaborate with a government that is fundamentally hostile to the Jews”. The use of anti-Semitism as a tool to coerce immigration to the Zionist state continues to the present day: Prime Minister Sharon has stated that anti-Semitism is on the rise and that the only hope for the safety of Jews is to move to Israel under the protection of the Zionist state. “The best solution to anti-Semitism is immigration to Israel. It is the only place on Earth where Jews can live as Jews," he said. Those who continue to call the so-called “state of Israel” the “Jewish State” are not only promoting Zionism which is contrary to the beliefs of true Judaism, but also endorsing the promotion of worldwide anti-Semitism. In doing so they are endangering the lives of traditional Jews and denying their civil liberties and human rights. When the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour (sponsor of the 1905 Aliens Act to restrict Jewish immigration to the UK), wanted the British government to commit itself to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, his declaration was delayed - not by anti-Semites but by leading figures in the British Jewish community. They included a Jewish member of the cabinet who called Balfour's pro-Zionism "anti-Semitic in result". In contrast, a great statesman like Secretary of State Colin Powell, a supporter of traditional Judaism, has the courage to separate Judaism from Zionism and to acknowledge that speaking out against the actions of the Zionist state is not “anti-Semitism”. The True Torah Jews call upon the leaders in Washington to disassociate the actions of the Zionist state from traditional Judaism by no longer referring to “Israel” as the “Jewish State” but as “the Zionist State” and to speak out against the Zionist actions which promote anti-Semitism.
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide happened it's not up for debate.
What's happening today in Gaza is not up for debate and the Holocaust is not up for Debate.
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, translit.: Hayoc’ C’eġaspanout’youn; Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı and Ermeni Kıyımı)—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime (Մեծ Եղեռն, Mec Yeġeṙn, Armenian pronunciation: [mɛts jɛˈʁɛrn])—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Pan-Turkists who hijacked Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.
The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events (see, Denial of the Armenian Genocide). In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this historic fact.
Armenia had largely come under Ottoman rule during the fifteenth and 16th centuries. The vast majority of Armenians, grouped together under the name Armenian millet (community), was concentrated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, although significantly large communities were also found in the western provinces, as well as the capital Constantinople. With the exception of the empire's urban centers and the extremely wealthy, Constantinople-based Amira class, a social elite whose members included the Duzians (Directors of the Imperial Mint), the Balyans (Chief Imperial Architects) and the Dadians (Superintendent of the Gunpowder Mills and manager of industrial factories), most Armenians – approximately 70% of the population – lived in poor and dangerous conditions in the rural countryside.
There, the Armenians were subject to the whims of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors, who would regularly overtax them, subject them to brigandage and kidnapping, force them to convert to Islam and otherwise exploit them without any interference from central or local authorities. In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Sufi-Sunni Muslim system, they, like all other Christians, were accorded granted rights for freedoms under Shariah law(such as the right to worship).
Reform implementation, 1840s–1880s
Beginning in the mid-19th century, the three major European powers, Great Britain, France and Russia (known as the Great Powers), took issue with the Empire's system by westernization leading to rivalship causing the Rise of Pan-Turkism. Starting in 1839 and ending with the declaration of a constitution in 1876, the Ottoman government implemented a series of reforms, known as the Tanzimat, to emancipate non-Muslims, although these all proved largely ineffective. By the late 1870s, the Greeks, along with several countries of the Balkans, frustrated with their conditions, had, because of westernized pressure made deals with the Powers, with the new found destitution of Ottoman rule. Armenians, for the most part, remained passive during these years, earning them the title of millet-i sadika or the "loyal millet."
In the mid-1860s and early 1870s, the Armenians, inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of universal equality and civic rights, began to ask for better treatment from the Ottoman government. After amassing the signatures of peasants from Western Armenia (where the bulk of the Armenian population in the empire was concentrated), the Armenian Communal Council petitioned to the Ottoman government to redress the issues that the peasants complained about: "the looting and murder in Armenian towns by [Muslim] Kurds and Circassians, improprieties during tax collection, criminal behavior by government officials and the refusal to accept Christians as witnesses in trial." The Pan-Turkist government considered these grievances and promised to punish those responsible, though no such steps were taken.
Following the violent suppression of Christians in the uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Serbia in 1875, the Great Powers invoked the 1856 Treaty of Paris by claiming that it gave them the right to intervene and protect the Ottoman Empire's Christian minorities. Under growing pressure, the government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II declared itself a constitutional monarchy (which was almost immediately prorogued) and entered into negotiations with the powers. At the same time, the Armenian patriarchate of Constantinople headed by Nerses II, forwarded Armenian complaints of widespread "forced land seizure ... forced conversion of women and children, arson, protection extortion, rape, and murder" to the Powers.
After the conclusion of the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, Armenians began to look more towards the Russian Empire as the ultimate guarantors of their security. Nerses approached the Russian leadership during its negotiations with the Ottomans in San Stefano and in the eponymous treaty, convinced them to insert a clause, Article 16, that stipulated that Russian forces occupying the Armenian provinces would only withdraw with the full implementation of Ottoman reforms. Great Britain was troubled with Russia holding on to so much Ottoman territory and forced it to enter into new negotiations with the convening of the Congress of Berlin on June 13, 1878. Armenians also entered into these negotiations and emphasized that they sought autonomy, not independence from the Ottoman Empire. They partially succeeded as Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin contained the same text as Article 16 but removed any mention that Russian forces would remain in the provinces; instead, the Ottoman government was to periodically inform the Great Powers of the progress of the reforms.
Armenian national movement
At the end of the nineteenth century the Armenians initiated their own campaign for autonomy following the example of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria of national awakening and territorial independence. Armenian cultural consciousness accompanied with nationalism aimed at achieving a nation state inside Ottoman territories. Armenians organised politically in 1870s and soon after staged their first revolts. Already in June 1880 the British consul warned that the Armenian movement had started the purchase of weaponry and calling on the Armenian people to prepare. Ottoman authority was challenged in Zeitun in 1881 and reports from elsewhere describe allegations of Armenian plots and arrests of conspirators. During this period numerous Armenian political organisations such as the Black Cross party of Van, the Armenaks, the Union of Armenian Patriots in Istanbul and the Defenders of the motherland movement in Erzurum were formed. The largest and most effective Armenian revolutionary organisations were established outside the Ottoman Empire in places such as Russia and Europe.
Hamidian Massacres, 1894–1896
Since 1876, the Ottoman state had been led by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. From the beginning of the reform period after the signing of the Berlin treaty, Hamid II attempted to stall their implementation and asserted that Armenians did not make up a majority in the provinces and that Armenian reports of abuses were largely exaggerated or false. In 1890, Hamid II created a paramilitary outfit known as the Hamidiye which was made up of Kurdish irregulars who were tasked to "deal with the Armenians as they wished." As Ottoman officials intentionally provoked rebellions (often as a result of over-taxation) in Armenian populated towns, such as in Sasun in 1894 and Zeitun in 1895–1896, these regiments were increasingly used to deal with the Armenians by way of oppression and massacre. In some instances, Armenians successfully fought off the regiments and brought the excesses to the attention of the Great Powers in 1895 who subsequently condemned the Porte. The Powers forced Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which, like the Berlin treaty, was never implemented. On October 1, 1895, 2,000 Armenians assembled in Constantinople to petition for the implementation of the reforms but Ottoman police units converged towards the rally and violently broke it up. Soon, massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed the rest of the Armenian-populated provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van. Estimates differ on how many Armenians were killed but European documentation of the violence, which became known as the Hamidian massacres, placed the figures from anywhere between 100,000–300,000 Armenians.
Although Hamid was never directly implicated in ordering the massacres, he was suspected of their tacit approval and of not acting to end them. Frustrated with European indifference to the massacres, Armenians from the Dashnaktsutiun political party seized the European-managed Ottoman Bank on August 26, 1896. This incident brought further sympathy for Armenians in Europe and was lauded by the European and American press, which vilified Hamid and painted him as the "great assassin" and "bloody Sultan." While the Great Powers vowed to take action and enforce new reforms, these never came into fruition due to conflicting political and economic interests.
Dissolution of the Empire and Rise of Pan-Turkism
Young Turk Revolution, 1908
On July 24, 1908, Armenians' hopes for equality in the empire brightened once more when a coup d'état staged by officers in the Turkish Third Army based in Salonika removed Abdul Hamid from power and restored the country back to a constitutional monarchy. The officers were part of the Young Turk movement that wanted to reform administration of the decadent state of the Ottoman Empire and modernize it to European standards. The movement was an anti-Hamidian coalition made up of two distinct groups: the secular liberal constitutionalists and the nationalists; the former was more democratic and accepted Armenians into their wing whereas the latter was more intolerant in regard to Armenian-related issues and their frequent requests for European assistance. In 1902, during a congress of the Young Turks held in Paris, the heads of the liberal wing, Sabahheddin Bey and Ahmed Riza, partially persuaded the nationalists to include in their objectives to ensure some rights to all the minorities of the empire.
Among the numerous factions of the Young Turks also included the political organization Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Originally a secret society made up of army officers based in Salonika, the CUP proliferated amongst military circles as more army mutinies took place throughout the empire. In 1908, elements of the Third Army and the Second Army Corps declared their opposition to the Sultan and threatened to march on the capital to depose him. Hamid, shaken by the wave of resentment, stepped down from power as Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Bulgarians and Turks alike rejoiced in his dethronement.
Adana Massacre, 1909
A countercoup took place on April 13, 1909. Some Ottoman military elements, joined by Islamic theological students, aimed to return control of the country to the Sultan and the rule of Islamic law. Riots and fighting broke out between the reactionary forces and CUP forces, until the CUP was able to put down the uprising and court-martial the opposition leaders. While the movement initially targeted the nascent Young Turk government, it spilled over into pogroms against Armenians who were perceived as having supported the restoration of the constitution. When Ottoman Army troops were called in, many accounts record that instead of trying to quell the violence they actually took part in pillaging Armenian enclaves in Adana province. 15,000–30,000 Armenians were killed in the course of the "Adana Massacre".
Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917 period
On November 2, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I became the scene of action. The combatants were the Ottoman Empire, with some assistance from the other Central Powers, and primarily the British and the Russians among the Allies of World War I. The conflicts at the Caucasus Campaign, the Persian Campaign and the Gallipoli Campaign affected where the Armenian people lived in significant amounts. Before the declaration of war at the Armenian congress at Erzurum the Ottoman government requested from Ottoman Armenians to facilitate the conquest of Transcaucasia by inciting a rebellion with the Russian Armenians against the tsarist army in the event of a Caucasus front.
Battle of Sarıkamış
On December 24, 1914 Minister of War Enver Pasha developed a plan to encircle and destroy the Russian Caucasus Army at Sarıkamış, to regain territories lost to Russia after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Enver Pasha's forces were routed at the Battle of Sarikamis, and almost completely destroyed.
In the summer of 1914, Armenian volunteer units were established under the Russian Armed forces. As the Russian Armenian conscripts had already been sent to the European Front, this force was uniquely established from Armenians that were not Russian or who were not obligated to serve. An Ottoman representative, Karekin Bastermadjian (Armen Karo), was also brought into to this force. Initially they had 20,000 men, but it was reported that their number subsequently increased. Returning to Constantinople, Enver publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians in the region having actively sided with the Russians.
Labor battalions, February 25
On February 25, 1915, The War minister Enver Pasha sent an order to all military units that Armenians in the active Ottoman forces be demobilized and assigned to the unarmed Labour battalion (Turkish: amele taburlari). Enver Pasha explained this decision as "out of fear that they would collaborate with the Russians". As a tradition, the Ottoman Army drafted non-Muslim males only between the ages of 20 and 45 into the regular army. The younger (15–20) and older (45–60) non-Muslim soldiers had always been used as logistical support through the labor battalions. Before February, some of the Armenian recruits were utilized as laborers (hamals), though they would ultimately be executed.
Transferring Armenian conscripts from active field (armed) to passive, unarmed logistic section was an important aspect of the subsequent genocide. As reported in "The Memoirs of Naim Bey", the extermination of the Armenians in these battalions was part of a premeditated strategy on behalf of the Committee of Union and Progress. Many of these Armenian recruits were executed by local Turkish gangs.
Events at Van, April 1915
On April 19, 1915, Jevdet Bey demanded that the city of Van immediately furnish him 4,000 soldiers under the pretext of conscription. However, it was clear to the Armenian population that his goal was to massacre the able-bodied men of Van so that there would be no defenders. Jevdet Bey had already used his official writ in nearby villages, ostensibly to search for arms, which had turned into wholesale massacres. The Armenians offered five hundred soldiers and to pay exemption money for the rest in order to buy time, however, Djevdet accused Armenians of "rebellion," and spoke of his determination to "crush" it at any cost. "If the rebels fire a single shot," he declared, "I shall kill every Christian man, woman, and" (pointing to his knee) "every child, up to here."
On April 20, 1915, the armed conflict of the Van Resistance began when an Armenian woman was harassed, and the two Armenian men that came to her aid were killed by Turkish soldiers. The Armenian defenders protected 30,000 residents and 15,000 refugees in an area of roughly one square kilometer of the Armenian Quarter and suburb of Aigestan with 1,500 able bodied riflemen who were supplied with 300 rifles and 1,000 pistols and antique weapons. The conflict lasted until General Yudenich came to rescue them.
Similar reports reached Morgenthau from Aleppo and Van, prompting him to raise the issue in person with Talaat and Enver. As he quoted to them the testimonies of his consulate officials, they justified the deportations as necessary to the conduct of the war, suggesting that complicity of the Armenians of Van with the Russian forces that had taken the city justified the persecution of all ethnic Armenians.
Arrest and deportation of Armenian notables, April 1915
On April 24, 1915, the Red Sunday (Armenian: Կարմիր Կիրակի), was the night which the leaders of Armenians of the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, and later extending to other Ottoman centers were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Ankara by then minister of interior Mehmed Talat Bey with his order on April 24, 1915. These Armenians later deported with the passage of Tehcir Law on 29 May 1915. The date 24 April, Genocide Remembrance Day, commemorates the Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915, as the precursor to the ensuing events. Interior Minister Talat Pasha, who ordered the arrests.
Dardanelles)In his order, order on April 24, 1915, Talat claimed "have long been pursuing to gain an administrative autonomy and this desire is displayed once more, in no uncertain terms, with the inclusion of the Russian Armenians who have assumed a position against us together with the Daschnak Committee in no time in the regions of Zeytûn (Zeitun Resistance (1915)), Bitlis, Sivas, and Van (Van Resistance) in accordance with the decisions they have previously taken (Armenian congress at Erzurum)." By 1914, Ottoman authorities had already begun a propaganda drive to present Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire as a threat to the empire's security. An Ottoman naval officer in the War Office described the planning: In order to justify this enormous crime the requisite propaganda material was thoroughly prepared in Constantinople. [It included such statements as] "the Armenians are in league with the enemy. They will launch an uprising in Istanbul, kill off the Committee of Union and Progress leaders and will succeed in opening the straits (of the On the night of April 24, 1915, the Ottoman government rounded-up and imprisoned an estimated 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. This date coincided with Allied troop landings at Gallipoli after unsuccessful Allied naval attempts to break through the Dardanelles to Constantinople in February and March 1915.
Triple Entente's reaction
On May 24, 1915, the Triple Entente warned the Ottoman Empire that "In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres."
Eitan Belkind was a Nili member, who infiltrated the Ottoman army as an official. He was assigned to the headquarters of Kamal Pasha. He claims to have witnessed the burning of 5,000 Armenians.
Lt. Hasan Maruf, of the Ottoman army, describes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned. The Commander of the Third Army Vehib's 12-page affidavit, which was dated 5 December 1918, was presented in the Trabzon trial series (March 29, 1919) included in the Key Indictment, reporting such a mass burning of the population of an entire village near Mush. that in Bitlis, Mus and Sassoun, "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them." And also that, "Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at the remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after."
Trabzon was the main city in Trabzon province; Oscar S. Heizer, the American consul at Trabzon, reports: "This plan did not suit Nail Bey.... Many of the children were loaded into boats and taken out to sea and thrown overboard." The Italian consul of Trabzon in 1915, Giacomo Gorrini, writes: "I saw thousands of innocent women and children placed on boats which were capsized in the Black Sea." The Trabzon trials reported Armenians having been drowned in the Black Sea. Hoffman Philip, the American Charge at Constantinople chargé d'affaires, writes: "Boat loads sent from Zor down the river arrived at Ana, one thirty miles away, with three fifths of passengers missing."
The psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton writes in a parenthesis when introducing the crimes of Nazi doctors, "Perhaps Turkish doctors, in their participation in the genocide against the Armenians, come closest, as I shall later suggest."
Morphine overdose; During the Trabzon trial series of the Martial court, from the sittings between March 26 and May 17, 1919, the Trabzons Health Services Inspector Dr. Ziya Fuad wrote in a report that Dr. Saib caused the death of children with the injection of morphine. The information was allegedly provided by two physicians (Drs. Ragib and Vehib), both Dr. Saib's colleagues at Trabzons Red Crescent hospital, where those atrocities were said to have been committed.
Toxic gas; Dr. Ziya Fuad and Dr. Adnan, public health services director of Trabzon, submitted affidavits reporting cases in which two school buildings were used to organize children and send them to the mezzanine to kill them with toxic gas equipment. Typhoid inoculation; The Ottoman surgeon, Dr. Haydar Cemal wrote "on the order of the Chief Sanitation Office of the IIIrd Army in January 1916, when the spread of typhus was an acute problem, innocent Armenians slated for deportation at Erzican were inoculated with the blood of typhoid fever patients without rendering that blood ‘inactive’." Jeremy Hugh Baron writes: "Individual doctors were directly involved in the massacres, having poisoned infants, killed children and issued false certificates of death from natural causes. Nazim's brother-in-law Dr. Tevfik Rushdu, Inspector-General of Health Services, organized the disposal of Armenian corpses with thousands of kilos of lime over six months; he became foreign secretary from 1925 to 1938."
What's happening today in Gaza is not up for debate and the Holocaust is not up for Debate.
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, translit.: Hayoc’ C’eġaspanout’youn; Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı and Ermeni Kıyımı)—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime (Մեծ Եղեռն, Mec Yeġeṙn, Armenian pronunciation: [mɛts jɛˈʁɛrn])—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Pan-Turkists who hijacked Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.
The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events (see, Denial of the Armenian Genocide). In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this historic fact.
Armenia had largely come under Ottoman rule during the fifteenth and 16th centuries. The vast majority of Armenians, grouped together under the name Armenian millet (community), was concentrated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, although significantly large communities were also found in the western provinces, as well as the capital Constantinople. With the exception of the empire's urban centers and the extremely wealthy, Constantinople-based Amira class, a social elite whose members included the Duzians (Directors of the Imperial Mint), the Balyans (Chief Imperial Architects) and the Dadians (Superintendent of the Gunpowder Mills and manager of industrial factories), most Armenians – approximately 70% of the population – lived in poor and dangerous conditions in the rural countryside.
There, the Armenians were subject to the whims of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors, who would regularly overtax them, subject them to brigandage and kidnapping, force them to convert to Islam and otherwise exploit them without any interference from central or local authorities. In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Sufi-Sunni Muslim system, they, like all other Christians, were accorded granted rights for freedoms under Shariah law(such as the right to worship).
Reform implementation, 1840s–1880s
Beginning in the mid-19th century, the three major European powers, Great Britain, France and Russia (known as the Great Powers), took issue with the Empire's system by westernization leading to rivalship causing the Rise of Pan-Turkism. Starting in 1839 and ending with the declaration of a constitution in 1876, the Ottoman government implemented a series of reforms, known as the Tanzimat, to emancipate non-Muslims, although these all proved largely ineffective. By the late 1870s, the Greeks, along with several countries of the Balkans, frustrated with their conditions, had, because of westernized pressure made deals with the Powers, with the new found destitution of Ottoman rule. Armenians, for the most part, remained passive during these years, earning them the title of millet-i sadika or the "loyal millet."
In the mid-1860s and early 1870s, the Armenians, inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of universal equality and civic rights, began to ask for better treatment from the Ottoman government. After amassing the signatures of peasants from Western Armenia (where the bulk of the Armenian population in the empire was concentrated), the Armenian Communal Council petitioned to the Ottoman government to redress the issues that the peasants complained about: "the looting and murder in Armenian towns by [Muslim] Kurds and Circassians, improprieties during tax collection, criminal behavior by government officials and the refusal to accept Christians as witnesses in trial." The Pan-Turkist government considered these grievances and promised to punish those responsible, though no such steps were taken.
Following the violent suppression of Christians in the uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Serbia in 1875, the Great Powers invoked the 1856 Treaty of Paris by claiming that it gave them the right to intervene and protect the Ottoman Empire's Christian minorities. Under growing pressure, the government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II declared itself a constitutional monarchy (which was almost immediately prorogued) and entered into negotiations with the powers. At the same time, the Armenian patriarchate of Constantinople headed by Nerses II, forwarded Armenian complaints of widespread "forced land seizure ... forced conversion of women and children, arson, protection extortion, rape, and murder" to the Powers.
After the conclusion of the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, Armenians began to look more towards the Russian Empire as the ultimate guarantors of their security. Nerses approached the Russian leadership during its negotiations with the Ottomans in San Stefano and in the eponymous treaty, convinced them to insert a clause, Article 16, that stipulated that Russian forces occupying the Armenian provinces would only withdraw with the full implementation of Ottoman reforms. Great Britain was troubled with Russia holding on to so much Ottoman territory and forced it to enter into new negotiations with the convening of the Congress of Berlin on June 13, 1878. Armenians also entered into these negotiations and emphasized that they sought autonomy, not independence from the Ottoman Empire. They partially succeeded as Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin contained the same text as Article 16 but removed any mention that Russian forces would remain in the provinces; instead, the Ottoman government was to periodically inform the Great Powers of the progress of the reforms.
Armenian national movement
At the end of the nineteenth century the Armenians initiated their own campaign for autonomy following the example of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria of national awakening and territorial independence. Armenian cultural consciousness accompanied with nationalism aimed at achieving a nation state inside Ottoman territories. Armenians organised politically in 1870s and soon after staged their first revolts. Already in June 1880 the British consul warned that the Armenian movement had started the purchase of weaponry and calling on the Armenian people to prepare. Ottoman authority was challenged in Zeitun in 1881 and reports from elsewhere describe allegations of Armenian plots and arrests of conspirators. During this period numerous Armenian political organisations such as the Black Cross party of Van, the Armenaks, the Union of Armenian Patriots in Istanbul and the Defenders of the motherland movement in Erzurum were formed. The largest and most effective Armenian revolutionary organisations were established outside the Ottoman Empire in places such as Russia and Europe.
Hamidian Massacres, 1894–1896
Since 1876, the Ottoman state had been led by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. From the beginning of the reform period after the signing of the Berlin treaty, Hamid II attempted to stall their implementation and asserted that Armenians did not make up a majority in the provinces and that Armenian reports of abuses were largely exaggerated or false. In 1890, Hamid II created a paramilitary outfit known as the Hamidiye which was made up of Kurdish irregulars who were tasked to "deal with the Armenians as they wished." As Ottoman officials intentionally provoked rebellions (often as a result of over-taxation) in Armenian populated towns, such as in Sasun in 1894 and Zeitun in 1895–1896, these regiments were increasingly used to deal with the Armenians by way of oppression and massacre. In some instances, Armenians successfully fought off the regiments and brought the excesses to the attention of the Great Powers in 1895 who subsequently condemned the Porte. The Powers forced Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which, like the Berlin treaty, was never implemented. On October 1, 1895, 2,000 Armenians assembled in Constantinople to petition for the implementation of the reforms but Ottoman police units converged towards the rally and violently broke it up. Soon, massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed the rest of the Armenian-populated provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van. Estimates differ on how many Armenians were killed but European documentation of the violence, which became known as the Hamidian massacres, placed the figures from anywhere between 100,000–300,000 Armenians.
Although Hamid was never directly implicated in ordering the massacres, he was suspected of their tacit approval and of not acting to end them. Frustrated with European indifference to the massacres, Armenians from the Dashnaktsutiun political party seized the European-managed Ottoman Bank on August 26, 1896. This incident brought further sympathy for Armenians in Europe and was lauded by the European and American press, which vilified Hamid and painted him as the "great assassin" and "bloody Sultan." While the Great Powers vowed to take action and enforce new reforms, these never came into fruition due to conflicting political and economic interests.
Dissolution of the Empire and Rise of Pan-Turkism
Young Turk Revolution, 1908
On July 24, 1908, Armenians' hopes for equality in the empire brightened once more when a coup d'état staged by officers in the Turkish Third Army based in Salonika removed Abdul Hamid from power and restored the country back to a constitutional monarchy. The officers were part of the Young Turk movement that wanted to reform administration of the decadent state of the Ottoman Empire and modernize it to European standards. The movement was an anti-Hamidian coalition made up of two distinct groups: the secular liberal constitutionalists and the nationalists; the former was more democratic and accepted Armenians into their wing whereas the latter was more intolerant in regard to Armenian-related issues and their frequent requests for European assistance. In 1902, during a congress of the Young Turks held in Paris, the heads of the liberal wing, Sabahheddin Bey and Ahmed Riza, partially persuaded the nationalists to include in their objectives to ensure some rights to all the minorities of the empire.
Among the numerous factions of the Young Turks also included the political organization Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Originally a secret society made up of army officers based in Salonika, the CUP proliferated amongst military circles as more army mutinies took place throughout the empire. In 1908, elements of the Third Army and the Second Army Corps declared their opposition to the Sultan and threatened to march on the capital to depose him. Hamid, shaken by the wave of resentment, stepped down from power as Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Bulgarians and Turks alike rejoiced in his dethronement.
Adana Massacre, 1909
A countercoup took place on April 13, 1909. Some Ottoman military elements, joined by Islamic theological students, aimed to return control of the country to the Sultan and the rule of Islamic law. Riots and fighting broke out between the reactionary forces and CUP forces, until the CUP was able to put down the uprising and court-martial the opposition leaders. While the movement initially targeted the nascent Young Turk government, it spilled over into pogroms against Armenians who were perceived as having supported the restoration of the constitution. When Ottoman Army troops were called in, many accounts record that instead of trying to quell the violence they actually took part in pillaging Armenian enclaves in Adana province. 15,000–30,000 Armenians were killed in the course of the "Adana Massacre".
Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917 period
On November 2, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I became the scene of action. The combatants were the Ottoman Empire, with some assistance from the other Central Powers, and primarily the British and the Russians among the Allies of World War I. The conflicts at the Caucasus Campaign, the Persian Campaign and the Gallipoli Campaign affected where the Armenian people lived in significant amounts. Before the declaration of war at the Armenian congress at Erzurum the Ottoman government requested from Ottoman Armenians to facilitate the conquest of Transcaucasia by inciting a rebellion with the Russian Armenians against the tsarist army in the event of a Caucasus front.
Battle of Sarıkamış
On December 24, 1914 Minister of War Enver Pasha developed a plan to encircle and destroy the Russian Caucasus Army at Sarıkamış, to regain territories lost to Russia after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Enver Pasha's forces were routed at the Battle of Sarikamis, and almost completely destroyed.
In the summer of 1914, Armenian volunteer units were established under the Russian Armed forces. As the Russian Armenian conscripts had already been sent to the European Front, this force was uniquely established from Armenians that were not Russian or who were not obligated to serve. An Ottoman representative, Karekin Bastermadjian (Armen Karo), was also brought into to this force. Initially they had 20,000 men, but it was reported that their number subsequently increased. Returning to Constantinople, Enver publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians in the region having actively sided with the Russians.
Labor battalions, February 25
On February 25, 1915, The War minister Enver Pasha sent an order to all military units that Armenians in the active Ottoman forces be demobilized and assigned to the unarmed Labour battalion (Turkish: amele taburlari). Enver Pasha explained this decision as "out of fear that they would collaborate with the Russians". As a tradition, the Ottoman Army drafted non-Muslim males only between the ages of 20 and 45 into the regular army. The younger (15–20) and older (45–60) non-Muslim soldiers had always been used as logistical support through the labor battalions. Before February, some of the Armenian recruits were utilized as laborers (hamals), though they would ultimately be executed.
Transferring Armenian conscripts from active field (armed) to passive, unarmed logistic section was an important aspect of the subsequent genocide. As reported in "The Memoirs of Naim Bey", the extermination of the Armenians in these battalions was part of a premeditated strategy on behalf of the Committee of Union and Progress. Many of these Armenian recruits were executed by local Turkish gangs.
Events at Van, April 1915
On April 19, 1915, Jevdet Bey demanded that the city of Van immediately furnish him 4,000 soldiers under the pretext of conscription. However, it was clear to the Armenian population that his goal was to massacre the able-bodied men of Van so that there would be no defenders. Jevdet Bey had already used his official writ in nearby villages, ostensibly to search for arms, which had turned into wholesale massacres. The Armenians offered five hundred soldiers and to pay exemption money for the rest in order to buy time, however, Djevdet accused Armenians of "rebellion," and spoke of his determination to "crush" it at any cost. "If the rebels fire a single shot," he declared, "I shall kill every Christian man, woman, and" (pointing to his knee) "every child, up to here."
On April 20, 1915, the armed conflict of the Van Resistance began when an Armenian woman was harassed, and the two Armenian men that came to her aid were killed by Turkish soldiers. The Armenian defenders protected 30,000 residents and 15,000 refugees in an area of roughly one square kilometer of the Armenian Quarter and suburb of Aigestan with 1,500 able bodied riflemen who were supplied with 300 rifles and 1,000 pistols and antique weapons. The conflict lasted until General Yudenich came to rescue them.
Similar reports reached Morgenthau from Aleppo and Van, prompting him to raise the issue in person with Talaat and Enver. As he quoted to them the testimonies of his consulate officials, they justified the deportations as necessary to the conduct of the war, suggesting that complicity of the Armenians of Van with the Russian forces that had taken the city justified the persecution of all ethnic Armenians.
Arrest and deportation of Armenian notables, April 1915
On April 24, 1915, the Red Sunday (Armenian: Կարմիր Կիրակի), was the night which the leaders of Armenians of the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, and later extending to other Ottoman centers were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Ankara by then minister of interior Mehmed Talat Bey with his order on April 24, 1915. These Armenians later deported with the passage of Tehcir Law on 29 May 1915. The date 24 April, Genocide Remembrance Day, commemorates the Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915, as the precursor to the ensuing events. Interior Minister Talat Pasha, who ordered the arrests.
Dardanelles)In his order, order on April 24, 1915, Talat claimed "have long been pursuing to gain an administrative autonomy and this desire is displayed once more, in no uncertain terms, with the inclusion of the Russian Armenians who have assumed a position against us together with the Daschnak Committee in no time in the regions of Zeytûn (Zeitun Resistance (1915)), Bitlis, Sivas, and Van (Van Resistance) in accordance with the decisions they have previously taken (Armenian congress at Erzurum)." By 1914, Ottoman authorities had already begun a propaganda drive to present Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire as a threat to the empire's security. An Ottoman naval officer in the War Office described the planning: In order to justify this enormous crime the requisite propaganda material was thoroughly prepared in Constantinople. [It included such statements as] "the Armenians are in league with the enemy. They will launch an uprising in Istanbul, kill off the Committee of Union and Progress leaders and will succeed in opening the straits (of the On the night of April 24, 1915, the Ottoman government rounded-up and imprisoned an estimated 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. This date coincided with Allied troop landings at Gallipoli after unsuccessful Allied naval attempts to break through the Dardanelles to Constantinople in February and March 1915.
Triple Entente's reaction
On May 24, 1915, the Triple Entente warned the Ottoman Empire that "In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres."
Eitan Belkind was a Nili member, who infiltrated the Ottoman army as an official. He was assigned to the headquarters of Kamal Pasha. He claims to have witnessed the burning of 5,000 Armenians.
Lt. Hasan Maruf, of the Ottoman army, describes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned. The Commander of the Third Army Vehib's 12-page affidavit, which was dated 5 December 1918, was presented in the Trabzon trial series (March 29, 1919) included in the Key Indictment, reporting such a mass burning of the population of an entire village near Mush. that in Bitlis, Mus and Sassoun, "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them." And also that, "Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at the remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after."
Trabzon was the main city in Trabzon province; Oscar S. Heizer, the American consul at Trabzon, reports: "This plan did not suit Nail Bey.... Many of the children were loaded into boats and taken out to sea and thrown overboard." The Italian consul of Trabzon in 1915, Giacomo Gorrini, writes: "I saw thousands of innocent women and children placed on boats which were capsized in the Black Sea." The Trabzon trials reported Armenians having been drowned in the Black Sea. Hoffman Philip, the American Charge at Constantinople chargé d'affaires, writes: "Boat loads sent from Zor down the river arrived at Ana, one thirty miles away, with three fifths of passengers missing."
The psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton writes in a parenthesis when introducing the crimes of Nazi doctors, "Perhaps Turkish doctors, in their participation in the genocide against the Armenians, come closest, as I shall later suggest."
Morphine overdose; During the Trabzon trial series of the Martial court, from the sittings between March 26 and May 17, 1919, the Trabzons Health Services Inspector Dr. Ziya Fuad wrote in a report that Dr. Saib caused the death of children with the injection of morphine. The information was allegedly provided by two physicians (Drs. Ragib and Vehib), both Dr. Saib's colleagues at Trabzons Red Crescent hospital, where those atrocities were said to have been committed.
Toxic gas; Dr. Ziya Fuad and Dr. Adnan, public health services director of Trabzon, submitted affidavits reporting cases in which two school buildings were used to organize children and send them to the mezzanine to kill them with toxic gas equipment. Typhoid inoculation; The Ottoman surgeon, Dr. Haydar Cemal wrote "on the order of the Chief Sanitation Office of the IIIrd Army in January 1916, when the spread of typhus was an acute problem, innocent Armenians slated for deportation at Erzican were inoculated with the blood of typhoid fever patients without rendering that blood ‘inactive’." Jeremy Hugh Baron writes: "Individual doctors were directly involved in the massacres, having poisoned infants, killed children and issued false certificates of death from natural causes. Nazim's brother-in-law Dr. Tevfik Rushdu, Inspector-General of Health Services, organized the disposal of Armenian corpses with thousands of kilos of lime over six months; he became foreign secretary from 1925 to 1938."
Deportations
In May 1915, Mehmed Talat Pasha requested that the cabinet and Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha legalize a measure for relocation and settlement of Armenians to other places due to what Talat Pasha called "the Armenian riots and massacres, which had arisen in a number of places in the country." However, Talat Pasha was referring specifically to events in Van and extending the implementation to the regions in which alleged "riots and massacres" would affect the security of the war zone of the Caucasus Campaign. Later, the scope of the immigration was widened in order to include the Armenians in the other provinces. On 29 May 1915, the CUP Central Committee passed the Temporary Law of Deportation ("Tehjir Law"), giving the Ottoman government and military authorization to deport anyone it "sensed" as a threat to national security. The "Tehjir Law" brought some measures regarding the property of the deportees, but during September a new law was proposed. By means of the "Abandoned Properties" Law (Law Concerning Property, Dept's and Assets Left Behind Deported Persons, also referred as the "Temporary Law on Expropriation and Confiscation"), the Ottoman government took possession of all "abandoned" Armenian goods and properties. Ottoman parliamentary representative Ahmed Riza protested this legislation: It is unlawful to designate the Armenian assets as “abandoned goods” for the Armenians, the proprietors, did not abandon their properties voluntarily; they were forcibly, compulsorily removed from their domiciles and exiled. Now the government through its efforts is selling their goods...If we are a constitutional regime functioning in accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties, such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it. On 13 September 1915, the Ottoman parliament passed the "Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation", stating that all property, including land, livestock, and homes belonging to Armenians, was to be confiscated by the authorities. With the implementation of Tehcir law, the confiscation of Armenian property and the slaughter of Armenians that ensued upon the law's enactment outraged much of the western world. While the Ottoman Empire's wartime allies offered little protest, a wealth of German and Austrian historical documents has since come to attest to the witnesses' horror at the killings and mass starvation of Armenians. In the United States, The New York Times reported almost daily on the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the process as "systematic", "authorized" and "organized by the government." Theodore Roosevelt would later characterize this as "the greatest crime of the war."
Death marches
The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. A good deal of evidence suggests that the Pan-Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived. By August 1915, The New York Times repeated an unattributed report that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people." Pan-Turkist troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill, and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves. Deprived of their belongings and marched into the desert, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. Naturally, the death rate from starvation and sickness is very high and is increased by the brutal treatment of the authorities, whose bearing toward the exiles as they are being driven back and forth over the desert is not unlike that of slave drivers. With few exceptions no shelter of any kind is provided and the people coming from a cold climate are left under the scorching desert sun without food and water. Temporary relief can only be obtained by the few able to pay officials.
Similarly, Major General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein noted that "The Turkish policy of causing starvation is an all too obvious proof... for the Turkish resolve to destroy the Armenians."
German engineers and laborers involved in building the railway also witnessed Armenians being crammed into cattle cars and shipped along the railroad line. Franz Gunther, a representative for Deutsche Bank which was funding the construction of the Baghdad Railway, forwarded photographs to his directors and expressed his frustration at having to remain silent amid such "bestial cruelty". Major General Otto von Lossow, acting military attaché and head of the German Military Plenipotentiary in the Ottoman Empire, spoke to Ottoman intentions in a conference held in Batum in 1918:
The Turks have embarked upon the "total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia... The aim of Turkish policy is, as I have reiterated, the taking of possession of Armenian districts and the extermination of the Armenians. Talaat's government wants to destroy all Armenians, not just in Turkey but also outside Turkey. 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.
Extermination camps
It is estimated that 25 major concentration camps existed, under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hand-men of Talat Pasha. The majority of the camps were situated near Turkey's modern Iraqi and Syrian borders, and some were only temporary transit camps. Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, are said to have been used only temporarily, for mass graves; these sites were vacated by autumn 1915. Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days.
Relief
American Committee for Relief in the Near East is a relief organization established in 1915, just after the deportations, primary aim was to alleviate the suffering of the Armenian people. Henry Morgenthau played a key role in rallying support for the organization. Between 1915 and 1930, distributed humanitarian relief across a wide range of geographical locations. ACRNE eventually spent over ten times of initial estimate, see original estimate, that amount and helped an estimated close to 2,000,000 refugees. In its first year, the ACRNE cared for 132,000 Armenian orphans from Tiflis, Yerevan, Constantinople, Sivas, Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem. A relief organization for refugees in the Middle East helped donate over $102 million (budget $117,000,000) [1930 value of dollar] to Armenians both during and after the war.
Teşkilat-i Mahsusa
The Committee of Union and Progress founded a "special organization" (Turkish: Teşkilat-i Mahsusa) that participated in the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community. This organization adopted its name in 1913 and functioned like a special forces outfit, and it has been compared by some scholars to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.[96] Later in 1914, the Ottoman government influenced the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization. According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later, they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees. Vehib Pasha, commander of the Ottoman Third Army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human species.”
Trials
In 1919, Sultan Mehmed VI ordered domestic courts-martial to try members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (Turkish: "Ittihat Terakki") for their role in taking the Ottoman Empire into World War I. The courts-martial blamed the members of CUP for pursuing a war that did not fit into the notion of Millet. The Armenian issue was used as a tool to punish the leaders of the CUP. Most of the documents generated in these courts were later moved to international trials. By January 1919, a report to Sultan Mehmed VI accused over 130 suspects, most of whom were high officials. The military court found that it was the will of the CUP to eliminate the Armenians physically, via its special organization. The 1919 pronouncement reads as follows:
The Court Martial taking into consideration the above-named crimes declares, unanimously, the culpability as principal factors of these crimes the fugitives Talat Pasha, former Grand Vizir, Enver Efendi, former War Minister, struck off the register of the Imperial Army, Cemal Efendi, former Navy Minister, struck off too from the Imperial Army, and Dr. Nazim Efendi, former Minister of Education, members of the General Council of the Union & Progress, representing the moral person of that party;... the Court Martial pronounces, in accordance with said stipulations of the Law the death penalty against Talat, Enver, Cemal, and Dr. Nazim.
The term Three Pashas, which include Mehmed Talat Pasha and Ismail Enver, refers to the triumvirate who had fled the Empire at the end of World War I. At the trials in Constantinople in 1919 they were sentenced to death in absentia. The courts-martial officially disbanded the CUP and confiscated its assets, and the assets of those found guilty. At least two of the three were later assassinated by Armenian vigilantes.
Following the Mudros Armistice, the preliminary Peace Conference in Paris established "The Commission on Responsibilities and Sanctions" in January 1919, which was chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Lansing. Based on the commission's work, several articles were added to the Treaty of Sèvres, and the acting government of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmed VI and Damat Adil Ferit Pasha, were summoned to trial. The Treaty of Sèvres (August 1920) planned a trial to determine those responsible for the "barbarous and illegitimate methods of warfare... [including] offenses against the laws and customs of war and the principles of humanity". Article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres required the Ottoman Empire "hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1914."
Various Pan-Turkist politicians, generals, and intellectuals were transferred to Malta, where they were held for some three years while searches were made of archives in Constantinople, London, Paris and Washington to investigate their actions. However, the Inter-allied tribunal attempt demanded by the Treaty of Sèvres never solidified and the detainees were eventually returned to Turkey in exchange for British citizens held by Kemalist Turkey.
On March 15, 1921, former Grand Vizier Talat Pasha was assassinated in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin, Germany, in broad daylight and in the presence of many witnesses. Talat's death was part of "Operation Nemesis", the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's codename for their covert operation in the 1920s to kill the planners of the Armenian Genocide.
The subsequent trial of the assassin, Soghomon Tehlirian, had an important influence on Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who campaigned in the League of Nations to ban what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism". The term "genocide", created in 1943, was coined by Lemkin who was directly influenced by the massacres of Armenians during World War I.
Armenian population, deaths, survivors, 1914 to 1918
While there is no consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during the Armenian Genocide, there is general agreement among western scholars that over 500,000 Armenians died between 1914 and 1918. Estimates vary between 600,000 (per the modern Turkish state) to 1,500,000 (per Western scholars) Argentina, and other states. Encyclopædia Britannica references the research of Arnold J. Toynbee, an intelligence officer of the British Foreign Office, who estimated that 600,000 Armenians "died or were massacred during deportation" in the years 1915–1916.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses, including the neutral United States and the Ottoman Empire's own allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, recorded and documented numerous acts of state-sponsored massacres. Many foreign officials offered to intervene on behalf of the Armenians, including Pope Benedict XV, only to be turned away by Ottoman government officials who claimed they were retaliating against a pro-Russian insurrection. On May 24, 1915, the Triple Entente warned the Ottoman Empire that "In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres."
The American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE, or "Near East Relief") was a charitable organization established to relieve the suffering of the peoples of the Near East. The organization was championed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Morgenthau's dispatches on the mass slaughter of Armenians galvanized much support for ACRNE.
In May 1915, Mehmed Talat Pasha requested that the cabinet and Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha legalize a measure for relocation and settlement of Armenians to other places due to what Talat Pasha called "the Armenian riots and massacres, which had arisen in a number of places in the country." However, Talat Pasha was referring specifically to events in Van and extending the implementation to the regions in which alleged "riots and massacres" would affect the security of the war zone of the Caucasus Campaign. Later, the scope of the immigration was widened in order to include the Armenians in the other provinces. On 29 May 1915, the CUP Central Committee passed the Temporary Law of Deportation ("Tehjir Law"), giving the Ottoman government and military authorization to deport anyone it "sensed" as a threat to national security. The "Tehjir Law" brought some measures regarding the property of the deportees, but during September a new law was proposed. By means of the "Abandoned Properties" Law (Law Concerning Property, Dept's and Assets Left Behind Deported Persons, also referred as the "Temporary Law on Expropriation and Confiscation"), the Ottoman government took possession of all "abandoned" Armenian goods and properties. Ottoman parliamentary representative Ahmed Riza protested this legislation: It is unlawful to designate the Armenian assets as “abandoned goods” for the Armenians, the proprietors, did not abandon their properties voluntarily; they were forcibly, compulsorily removed from their domiciles and exiled. Now the government through its efforts is selling their goods...If we are a constitutional regime functioning in accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties, such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it. On 13 September 1915, the Ottoman parliament passed the "Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation", stating that all property, including land, livestock, and homes belonging to Armenians, was to be confiscated by the authorities. With the implementation of Tehcir law, the confiscation of Armenian property and the slaughter of Armenians that ensued upon the law's enactment outraged much of the western world. While the Ottoman Empire's wartime allies offered little protest, a wealth of German and Austrian historical documents has since come to attest to the witnesses' horror at the killings and mass starvation of Armenians. In the United States, The New York Times reported almost daily on the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the process as "systematic", "authorized" and "organized by the government." Theodore Roosevelt would later characterize this as "the greatest crime of the war."
Death marches
The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. A good deal of evidence suggests that the Pan-Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived. By August 1915, The New York Times repeated an unattributed report that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people." Pan-Turkist troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill, and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves. Deprived of their belongings and marched into the desert, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. Naturally, the death rate from starvation and sickness is very high and is increased by the brutal treatment of the authorities, whose bearing toward the exiles as they are being driven back and forth over the desert is not unlike that of slave drivers. With few exceptions no shelter of any kind is provided and the people coming from a cold climate are left under the scorching desert sun without food and water. Temporary relief can only be obtained by the few able to pay officials.
Similarly, Major General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein noted that "The Turkish policy of causing starvation is an all too obvious proof... for the Turkish resolve to destroy the Armenians."
German engineers and laborers involved in building the railway also witnessed Armenians being crammed into cattle cars and shipped along the railroad line. Franz Gunther, a representative for Deutsche Bank which was funding the construction of the Baghdad Railway, forwarded photographs to his directors and expressed his frustration at having to remain silent amid such "bestial cruelty". Major General Otto von Lossow, acting military attaché and head of the German Military Plenipotentiary in the Ottoman Empire, spoke to Ottoman intentions in a conference held in Batum in 1918:
The Turks have embarked upon the "total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia... The aim of Turkish policy is, as I have reiterated, the taking of possession of Armenian districts and the extermination of the Armenians. Talaat's government wants to destroy all Armenians, not just in Turkey but also outside Turkey. 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.
Extermination camps
It is estimated that 25 major concentration camps existed, under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hand-men of Talat Pasha. The majority of the camps were situated near Turkey's modern Iraqi and Syrian borders, and some were only temporary transit camps. Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, are said to have been used only temporarily, for mass graves; these sites were vacated by autumn 1915. Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days.
Relief
American Committee for Relief in the Near East is a relief organization established in 1915, just after the deportations, primary aim was to alleviate the suffering of the Armenian people. Henry Morgenthau played a key role in rallying support for the organization. Between 1915 and 1930, distributed humanitarian relief across a wide range of geographical locations. ACRNE eventually spent over ten times of initial estimate, see original estimate, that amount and helped an estimated close to 2,000,000 refugees. In its first year, the ACRNE cared for 132,000 Armenian orphans from Tiflis, Yerevan, Constantinople, Sivas, Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem. A relief organization for refugees in the Middle East helped donate over $102 million (budget $117,000,000) [1930 value of dollar] to Armenians both during and after the war.
Teşkilat-i Mahsusa
The Committee of Union and Progress founded a "special organization" (Turkish: Teşkilat-i Mahsusa) that participated in the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community. This organization adopted its name in 1913 and functioned like a special forces outfit, and it has been compared by some scholars to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.[96] Later in 1914, the Ottoman government influenced the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization. According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later, they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees. Vehib Pasha, commander of the Ottoman Third Army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human species.”
Trials
In 1919, Sultan Mehmed VI ordered domestic courts-martial to try members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (Turkish: "Ittihat Terakki") for their role in taking the Ottoman Empire into World War I. The courts-martial blamed the members of CUP for pursuing a war that did not fit into the notion of Millet. The Armenian issue was used as a tool to punish the leaders of the CUP. Most of the documents generated in these courts were later moved to international trials. By January 1919, a report to Sultan Mehmed VI accused over 130 suspects, most of whom were high officials. The military court found that it was the will of the CUP to eliminate the Armenians physically, via its special organization. The 1919 pronouncement reads as follows:
The Court Martial taking into consideration the above-named crimes declares, unanimously, the culpability as principal factors of these crimes the fugitives Talat Pasha, former Grand Vizir, Enver Efendi, former War Minister, struck off the register of the Imperial Army, Cemal Efendi, former Navy Minister, struck off too from the Imperial Army, and Dr. Nazim Efendi, former Minister of Education, members of the General Council of the Union & Progress, representing the moral person of that party;... the Court Martial pronounces, in accordance with said stipulations of the Law the death penalty against Talat, Enver, Cemal, and Dr. Nazim.
The term Three Pashas, which include Mehmed Talat Pasha and Ismail Enver, refers to the triumvirate who had fled the Empire at the end of World War I. At the trials in Constantinople in 1919 they were sentenced to death in absentia. The courts-martial officially disbanded the CUP and confiscated its assets, and the assets of those found guilty. At least two of the three were later assassinated by Armenian vigilantes.
Following the Mudros Armistice, the preliminary Peace Conference in Paris established "The Commission on Responsibilities and Sanctions" in January 1919, which was chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Lansing. Based on the commission's work, several articles were added to the Treaty of Sèvres, and the acting government of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmed VI and Damat Adil Ferit Pasha, were summoned to trial. The Treaty of Sèvres (August 1920) planned a trial to determine those responsible for the "barbarous and illegitimate methods of warfare... [including] offenses against the laws and customs of war and the principles of humanity". Article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres required the Ottoman Empire "hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1914."
Various Pan-Turkist politicians, generals, and intellectuals were transferred to Malta, where they were held for some three years while searches were made of archives in Constantinople, London, Paris and Washington to investigate their actions. However, the Inter-allied tribunal attempt demanded by the Treaty of Sèvres never solidified and the detainees were eventually returned to Turkey in exchange for British citizens held by Kemalist Turkey.
On March 15, 1921, former Grand Vizier Talat Pasha was assassinated in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin, Germany, in broad daylight and in the presence of many witnesses. Talat's death was part of "Operation Nemesis", the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's codename for their covert operation in the 1920s to kill the planners of the Armenian Genocide.
The subsequent trial of the assassin, Soghomon Tehlirian, had an important influence on Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who campaigned in the League of Nations to ban what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism". The term "genocide", created in 1943, was coined by Lemkin who was directly influenced by the massacres of Armenians during World War I.
Armenian population, deaths, survivors, 1914 to 1918
While there is no consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during the Armenian Genocide, there is general agreement among western scholars that over 500,000 Armenians died between 1914 and 1918. Estimates vary between 600,000 (per the modern Turkish state) to 1,500,000 (per Western scholars) Argentina, and other states. Encyclopædia Britannica references the research of Arnold J. Toynbee, an intelligence officer of the British Foreign Office, who estimated that 600,000 Armenians "died or were massacred during deportation" in the years 1915–1916.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses, including the neutral United States and the Ottoman Empire's own allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, recorded and documented numerous acts of state-sponsored massacres. Many foreign officials offered to intervene on behalf of the Armenians, including Pope Benedict XV, only to be turned away by Ottoman government officials who claimed they were retaliating against a pro-Russian insurrection. On May 24, 1915, the Triple Entente warned the Ottoman Empire that "In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres."
The American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE, or "Near East Relief") was a charitable organization established to relieve the suffering of the peoples of the Near East. The organization was championed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Morgenthau's dispatches on the mass slaughter of Armenians galvanized much support for ACRNE.
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