The Great War

[Dukasaur]

The next installment in the Bulgarian saga begins in 14 hours:

show: ovce pole offensive

[pamoa]

First thanks for that great campaign
Did you prepare something for the anniversary of the first Verdun battle the 21st of February
It has to be as massive as the 715 000 casualties

[Dukasaur]

First thanks for that great campaign
Did you prepare something for the anniversary of the first Verdun battle the 21st of February
It has to be as massive as the 715 000 casualties

Working on it. Still undecided about the format. If you have some suggestions, I'll be happy to hear them.

[pamoa]

First thanks for that great campaign
Did you prepare something for the anniversary of the first Verdun battle the 21st of February
It has to be as massive as the 715 000 casualties

Working on it. Still undecided about the format. If you have some suggestions, I'll be happy to hear them.

for german attack
first a bombing map
then a large conquest map
then 3 castle conquest map

and for french counter attack
again bombing
3 castles
then large conquest

and the final "trench" for the stealmate

[-1-1-3-]

First thanks for that great campaign
Did you prepare something for the anniversary of the first Verdun battle the 21st of February
It has to be as massive as the 715 000 casualties

(among other things)
a battle royale (several battle royales) is (are) in order !

[Dukasaur]

show: Krivolak and Kosturino

[Dukasaur]

First Verdun tournament almost ready. I've finished the write-up, but I haven't had time to code the tourney yet.

[Dukasaur]

At last, the first tournament in the Verdun series is here:

show: Verdun -- the First Five Days

Only slightly late. There's a bit of irony here. Some of you may know that I'm a snow-plow supervisor. Well, the original battle of Verdun was delayed because of snow and nasty weather. My tournament has also been delayed because of snow and nasty weather, so it is probably a fitting tribute!

First thanks for that great campaign
Did you prepare something for the anniversary of the first Verdun battle the 21st of February
It has to be as massive as the 715 000 casualties

(among other things)
a battle royale (several battle royales) is (are) in order !

I haven't had time to figure out how to run a Battle Royale tournament, but I agree with you: there should be one.

The Battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It will not be a single tournament, but a group of tournaments. A Battle Royale will definitely be included along the way.

[ConfederateSS]

--------I read the Auto Tourney things. It says a round will be played with one less player.Unless down to 1...
--------Is there nothing that can be done for injustice???????
--------First ,osok68 is a wonderful player,but said he can no longer pay for premium........He has been allowed to advance...2 rounds....Now in...."RACE TO THE SEA"...He is going to advance a 3rd time...Silly Knig-it is going to be cut from the tourney...osok68 is going to move on....IS THERE NO WAY TO LET Silly move on...AND TOTALLY eliminate osko68 from the Tourney?...Keeping it competitive for all those left...Or because it is Auto,that is that?...ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion).

[Dukasaur]

I'm sure some people have noticed there hasn't been a new tournament in over a month.

I've gotten a little overwhelmed with stuff in R/L. If anyone wants to try their hand at writing some tourneys, I would love to incorporate them. We're behind by up to four months now in some theatres (for instance, the final evacuation from Gallipoli should have been done on December 18th.) Coding the tourneys is relatively fast, it's the creative writing for the intro that bogs me down, as well as the initial tourney design. Obviously Final Evacuation from Gallipoli will use the Gallipoli map heavily, but what game types, how many rounds, how many players, what other maps, etc, and then finding some nice graphics for the accompanying article.

If you love the Great War, here's your chance to shine.

[mookiemcgee]

bigWham, you need to pay the man so he has an excuse to clear his RL slate and write us some more tourneys!

Thanks for what your doing Duku, if I wasn't so busy with RL myself I'd take a stab at it.

[Dukasaur]

What we are currently behind on:

1915 Battles:
Kosovo Offensive (November 10th)
Evacuation of Gallipoli (December 18th)
The Fokker Scourge (no fixed date, but reached its peak in late 1915 - early 1916)
The Armenian Genocide (no fixed date, but one million deaths milestone was reached December 15th)


1916 Battles:
Sheikh Sa'ad (January 6th)
Battle of the Wadi (January 13th)
Hanna (January 21st)
The Second Attack at Verdun (March 6th)
Dujaila (March 8th)
Fifth Isonzo (March 9th)
Lake Naroch (March 18th)


Battles we are not behind on (yet!) but might be soon:
The Fall of Kut (April 5th)
Asiago (April 15th)
Trentino (April 15th)
Trabzon (April 18th)

[Dukasaur]

The first tournament of the seventh quarter

show: kosovo offensive

[Dukasaur]

Fifth quarter archive

show: battle of loos oct 11th to 21st

show: second champagne oct 25th to nov 4th

show: Es Sinn November 16 to 25

show: Third Isonzo

show: Fourth Isonzo

show: colonel john mccrae dec 9 to 16

show: gulf of Riga Dec 19th to 29th

show: Ctesiphon dec 27 to jan 6

back to main index

[Dukasaur]

Sixth quarter archive

show: Bulgaria Enters the War

show: siege of kut el amara

show: Morava Offensive

show: ovce pole offensive

show: Krivolak and Kosturino

show: Verdun -- the First Five Days

back to main index

[Dukasaur]

The great Gallipoli Campaign reaches its final chapter:

show: evacuation of gallipoli

[shoop76]

Is there any rule for repeatedly timing out in nuclear games so you don't have to card?

[Dukasaur]

Is there any rule for repeatedly timing out in nuclear games so you don't have to card?

It's not an enforceable rule.

Many people regard it as sleazy, and personally so do I, but if you can handle the moral stigma then no, it's not against the rules.

[shoop76]

Is there any rule for repeatedly timing out in nuclear games so you don't have to card?

It's not an enforceable rule.

Many people regard it as sleazy, and personally so do I, but if you can handle the moral stigma then no, it's not against the rules.

\i know its not enforceable unless the TO makes the rule for his tourney. I was just checking, though I knew the answer. They should make it illegal though.

[Dukasaur]

Is there any rule for repeatedly timing out in nuclear games so you don't have to card?

It's not an enforceable rule.

Many people regard it as sleazy, and personally so do I, but if you can handle the moral stigma then no, it's not against the rules.

\i know its not enforceable unless the TO makes the rule for his tourney. I was just checking, though I knew the answer. They should make it illegal though.

Agreed.

Actually, even better than another rule and countless C&A cases, is simply programming the game so that when you earn a spoil you get a spoil, and timing out won't prevent it. A simple change that would make this type of cheating impossible.

[Dukasaur]

Today we launch a new and very morally compelling tournament in the Great War series.

The Armenian Genocide

A tournament for 18 players, this will commemorate the history of the Armenian people and the shameful attempt by the Ottoman Turks to exterminate them.

Settings: All games will be Standard, with Automatic deployment, 24-hour Sequential turns.
Reinforcement: randomly Chained/Parachute.
Spoils: Randomly Escalating (representing escalating violence) Nuclear (representing destruction) and Zombie (representing death.)
Trench: No Trench in any round.
Fog: Randomly Fog/No Fog.

Part 1: Ancient Armenia.

Armenia has a long and fascinating history. The existence of this nation in some form goes back at least 6,000 years and probably more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Armenia We mark the 6 millenia of Armenian history with 6-player games. The Areni-1 cave complex has been explored and found to contain artisans' workshops for the manufacture of wine, dresses, and the world's first known leather shoe. (Commemorate ancient artisans with the Age of Merchants map.) The first known use of the term "Armenia" is on an Akkadian inscription dated to 2300 B.C. (Commemorate Akkadian neighbours with Gilgamesh map.) Armenia was eventually absorbed into the Persian Empire, after which it became one of Alexander's conquests and on his death became an important part of the Seleucid Empire. (Commemorate the Persian-Macedonian-Seleucid phase with the Alexander's Empire map.) Herodotus placed Armenia near the centre of his world map. (Commemorate Herodotus' ellipsoid world map with Vertex map.) Armenia changed hands between the Parthians and the Romans a few times before finally becoming a self-governing vassal state of the Roman Empire. (Commemorate Roman Armenia with Imperium Romanum map.)

Part 2 and 3: Medieval and Crusade-era Armenia.

Armenia was mostly Zoroastrian in the pre-Christian era. It was Christianized fairly early in its history. According to legend, two of Jesus' original disciples, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, preached there from 42 to 62 A.D. Armenia became the world's first officially Christian kingdom in 301 A.D., a decade before Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan. During a brief occupation by the Sassanids, Zoroastrianism was forcibly restored, leading to a period of religious civil war. By the Treaty of Nvarsak, religious freedom was guaranteed.

Armenia had the misfortune of being seen as a cushion or buffer state between the Roman world to the west and the Persian world to the east. As is common with such buffer states, its sovereignty was frequently violated by both sides and its territory inexorably eroded. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam took the place of Zoroastrianism in competing for dominance in the region. The Christian vs. Zoroastrian wars became Christian vs. Muslim wars without any notable period of peace in between. The first of many Muslim occupations took place in 645.

The ties between Armenia and the Byzantine empire were many -- religious, cultural, economic, military, and dynastic. Several Byzantine emperors were ethnically Armenian. As more and more of Armenia was conquered by Muslims, the remainder was more vigorously defended by its Christian majority and by the Byzantines. The final conquest of Armenia after the Battle of Manzikert is seen as the defining moment when Turkish power in Asia Minor exceeded Greek power. The only independent Armenian kingdom surviving after the debacle of Manzikert was Cilicia.

During the Crusades, Cilicia was a faithful ally of the Crusader states and gave them very significant help. A third religious faction arose, following the Roman Catholic rite, distinct not only from the Muslims but also significantly different from the Armenian Apostolic Christians. After the failure of the Third Crusade, Cilicia was the only significant Christian presence in the Middle East.

The only Conquer Club map that represents the Middle East during the Crusading/Medieval era is Third Crusade. We will commemorate this period through two phases. First, a round of six-player games (representing Armenians, Greeks, Romans, Persian, Arabs, and Turks) and then a round of five-player games (representing Zoroastrian, Muslim, Armenian Apostolic, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic influences.) Between these rounds we will cut the field from 18 to 15 players and after Phase 3 we will have a further reduction to 14 players.

Phase 4: Persecution and Slavery

In the early days of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians had a significant degree of self-government within the Empire. As time went on, however, their autonomy was steadily eroded, and relations between the (overwhelmingly Muslim) Turks and (mostly Christian) Armenians became worse. By the 19th century, the Armenians were treated as a slave race.

Click image to enlarge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#Armenians_under_Ottoman_rule

Armenia had come largely under Ottoman rule during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The vast majority of Armenians, grouped together under the name Armenian millet (community) and led by their spiritual head, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, were concentrated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire (commonly referred to as Turkish Armenia or Western Armenia), although large communities were also found in the western provinces, as well as in the capital Constantinople. The Armenian community was made up of three religious denominations: the Armenian Apostolic to which the overwhelming majority of Armenians belonged, and the Armenian Catholic and Armenian Protestant communities. Through the millet system, the Armenian community were allowed to rule themselves under their own system of governance with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government. 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 their population – lived in poor and dangerous conditions in the rural countryside.[32][33] Ottoman census figures clash with the statistics collected by the Armenian Patriarchate. According to the latter, there were almost three million Armenians living in the empire in 1878 (400,000 in Constantinople and the Balkans, 600,000 in Asia Minor and Cilicia, 670,000 in Lesser Armenia and the area near Kayseri, and 1,300,000 in Western Armenia itself).[34] In the eastern provinces, 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 interference from central or local authorities.[33] In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the dhimmi system implemented in Muslim countries, they, like all other Christians and also Jews, were accorded certain freedoms. The dhimmi system in the Ottoman Empire was largely based upon the Pact of Umar. The client status established the rights of the non-Muslims to property, livelihood and freedom of worship but they were in essence treated as second-class citizens in the empire and referred to in Turkish as gavours, a pejorative word meaning "infidel" or "unbeliever". While the Pact of Umar prohibited non-Muslims from building new places of worship, it was not enforced in all regions of the Ottoman Empire. Since there were no laws concerning religious ghettos, the prohibition of non-Muslims building new places of worship led to their clustering around existing ones.[35][36] Writing in the late 1890s after a visit to the Ottoman Empire, the British ethnographer William Ramsay described the conditions of Armenian life as follows:

We must, however, go back to an older time, if we want to appreciate what uncontrolled Turkish rule meant, alike to Armenians and to Greeks. It did not mean religious persecution; it meant unutterable contempt ... They were dogs and pigs; and their nature was to be Christians, to be spat upon, if their shadow darkened a Turk, to be outraged, to be the mats on which he wiped the mud from his feet. Conceive the inevitable result of centuries of slavery, of subjection to insult and scorn, centuries in which nothing that belonged to the Armenian, neither his property, his house, his life, his person, nor his family, was sacred or safe from violence – capricious, unprovoked violence – to resist which by violence meant death![37]

In addition to other legal limitations, Christians were not considered equals to Muslims and several prohibitions were placed on them. Their testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels. Their houses could not overlook those of Muslims; and their religious practices were severely circumscribed (e.g., the ringing of church bells was strictly forbidden).[35][38]

With the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, hope arose that the Armenians might be liberated from the more onerous aspects of Ottoman rule. The Russians did, indeed attempt to get Armenian self-government guaranteed in the peace treaties, but the terms were first watered down and then ignored completely. An Armenian liberation movement was born, but rapidly repressed, and the familiar cycle of violence and repression accelerated.

By 1894 intentional massacres of Armenians were being carried out under the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. These Hamidian massacres can be seen as the beginning of the Genocide, although the term is generally only applied to larger massacres that took place from 1915. Still, between 1894 and 1896 it is believed that 100,000 to 300,000 Armenians were intentionally murdered.

By W. L. Sachtleben. (d. 1953) - "The Graphic" December 7th 1895., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2225204

Map: WWI Ottoman, 7-p.
Players reduced from 14 to 12.

Part 5: Respite

As a result of corruption, the Ottoman monarchy was weakened and Hamid was deposed in 1908 during the Young Turk Revolution. The "Young Turk" movement was composed of both liberals (who believed in protecting the rights of minorities) and conservatives (who did not, but were willing to play along in order to win friends in liberal Europe). During this time, the oppression of the Armenians was much reduced. It was a brief respite.

A round of 2-player games on Orient Express.

Part 6: Oppression resumes.

A reactionary wave of Turkish nationalism and Islamic extremism swept the country, resulting in many random acts of violence against Armenians. In Adana province, Army units that were called in to suppress the violence actually joined in and participated, resulting in the deaths of 30,000 Armenians.

Worse was yet to come. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#The_Balkan_Wars

In 1912, the First Balkan War broke out and ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire as well as the loss of 85% of its European territory. Many in the empire saw their defeat as "Allah's divine punishment for a society that did not know how to pull itself together".[38]:84 The Turkish nationalist movement in the country gradually came to view Anatolia as their last refuge. That the Armenian population formed a significant minority in this region later figured prominently in the calculations of the Three Pashas, who carried out the Armenian Genocide.

An important consequence of the Balkan Wars was also the mass expulsion of Muslims (known as muhacirs) from the Balkans. Beginning in the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, including Turks, Circassians, and Chechens, were expelled or forced to flee from the Caucasus and the Balkans (Rumelia) as a result of the Russo-Turkish wars and the conflicts in the Balkans. Muslim society in the empire was incensed by this flood of refugees. A journal published in Constantinople expressed the mood of the times: "Let this be a warning ... O Muslims, don't get comfortable! Do not let your blood cool before taking revenge".[38]:86 As many as 850,000 of these refugees were settled in areas where the Armenians were resident from the period of 1878–1904. The muhacirs resented the status of their relatively well-off neighbors and, as historian Taner Akçam and others have noted, the refugees came to play a pivotal role in the killings of the Armenians and the confiscation of their properties during the genocide

We mark the significance of the Balkan Wars on events in the Ottoman Empire with a round of 6-p games on the Balkan Peninsula map, followed by the elimination of 4 more players and a score reset.

From here on in, all games are 8-player and there are no more eliminations or score resets.

Part 7: World War I and Directive 8682

In November of 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War 1 and declared war on Russia. There were Armenians on both side of the border, and both were actively courted by the opposition. Russia encouraged Armenians in the Ottoman Empire to revolt, and the Ottomans encouraged Armenians in the Russian empire to revolt. There was little success in raising revolts on either side, but much paranoia about the possibility.

Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and other significant Young Turks who had preached that "the Committee stood for the unionization of all the races in the empire" abruptly abandoned all pretense of ethnic equality and cloaked themselves in extreme Turkish nationalism.

On 25 February 1915, the Ottoman General Staff released the War Minister Enver Pasha's Directive 8682 on "Increased security and precautions" to all military units calling for the removal of all ethnic Armenians serving in the Ottoman forces from their posts and for their demobilization. They were assigned to the unarmed Labour battalions (Turkish: amele taburlari). The directive accused the Armenian Patriarchate of releasing State secrets to the Russians. Enver Pasha explained this decision as "out of fear that they would collaborate with the Russians".[49] Traditionally, the Ottoman Army only drafted non-Muslim males 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 labour battalions. Before February, some of the Armenian recruits were utilized as labourers (hamals), though they would ultimately be executed.[50]

Transferring Armenian conscripts from active combat to passive, unarmed logistic sections was an important precursor to the subsequent genocide. As reported in The Memoirs of Naim Bey, the execution of the Armenians in these battalions was part of a premeditated strategy of the CUP. Many of these Armenian recruits were executed by local Turkish gangs

The removal of Armenians from important posts may have been justified by security considerations, but their subsequent executions unquestionably escalated this from being a security operation to outright brutish genocide.

This puts one in mind of Stalin's purges, so we'll do a round of games on the Soviet Union map.

Part 8: The Siege of Van

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Van_%281915%29

On 19 April 2015, Jevdet Bey, governor of Van district, ordered the Armenians of Van to immediately supply 4,000 "conscripts" for military service. By this point, the murders of Armenians in the Army were common knowledge, and Jevdet Bey had already conducted massacres in nearby villages, so the citizens of Van believed (and almost certainly were correct) that the 4,000 men were to be killed. They therefore did not comply. To avoid being portrayed as outright rebels, they offered 500 men and exemption money for the rest. Nonetheless, Jevdet Bey would not hear of compromise. He immediately declared the town to be in a state of rebellion and proclaimed that any resistance to his troops would result in summary executions.

The next day, Ottoman soldiers seized a woman who was attempting to enter the city. Two Armenian men who came to her aid were shot dead, and the battle was on. The Armenian militia easily won the first few encounters and fortified the city as well as they could. Nonetheless, the usual supply problems of a besieged place would have almost certainly have resulted in eventual starvation and defeat. The salvation of the city came with the arrival of the Russian Army. A month after the initial Turkish attacks, Russian troops were in control of key areas near Van, and by 31st of May the siege was over.

The entry of the Russian Army, while it did supply Van with a happy ending, allowed the Turks to claim that they had been right all along: the Armenians would be happy to co-operate with the invading Russians. It did not seem to concern them that their own barbaric treatment of the heretofore mostly-loyal minority had led to this situation.

I thought about a number of maps to mark this event. The "Siege" map, despite the name, doesn't really do a great job of portraying a siege. Stalingrad is closer to what I want to portray here, but it seems too big and complex for a relatively small conflict. In the end, I think Texan Wars will do, with its connotations of the siege of the Alamo and other places.

Part 9: The Great Deportations Begin

In May of 1915 a "Temporary Law of Deportation" was passed, giving the Pashas (military governors) the legal power to deport anyone they sensed as a threat to national security. Almost immediately, it became obvious that the "deportations" were genocidal death marches.

Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser states that, from the statements of Talaat Pasha[61] it is clear that the officials were aware that the deportation order was genocidal.[62] Another historian Taner Akçam states that the telegrams show that the overall coordination of the genocide was taken over by Talaat Pasha.[63]

The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. There is no evidence that the Ottoman government provided the extensive facilities and supplies that would have been necessary to sustain the life of hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees during their forced march to the Syrian desert or after.[64] 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".[65] Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha were completely aware that by abandoning the Armenian deportees in the desert they were condemning them to certain death.[66] A dispatch from a "high diplomatic source in Turkey, not American, reporting the testimony of trustworthy witnesses" about the plight of Armenian deportees in northern Arabia and the Lower Euphrates valley was extensively quoted by The New York Times in August 1916:

The witnesses have seen thousands of deported Armenians under tents in the open, in caravans on the march, descending the river in boats and in all phases of their miserable life. Only in a few places does the Government issue any rations, and those are quite insufficient. The people, therefore, themselves are forced to satisfy their hunger with food begged in that scanty land or found in the parched fields.

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, if proof was still needed as to who is responsible for the massacre, for the Turkish resolve to destroy the Armenians"

Click image to enlarge.

Source: wikipediahttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AArmenian_Genocide_Map-en.svg
By Sémhur [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

English: Map of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

• Each size shows a massacre. There are three types of massacre: in a control centre (red dot), in a station (pink dot), in a concentration and annihilation center (black dot). The size of the dot shows the relative number of killed Armenians.
  
• Each pair of swords shows an area of Armenian resistance: greater resistance (red swords) or lesser resistance (black swords). The different size of swords is to save space into the map, it means nothing.
  
• Dots in Black Sea representing Armenians (mainly women and children) drowned into the sea (see Armenian Genocide for references).

Map: Middle East

Part 10: The Full Horror Unfolds

Eyewitness reports from Syria seem stunningly similar to eyewitness reports of the Jewish Holocaust a generation later.

German engineers and labourers 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".[35]:326 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.[38]:349

Rape was an integral part of the genocide;[67] military commanders told their men to "do to [the women] whatever you wish", resulting in widespread sexual abuse. Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, including Mosul according to the report of the German consul there, constituting an important source of income for accompanying soldiers.[68] Rössler, the German consul in Aleppo during the genocide, heard from an "objective" Armenian that around a quarter of young women, whose appearance was "more or less pleasing", were regularly raped by the gendarmes, and that "even more beautiful ones" were violated by 10–15 men. This resulted in girls and women being left behind dying.[69]

Concentration camps

A network of 25 concentration camps was set up by the Ottoman government to dispose of the Armenians who had survived the deportations to their ultimate point.[70] This network, situated in the region of Turkey's present-day borders with Iraq and Syria, was directed by Şükrü Kaya, one of Talaat Pasha's right-hand men. Some of the camps were only temporary transit points. Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, were briefly used for mass graves and then vacated by autumn 1915. Camps such as Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ayn were built specifically for those whose life expectancy was just a few days.[71] According to Hilmar Kaiser, the Ottoman authorities refused to provide food and water to the victims, increasing the mortality rate, and Muslim men obtained Armenian women through recorded marriages, while the deaths of their husbands were not recorded.[72]

Bernau, an American citizen of German descent, traveled to the areas where Armenians were incarcerated and wrote a report that was deemed factual by Rössler, the German Consul at Aleppo. He reports mass graves containing over 60,000 people in Meskene and large numbers of mounds of corpses, as the Armenians died due to hunger and disease. He reported seeing 450 orphans, who received at most 150 grams of bread per day, in a tent of 5–6 square meters. Dysentery swept through the camp and days passed between the instances of distribution of bread to some. In "Abu Herrera", near Meskene, he described how the guards let 240 Armenians starve, and wrote that they searched "horse droppings" for grains.[73]

(...)

Mass burnings

Lt. Hasan Maruf of the Ottoman army describes how a population of a village were taken all together and then burned.[85] The Commander of the Third Army Vehib's 12-page affidavit, which was dated 5 December 1918, was presented in the Trabzon trial series (29 March 1919) included in the Key Indictment,[86] reporting such a mass burning of the population of an entire village near Muş: "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them".[87] Further, it was reported that "Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after".[88] Vahakn Dadrian wrote that 80,000 Armenians in 90 villages across the Muş plain were burned in "stables and haylofts"

Armenians were transported in overcrowded cattle cars in the desert heat, with little or no food and little or no water. Women were raped; children sold into slavery. Villages were burned. Property was confiscated with the thinnest veneer of legality. Prisoners were used in outlandish medical experiments. Everything about the inhumanity of the "deportation" procedures and the concentration camps foreshadows Hitler's genocide against the Jews, Slavs, and other peoples. Indeed, Hitler even said so himself. In the Obersalzberg Speech,

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?[13]

Due to all these parallels we will mark this phase with games on the WW II Europe map.

Nobody knows with certainty how many died during the peak of the Genocide. Estimates range from 600,000 to 1,500,000. Record-keeping in the Ottoman Empire was shoddy to begin with, and the combination of a Revolution, a World War, a Civil War, and a Genocide did nothing to improve it. The main part of the Genocide began in May of 1915, peaked late in 1915, and was mostly finished by the summer of 1916.

Part 11: Wind-down and Aftermath

After May of 1916 the policy did not immediately change, but there were few intact Armenian communities left to terrorize. The majority of the Armenian population had either died, fled, or been deported. Thus, the Genocide was winding down through a shortage of victims. In 1918, with defeat in the Great War looming over their heads, Turks began to show remorse. One can't help but be cynical. It is not that different from the Germans who suddenly found their conscience in the spring of 1945.

On the night of the 2nd to 3rd of November, the "Three Pashas" (Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha) who had ruled Turkey since 1913 as a triumvirate, were overthrown and fled the country. They were tried and sentenced to death in absentia. The sentences were never carried out, but two of the three were eventually assassinated by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. (Map: WW I Ottoman)

Between 1919 and 1921, a number of officials responsible for the genocide were transported to Malta to be tried by the Allied governments for crimes against humanity. However, unlike Nuremberg a generation later, in 1919 there was no generally accepted legal framework for such a trial, and all the officials were returned to Turkey with no result. (Map: Malta)

Also during the years 1920 to 21, a small war was fought between the new Turkish Government and the newly-independent First Armenian Republic. This war, though small and brief, showed that the ethnic hatred remained undiluted. Probably 90,000 Armenian civilians, and possibly more, were slaughtered by the new Turkish army.

The word "genocide" did not exist in 1920. It was coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew. Lemkin fought in Warsaw in 1939 before fleeing to Lithuania and thence to Sweden. Parallels between the Armenian and Jewish genocides were clear to Lemkin:

coined the term "genocide" in 1943, with the fate of the Armenians in mind; he later explained that:

...it happened so many times ... It happened to the Armenians, then after the Armenians Hitler took action.[197]

(Map: Baltic States)

The New York Times from beginning to end was crucial in bringing news of the Armenian genocide to the western world and keeping the issue in the public's eye. The Times advocated for western aid and intervention from beginning to end, with mixed results. (Map: NYC).

Despite overwhelming evidence of the Genocide, Turkish diplomatic efforts have succeeded in persuading many nations to accept the official Turkish version of events, in which the Armenians were simply being deported for security reasons and the deaths which occurred were mostly unintentional. Only 29 of the world's countries officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, those marked in dark green below:

(The countries marked in light green, including the United States and Australia, are countries where the federal government does not officially recognize the Genocide but many of the individual States have passed resolutions doing so.)

Click image to enlarge.

Armenian genocide monument in Larnaca, Cyprus. Cyprus was among the first countries to recognize the genocide. By Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=10744199
(Map: Cyprus)

-- DK

[gigi_b]

An excellent tournament as always Dukasaur!
And like much of your previous articles, this one is a brilliant resume of an important piece of world history, much of which, I for one, wasn't at all familiar with. I went for a couple of hours of wondering through wikipedia articles in parallel with reading this a few days ago..

[Man from Modesto]

I met a young Armenian-American in 1987 at youth leadership camp. He was a literal genius with an IQ off the standard test range. Since then, I have studied this genocide. The essay above is the most honest I have read.

Where is the tournament? Link?

[Dukasaur]

I met a young Armenian-American in 1987 at youth leadership camp. He was a literal genius with an IQ off the standard test range. Since then, I have studied this genocide. The essay above is the most honest I have read.

Where is the tournament? Link?

On your Central Command page. Click on the Great War box to open it, then any Great War tourneys currently open will be displayed. (This is the only Great War tourney currently open, but there should be another one in a few days.)

[Tviorr]

Is it copy-righted?


I ask because Im hopefully getting into teaching and if so will probably be involved in History and English lessons. - The above would serve rather well as reading material. Its fairly short, fairly recent and while the lix-number is probably high for a second language class even with older pupils, extra time, group work and/or a provided vocabulary should work.

A bit of snipping would of course be required with regards to the tournament and cc-references. - So hmmm could I borrow from it if the situation arises and if so, what name should I credit?