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THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
“Denial is an integral part of atrocity, and it’s a
natural part after a society has committed genocide.
First you kill, and then the memory of killing is
killed.”
— Iris Chang, author of THE RAPE OF NANKING
(1997), when the Japanese translation
of her work was cancelled by Basic
Books due to threats from Japan,
on May 20, 1999.
“Historical amnesia has always been with us:
we just keep forgetting we have it.”
— Russell Shorto
1825
Ever since the 14th Century, Turkey had been impressing the sons of Christian families into a special yeni
chéri or “new army” branch of its armed forces. The size of this special religiously and ethnically segregated
brigade of “janissaries” had reached 135,000, and it had become politically powerful, and it had become
obnoxious to Moslems. The Sultan therefore had his faithful Moslem officers surround this Christian brigade
with Moslem formations of overwhelming size, and after a brief struggle all 135,000 were slaughtered.1
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1872
Nicolas Roch, grandson of Antoine Roch, had become at this point the beheader at Paris itself. Over the years
of his career, he would have five assistants, among them Leon Berger, Henri Ganier, and Jules-Henri
Desfourneaux.
HEADCHOPPING
In this year or the previous year, “The Apotheosis of War,” by Vassili Vereshchagin (1842-1904), a painting
which now hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow:
Since this painting has on occasion been used to illustrate the Armenian Genocide of the 1920s in Turkey,
it should be recorded here that the painting was prior, and imaginative, and that there is no such connection.
1. The same sort of thing would happen at the conclusion of the Iran/Iraq war in our contemporary era. Iran had placed liberal secular
young men in a special formation, and had placed this special formation in charge of a given sector of the frontier for the duration
of the long war against Iraq. But at the end of the war, faced with the spectre of having to reincorporate these liberal secular men
into the Khomeini revolution, the religious leadership decided to trick them, disarm them, charge them with treason for not having
behaved with sufficient martyr spirit (that is, basically, the treason of still being alive at the end of the war), and machine-gun them
right there in the positions they had defended for nine years on the Iraqi border. But this only involved a slaughter of some 10,000,
order of magnitude, not 135,000, and when the matter was reported in the Western press, it sank without a bubble because, of course
— these men had no Western constituency.
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1914
February 21: A Turkish boycott of Armenian businesses was declared by the Ittihadists.
Dr. Nazim traveled throughout the provinces to implement this boycott.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 26: The police spy “David” notified Reshad Bey, Chief of the Political Section of the Constantinople Police
Department, that he was providing names, biographies, pictures, and speeches about reform, as well as other
data, in regard to 2,000 leading Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 2: Parliamentary elections were held in Turkey, and only the candidates approved by the CUP were able to win
seats in the assembly.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 14: An Ittihadist, Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, was appointed as governor-general of Bitlis Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 28: A jury in Paris ruled that the killing of Gaston Calmette (editor of Le Figaro) by Henriette Caillaux (wife of
the French Finance Minister) had been an understandable act of passion, and found her not guilty.
The Russian Council of Ministers ordered a partial mobilization on the Austrian border.
Italy ordered all its vessels to home ports.
At noon, Emperor Franz Josef II signed a declaration of war on Serbia.
WORLD WAR I
Negotiations were initiated between the Turkish and German Imperial governments.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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August 2: By this point all the male inhabitants of the Villa Medici (all Prix de Rome winners) had been mobilized into
the French army. The only female inhabitant, Lili Boulanger, having left a month earlier, the villa stood empty
except for its servants. All theaters, movie houses and music halls in France were closed.
A secret treaty of military alliance was signed between the Ottoman Empire and Germany, that virtually placed
the Turkish armed forces under German command.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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Adolf Hitler received permission to enlist, and joined the 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment in München.
German forces completed their occupation of Luxembourg. By 7PM, the German minister in Brussels handed
over a note which demanded that Belgium “remain neutral” and not oppose German advances into Belgian
territory to face a “French threat.” Germany promised to pay for any damages incurred during the intrusion.
9PM King Albert of Belgium met with his Council of State. They agreed to oppose any German incursion.
With Germany’s demand for free passage through Belgium, World War I began.
WORLD WAR I
August 3: 7AM. A Foreign Ministry courier delivered a note to the German minister in Brussels. Belgium
unexpectedly advised Germany that it was “firmly resolved to repel by all means in its power every attack upon
its rights.” Belgium had rejected Germany’s demand for free passage through Belgium in its attack upon
France.
3PM The British Parliament convened to hear a speech by Foreign Minister Sir William Grey advocating
armed support for Belgium, after which the members rose and cheered. Sir Edward Grey remarked to a friend,
“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
6:30PM Germany declared war on France.
WORLD WAR I
Gabriel Fauré wrote to his wife from Geneva that “I have just spent three appalling days with my blasted
luggage.” Travelling home from Ems he had found the French border closed so he had taken a circuitous route
through Switzerland. Trains in all three countries were being used for mobilization.
A visitor to Bayreuth, Ernest MacMillan, asked the US consul in Nürnberg, Charles Winans, what he should
do in the current political situation. (the British consul having already left the country) Winans told him to
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return to Bayreuth to see what happens.
German forces captured Kalish, Chenstokhov, and Bendzin in Russian Poland.
Italy declared neutrality in the European war.
The Turkish government sent out sealed envelopes containing a general mobilization order to district and
village councils, with strict instructions that they were not to be opened until further notice. A fortnight later,
with the approval of the Ittihad Committee, the instruction would go out, for the councils to open these
envelopes.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 8: The first of twelve Liège forts, Ft. Barchon, fell to the Germans. Serbia went to war against Germany.
French troops entered Mulhouse without opposition.
The Defence of the Realm Act approved by the British Parliament granted the government wide powers to do
whatever seemed necessary to ensure a successful outcome in the war.
WORLD WAR I
Censorship of all telegraphic communication was imposed by the Turkish government.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 18: King Albert ordered a general withdrawal from the Gette to Antwerp and moved his headquarters from
Louvain to Malines.
French forces captured Château Salins near Morhange.
In a day of attacks and counterattacks, the Austrians were stopped by Serbian forces at Sabac.
WORLD WAR I
Looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces of Turkey, under the guise of collecting war
contributions. Stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 Armenian-owned
shops were burned by Turks in the city of Diyarbekir, Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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August 22: Owing to the condition of Russians reporting for military duty, Tsar Nikolai II ordered that for the duration
of the war there would be prohibition (vodka being a state monopoly, he thus eliminated a third of his
government’s income).
A furious battle in the Ardennes ended with 27,000 Frenchmen dead, and masses of survivors fleeing
southward in disorder (this would be recognized as the costliest day in French military history).
Belgian defenders fled from Namur.
German troops occupied Lunéville, Lorraine.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Belgium.
A day after sacking Tamines, Belgium, German soldiers herded 400 residents of the town into the main square,
where they were shot or bayoneted.
French, British, and native forces attacked the Germans on the Chra River, just north of Nuatja, Togoland.
The attack failed but during the night the Germans would retire.
WORLD WAR I
Riders to the Sea: Symphonic Prologue for orchestra by Henry F. Gilbert was performed for the initial time,
in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and was conducted by the composer himself (this was a revision of a
prologue written for Synge’s play).
The entire male population of the Ottoman Empire between the ages of 20 and 45 was conscripted into that
nation’s armed forces.2
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
MILITARY CONSCRIPTION
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August 28, day: Austria went to war against Belgium.
After cutting off the Russian line of retreat, the Germans commenced their major blow at Tannenberg (Stebark)
150 kilometers northwest of Warsaw.
In three days of fighting, the French staved off furious German assaults south of Sedan.
Ministers of the United States, Mexico, and Sweden visited Louvain and witnessed the death and devastation.
The news would be sent around the world.
WORLD WAR I
Turkish troops were garrisoned in Armenian schools and churches in the Sivas Province. In the city of Sivas,
2. It seems not to be well known that the Turks of the Ottoman Empire accomplished the liquidation of the young-male segment of
the Armenian population largely by means of the military draft. Official Turkish accounts acknowledge, however, that through
concentrating the young men by means of this general conscription, the slaughter of about 800,000 male Armenians was enabled.
Refer to Vahakn Dadrian, THE HISTORY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: ETHNIC CONFLICT FROM THE BALKANS TO ANATOLIA TO
THE CAUCASUS (Providence RI: Berghahn Books, 1995, page 226).Henry Morgenthau would report that:
In the early part of 1915, the Armenian soldiers in the Turkish
army were reduced to a new status. Up to that time most of them
had been combatants, but now they were all stripped of their
arms and transformed into workmen. Instead of serving their
country as artillerymen and cavalrymen, these former soldiers
now discovered that they had been transformed into road
labourers and pack animals. Army supplies of all kinds were
loaded on their backs, and, stumbling under the burdens and
driven by the whips and bayonets of the Turks, they were forced
to drag their weary bodies into the mountains of the Caucasus.
Sometimes they would have to plough their way, burdened in this
fashion, almost waist high through snow. They had to spend
practically all their time in the open, sleeping on the bare
ground — whenever the ceaseless prodding of their taskmasters
gave them an occasional opportunity to sleep. They were given
only scraps of food; if they fell sick they were left where they
had dropped, their Turkish oppressors perhaps stopping long
enough to rob them of all their possessions — even of their
clothes. If any stragglers succeeded in reaching their
destinations, they were not infrequently massacred. In many
instances Armenian soldiers were disposed of in even more
summary fashion, for it now became almost the general practice
to shoot them in cold blood. In almost all cases the procedure
was the same. Here and there squads of 50 or 100 men would be
taken, bound together in groups of four, and then marched out
to a secluded spot a short distance from the village. Suddenly
the sound of rifle shots would fill the air, and the Turkish
soldiers who had acted as the escort would sullenly return to
camp. Those sent to bury the bodies would find them almost
invariably stark naked, for, as usual, the Turks had stolen all
their clothes. In cases that came to my attention, the murderers
had added a refinement to their victims’ sufferings by
compelling them to dig their graves before being shot.
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Armenia, 56,000 soldiers of the 10th Army Corps were quartered in and around the Christian districts.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 8: The French moved 6,000 men 60 kilometers from Gagny, near Paris, to the front, by use of 600 taxicabs.
WORLD WAR I
British forces attacked across the Petit Morin River, forcing the Germans to abandon Montmirail.
Alban Berg sent the 1st and 3d of his Three Orchestral Pieces op.6 to Arnold Schoenberg, hoping to dedicate
them to him.
The Turkish government abrogated the Capitulations (the commercial and judicial rights of the Europeans in
the Ottoman Empire).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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September 11: Australians capture New Pomerania (New Britain) in the Bismarck Archipelago from Germany.
Austro-Hungarians retreat from the Russians almost as far west as Krakow.
French troops advance as far as Compiègne and Châlons-sur-Marne.
British troops from Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) attacked and scattered the Germans on the Lumi River.
WORLD WAR I
The Armenian National Assembly, composed of civil and religious representatives, met in Constantinople and
advised Armenians in the provinces to remain calm in the face of provocation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 27: Japanese forces attacked the outer defenses of Tsingtao.
Russian forces invaded Hungary.
The German garrison at Douala, Kamerun, surrendered to British and French forces offshore.
WORLD WAR I
Frédéric Masson of the French Academy published an article urging his countrymen to banish Wagner from
the country “by violence if need be.”
On German orders, the Turks closed the Dardanelles to foreign shipping.
News reached Constantinople about the demand made by the Turkish government to the Armenian population
in Zeitun, to turn in its weapons, including any and all types of knives.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 30: British and French troops from Douala attacked the Germans at Tiko, driving them off.
WORLD WAR I
Publishers Breitkopf and Härtel announced that the International Music Society had been discontinued on
account of war.
Ezra Pound wrote to Harriet Monroe, the publisher of Poetry magazine, alerting her about “The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock”: “[T.S. Eliot] has sent in the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American.”
Turkish authorities distributed arms to the Muslim residents of the town of Keghi in Erzerum Province on the
excuse that the Armenians there were unreliable.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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October 1: All foreign postal services in Turkey were closed on government order.
Nazaret Chavush, the most notable Armenian leader in Zeitun, was murdered on the order of Haidar Pasha,
governor of Marash.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The end of the world according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In fact, they viewed the entirety of World War I as
the Battle of Armageddon3 (Skinner, Stephen. MILLENNIUM PROPHECIES. Stamford CT: Longmeadow Press,
3. Armageddon = the place (possibly to be identified with Har Megiddo, the Mount of Megiddo, near Tel Aviv, near which many
battles were fought) designated in REVELATION 16:16 as the scene of the final battle between the kings of the earth at the end of
the world.
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1994, page 102).
MILLENNIALISM
October 7: News reached Constantinople of looting under the guise of war contributions in Shabin-Karahisar,
Armenia.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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October 10, day: Germans defeated Russians at Grojec, south of Warsaw.
Remaining Belgian troops in Antwerp surrendered as the Germans completed the occupation of the city.
There was news that “the war contribution” looting of Armenians by Turks was continuing in Diyarbekir
Province. In Zeitun, Armenia, all the Armenian notables were called to a meeting. About three score attended
— and they were immediately taken into detention.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Follow the Colours, in the version for male chorus, by Edwar Elgar to words of Stretton, was performed for
the initial time, at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Also premiered was Elgar’s song A Soldier’s Song: Roll
Call to words of Begbie.
Margot, a comedia lírica by Joaquín Turina to words of Martínez Sierra, was performed for the initial time, in
Madrid.
King Carol I of Romania died in Sinaia, succeeded by his nephew, Ferdinand I.
A meeting of revolutionary leaders in Aguascalientes agreed to back Eulalio Gutiérrez as President of Mexico.
In Berlin, Ferruccio Busoni wrote in his diary, “Today Antwerp ‘fell’...What to they actually intend to do with
Belgium? Hand it back a little damaged.”
WORLD WAR I
October 17: Bands of chetes began looting, violating women and children, and wholesale murdering in Erzerum
Province.
Leaders of the Armenian nationalist Dashnak party organization in Erzerum were arrested.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 9, day: News from the interior of Turkey reaches the Armenian community of Constantinople that
persecutions already exceed earlier actions against the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
HMAS Sydney forced the raider SMS Emden aground at the Cocos Islands. The Germans lost 111 crew
members although some crew members escaped.
Austrians crossed the Sava east of Belgrade but were stopped by Serbian forces.
WORLD WAR I
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November 11: German forces counterattacked against Russians along the Vistula, crashing through the defenders north
of Lodz.
In a blinding rain storm, German troops broke through the British lines east of Ypres, but the hole was plugged
by the last possible reserves. This marked the end of a month of fighting (The First Battle of Ypres) during
which both the German advance and an Allied counterattack were halted around the city of Ypres, Belgium.
WORLD WAR I
A Proclamation of Jihad, directed against England, France, and Russia, was issued in Constantinople and
legitimated the formation of the chete organizations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 13: Unfounded accusations are launched against the Armenians that they had revolted and were preparing
to join the Russian forces.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 14, day: British and Indian troops began to fight their way up the Shatt-al-Arab against Turkish opposition.
WORLD WAR I
The village of Otsni in Erzerum Province was attacked at night by chete forces. The local Armenian priest and
many other Armenians were killed. Every house was looted. The first attacks by chete forces on the Armenian
villages of Erzerum were reported.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The sheikh-ul-Islam, leader of Sunni Muslims, announces in Constantinople a jihad against all Christians
(except Germans and Austro-Hungarians).
After a convention of Mexican revolutionary leaders broke down, two of them, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho
Villa, joined to force a 3d, Venustiano Carranza, out of Mexico City. The two victors set up their own
government in the capital while Carranza retired to Veracruz to plot revenge.
November 18, day: The Jihad Proclamation was read in all the provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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November 19, day: Mass executions of Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army took place in various public squares for
the purpose of terrorizing the Armenians, while with voluntary contributions, Armenians were building several
hospitals for the use of the Turkish army through the Red Crescent Society.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Five Bolshevik Duma members were arrested and sent to Turkestan for urging citizens to fight their own
government rather than the Germans.
WORLD WAR I
Turkish authorities began executing Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army. (this was done publicly in order
to terrorize the civilian Armenian population).
November 20: Orders are issued from Constantinople instructing the provincial administrators to oust all Armenian
functionaries in the service of the Ottoman government.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 21: In Mush, Ittihadist agents distributed arms to the Turkish population after arousing them with false
stories of Armenian outrages.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 23, day: British Indian troops captured Basra from the Turks.
Previously undisturbed Armenian schools and churches in Sivas Province, together with many private
residences, were requisitioned by the Turkish army for use as barracks. The carts, horses, and other travel
equipment of the Armenian villagers in the provinces were confiscated.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The Portuguese parliament authorized the government to declare war on Germany if necessary.
WORLD WAR I
By order of President Wilson, American forces departed from Vera Cruz, Mexico.
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November 26: Robbery and looting on a large scale was reported in Van Province.
The War Ministry distributed explosives, rifles, and other equipment to the irregular forces of the Special
Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa).
Enver’s uncle, Halil Pasha, the military governor of Constantinople, began organizing Special Organization
units in Constantinople by enrolling criminals released from prison.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 28: Austrian forces retreated to the east of Krakow and south of the Vistula.
WORLD WAR I
November 29: Halil Pasha instructed the governor of Izmid (Izmit) to identify leaders for Special Organization units
and to release criminals from prisons to join these bands.
The vice-governor of Izmid (Izmit) armed the Special Organization with weapons supplied by the War
Ministry.
Chete forces consisting of intentionally released convicts were armed by the government in Van Province. In
the region of Van requisitions took the form of open robbery and looting.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 30: Germans and Russians engaged at Lowicz-Sanniki.
WORLD WAR I
Soleá for voice and guitar by Manuel de Falla was performed for the initial time, in Teatro Lara, Madrid, as
part of Martínez Sierra’s play La pasión.
Having completed his job organizing the Special Organization in Artvin, Behaeddin Shakir was instructed to
move on to Trebizond.
The central command of the Special Organization sent instruction for supplying the chete bands with money,
vehicles, and others equipment.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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December: The beginning of a series of isolated murders to terrorize the Armenian population.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 1: Austro-Hungarian forces attacked advancing Russians at Limanowa, 50 kilometers southeast of Krakow.
Austro-Hungarian troops occupied Belgrade.
WORLD WAR I
Reports reached Constantinople that raids by irregular chete forces on the Armenian villages of Erzerum
Province were continuing.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 2: Turks looted the properties of subjects of Allied nations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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December 3: The Ittihad Inspector of Balikesir sent a message to Dr. Mehmed Nazim4 of the central committee of the
Special Organization via Midhat Shukri, the Central Secretary of Ittihad, that the Interior Ministry and the
Ittihad Committee, in accordance with issued orders, were busy organizing the irregular chete bands.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Serbian forces launched an unexpected counterattack against Austria.
WORLD WAR I
Irving Gifford Fine was born in Boston, the 1st of three children born to George Fine, a lawyer, and Charlotte
Friedman.
String Quartet in e minor by Ethel Smyth was performed for the initial time, in Aeolian Hall, London.
December 5: Reports continued to reach Constantinople, that the chete raids on the Armenian villages of Erzerum
Province were continuing.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
4. The Armenian Genocide was masterminded by the Central Committee of the Young Turk Party (“Committee for Union and
Progress”) which was dominated by Mehmed Talât Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha. This was a group of
racists whose ideology was being articulated by Zia Gökalp, Dr. Mehmed Nazim, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir.
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December 14, Wednesday: Virgie Ileen Peake was born in Jasper, Arkansas.
French commander Joseph Joffre had schemed to break out of the current trench warfare stalemate on the
Western Front by means of a major offensive against the Germans, stretching throughout the Artois and
Champagne regions of France from Nieuport in the north to Verdun in the south. In the 1st Battle of
Champagne, the 8th infantry Brigade at Wytschaete attempted to advance in winter weather in the face of well
entrenched machine gun battalions, and the attack of course failed with heavy casualties.
WORLD WAR I
At Baylor University in Waco, Texas, a private Baptist institution of higher education, the student body voted
on whether the buffalo, eagle, antelope, bookworm, or bear might best do service as their campus mascot.
The North American Black Bear won by a few more than half the 406 votes. There is now a Bill & Eva William
Bear Habitat near campus, and a Bear Program with a Lead Team elected by the members of the Baylor
Chamber of Commerce. Since 1914 a succession of more than 50 such ursines have been able to consider
Waco their home away from home.
At the Hotel Savoy in Buenos Aires, Lisandro de la Torre and others founded El Partido Demócrata Progresista
(PDP).
The Turkish Cabinet charged Ismail Enver Pasha with command of the offensive on the Caucasian front,
and assigned Mehmet Talât Pasha5 as Acting Minister of War while continuing him in his position as Minister
of the Interior.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
5. Also known as Talaat Bey (1874-1921), this man would become the principal architect of the Armenian Genocide. Born in Edirne
(Adrianople), he had become a telegrapher at a young age. He was active in the Young Turk movement seeking to overthrow Sultan
Abdul Hamid (Abdulhamit) II. He joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and quickly emerged a leader in the secret
organization. His profession gave him access to the principal means of communication in his era and his assignment as Chief
Secretary of Posts and Telegraphs in Salonika (now Thessaloniki, Greece) placed him at the hub of Turkish revolutionary plotting.
After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, Talaat became one of the most influential politicians of the Ottoman Empire. In 1909 he
was appointed Minister of the Interior and then Minister of Posts. By 1912 he was Secretary General of the CUP, which the
following year seized complete power in the Ottoman Empire. The 1913 coup saw the rise of the so-called Young Turk triumvirate
consisting of Talaat as Minister of the Interior, Enver as Minister of War, and Jemal as Minister of the Marine.
Talaat was one of the main advocates of the Turkification of the Ottoman Empire. As Minister of the Interior, he assumed primary
responsibility for planning and implementing the Armenian Genocide. He employed the system of provincial administration
subordinate to his direct authority as the main instrument for carrying out the deportations. The 1915 orders for the eviction of the
Armenians from their homes carried his signature, much as subsequent orders clarifying the originally disguised intentions of the
deportations as annihilation also bear his name. Talaat personally supervised the process and his ability to operate a telegraph
machine enhanced his capacity to carry out the policies of his government through direct and secret communications to other CUP
cohorts specifically assigned provincial administrative posts to receive and carry out the orders. This method of operation
circumvented the machinery of the central government and permitted a handful of CUP fanatics to subvert the state in order to carry
out their criminal conspiracy. The organized and scheduled depopulation of Armenians from one town after another carried out with
complete surprise and minimal cost, their systematic liquidation once moved to remote locations, and the methodical plunder of
their properties demonstrated Talaat's capacity for calculated cruelty and only increased his power and prestige in the CUP. Talaat
went so far as to expressly order the destruction of young Armenian orphans. In February 1917 Talaat became Grand Vizier, earning
him the title Pasha. He resigned his post in October 1918 as the empire neared total defeat.
Aware of the consequences he faced because of the declared intentions of the Allied Powers to hold him and his associates
responsible for the extermination of the Armenians, Talaat fled to Germany where he lived under an assumed name. During the
tribunal convened in Constantinople by the post-war Ottoman government, Talaat was tried in absentia, found guilty of capital
crimes, including massacre, and was condemned to death. Whereas Germany refused to extradite him, Talaat was identified and
gunned down in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, an Armenian whose extended family had disappeared from its native town
of Erzinjan. Talaat's assassination caused a furor, and Tehlirian's trial became a major media event exposing the knowledge of the
German government about the Armenian massacres, which had been kept from the German public during the war. The jury, hearing
the eyewitness testimony of German officers, acquitted Tehlirian. As for Talaat's remains, they were returned to Istanbul in 1943 by
Nazi Germany and given burial with full honors.
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December 22: An attack by the Ottoman Third Army corps opens the Battle of Sarikamish on the Caucasian Front.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 23: Foreign missionaries abandon the interior of Turkey as crosses on missions are broken by the Turks and
replaced by crescents.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 26: Armenians were put to use as porters of army supplies in Erzerum, Trebizond, and Sivas Provinces
under the worst of cold winter conditions — so that they would die of overwork and illness.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 31: Sahag Odabashian, the newly appointed Prelate of Erzinjan, was traveling from Constantinople via
Sivas to Erzinjan where he was to be installed in office, when he was slain in the village of Kanli-Tash, near
Shabin-Karahisar, by six chetes organized by Ahmed Muammer, the governor-general of Sivas Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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1915
JANUARY
January 1: German submarine U-24 sank the battleship HMS Formidable in the English Channel.
WORLD WAR I
The 2/4 Field Ambulance of the Royal Army Medical Corps, containing orderly Ralph Vaughan Williams was
relocated from Chelsea to Dorking.
The 1st issue of The Musical Quarterly was published in New York City.
Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart op.132 for orchestra by Max Reger was performed for the initial
time, in Wiesbaden, the composer conducting.
The Ittihad representative of Bursa reported to the Ittihad Central Committee that local criminals and bandits
had been registered in the Special Organization.
Nuri, the vice-governor of Gavar District in Van Province, received orders from the military governor to kill
all Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army who were stationed in his district.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 5: The Turkish government publicly accused the Armenian bakers in the army bakeries of Sivas of poisoning
the bread of the Turkish forces. The bakers were cruelly beaten despite the fact that a group of doctors were
able to demonstrate the charge to be false by examining, and themselves consuming, the bread in question. The
government did not rescind the accusation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 8: Turkish and Kurdish chetes (Halil Pasha’s “First Corps”) attacked Armenian and Assyrian villages in
northwest Persia. They would remain around the city of Tavriz (Tabriz) and the city of Urmia from January 8
until January 29, 1915. From Urmia alone, more than 18,000 Armenians, together with many Assyrians and
even Persian Muslims, fled to the Caucasus.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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January 8: French forces attack Germans near Soissons.
WORLD WAR I
Turkish and Kurdish paramilitaries attack the Armenian and Assyrian communities of northwestern Persia.
18,000 civilians flee the area. The attackers would remain in the vicinity of Tabriz and Urmia until January 29.
Eine vaterländische Ouvertüre op.140 for orchestra by Max Reger was performed for the initial time, in
Wiesbaden, the composer conducting.
January 12, day: A measure to extend voting rights to women was defeated in the US House of Representatives.
In order to make future defense impossible for the Armenians, Ahmed Muammer, the governor-general of
Sivas Province, ordered the destruction of Tavra-Koy and other strategically located villages around the city
of Sivas. Inside the city of Sivas strategically-located buildings were requisitioned.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
A German/colonial attack on the Indian garrison at Jassin, German East Africa, failed.
British troops landed on Mafia Island off the coast of German East Africa, capturing its German and colonial
garrison of 52.
WORLD WAR I
January 14, day: The Seven Popular Spanish Songs of Manuel de Falla were performed for the 1st time, in Teatro
Ateneo, Madrid, the composer at the piano.
German forces launched a final assault on the French lines on the north bank of the River Aisne near Soissons,
inflicting 12,000 casualties and taking 5,200 prisoners.
WORLD WAR I
January 16, day: The last actions of the Battle of Sarikamish were reported: the Turkish army had lost 70,000 out of
85,000.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 19, day: Enver arrived in Sivas by automobile from Erzerum after his calamitous defeat at Sarikamish. He
instructed that hereafter the Army was to accept only his orders, none from German commanders. He
conscripted at once all those deferred in the 20-to-40 age group, along with all males between the ages of 18
and 20 and all males between the ages of 45 and 52.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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January 22, day: Enver arrived in Constantinople by automobile from Sivas. In a speech he congratulating the
Armenians for admirably doing their duty on the Caucasian Front and elsewhere (this would soon be
understood to have been merely an attempt to lull the Armenians of Constantinople who, because of the
presence of a large European community of observers in the city, had not yet begun to experience the general
persecutions in the isolated provinces).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 23, day: Enver, who had again become actively the Minister of War, issued a general order that any person
who resisted his orders was to be shot.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 24, day: The Royal Navy intercepted a German squadron off Dogger Bank, gave chase, and did battle (this
British victory cost about 1,000 lives).
WORLD WAR I
In Rome’s Teatro Augusteo, Sinfonia drammatica for orchestra by Ottorino Respighi was performed for the
initial time.
FEBRUARY
February: Ezra Pound’s “Imagism and England.”
In Turkey, the vice-governor of Mush ordered 70 gendarmes to attack the village of Koms and kill the
Armenian Dashnak leader Rupen, and all persons with him (Rupen and his companions would be able to resist,
and eventually escape into the Caucasus region).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 2, day: Talaat advised German Ambassador Count Hans von Wangenheim that the present war was the only
propitious moment to conclude the Armenian Question.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 4, day: Germany publicly declares a war zone around the British Isles. They announce that all merchant ships
may be sunk within that area without warning.
WORLD WAR I
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February 7, day: Germans attack the Russians in what has come to be known as the Winter Battle of Masuria, during
a driving blizzard. They succeed in capturing Johannisburg but the Russians doggedly defend the Carpathian
passes.
WORLD WAR I
Quartet for piano and strings op.133 by Max Reger was performed for the initial time, in Leipzig, the composer
conducting.
February 10, day: President Woodrow Wilson sent simultaneous protests to Great Britain and Germany — Germany
for its February 4th declaration of a war zone, and Britain for its January 31st authorization for misuse of the
American flag.
The Russians were defeated by the Germans in the Battle of Masurian Lakes.
WORLD WAR I
S. Pasdermadjian, the Second Director of the Ottoman Bank, was murdered in the presence of German MajorGeneral Posseldt — who would report to his government that no investigation was carried out by the Turks,
nor was any attempt made by the authorities there to apprehend the guilty parties.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Enver Pasha’s brother-in-law, Hafiz Hakki, died of typhoid fever and was replaced by Mahmud Kamil as
Commander of the Third Army (Erzerum).
February 14, day: Tahir Jevdet, the governor-general of Van Province, was reported as saying that the government
needed to begin at once, in the finishing off of the Armenians in Van.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 15, day: Russian forces began a week-long furious resistance against advancing Germans in the Augustow
Forest.
Germans took Plozk on the Vistula.
French forces attacked the Germans west of Verdun and continued the attack until March 16. While the French
advance was measured in meters, their dead were measured in the thousands.
WORLD WAR I
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February 17, day: German forces surrounded 70,000 Russians in the Augustów Forest.
French forces made slight gains near Verdun, in Artois, Champagne and Vosges. Germans counterattacked in
Champagne at night.
The two Zeppelins that raided Norfolk on January 18 were forced down by high winds in Denmark.
Four crew members were killed and the rest were interned by the Danish.
WORLD WAR I
February 26: Vramian, an Armenian parliamentary deputy from Van, wrote to Talaat advising him to remove the large
number of chetes in Van Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 27: In Sivas Province a general attack was reported on many Armenian villages accompanied by raping,
looting, and an increasingly larger number of killings.
In the village of Chomaklu in Kayseri Province and in other places, the government demanded all weapons
from the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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MARCH
March: Ezra Pound’s “Provincia Deserta.”
A traveling commission of parliamentary deputies toured all the cities of Anatolia. The commission included
Dr. Fazil Berki, parliamentary deputy from Chankri, Ubedulla, parliamentary deputy from Smyrna, and
Behaeddin Shakir, member of the Central Committee of the Ittihad Party. In the mosques, they addressed the
Moslem population of Turkey, characterizing the Armenian Christians of Turkey as internal enemies who must
be destroyed.
In Sivas Province, the population in all the Armenian villages was disarmed.
Omer Naji, a circulating Ittihad propagandist, traveled to Aleppo, Adana and nearby towns to arouse the
Muslims.
Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper in Constantinople, was closed by a government order issued
through the office of Osman Bedri, Police Commissioner of that city. The contents of the petty cash box, some
300 Turkish pounds, box were stolen. The printing presses were removed to the Ittihad Press, where the organ
Tanin was published by the CUP, with Huseyin Jahid (Yalchin) as editor-in-chief and Ahmed Emin as associate
editor.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 1: In Marash, the Armenians in the Turkish Army were deprived of their uniforms and arms.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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March 3: D.W. Griffith’s feature-length film The Birth of a Nation opened in New York City. The darkies were a
laughing, happy folk, trusting and supportive of their betters, until they were freed, at which point they became
tricky, violent, and sex-obsessed. The scholarship of Woodrow Wilson was the major source of historical
realism for this film. Wilson would arrange for a special White House screening.
(deathmask)
US CIVIL WAR
Germans use liquid fire for the 1st time, at Vosges.
Sergei Prokofiev arrived in Rome for his 1st foreign performing engagement, expenses paid by Sergei
Diaghilev.
A dispatch from the Ittihad Central Committee was released announcing the decision to exterminate the
Armenians. Armenian soldiers in the Erzerum army area were deprived of their uniforms and arms.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The British decided to make an amphibious assault on the strait of the Dardanelles.
WORLD WAR I
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March 5: In Van Province, regular gendarmes and chetes were reported attacking many villages inhabited by
Armenians and Assyrians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 6: King Konstantinos of Greece dismisses Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos because of his decision to allow
the Allies to land at Thessaloniki and his intention to send Greek troops to Gallipoli.
Russian forces drive Germans from the Augustów Forest.
WORLD WAR I
March 7: A search for weapons was conducted in Iskenderun (Alexandretta) and a mass arrest of Armenians carried
out.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 9: Chetes and regular Army units attacked Zeitun. Six Turkish gendarmes were killed by individuals resisting
the attack.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 12: Massacres and robberies were carried in Alashkert District as part of a general campaign led by the chetes
forces against the Armenian villages of the district.
Mass arrests of Armenians were carried out in Dortyol and a public announcement was made that those
arrested would be sent to work on road construction near Aleppo. They were never heard of again.
Ismail Enver Pasha6 left for Berlin to see Kaiser Wilhelm II.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Charles T. Griffes signed a contract with G. Schirmer to publish his piano pieces op.5 & 6.
Britain and France announced their agreement that Russia may annex Constantinople and the Dardanelles.
Turkish paramilitary attacks began against several Armenian areas in the Alashkert district, with murdering,
raping and looting. Mass arrests and deportations of Armenians began in Dortyol.
German forces counterattacked at Neuve-Chapelle, but the British held. The battle for Neuve-Chapelle had to
that point cost 26,000 casualties. The line stabilized in the sector.
WORLD WAR I
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March 14: Sahag, the Catholicos of Cilicia, advised the Armenians of Zeitun not to resist under any conditions.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 16: Russian forces advanced between Urmia and Tavriz.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
WORLD WAR I
March 18: An Allied attack on the Dardanelles began.
WORLD WAR I
In Zeitun, the Turkish forces arrested many of the remaining Armenian notables and intellectuals, whom they
would torture and then kill.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 19: To terrify the Armenian population, six Armenian soldiers from the town of Gurun were publicly hanged
in Sivas.
Greek recruits were massacred near Smyrna.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
6. Ismail Enver Pasha (1881-1922) was an instigator of the Armenian Genocide. A military officer, Enver was the principal
proponent of Germanophile policies in the Young Turk government. Enver demonstrated organizational and leadership skills at an
early age. He was one of the organizers of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. In 1911 he organized the defense of Libya against Italy
and in 1913, after leading the January 23 coup which installed the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in power, he reversed
the Ottoman defeat in the First Balkan War by recapturing Edirne (Adrianople) from the Bulgarians. By 1914 he was married into
the Ottoman imperial family and was Minister of War. He steered the Ottoman state into war on the side of the Central Powers by
entering into an alliance with Germany. While nominal command of the Ottoman armies was exercised by Turkish officers,
planning, strategizing, and financing devolved to the large German military mission serving out of the War Ministry. In pursuit of
his quest for a Pan-Turkic empire stretching to Central Asia, Enver personally led the first major campaign against Russia which
resulted in a disastrous defeat at the border outpost of Sarikamish in the Armenian highlands.
Enver played a major role in the Armenian Genocide. He took the first steps to implement the CUP blueprint for genocide by
ordering the Armenian recruits in the Ottoman forces to be disarmed and reassigned to labor battalions before their summary
executions. While these instructions were explained on the basis of accusations of treasonous activity, the defeat of his army only
provided the pretext for escalating a campaign of extermination whose instruments had already been forged and which now were
unleashed against the civilian population also. Within the Ministry of War, Enver had at his disposal a secret outfit called the Special
Organization (SO), Teshkilâti Mahsusa in Turkish. The SO was led by Behaeddin Shakir, a medical doctor, and its cohorts in the
field were commanded by CUP confidants whose singular assignment was the execution of the Armenian population. These mobile
killer units carried out the systematic massacres of the deported Armenians. Upon the collapse of the Russian front in 1918, the
advance of the Ottoman armies into the Caucasus, under the command of Enver's brother, Nuri, provided further opportunity for the
SO operatives to instigate atrocities against Armenians in Azerbaijan.
At the end of the war Enver took refuge in Germany. A post-war tribunal in Constantinople tried him in absentia and condemned
him to death. Many officers of the Special Organization were arrested by the British occupation authorities after the Ottoman
surrender. While some were eventually put on trial and found guilty of crimes, most eluded justice when Mustafa Kemal negotiated
their release in exchange for British prisoners. As for Enver, in 1920 he traveled to Russia and offered his services to the new Soviet
regime which sent him to quell rebellion among the Muslims of Central Asia, only to see him join the Basmaji revolt as soon as he
arrived in Bukhara. He was killed in action by Soviet forces.
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March 21: Two German Zeppellins drop high explosives and incendiary bombs on Paris. One person was killed, eight
injured.
WORLD WAR I
March 24: Chetes and gendarmes attacked Armenians in the towns of Bayburt (Papert) and Terchan in Erzerum
Province, and in Bitlis.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 26: Sahag, Catholicos of Cilicia, renewed his instruction to the Armenians of Zeitun not to resist.
Thirty more Armenian community leaders were arrested in Zeitun.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 28: The Armenian Dashnak leader, Murad, resisted arrest in Sivas and fled to the mountains, and after many
daring escapes would reach the Caucasus.
Hamid, the governor-general of Diyarbekir Province, was removed for opposing the order of massacre,
and was replaced by Dr. Reshid.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 29: In Aleppo, the capital of the province, Jemal Pasha falsely announced that the Armenians of Zeitun were in
revolt and therefore he was instructing the military authorities, to the exclusion of the civilian government, to
take measures to punish the Armenians.
Artillery and three regiments of the regular army were sent to Zeitun as reinforcements for the three battalions
which had arrived in the town in January and February.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 30: Mass beatings and tortures were inflicted on the Armenians of Chomaklu.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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March 31: In Marash, Turks announced a mass meeting to prepare a massacre. Acting under the terms of the March
29 order, the government forbade civilians from taking matters into their own hands.
Deportation of Armenians from Zeitun began. Some of the inhabitants were sent toward the Konia Desert in
central Anatolia. The rest were sent toward Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) in the Syrian Desert.
At some point toward the end of the month, although perhaps not on this exact day, the Turkish government
forbade American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau from sending any coded messages to the American consuls
and deprived him of his diplomatic prerogative of receiving uncensored communications.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
APRIL
April 1: The mass arrest of Armenian political leaders was carried out in Sivas and other provinces.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
When French pilot Lt. Roland Garros shot down a German Albatros with a newly outfitted forward-firing
machine gun, the era of the dogfight began.
WORLD WAR I
April 2: General robbery and arrests of Armenians were reported throughout Bitlis and Erzerum Provinces.
In Sivas Province, battalions of gendarmery and 4000 chetes began regular attacks on Armenian villages with
increasing brutality.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 3: (Easter week) Mass arrests and a search for weapons were carried out in Marash and Hadjin (Hajen), with the
seizure of all arms, including household knives. Numerous rapes during the house searches were reported.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 5: In Marash, in an excuse to loot, Turks demanded 5,000 jackasses from the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 6: French forces attacked the Germans east of Verdun (Battle of the Woëvre) with negligible results. This attack
would disintegrate around April 24th.
WORLD WAR I
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April 8: Turkish emigrants from Bosnia were settled by the government in the villages of Zeitun District. 8,000 Turkish
regulars were reported in Zeitun.
The famous monastery of Zeitun was burned by the Turks.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 9: Turks declared a meeting in Marash to deport the Armenians. The Turkish government forbade civilian action
on the ground that the March 16 Army command covered the situation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 11: Talaat promised the Armenian parliamentary deputy Bedros Halajian that there would be no massacres.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 12: Widespread attacks on, and looting of, Armenian villages in Bitlis and Erzerum Provinces were fed by the
accusation that the Armenians had caused the war.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 14: The governor-general of Van, Tahir Jevdet invited the Armenian parliamentary deputies from Van and the
Dashnak leader Ishkhan to attend a conference.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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April 15: Armenian refugees from villages surrounding the city of Van arrived and notified the inhabitants that 80
villages in Van Province were already obliterated and that 24,000 Armenians had been killed in three days.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
In Petrograd, Alyksandr Skryabin played the final recital of his life.
While at an internment camp at Ruhleben, Germany, Ernest MacMillan completed the oratorio England: an
Ode and sent it to his examiners for the DMus at Oxford.
WORLD WAR I
El amor brujo, a ballet by Manuel de Falla to a story by Martínez Sierra, was performed for the initial time, at
the Teatro Lara, Madrid. It received a mixed response.
New York’s Barge Canal’s Lower Aqueduct at Crescent was demolished, in preparation for the opening of the
new section between Waterford and Rexford, set for the following month.
April 16: The Armenian leaders Vramian and Ishkhan were slain during the night in the Kurdish village of Hirj by
chetes on orders from Governor-general Tahir Jevdet.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 17: Friendly Kurds informed the inhabitants of Van of the assassination of Vramian and Ishkhan.
The Armenians organized a defense against the sudden attack by Turkish forces on the city of Van. (They
would hold out until advance units of the Russian Army consisting of Armenian volunteers were able to come
to their rescue on May 23, 1915).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 18: Until the end of April 32,000 more Armenians were slain in the villages of Van Province, including the
inhabitants of remote villages.
In Erzerum, Turkish civilians declared an intention to hold a meeting. The Army forbade this. Similar
gatherings in other centers were also forbidden on the grounds that the Army was the agency responsible for
handling the Armenians.
The Governor-general of Van Province demanded that the Armenians of the city of Van surrender their
weapons. The Armenians refused as chete units were harassing the surrounding villages.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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April 19: House searches were made in Diyarbekir and widespread persecution took place.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 20: The deportation of the 25,000 Armenians of Zeitun was completed.
The first large-scale arrests of Armenians were made in Diyarbekir upon the orders of Governor-general
Reshid.
Twenty Armenian Social Democratic Hnchak Party members were brought to the Central Prison in
Constantinople to face court martial. They would be publicly hanged on June 2, 1915.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 24: 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested in Constantinople and sent to Chankri and
Ayash, where they would later be killed.
The editors and staff of Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper of Constantinople, were arrested, and on
June 15 would be slain in Diyarbekir, where they had been transported and imprisoned.
The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople and Zohrab, Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament,
petitioned the Grand Vizier, Said Halim, the Minister of the Interior Talaat, and the President of the Senate,
Rifat, on behalf of the arrested Armenians of Constantinople. Though approached separately, all three give
identical answers; that the government was isolating the Armenian leadership and dissolving the Armenian
political organizations.
A map of the Armenian genocide:
http://www.24april1915.com/eng/images/Armenian_Genocide_(arm1).jpg
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 26: Three Armenians were hanged publicly in Mush without trial.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 27: A second meeting in Erzerum to organize a communal massacre was disbanded by the government as
interference in the affairs of the Army.
26 Armenian leaders were arrested in Marsovan (Merzifon). A two-week-long search for weapons was started
accompanied by acts of violence and the abuse of women.
Russian citizens of Armenian origin were arrested in Constantinople.
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April 29: The disarming of the Armenians of Constantinople was carried out with many outrages.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 30: The vice-governor of Erzinjan began the persecution of the Armenians with the arrest of many intellectuals.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
MAY
May 1: The American steamer Gulflight was torpedoed off the Scilly Isles by a German submarine, with the loss of 3
lives.
WORLD WAR I
The Cunard liner RMS Lusitania left New York harbor for the final time. As the boat was exiting the harbor,
the Master at Arms discovered three Germans still on board who should have left the ship. The Germans had
a camera with them. Captain Turner confiscated the camera and ordered that the Germans were to make the
voyage in the ship’s brig. Part of the cargo in the forward hold was a large consignment of live artillery shells.
The arrest of the Armenian professors and teachers of the American Euphrates College in Kharput began.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Late morning. French troops, with British artillery support, attack the Germans at Ypres. It fails miserably with
heavy losses. Allied troops began a withdrawal to new defensive positions east of Ypres.
10 p.m. Turkish troops attack the invaders at Cape Helles but make no headway.
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A German zeppelin bombed London.
WORLD WAR I
Meeting in the Hague, Netherlands, 1,200 delegates to the International Congress of Women adopted
resolutions calling for women’s suffrage and peaceful negotiations of international disputes. The delegates
represented twelve countries including many of the warring powers and the United States.
The Moscow journal Musika informed its readers that Igor Stravinsky, currently in Switzerland, was working
on a new project which was neither an opera nor a ballet, called Svadebka (Les Noces).
May 2: 6 a.m. Germans and Austro-Hungarians began a massive offensive against the Russians.
The bombardment begins all along the line stretching from the Carpathian Mountains to the Vistula River.
German troops capture Gorlice, 100 kilometers southeast of Krakow.
WORLD WAR I
Two works for cello and piano by Enrique Granados were performed for the 1st time, in Barcelona: Madrigal
and Trova.
May 2: British South Africa troops under General Botha captured Otymbingue in German Southwest Africa.
WORLD WAR I
Halil Pasha’s forces were defeated by the Russian Army in the Caucasus and in northern Iran, and retreated to
Van, Bitlis, and Mush — where they participated in the massacre of Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
3,000 English and French civilians were taken into custody in Constantinople.
May 3: House searches were made in Aleppo.
Macedonian Turkish immigrants were installed in Zeitun by the government.
The deportations from the villages of Erzerum Province were started.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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May 3: German and Austro-Hungarian forces destroy three Russian divisions between Gorlice and Tarnow leaving a
20 kilometers gap in the line. They advance 13 kilometers.
WORLD WAR I
British troops capture Ndupe, Kamerun.
The Turkish authorities began mass deportations of Armenians from Erzerum province.
May 4: A British and French assault on the Turkish defenders of the heights near Krithia fails.
Prime Minister Salandra of Italy sends private messages to Germany and Austria denouncing the Triple
Alliance.
British troops capture Wum Biagas, Kamerun.
WORLD WAR I
May 4: The mass arrests of Armenian leaders in Aintab were begun.
200 Armenian leaders in Erzerum were arrested.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 5: Arrests and persecutions began in Kharput.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 5: South African troops capture Karibib, South West Africa (Namibia), 140 kilometers northwest of Windhoek,
without opposition.
Gabriele d’Annunzio arrives back in Italy and in Genoa begins a series of nationalistic speeches in order to
whip up support for war against Germany and Austria. He was being secretly funded by Prime Minister
Salandra.
WORLD WAR I
May 6: Allied nationals in Beirut (Beyrut) were deported to Damascus and dispersed from there.
The New York Times reports that the Young Turks had adopted a policy to annihilate the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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May 9: Lord Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs, sends a message to Enver holding him personally responsible
should anything happen to the 3,000 captive English and French civilians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 9: British forces go over the top against the Germans at Neuve-Chapelle. The attack was cut to pieces with over
11,000 casualties. Simultaneous with the British assault, French forces attack the Germans at three points, the
River Scarpe east of Arras, Lorette and Vimy Ridge. The French advance five kilometers in 90 minutes but
German reserves plug the hole.
WORLD WAR I
British cellist and conductor Lieutenant Edward Mason was killed in action at the age of 37.
Charles Villiers Stanford writes to Horatio Parker telling him he would not be able to travel to Connecticut for
the premiere of his Piano Concerto no.2. He booked passage to sail May 15 on the Lusitania.
May 10: 950 prominent Armenians were arrested in Diyarbekir on orders from Dr. Reshid, the governor-general of
Diyarbekir Province.
The Armenian refugees from Zeitun found in Marash, who had previously been spared deportation, were
removed to the Syrian Desert.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 10: German and Austro-Hungarian forces overwhelm the Russians near Sanok, 135 kilometers southwest of
Lemberg (Lvov).
Anton von Webern writes to Arnold Schoenberg that he has been transferred to Windisch Feistritz, south of
Marburg and that he has been promoted to corporal.
North Country Sketches for orchestra by Frederick Delius was performed for the initial time, in Queen’s Hall,
London.
German Zeppelin LZ-38 bombs Southend, London.
WORLD WAR I
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May 11: French forces occupy Eseka, Kamerun, 80 kilometers west of Yaounde.
Russian forces began a wholesale retreat along the 300 kilometers front in Galicia, toward the Vistula.
South African leader Louis Botha speaks by telephone with the governor of German South West Africa,
Theodor Seitz. They agree to a 48-hour cease-fire to began on May 20 and a meeting at Giftkop.
WORLD WAR I
Pietro Mascagni writes to his lover, Anna Lolli, from Milan. “And if [there was war] I would weep forever
over my country, destroyed by...a band of madmen and criminals.”
May 12: Vartkes, an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, visits Talaat to protest the arrests of April 24.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 12: Early morning. A Turkish destroyer puts three torpedoes into the British battleship Goliath in Morto Bay.
Goliath sinks in two minutes, taking 500 crewmen to the bottom.
WORLD WAR I
South African forces capture Windhoek, capital of German South West Africa without opposition.
French troops take Clarency.
After a triumphal procession from Genoa, Gabriele d’Annunzio arrives in Rome for two days of nationalistic
harangues in the city, all secretly funded by Prime Minister Salandra to gain public support for war against
Germany and Austria. Meanwhile, the prime minister postpones the opening of Parliament until May 20 to
change the minds of the members, most of whom were against a declaration of war.
May 14: English and French civilian prisoners were deported to the interior of Anatolia.
38 Armenian community leaders were arrested in the town of Chomaklu in Kayseri Province and shortly
thereafter executed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 15: The Armenian community leaders in the town of Bayburt were arrested and subsequently killed in
Urbajioghli-Dere.
Armenians were deported from the northern villages of Erzerum Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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May 16: German and Austro-Hungarian troops reach Jaroslau (Jaroslaw, Poland), 100 kilometers west of Lemberg
(Lvov).
WORLD WAR I
May 17: A deadly British artillery barrage at Neuve-Chapelle creates 450 German prisoners before the infantry attack
begins. But the ensuing attack can make no headway.
WORLD WAR I
José de Castro replaced a five-man military junta as Prime Minister of Portugal.
May 18: Courts martial were set up in Marash to try the Armenian leaders arrested there shortly earlier.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 19: Advance troops of the Russian Army in the Caucasus led by Armenian volunteers reach Van and lift the siege
of city.
Armenians in the Khnus region of Erzerum Province were massacred.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 19: Turks began massacres of Armenians in the Khnus region of Erzerum province.
Fokker demonstrates a machine gun synchronized with an aircraft propeller near Berlin. The Germans were
pleased and almost immediately began sending them to the front.
WORLD WAR I
May 20: The Italian Chamber of Deputies votes 407-74 for emergency powers to be given to the government “in case
of war.”
Arnold Schoenberg reports for military service in the Austro-Hungarian army, but was sent home.
South African General Louis Botha and Governor Theodor Seitz of German South West Africa meet in
Giftkop to discuss an end to hostilities. The talks fail.
WORLD WAR I
La Ballade des lutins for band by Claude Champagne was performed for the initial time.
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May 21: Regular Russian Army forces arrive in Van. They began the cremation of the dead in the city and in the
villages of the province. 55,000 dead were identified as Armenians.
WORLD WAR I
Armenian parliamentary deputy Vartkes visits Police Commissioner Osman Bedri to protest the arrests of the
Constantinople Armenian community leaders.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 22: Turkish refugees were settled in the emptied Armenian villages of the Tortum District of Erzerum Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 24: A note was sent by the Allied Powers to the Turkish Cabinet holding it responsible for the massacres of the
Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
WORLD WAR I
May 24: Morning. Alfredo Casella left his Paris home and ventured out into the city. He found joy and delirium
everywhere as Parisians celebrated the entry of Italy into the war. On hearing the news, Casella reported to the
Italian consulate to find out what was required of him.
Germans renewed their offensive at Ypres making small gains. The British, nearly out of artillery shells, failed
to counterattack. Thus the Second Battle of Ypres ended. The Germans had successfully reduced the allied
salient, while 105,000 men were dead or wounded.
German forces pushed 18 kilometers east of the San River.
WORLD WAR I
May 25: Armenian parliamentary deputies Zohrab and Vartkes were arrested in Constantinople and would later be
murdered while in custody in Kara-Kopru.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 26: The German Zeppelin LZ-38 once again bombs Southend, killing three people and injuring three others.
WORLD WAR I
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May 27: German Marshal Otto Liman von Sanders reported that the deportations were planned by the Committee of
Union and Progress, and had been received the approval of all the ministries, and that the execution of the plans
had been placed in the hands of the governors-general, their subordinates, and the police.
The promulgation of the Temporary Law of Deportation, months after the depopulation of the Armenian
settlements had been initiated.
2,000 Armenians were deported from Marash.
300 Armenians who had been arrested on May 10th in Diyarbekir were murdered on this day, while in custody.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 29: Talaat was being reported to have commented that he was “going to give to the Armenians a new and final
residence.”
630 Armenians had been arrested on May 10th in Diyarbekir, and on this day while in custody they were
murdered in the village of Bisheri, and their bodies were thrown into the Tigris River.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 31: The Germans bombarded the suburbs of London with the use of Zeppelins.
WORLD WAR I
Two weeks of outrages, perpetrated against the Armenians of the town of Chomaklu under the guise of forcing
the Armenians to give up their arms, came to their conclusion.
The German Ambassador, Hans von Wangenheim, advised his government against any German interference
with the deportations from Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
JUNE
June:
Talat Pasha, in a conversation with Dr. Mordtmann of the German Embassy, stated that:
Turkey was taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly
liquidate (grundlich aufzaumen) its internal foes, i.e., the
indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by
foreign intervention.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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June 2: Robert Moffat Palmer was born was Syracuse, New York.
Botho Sigward, Count of Eulenberg, German composer of orchestral and vocal music, was killed in action in
Galicia.
Twenty Armenian social democrat leaders were publicly hanged in Constantinople.
British troops take the village of Qal’at Salih on the Tigris.
Serbia invades Albania against little resistance.
WORLD WAR I
June 3: German forces retake Przemysl, 90 kilometers west of Lemberg (Lvov) after heavy fighting.
British and Indian troops capture Al-Amarah, 180 kilometers north of Basra.
WORLD WAR I
A federal court in New Jersey finds United States Steel not guilty of antitrust violations.
Two new orchestral works were premiered at the Norfolk Festival in Connecticut: Tam O’Shanter, a
symphonic ballad by George Whitefield Chadwick and the Piano Concerto no.2 op.126 of Charles Villiers
Stanford.
Recessional for chorus, trumpet and three trombones by Arthur Foote to words of Kipling was performed for
the initial time, in Boston.
June 3: Ayub Bey, an arch-assassin, left Adana for Aleppo in connection with the organizing of massacres.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 4: Enver Pasha issued a circular dispatch classified secret and urgent concerning the deportations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
On this day, and the two following ones, German aircraft were bombing English towns.
WORLD WAR I
June 6: 9:57 p.m. Vincent Ludwig Persichetti was born in Philadelphia, the 1st of three children born to Vincent
Ruggero Persichetti, an Italian immigrant who works in a bank, and Martha Catherine Buch, a German
immigrant, the daughter of a tavern owner.
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June 7: The first convoy of Armenian deportees leave Erzinjan toward Kemakh on their way to the Syrian Desert.
The Armenian Prelate of Shabin-Karahisar, Vaghinag Vartabed, was assassinated.
The Armenians of Constantinople appeal to the German and the Austrian Embassies to prevent the
deportations and associated outrages, but receive no satisfactory reply.
The Armenians arrested in Sivas on April 1 and transported to Angora Province were murdered in the woods
of Meshedler-Yeri. The mass slaughter was witnessed by Greek woodcutters who report the news to the
Armenians of Sivas.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 8: The second convoy of deportees from Erzinjan leaves for the Syrian Desert.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 8: Anton von Webern was promoted to cadet aspirant (sergeant) at Frohnleiten, near Bruck. He was placed in
charge of training older recruits (those aged 37-42).
British and Rhodesian troops capture Bismarcksburg, German East Africa (Tanzania), at the southern end of
Lake Tanganyika.
WORLD WAR I
June 9, day: The third convoy of Armenians departs from Erzinjan.
Three Armenian medical officers, Dr. Hairanian, Dr. Baghdasar Vartanian, and Dr. Maksud, serving in the
Turkish Army, were murdered in the city of Sivas.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 10, day: The German garrison at Garoua, Kamerun, 350 kilometers southwest of Fort Lamy (N’Djamena),
surrenders to a combined British-French force.
WORLD WAR I
A law enacted by the Ottoman government describes how the property of all arrested Armenians was to be
handled. Beginning today through June 13, 25,000 Armenians deported from Erzerum province were
massacred by Turks at Kemakh.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Francisco Jerónimo de Jesús Lagosw Cházaro replaced Roque Gonzálex Garza as acting President of Mexico.
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June 10, day to June 13, day: Over a period of four days the Armenians deported from the towns and villages of
Erzerum Province were slaughtered in a major massacre at Kemakh.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 11, day: Italian troops attack Austrian positions near Plava.
WORLD WAR I
June 13, day: German forces open an offensive along a 50 kilometers front in Galicia.
WORLD WAR I
June 13: The War Ministry ordered the seizure of all the domestic animals of the Armenians.
The War Ministry warned that the permits given to Armenians exempting them from the deportations and
safety certificates were merely provisional and temporary.
25,000 Armenians were murdered by the fourth day of the Kemakh massacre. The 86th Cavalry Brigade with
its officers and the 2nd Reserve Cavalry Division of the Turkish Army participated in the slaughter.
Instructions concerning procedures for the deportations, urging extreme strictness, were sent to provincial
governors.
Subhi Bey, the assistant to the Undersecretary of the Interior Ministry, asked for a list of Armenians working
in the shipyards, docks, and arsenals of the Ministry of the Marine.
The third convoy of Armenian deportees exited the town of Bayburt.
300 Armenian community leaders were arrested in Shabin-Karahisar.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 15: Twenty members of Armenian Social Democratic Hnchak Party were publicly hanged in Constantinople as
a signal to the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, to intensify measures.
Twelve Armenian community leaders were publicly hanged in Sivas.
The Armenians of Shabin-Karahisar organized a defense against chete forces and the regular Turkish Army.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
In retaliation for the German air raids earlier in the month, Allied aircraft bombed Karlsruhe, Baden.
WORLD WAR I
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June 15: German successes in their Galicia offensive at Lubaczow and Mosciska create a new front line from Zolkiev
to Rava-Russka to Lemberg (Lvov).
WORLD WAR I
The editors and staff of the leading Armenian newspaper in Constantinople were killed in Diyarkebir.
They were arrested on April 24. Twelve leaders of the Armenian community in Sivas were publicly hanged.
June 16: 3,500 Armenian men were seized in a mass arrest in Sivas Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 17: The Italian assault begun June 11 halts with no advance.
The German army reaches Magierow.
WORLD WAR I
June 17: Talaat was reported to have declared that he would uproot the internal enemy.
1,213 Armenian men were arrested in Marsovan (Merzifon).
8,500 Armenians withdrew into the ruined castle of Shabin-Karahisar to defend themselves against the Turks.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 18: 160 families were deported from city of Erzinjan.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 19: A second convoy composed of 300 families exited the city of Erzerum.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 20: South African troops enter Omaruru, South West Africa (Namibia), 165 kilometers northeast of Windhoek,
which was evacuated by the Germans.
WORLD WAR I
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June 21: The governor-general of Aleppo, Jelal Bey, resigned in protest against the deportation order and the
massacres.
Talaat sent instructions to prevent the populace from robbing the abandoned goods of the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 22: German and Austro-Hungarian forces retake Lemberg (Lvov, Ukraine) from the Russians.
British, Indian and African troops attack Bukoba on Lake Victoria. In the face of fierce resistance, they
advance only five kilometers by nightfall.
WORLD WAR I
June 29: German forces reach Tomaszow.
WORLD WAR I
June 23: The Interior Ministry advised provincial governors that the Commission on Abandoned Goods will have
charge of the resettlement of Turkish Muslim immigrants.
The Interior Ministry advised taking the precaution of separating the convoys of Armenian deportees by a
distance of five hours.
The wholesale arrest of 1,500 men was carried out in Sivas Province.
First large-scale massacre of Armenian men was carried out in the town of Kharput.
Wholesale arrests were made in Bitlis of the scattered remnant Armenians who had escaped the previous series
of massacres.
Massacres of Armenian Christians, Maronites, Nestorians, Europeans, Catholics, and other non-Muslim
people in the city of Mardin were carried out under the direct order of Dr. Reshid, the governor-general of
Diyarbekir Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 24: The Armenian notables of Trebizond were sent by boat toward Samsun, and on the way were thrown, tightly
bound together, into the Black Sea.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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June 25: The massacre of Armenians of Bitlis was carried out under the direct orders of Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda.
The Ottoman Empire issued a decree instructing the 30,000 Armenians in Trebizond to depart from that city
within 5 days.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 26: The Montenegrins entered Scutari, Albania.
WORLD WAR I
The remaining Armenian men in Sivas were arrested.
A decree issued in Erzerum ordered all Armenians to leave for Syria.
An decree issued in Samsun ordered all Armenians to depart within 15 days.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 28: The previously arrested Armenian educators and community leaders in Kharput were transported from prison
to be murdered.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 29: Vartkes and Zohrab, two Armenian deputies in the Ottoman Parliament, deported from Constantinople, arrive
in custody in Aleppo.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 30, day: 3,000 Armenians from the city of Erzerum were murdered while being deported.
6,000 Armenians from Zeitun arrived in the Konia Desert and nearby malarial marshes.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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JULY
July:
In response to high wartime prices wheat farmers had turned the sod of millions of acres of grassland across
the homesteaded plains of what would become America’s Dust Bowl. US yields for the 1st time topped
1,000,000,000 bushels of wheat, despite $100,000,000 damage by newly arrived Hessian flies.
In the course of a vacation in the mosquito-free mountains of Virginia, wealthy unhappily married National
Museum entomologist Harrison Gray Dyar, Jr., a specialist in the family Culicidae, became intrigued with a
rather unattractive middleaged spinster kindergarten schoolteacher of Washington DC, Miss Wellesca
“Aseyeh” Pollock. He would name a newly discovered moth species in her honor — Parasa wellesca:
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In Turkey, Behaeddin Shakir, chief of the Special Organization of Erzerum Province, sent a telegram to Nazim
Bey Resneli via Sabit Bey, governor-general of Kharput Province, desiring to be informed whether the
Armenians he was deporting were being exterminated or merely convoyed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Behaeddin Shakir ordered the governor-general of Kastamonu Province to begin deportation of the Armenians
there.
Talaat informed the Ittihad party organization in Malatia that half the loot taken from Armenian families was
reserved to the Central Committee of Ittihad in Constantinople, with only the other half distributed to chetes.
(On December 12, 1918 the newspaper Sabah would report that each chete in the Malatia area had received
15,000 Turkish pounds.)
Governor-general Reshid Pasha reported to the Interior Ministry that deportation of Armenians from
Kastamonu Province had been completed.
Behaeddin Shakir sent a cipher telegram to the governor-general of Adalia Province, Sabur Sami Bey, asking
him what steps he was taking at a time, when in Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Sivas, and Trebizond
Provinces, not a single Armenian remained because they have all been sent in the direction of Mosul and Derel-Zor (Deir el-Zor). Sabur sent a copy of the telegram to Talaat to show that he had received these indirect
instructions.
The vice-governor of Yozgat District, in Angora Province, reported to the Interior Ministry that 68,000
Armenians had been slain there.
Sabit, the governor-general of Kharput Province, informed the Interior Ministry that the roads were filled with
the bodies of women and children but time could not be found to bury them.
July 1: 2,000 Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army used as laborers were massacred near the city of Kharput.7
The first convoy of deportees departed from the seaport of Trebizond heading south.
The governor-general of Sivas announced that the first convoy of deportees from the city was to leave by July
5th, in groups according to street residence. A total of 48,000 persons were to be deported. The governor,
commissioner of police, two parliamentary deputies, the qadi (the chief religious judge), and the mufti (the
religious chief) advised the Armenians that they were being resettled for the duration of the war in order to
forestall any resistance.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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July 2: German troops occupy the fortress at Zamosc but Russian defenders of Krasnik hold off an Austrian attack.
WORLD WAR I
The British Parliament passes the Munitions of War Act, which requires compulsory arbitration of labor
disputes, bans strikes and lockouts, limits profits and places other restrictions on management and labor.
Turkish and Kurdish paramilitaries began attacks on convoys of Armenians being deported south through
Erzinjan.
A bomb destroys a reception room in the United States Senate. It was placed by Erich Muenter (a.k.a. Frank
Holt) a German instructor at Cornell University.
July 2: Bands of 4,000 chetes operating out of the mountains around Erzinjan began daily raids against the southward
bound convoys of Armenian deportees.
The deportation decree was issued in the city of Mush.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
7. It seems not to be well known that the Turks of the Ottoman Empire accomplished the liquidation of the young-male segment of
the Armenian population largely by means of the military draft. Official Turkish accounts acknowledge that concentrating the young
men through this conscription enabled the slaughter of about 800,000. Refer to Vahakn Dadrian, THE HISTORY OF THE ARMENIAN
GENOCIDE: ETHNIC CONFLICT FROM THE BALKANS TO ANATOLIA TO THE CAUCASUS (Providence RI: Berghahn Books, 1995, page
226). Henry Morgenthau described one such episode in which some 2,000 Armenian “amélés” (“such is the Turkish word for
soldiers who have been reduced to workmen”) were dispatched from the city of Harpoot, ostensibly for a road-construction project:
The Armenians in that town understood what this meant and
pleaded with the Governor for mercy. But this official insisted
that the men were not to be harmed, and he even called upon the
German missionary, Mr. Ehemann, to quiet the panic, giving that
gentleman his word of honour that the ex-soldiers would be
protected. Mr. Ehemann believed the Governor and assuaged the
popular fear. Yet practically every man of these 2,000 was
massacred, and his body thrown into a cave. A few escaped, and
it was from these that news of the massacre reached the world.
A few days afterward another 2,000 soldiers were sent to
Diarbekir. The only purpose of sending these men out in the open
country was that they might be massacred. In order that they
might have no strength to resist or to escape by flight, these
poor creatures were systematically starved. Government agents
went ahead on the road, notifying the Kurds that the caravan was
approaching and ordering them to do their congenial duty. Not
only did the Kurdish tribesmen pour down from the mountains upon
this starved and weakened regiment, but the Kurdish women came
with butcher’s knives in order that they might gain that merit
in Allah’s eyes that comes from killing a Christian. These
massacres were not isolated happenings; I could detail many more
episodes just as horrible as the one related above.
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Our national birthday, the 4th of July: An “Americanization Day” was celebrated in Kansas City, Missouri,
with 220 new citizens singing “America” and other patriotic songs.
At the foot of the Statue of Liberty, Margaret Wycherly read an “Appeal for Liberty” to a gathering of women
suffrage activists.
In San Francisco, California, William Jennings Bryan delivered himself of some thoughts about “Universal
Peace.”
From Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Liberty Bell was leaving on a 6-month tour, at the
end of which it was to be put on display at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.
In Paris, 9 members of the French Cabinet attended an Independence Day banquet the American Chamber of
Commerce (this was a first).
CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
In Turkey, Neshed Pasha went out from Sivas with three regiments and artillery to subdue Armenians who
were resisting in Shabin-Karahisar. For the record, German diplomats lodged an official protest of the ongoing
genocide against the Armenian Christians with the Grand Vizier of Turkey. The Turkish government would
make no response whatever to this protest.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 5: In Diyarbekir 2,000 Armenian soldiers working in labor corps were killed.
The first convoy of deportees departed from the city of Sivas. Every day for 16 days an average of 400 families
would depart, the overwhelming majority to be slain on route to the Syrian Desert. The last convoy would
depart from the city on July 20th.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 6: By this date up to 1,000 Armenian families had left Trebizond in convoys headed south.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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July 6: South African troops capture Namutoni, South West Africa (Namibia), 400 kilometers north of Windhoek.
British ships successfully run German shore batteries on the mouth of the Rufiji River, German East Africa
(Tanzania), 145 kilometers south of Dar-es-Salaam.
WORLD WAR I
On doctor’s advice, Frederick Delius and his wife depart England for Bergen, Norway.
Polonia, a symphonic poem composed by Edward Elgar for the benefit of the Polish Relief Fund, was
performed for the initial time, in Queen’s Hall, London.
Erich Muenter (a.k.a. Frank Holt) kills himself while in custody in New York.
July 7: The male members of 800 Armenian families in the town of Kharput were killed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 8: Zaven, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, appealed to the Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Bey, who replied
that he couldn’t intervene in matters concerning the War Ministry.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 10: 2,700 persons were killed in a 2d massacre in Mardin.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 11: The beginning of a four-day massacre in Mush under the combined orders of parliamentary deputy Elias, vicegovernor Servet, and Governor-general Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, Talaat’s brother-in-law.
The Interior Ministry directed that the Armenian villages be settled with Muslim immigrants.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 11: British ships destroy the German battle cruiser Königsberg on the Rufiji River, German East Africa
(Tanzania).
WORLD WAR I
Turks began four days of killing Armenians around Mush.
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July 12: The government advised all governors-general that Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District was saturated and that
the rest of the deportees should therefore be routed to Kirkuk District in northern Iraq, to the south of Aleppo,
and to the east of Syria.
Instructions were issued to distribute Armenian orphans to Turkish homes.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 13: The Muslim holy month of Ramadan began. During the whole month the greatest concentration and
universalization of massacring and murdering would occur in every province of Turkey.
The last convoy, containing all the remaining Armenians in the city, departed from Kharput.
Zaven, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, was declined an audience with Talaat.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 14: On the 1st Bastille Day since the beginning of the current war, the ashes of Rouget de Lisle, composer of La
Marseillaise, were brought to Napoléon’s tomb at Les Invalides in Paris.
WORLD WAR I
Ahmed Jemal Pasha,8 Commander of Aleppo’s Fourth Army Corps, protested to Dr. Reshid, the governorgeneral of Diyarbekir Province about the dumping of dead bodies in the Euphrates River and advised burial.
From June 22 to July 17, a period of 25 days, a steady stream of bodies of massacred Armenians floated down
the Euphrates River.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 16: Bodies from Kharput Province and Erzerum Province floated down the Euphrates to Jerablus, where they
were seen and identified by German officers.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 18: In the region of Dersim, 3,000 Armenians were killed by the Turks. Almost all of the large Kurdish population
of Dersim refused to participate in the massacres and even sheltered many Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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July 18: German forces take Krasnostav.
WORLD WAR I
Early afternoon. Italian forces began the Second Battle of the Isonzo, making little gains.
3,000 Armenians were killed in the region of Dersim by the Turks. The large Kurdish population refuses to
participate and shelters some Armenians.
July 21: First day of the Turkish attack on Musa Dagh (Musa Ler in Armenian).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 23: The Italian consul at Trebizond reported about the barbarities he had witnessed.
The seventh anniversary of the 1908 restoration of the liberal Constitution of 1876 was celebrated.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
8. Ahmed Jemal [Djemal, Cemal] Pasha (1872-1922) was the overseer of the Armenian Genocide. A graduate of the War Academy,
Jemal was posted in 1898 to the Third Army in Salonika where the new captain joined the underground movement of Ottoman
officers known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which was opposed to the regime of Sultan Abdul-Hamid
(Abdulhamit) II. He used his position as a military inspector and staff officer to spread the CUP network in Thrace. By the time of
the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, Jemal was one of the leaders of the movement and was soon on the executive committee of the
CUP. He rejoined his military unit to help suppress the April 1909 counter-revolution. Thereafter he served in a succession of
military and administrative posts as the CUP's main trouble-shooter across the Ottoman Empire. In August 1909 he was appointed
vali (governor-general) of Adana after the massacre of Armenians in the province. He came to prominence with the January 1913
CUP coup d'etat, which he helped engineer. Thereupon he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, given command of the
First Army based in Istanbul and made military governor of the city, where he also brutally suppressed the liberal opposition. In
December 1913 he joined the CUP cabinet as Minister of Works. His appointment as Minister of the Navy in February 1914 placed
the key Ottoman ministries in the hands of the CUP and signaled the complete consolidation of power by the Young Turk dictatorial
triumvirate of Enver, Talaat and Jemal.
From the time of the Ottoman entry into WWI in November 1914 until December 1917, Jemal was stationed in Damascus as
commander of the Fourth Army and served simultaneously as military governor of Syria including the regions of Palestine and Hijaz
(Arabia). He led unsuccessful campaigns in 1915 and 1916 against the British in Egypt by advancing on the Suez Canal. Before the
British turned the tide, Jemal's administration of Syria had devastated the civilian population in the region. Arab nationalists were
summarily hanged, Zionists were persecuted and steps taken to remove Jewish settlements, grain requisitions in Lebanon had driven
the populace to the brink of starvation. These calamities, however, paled in comparison to the destruction of the deported Armenian
population carried out in Syria during Jemal's rule. By virtue of the fact that he controlled all the resources and the agencies of
government in Syria, Jemal had oversight over the final leg of the deportation of the Armenians and the extermination of the
surviving population. By mid-1915 Syria was dotted with concentration camps where the weaker members of the Armenian
population were starved to death and where the still able-bodied were employed as virtual slave laborers on construction projects,
the most notorious being the Baghdad rail line then still to be laid through the mountain passes of northern Syria. Lastly, the
infamous killing sites of Rakka, Ras ul-Ain, and Deir el-Zor were locations in his jurisdiction. In this respect, of the Young Turk
triumvirs who conspired and executed the Armenian Genocide, Jemal held responsibility as the final enforcer of the secret plan of
extermination.
With the surrender of the Ottomans in 1918, Jemal joined Enver and Talaat in flight, first to Berlin, then to Switzerland and Russia.
He made contact with the Bolsheviks in Moscow who facilitated his travel to Afghanistan, where he reorganized the Afghan army
to carry on the fight against the British. In the meantime he was tried in absentia by a military tribunal in Istanbul, found guilty of
war crimes and sentenced to death. While in Moscow, he also established contact with Mustafa Kemal and assisted Enver's uncle,
Halil, who negotiated on Kemal's behalf for a supply of arms, ammunition and gold from the Bolsheviks. Jemal was assassinated
in Tbilisi in 1922 by two Armenians on his trail.
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July 24: Talaat sends instructions to Urfa, Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), and Diyarbekir to bury the bodies of those fallen
by the roadside and not throw them in ditches, lakes, or rivers.
Between this day and August 1st, the registration and classification of all prisoners from Sivas would be being
carried out. This was done in accordance with a directive in general circulation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
When the Eastland, a Great Lakes excursion steamer, capsized in the Chicago River, of the 2,572 people
aboard, 812 died.
TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS
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July 28: The governor-general of Erzerum Province reported widespread looting and rape.
The Interior Ministry issued a circular telegram instructing that Muslims be settled in the large Armenian
villages.
The deportation of the Armenians of the town of Aintab began.
The deportation of the Armenians of the town of Kilis began.
The deportation of the Armenians of the town of Adiaman began.
Professor Kakig Ozanian of the American College and others from Marsovan (Merzifon), together with the
Armenian community leader Dikran Diranian and others from Samsun, were transported to the prisons of
Sivas to be killed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The US Marines landed in Haiti, beginning our longest Caribbean intervention.
USMC
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July 30: A mass arrest of Armenians in the city of Angora was carried out. Those arrested would be slain the following
day at a place six hours distance from the city.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The withdrawal of the Russian Army from the city of Van began.
Haicke Janssen and Willem Roos, German spies, were executed by firing squad in the moat area of the Tower
of London. Janssen was strapped into the wooden chair at 6AM, and his corpse had been removed and replaced
by the living body of Roos by 6:10AM.
WORLD WAR I
July 31: Mass murder of the Armenian community leaders of Constantinople imprisoned in Ayash and Chankri. They
were killed alongside the Armenians who had been arrested in Angora the day before.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
AUGUST
August 1: The deportation of 25,000 Armenians from Adabazar, near Constantinople, began.
20,000 deportees arrived in Aleppo.
Mass torture was inflicted on 500 Armenians in the prisons of Adabazar.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 2: Ambassador Henry Morgenthau would report that on this day Talaat told him that the Ittihad Committee had
carefully considered in all its details the matter of crushing the Armenians, and that the policy which was being
pursued was that which had been officially adopted. He also told Morgenthau that the deportations were not
the result of hasty decisions but of careful and prolonged deliberation. Talaat, moreover, indicated that three
quarters of the Armenians had already been disposed of, none being left in Bitlis, Van, or Erzerum.
During the six following nights, the Armenian prisoners, most of them intellectuals, who were being held in
Gok-Medrese in Sivas (a Seljuk structure in use as a temporary prison), would be being taken out and killed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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August 3: 150,000 deportees arrived in Aleppo from various unspecified places.
4,500 Armenian deportees from Seghert and 2,000 deportees from Mezre arrived near Aleppo.
15,000 Armenians arrived in Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).
In response to unofficial German protests about large-scale murders, rapes, and tortures inflicted on the
Armenian deportees on the highways, which was making a bad impression among the Americans, a circular
telegram was sent advising against the attack or rape of Armenians while they were near highways.
Officials were instructed to not appropriate the “abandoned goods” of the Armenians for their personal use.
60,000 Armenian deportees from unspecified places arrived near Aleppo.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 4: Talaat sent a circular telegram to all governors and officials expecting accountability for “abandoned
goods.”
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 6: With the debarkation of new troops in Suvla Bay on the west of the peninsula, Britain’s Gallipoli Peninsula
campaign entered its 2nd stage.
WORLD WAR I
Eighteen Armenians were publicly hanged in the town of Everek near Kayseri.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 7: The Armenians of Mersin (Mersine) were deported.
The listing of all real estate seized from the Armenians was requested by the Interior Ministry.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 8 to August 12: The Armenian intellectuals imprisoned in the Sifahdiye Medrese (a Muslim religious school)
in Sivas, were being taken out from the city and slain. There were 36 extermination centers in the area of Sivas.
5,000 Armenian intellectuals imprisoned in the Gok Medrese and the Sifahdiye Medrese, both Seljuk
structures in use as temporary prisons, were taken to these 36 execution centers and slain.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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August 10: A surprise Turkish counterattack from Sari Bair on Gallipoli forced the Allies to withdraw with 12,000
casualties. Among the dead soldiers lay the corpse of physicist Henry Moseley, who had made fundamental
discoveries about the structure of the atom.
WORLD WAR I
All the Armenians of Chorum were deported via Boghazli and Bozanti with the Syrian Desert, purportedly, as
their ultimate destination.
A circular telegram called for the registration of all Muslim creditors of the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 11: Instructions were issued that some Turkish settlers be sent via Angora, Sivas, and Kayseri to Kharput, and
others be sent via Konia (Konya) and Adana to Diyarbekir.
Armenian women married to Turks were deprived of the right of inheritance.
The last of 84 Armenian intellectuals, who were brought to the Ayash prison and who over the course of the
weeks had been taken out in small groups to be murdered at various times, was killed. The longest-held had
been in prison in Ayash for 105 days before being taken out to be murdered.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 12: This was the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was the first day of the 3-day holiday of Bairam.
Since these were three days set aside for rest, no massacres would be carried out until August 15th. Enver filed
a report, that to date 200,000 Armenians had been massacred. In Aleppo Province 200,000 Armenian
deportees were reported as being in transit to the desert.
Boghos Nubar, a leading Armenian from Egypt, who had never been in Turkey, but who had been instrumental
in Paris in pressing Turkey to introduce reforms in the Armenian provinces, was tried for treason in absentia
by a Turkish court martial and sentenced to death.
Deportation of the Armenians of Izmid (Izmit), Baghchejik (Bardizag), Bursa, and Adabazar began.
Instructions were issued to prevent such deportees from coming to rest near any military installation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 13: Between this day and August 17th, 15,000 Armenians would be taken out of the Central Prison of the city
of Sivas, where many Armenian intellectuals, political leaders, and leading men of the villages surrounding
Sivas had been imprisoned, and massacred in the 36 extermination centers of the region.
Instructions were sent out to the committees that were in charge of liquidating the “abandoned goods” of the
Armenians, as to precisely how to deposit the funds obtained through such activities.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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August 14, Saturday: The 3d and last day of Bairam.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 16: 50,000 deportees were observed on the road from Bozanti to Aleppo.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 18: The New York Times reported on a plan for the destruction of the entire Armenian nation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 18: Alma (Schindler) Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, got married with the architect Walter Gropius, now
a lieutenant in the German army, in Berlin. Tomorrow he returns to the front.
German forces took Kovno.
WORLD WAR I
August 19: 250 Armenians were killed in the city of Urfa in a massacre by Turks inaugurating the first attempt to
uproot the Armenians of Urfa. The Armenians of Urfa began the defense of their city.
Lord Bryce reports that 500,000 Armenians had been murdered in Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The Arabic, a White Star liner, was sunk by a submarine off Fastnet, with the loss of 44 persons, two of whom
were American citizens.
WORLD WAR I
August 19: German forces captured Kaunas.
German forces captured Novo-Georgiewsk (Modlin) and 90,000 Russian prisoners.
Turks attacked the Armenians of Urfa, killing 250. The Armenians put up a defense.
A German submarine sank the British liner Arabic off the south coast of Ireland. 44 of the 423 passengers and
crew were killed.
WORLD WAR I
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August 21: The War Ministry requisitioned for the military 41 kinds of articles of merchandise from the Armenians.
A general order was issued for the liquidation of the closed commercial stores of the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 23: A second massacre of Armenians in Urfa was organized.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 25: German occupying forces established a Polish government in Warsaw. General Hans Hartwig von Beseler
was named governor-general.
WORLD WAR I
August 25: The War Ministry requisitioned all soap found in the homes and stores of the deported Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Brest-Litovsk, a Russian fortress, was captured by the Austro-Germans.
WORLD WAR I
August 26: German forces captured Brest-Litovsk.
WORLD WAR I
US President Wilson reversed earlier policy and allows private loans to belligerent nations.
The overture to Ethel Smyth’s unperformed opera The Boatswain’s Mate was performed for the initial time,
in Queen’s Hall, London.
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August 26: The War Ministry requisitions for its military supply depots all wood, coal, and copper found in the homes
and stores of deported Armenians.
The Armenian poet, Daniel Varoujan, together with the poet physician Rupen Sevak, and others, were
murdered by chetes while incarcerated in the Ayash prison.
60,000 deported Armenians in the Aleppo area were ordered to leave for Hawran, an Arab district in northern
Trans-Jordan.
The Armenian Catholics in Angora were arrested.
Instructions were issued forbidding the purchase of property from Armenian deportees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 28: The students of the Sanasarian Academy in the city of Sivas were murdered in the town of Gemerak some
thirty miles southwest of Sivas.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The Italian forces reached Cima Cista, to the north-east of Trent.
WORLD WAR I
August 31: Lutsk, a Russian fortress, was captured by the Austrians.
WORLD WAR I
Talaat told German ambassador Prince Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenburg that the Armenian Question no longer
existed (Hohenlohe had assumed the German ambassadorship on July 20th).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
SEPTEMBER
September 1: Germany orders its U-Boats not to attack passenger ships without warning and making provision for
non-combatants.
WORLD WAR I
British troops assault Mora, Kamerun.
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September 2: German forces take Grodno (Belarus), 250 kilometers west of Minsk, and attack Vilna (Vilnius).
WORLD WAR I
4,750 Armenians were murdered in Jezire.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 3: 10,000 survivors from the Armenians deported from Bursa and Izmid (Izmit) arrive in Konia (Konya).
The New York Times reports that Izmid (Izmit) had been put to the torch and the Armenians massacred.
15,000 Armenian deportees were reported at Eskishehir, 5,000 at Alayund, and 2,000 at Chai.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 6: Czar Nicholas of Russia assumed command of the Russian armies. Grand Duke Nicholas was transferred
to the Caucasus.
WORLD WAR I
In Marsovan (Merzifon), of the 62 Armenian girls who had been saved by American missionaries, on this date
only 21 remained. 21 others had been abducted by Turks.
The Interior Ministry ordered all Armenian schools to be placed at the disposal of Turkish authorities.
Massacres of Armenians were carried out in Yozgat District.
The War Ministry instructed that the goods requisitioned from the Armenians were to be distributed to the
Third, Fourth, and Iraq Armies.
The second Liquidation Commission in Kayseri was organized.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 6: At Pless, Germany, Bulgaria signs a pact committing it to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers
for which it would receive Serbian Macedonia and part of Serbia, as well as a port on the Adriatic and small
concessions from Turkey.
WORLD WAR I
US newspapers publish secret documents captured by the British outlining Austrian and German plans for
sabotage against US industries.
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September 8: 5,000 Armenian deportees were reported at Bozanti.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 9: German forces began a new offensive against the Russians, thrusting toward Dvinsk and Vilna (Vilnius).
WORLD WAR I
The US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, requires that Austrian Ambassador, Konstantin Graf von Dumba
leave the country. Dumba has been implicated in schemes to disable American war-making industry.
September 10: On the fifty-third day of the Armenian defense in Musa Dagh, 4,058 persons were rescued by three
English and one French warship, which would transport the survivors to Port Said in Egypt.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 11: 6,000 Armenian deportees in transit left Adana in the direction of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 12: A Fifth Army notice advised that the Islamization of Armenian soldiers was the responsibility of the
civilian authorities.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 13: The Turkish Red Crescent Society asked that all cotton goods, and other necessities, be granted to the
organization from the “abandoned goods” of the Armenian deportees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 14: The New York Times reported the slaughter of 350,000 Armenians. The survivors of Musa Dagh
arrived in Port Said.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 15: In a circular letter Talaat explained that the real intention of sending the Armenians to the Der-el-Zor
(Deir el-Zor) Desert had been to annihilate them.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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September 16: Talaat sent instructions by circular telegram to mete out the same fate to the Armenian women and
children, that had been meted out to the Armenian men.
A circular dispatch was issued advising caution against the looting of the property of foreigners, making
special mention of the property of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.
Talaat send a telegram to Ali Suad Bey, Governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), explaining his responsibilities.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 16: The Russian Duma was prorogued.
German troops captured Pinsk.
WORLD WAR I
A treaty between the United States and Haiti rendered that Caribbean nation a virtual protectorate of the United
States. The entire country was in receivership.
September 17: A circular telegram instructed all district attorneys to sign and seal the account books cataloguing the
properties seized from the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 18: German forces captured Vilna (Vilnius), taking 50,000 casualties.
In Aleppo, Nuri and Ali Bey consulted about the prospective massacre of a few Armenians who were still
surviving in the harsh conditions of the Syrian Desert at Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 21: A circular telegram authorizes the seizure of all Armenian schools and authorized their placement under
the control of local education committees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 22: Weekly reports on the number of Armenians dead were requested.
The War Ministry requisitioned for the use of the army all wood and coal in the homes and stores of Armenian
deportees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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September 23: 300 Armenians were killed in a massacre at Urfa.
11,000 Armenian deportees from 26 different villages were observed at Afiyon-Karahisar.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 24: The vice-governor of Bolu, Mufid, wires the Interior Ministry that the Armenians of Bolu were about
to be deported.
The local Ittihad Secretary informs the Interior Ministry that 61,000 Armenians had been deported up to this
date from Chankri and Angora. He also reports that the Muslims of Angora Province worship the Ittihad party
and government for its committed deeds and that the same can be secured in Bolu if the same measures were
taken there.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 25: 7 a.m. British forces send 150 tons of chlorine toward the Germans, then go over the top at Loos. They
manage to push the Germans back to their secondary defense line.
9:15 a.m. French forces attack along a 30 kilometers front in Champagne.
Noon. French forces attack along a 30 kilometers front in Artois. The combined assault makes small gains,
capturing Souchez, but then was pushed back with vigor.
Fritz Jürgens, 27-year-old German composer, was killed in action in Champagne.
Robert Rudolph Hindemith, father of Paul Hindemith, dies in Belgium.
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September 25: The Allies opened an offensive on the Western front, and occupied Lens.
WORLD WAR I
In Kayseri alone, 24 Armenian schools were requisitioned in four days.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The Sanitation Division of Turkey’s War Ministry requisitioned all the medical implements and
pharmaceuticals held by Armenians (cleanliness is next to extermination).
September 26: A Law on Abandoned Goods was ratified by the Ottoman Senate legalizing ex post facto the looting by
the government of the properties of the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 26: British forces continue to attack at Loos across open fields into German machine gun fire.
September 27: Second Lieutenant John Kipling, only son of Rudyard Kipling, was mortally wounded at Loos.
Sergeant Léo Latil of the French 67th Infantry, a budding poet, was killed in action in Champagne. At that
moment, his good friend Darius Milhaud was crossing the Place de Villiers and feels a sharp pain and thinks
of Léo. Milhaud would dedicate his String Quartet no.3 to the memory of Léo Latil.
September 27: The Interior Ministry by circular telegram orders the deportation of all Armenian women, children, and
the sick.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 28: The German ambassador in the United States, Johann Heinrich Count von Bernstorff, suggests that the
stories about massacres in Turkey were fabricated
A circular telegram advises that all Armenian property now belongs to the Turkish government.
The governor-general of Diyarbekir Province, Dr. Reshid, reports to the Interior Ministry that more than
120,000 Armenians have been deported from Diyarbekir Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 28: French troops reach the German reserve lines in Champagne west of Tahure but can not break through.
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September 29: By this date 10,000 Armenian deportees had arrived at Afiyon-Karahisar, 50,000 had arrived at Konia
(Konya), 10,000 had arrived at Intille (Intili), while 150,000 were reported at Katma.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 29: After a three-day battle, British and Indian troops take Kut al Imara (Al Kut) 160 kilometers southeast
of Baghdad.
A socialist conference in Zimmerwald, Switzerland calls for and end to the imperialist war.
Rudi Stephan, a 28-year-old German neo-classical composer, was killed in action on the Russian front near
Tarnopol.
September 30: The deportees from Yalova, Angora, and Kastomuni (Kastamoni) were numbered at 250,000.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
OCTOBER
October 1: US Secretary of State Robert Lansing delivered a note to German Ambassador Bernstorff relating to the
massacres of the Armenians.
The governor-general of Sivas Province, Ahmed Muammer, traveled to Amasia and elsewhere to inspect the
completion and effect of the massacres in preparation for Talaat’s inspection trip.
600 Armenian orphan boys were Turkified in Herek.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 4: The Interior Ministry advised against the opening of orphanages and thereby needlessly prolonging the
lives of Armenian children.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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October 7: By this date the number of deported Armenians still living was estimated at 360,000 minimum, and the
number of Armenians dead was estimated at 800,000 minimum.
$75,000 was collected in the United States for relief for the Armenian deportees.
In the British House of Lords a general discussion of the Armenian situation took place. Lord Bryce, Lord
Crewe, and Lord Cromer condemned Turkish barbarities.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Austro-Hungarian and German forces attacked across the Danube into Serbia.
WORLD WAR I
Unhappy with the pro-Allies policy, King Konstaninos replaced Eleftherios Kiriakou Venizelos with
Alexandros Thrasivoulou Zaimis as Prime Minister of Greece.
October 8: Talaat requested from provincial officials documents proving Armenian “treason” against Turkey to justify
the massacres.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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October 10: 45 Armenians were arrested in Adrianople (Edirne), and 1,600 Armenians were deported.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 11: German troops capture Semendria and Pozarevac, Serbia.
WORLD WAR I
In memoriam Franz Neruda, for reciter and orchestra by Carl Nielsen to words of Clausen, was performed for
the initial time, directed by the composer. This concert was the 1st with Nielsen as permanent conductor of the
Copenhagen Music Society.
October 12: 6 a.m. Germans execute nurse Edith Cavell whose only crime was in tending to wounded British soldiers
and helping them to escape capture. Executed next to her was Philippe Baucq, an architect who assisted her.
WORLD WAR I
October 12: In Belgium, Edith Cavell, an English nurse, faced a German firing squad for the offense of having helped
wounded British men get back home.
WORLD WAR I
Orders were issued forbidding Turkish men to intermarry with Armenian women.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 13: In Berlin an announcement was made that the story of the Armenian massacres was an Allied fabrication.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
London was bombarded by Zeppelins and 55 persons were killed, 114 injured.
WORLD WAR I
October 18: The governor-general of Sivas Province, Ahmed Muammer Bey, inspected the carrying out of his orders
for the deportation and destruction of the Armenians in the province, in anticipation of Talaat’s inspection trip
which was shortly thereafter to occur.
A large public gathering to protest the massacres of the Armenians by the Turkish government was held in the
Century Theater in New York. Rabbi Wise, B. Cochrane, Dr. Barton, and H. Holt were the main speakers.
Mufti Zade Zia, a Turkish propagandist, writing in New York described the Armenians as traitors.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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October 22, day: The Turkish Embassy in Washington accused the Armenians of treason against the Ottoman state.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The German advance in Serbia was brought to a halt.
WORLD WAR I
Representatives of the Bohemian National Alliance and the Slovak League signed the Cleveland Agreement
calling for the union of Czechs and Slovaks in an independent federative state.
October 22, day: The German advance in Serbia was brought to a halt.
WORLD WAR I
Representatives of the Bohemian National Alliance and the Slovak League signed the Cleveland Agreement
calling for the union of Czechs and Slovaks in an independent federative state.
October 22, day: The German advance in Serbia was brought to a halt.
WORLD WAR I
Representatives of the Bohemian National Alliance and the Slovak League signed the Cleveland Agreement
calling for the union of Czechs and Slovaks in an independent federative state.
October 22, day: The German advance in Serbia was brought to a halt.
WORLD WAR I
Representatives of the Bohemian National Alliance and the Slovak League signed the Cleveland Agreement
calling for the union of Czechs and Slovaks in an independent federative state.
October 25, day: Halil Bey of Menteshe, the Vice-President of the Turkish Chamber of Deputies and president of the
State Council, becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Instructions were issued requesting that within one week documents be sent to the Interior Ministry indicting
the Armenian people as traitors.
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October 27, day: 20,000 Armenian deportees were reported in Konia (Konya) on this date.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 28, day: Numerous Armenian families were deported from Adrianople (Edirne) at midnight without prior
notice upon the order of Acting Governor-general Zekerie.
Per earlier instructions sent by Talaat, 80,000 Armenian deportees left the Konia (Konya) station for Bozanti
on this date on their way to their “final destination.” These 80,000 were deportees from cities near
Constantinople and from the Armenian communities in the western parts of Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 31: A bulletin was issued to point out that the special measures being taken against the Armenians should be
conducted only in places that were out of sight of foreigners, and especially, out of sight of the American
consuls.
Instructions were issued for the trial by court martial of any Armenian reporting the events of the deportations
to any foreigner.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
NOVEMBER
November 3, Wednesday: Doctor Schacht, a German army physician, stationed near the village of Der-el-Zor (Deir elZor) village, reported counting 7,000 severed Armenian heads (skulls) in Sabgha District near the Euphrates
River.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 4, Thursday: The German consul in Mosul reported that Halil Pasha’s soldiers had massacred the
Armenians north of Mosul and were preparing to massacre the Armenians in the city of Mosul.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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November 5, Friday: The Germans surrendered Banyo, Kamerun, 320 kilometers north of Yaounde, to the British.
Bulgarian forces captured Nis, Serbia.
The 1st concert of the Sociedad Nacional de Música took place in Buenos Aires.
Nish, the Serbian war capital, was captured by the Bulgarians.
WORLD WAR I
On this date, 10,000 Armenian deportees were reported in Bozanti, 20,000 deportees in Tarsus, 40,000
deportees in Islahiye, and 50,000 deportees in Katma.
150,000 Armenian deportees were reported scattered between Adana and Aleppo crossing the Amanos Range.
20,000 Armenian deportees were reported in Adana.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 6, Saturday: German forces took Krusvac.
After a month of training camp in the Austro-Hungarian army at Bruck an der Leitha, Alban Berg suffered
acute asthma attacks and a bronchial catarrh. He was immediately hospitalized.
Sinfonietta op.5 for orchestra by Sergei Prokofiev was performed for the initial time, in Moscow.
November 7, Sunday: Stephanos Skouloudis, a neutralist, replaced Alexandros Thrasivoulou Zaimis as Prime
Minister of Greece.
German forces took Aleksinac, Serbia.
A German or Austrian U-boat sank the Italian ocean liner Ancona off Cape Carbonara, Sardinia, killing 272.
November 8, Monday: The Turkish authorities again made preparations to deport the 200,000 Armenians of
Constantinople.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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November 11, Thursday: Jemal Pasha, as commander of Syria, sought to court-martial the dean of the Realschule in
Aleppo and other German signatories of the protest of October 15 for having publicized the Armenian events
in Cilicia.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 13, Saturday: 20,000 Armenian deportees were reported in the Hawran District of Trans-Jordan. (On
November 15, 1918, only 450 of this group of 20,000 were reported alive.)
On this date, 10,000 Armenian deportees were reported in Intille (Intili) and 150,000 deportees were reported
in Katma living under terrible conditions, disease-wracked and starving.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 14, Sunday: The Anglican and the Orthodox Churches asked U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to pressure
the German government to intervene with the Turkish government to stop the massacre of the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 15, Monday: Winston Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty.
The German Charge d’affaires Baron Konstantin von Neurath, welcomed the new ambassador, Paul, Count
von Wolff-Metternich, who would represent Imperial Germany from this date until October 3, 1916. The
Charge d’affaires had been in charge of the German diplomatic representation in Turkey since October 2, 1915,
when Hohenlohe had departed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 16, Tuesday: The fields in Bakche District were reported littered with the corpses of many thousands of
Armenians who had starved while being deported through here.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 17, Wednesday: Sir Robert Cecil protested the Turkish charge that the massacres were a response to an
Armenian revolt, and charged that they were the result of a premeditated plan on the part of the Turkish
government.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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November 18, Thursday: In Haiti, Marine Major Smedley D. Butler led an attack on Fort Riviere.
This would produce a 2nd Medal of Honor. Major Butler would be proud of himself until he got thoroughly
sick of himself.
A circular telegram was sent ordering the deportation of Armenian children.
Talaat left Constantinople for an inspection tour in Anatolia. He would return on December 18th.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 23, Tuesday: British and French leaders decided on the evacuation of Gallipoli.
German forces defeated the Serbians at Pristina and Mitrovica taking 17,000 prisoners. Bulgarian forces cut
off the Serbian escape route and the remaining 200,000 Serbian soldiers began a long retreat into Albania.
November 25, Thursday: British and colonial troops were forced to retreat from Ctesiphon to Lajj.
William J. Simmons and 16 other Protestant white men clambered up Stone Mountain, Georgia to set a large
cross on fire and proclaim the rebirth of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. They dedicated their revitalized
organization, among other desiderata, to “Americanism” and “white supremacy.”
Up to this date, 500,000 Armenian deportees were estimated to have passed through Bozanti (northwest of
Adana).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 26, Friday: 1,010 Armenians were deported from the village of Mamure (Mamura) in Adana District.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 30, Tuesday: After three days of terrible weather including hurricane force winds, freezing temperatures,
snow and sleet, the Allies on Gallipoli counted 200 men drowned, 5,000 with frostbite, and 5,000 with other
sickness.
Afonso Augusto da Costa replaced José de Castro as prime minister of Portugal.
A Trio for violin, viola and cello by Max Reger was performed for the initial time, in München.
Enrique Granados and his wife board the Montevideo in Cádiz for a trip to the United States to premiere
Goyescas at the Metropolitan Opera. The ship was stopped and searched for seven hours by a French warship
looking for German spies. It would also be searched for five hours by a British warship.
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DECEMBER
December 1: After a concert of Skryabin’s piano works by Sergei Rakhmaninov (during which a disturbance by
Skryabin partisans broke out), Sergei Prokofiev and Rakhmaninov had an icy exchange, thus ending whatever
good relations they had.
Lee de Forest published an article entitled “Audion Bulbs as Producers of Pure Musical Tones,” describing the
musical properties of sounds produced by vacuum tubes.
Because of numerous reports and rumors of espionage, US President Woodrow Wilson demanded the recall
of the German military attaché Franz von Papen, naval attaché Karl Boy Ed, head of the German trade mission
Heinrich Albert and the Austrian ambassador Konstantin Dumba.
The fields around the village of Mamure (Mamura) were reported littered with several thousand corpses of
starved or murdered deportees who had been traveling through.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 3: The United States expelled two German diplomats on charges of spying.
December 4: Henry Ford, with a large party of peace advocates, sailed for Europe on a steamer he had chartered, the
Oscar II.
WORLD WAR I
10,000 Armenian bachelors were deported from the city of Constantinople up to this date. A list was prepared
of 70,000 Armenian individuals to be deported from Constantinople.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 18: US President Woodrow Wilson got married with Edith Galt at her home in Washington.
Edgard Varèse boarded ship for America with eighty dollars, letters of introduction, and no hope of
performances or employment, thinking he would stay only a few weeks.
Kurt Weill played a Chopin nocturne and Liebestraum nr.3 by Franz Liszt at a concert to benefit the Society
for Germans Abroad in the palace of Duke Friedrich II of Anhalt in Dessau.
When Christ was born of Mary free, a carol by Hubert Parry to anonymous words, was performed for the initial
time, in Albert Hall, London.
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December 19: The British had completed the preliminary evacuation of Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on Gallipoli,
removing 80,000 men. This night, the small boats returned and took away 20,000 more.
The Germans used phosgene gas for the 1st time, north of Ypres, but without strategic result.
December 6: A circular telegram instructs that no Armenian was to be left alive in the eastern provinces.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 7: The German ambassador Wolff-Metternich goes to the Sublime Porte in connection with the massacres
and was told that nothing could be discussed until Talaat’s return.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 9: Orders were issued in Aleppo Province for the deportation of 400 Armenian orphans previously placed
in an orphanage.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 12: 180,000 Armenian refugees from Turkey who had reached Tiflis (Tbilisi) were reported to be in dire
conditions.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 14: Orders were issued for the killing of Armenian priests.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 15: General Sir Douglas Haig succeeded Field Marshal Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief of British
forces in France.
WORLD WAR I
A circular telegram instructed that the true purpose of the deportations of the Armenians from the Ottoman
Empire was annihilation.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 16: Instructions were issued advising against slowing the deportations and urging the dispatch of the
deportees to the desert.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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December 18: Talaat returned from Anatolia. German Ambassador Wolff-Metternich was told by Talaat that the Turks
were not killing innocents.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 22: Henry Ford left his peace party at Christiania and returned to the United States.
WORLD WAR I
Orders were issued in the Ottoman Empire, forbidding the acceptance from any Armenian of an application of
exemption from the deportations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 25: It was Christmas Day. Orders were issued for the deportation from Turkey of all Armenian Christian
children still living, except those who did not remember their parents.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 29: On this date, of the estimated 210,000 refugees who had reached the Caucasus, only 173,000 were
reported still living, almost 40,000 having died as a result of privations and disease. Of the remaining 173,000,
105,000 were from Van Province, 48,000 from Bayazid (Bayazit) District, 20,038 from Mush District.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 30: A circular telegram, as a follow-up on the telegram of December 15, instructed that Armenians desiring
to convert to Islam were to be notified that their Islamization must take place subsequent to their arriving at
their final destination. In view of the earlier instructions clarifying the purpose of the deportations as
annihilation, the new instructions of course was meant to imply that Armenians were no longer to be allowed
to escape destruction for any reason.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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1916
JANUARY
January: A French translation was published, of a spurious book prepared by Talaat’s office charging the Armenians
with treason and revolution.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 1: The Armenian deportees concentrated in Suruj District, near Urfa, were sent out toward Der-el-Zor (Deir
el-Zor) under very severe winter conditions, completely lacking food, shelter, and suitable clothing.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 5: Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda seeks to oust Ali Suad, the Arab governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District
for lack of severity by applying directly to Talaat.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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January 8: The immediate deportation to the desert of the Armenians working on the railroads or in railway
construction was ordered.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 11: The Greek island of Corfu was occupied by the French.
WORLD WAR I
Instructions were sent to prevent foreign officers from photographing dead Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 13: Cettinje, the capital of Montenegro, was occupied by the Austrians.
WORLD WAR I
U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau during his farewell visit with Talaat was told of the pointlessness of
speaking about the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 15: A second circular telegram was issued by the Interior Ministry to prevent photographing of the dead.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 17: The governor-general of Aleppo was instructed to send the Armenians deported from the northern
provinces directly to their final destinations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 23: The governor-general of Aleppo informed Talaat that only one out of every ten of the Armenian deportees
remained alive, and that measures were being taken to dispose of this remainder as well.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 23 to March 10: During this period of 47 days, of 486,000 Armenian deportees, 364,500 were reported to have
been killed by the Turks or to have died because of the hardships of the deportations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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January 24: The War Ministry ordered all Armenian soldiers remaining alive in the Turkish armies to be converted to
Islam and to undergo circumcision.
The governor-general of Aleppo ordered the vice-governor of Aintab to deport the remaining Armenian
women in Aintab.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 26: German Marshal Colmar von der Goltz was appointed Commander of the Eastern Front.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 28: A circular telegram ordered the destruction of orphans.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 29: 50,000 Armenian remnants were reported concentrated at Intille (Intili).
The Interior Ministry provisionally exempted from deportation Armenians needed for the running of the
railways. Their families and children, however, were to be deported to the desert.
The Interior Ministry ordered the deportation of the Armenians constructing roads as soon as construction
work was completed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 31: The vice-governor of Aintab District informed the governor-general of Aleppo Province that the
Armenian women and children there had been handed over to the Kurds.
In a period of two and a half days, 1,029 Armenians died of the rigors of the deportations in the town of Bab,
to the northeast of Aleppo.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
FEBRUARY
February: Marshal Liman von Sanders claimed to have stopped the deportation of many Armenians from Adrianople
(Edirne).
Tahir Jevdet, Enver’s brother-in-law, the governor-general of Van Province, traveled via Ras-el-Ain (Ras ulAin) to Adana, where shortly before he had been appointed governor-general, replacing Ismail Hakki.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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February 3: According to Lord Bryce, 486,000 Armenians deportees were still living: 100,000 were to be found
between Damascus and Maan, 12,000 at Hama, 20,000 at Homs, 7,000 at Aleppo, 4,000 at Maara, 8,000 at
Bab, 5,000 at Munbij (Munbuj), 20,000 at Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain), 10,000 at Rakka, and 300,000 at Zor.
A circular telegram instructed that orphans who do not remember their parents be send from Aleppo to Sivas;
the rest were to be send to Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) and no expenditures were to be made for their continued
existence.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 4: Marshal Liman von Sanders replaced Marshal Colmar von der Goltz as Commander of the Caucasian, or
Eastern, Front.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 9: Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, the governor-general of Aleppo Province, and the Aleppo Commissioner of
Police began to remove 10,000 Armenian deportees from the environs of Aleppo.
The commander of the labor battalions for the railroad in Cilicia was instructed to deport the wives of the
workers and to tell them that their husbands will follow them.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 10: A British conscription law went into effect.
WORLD WAR
MILITARY CONSCRIPTION
I
The deportation commissioner in Aleppo requested funds from the Interior Ministry to cover to the expenses
of destroying the orphans.
Erzberger, a German Reichstag representative, visited Enver and Talaat, to protest the massacres and the
excesses of the deportations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 14: 50,000 Armenians were reported murdered at Intille (Intili).
On this date 50,000 deportees were reported at Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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February 16: An American application to send relief to the Armenians was rejected by Turkey.
Talaat sent a circular letter to Urfa, Aintab, and Kilis requesting documents to indict the Armenians.
The Russian Army occupied Erzerum. In the entire province, only a very few of the captive Armenian women
still survived.
U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing asked the German Ambassador Bernstorff to stop the Armenian
tragedy.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 22: Henry Morgenthau arrived in New York.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 23: Count Wolff-Metternich, the German ambassador in Turkey, visited Talaat and Halil Bey, the newlyappointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the Armenian Question with them because of the
representations of the United States to the German government.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 28: A few Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army in Aleppo were forcibly converted to Islam.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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MARCH
March 1: The 2d deportation of the Armenians of Adrianople (Edirne) began.
The authorities in Aleppo informed the Interior Ministry that the Armenians who had fled from Mardin had
all been killed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 4: A circular telegram instructed that Armenians of military age were to be put to work only outside inhabited
areas.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 10: A report was send to the Interior Ministry from Aleppo informing that three out of every four of the
Armenians previously in the desert had already died, with only one out of four still living.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 14: Kerim Refi, described as a very savage Rumelian Turk, who was appointed vice-governor of Ras-el-Ain
(Ras ul-Ain), arrived from Constantinople. He would speed up the massacres of the Armenian deportees
concentrated in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain), massacres which for some reason had gotten off to a slow start. The
massacres would extend over a period of five months. Kerim Refi would utilize primarily chete forces,
including one extremely wild tribe of Circassians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 20: In the Armenian Genocide of Turkey, Talaat was informed from Aleppo that 95,000 Armenians had died
from sickness and other causes in the past week: 30,000 in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain), 35,000 in Bab and
Meskene, 10,000 in Karluk (Karlik), and 20,000 in Dipsi, Abu Herir (Abuharar), and Hama.
Instructions were sent to entrap Armenian orphans under the pretext of giving them food — and then kill them.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
That afternoon Ota Benga –the African pygmy who had been kicked out of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City for throwing a chair at a rich donor, and then kicked out of the Bronx Zoo for
shooting arrows at its patrons, and had labored for years in a tobacco factory, using the name Otto Bingo,
growing more and more homesick for Africa and unable to earn enough to purchase a steamship ticket across
the Atlantic– at the age of 35 got his hands on a pistol, chipped the caps off his teeth, went out into the woods
near Lynchburg, Virginia, built a ceremonial fire, performed a dance, and shot himself through the heart.
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March 23: In Aleppo there was an attempt to force all Armenian soldiers in labor corps to become Muslims and give
up their Armenian names.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 29: The Turkish government officially rejected foreign relief for the Armenian deportees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
APRIL
April 6: 14,000 Armenians were massacred in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain). 24,000 deportees were reported still living in
Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 14: By this date, 70,000 Armenians were reported massacred at Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 15: The Russian Army occupies Trebizond. With the exception of a few Armenian orphans and widows secretly
sheltered by Greeks, no Armenians were found in the city.
A battalion of the Turkish 4th Army Engineers arrives in Ras-el-Ain (Ras ul-Ain) from Damascus to assist in
massacring the Armenians.
19,000 Armenian deportees arrived near the Khabur River.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 16: The New York Times reported that German Catholics had placed the number of massacred Armenians at
1,000,000, and that they held England at fault for this great crime.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 14, day: Russian forces made one final attempt to dislodge the Germans at Lake Naroch. It failed. The offensive
had cost 130,000 casualties.
A combined Russian land and sea attack on Kara-dere sent Turkish troops into retreat toward Trebizond.
WORLD WAR I
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April 18: Russian forces captured Trebizond (Trabzon) on the Black Sea from Turkey without opposition. Of the large
Armenian population there, they found only a few widows and orphans.
US President Wilson threatened Germany with a break in relations if submarine attacks on passenger ships
were not stopped.
Two of the Trois Mélodies by Erik Satie to words of Godebska and Chalupt, were performed for the 1st time,
at the Société Lyre et Palette, Paris.
April 19, day: President Woodrow Wilson issued a warning to Germany, that it had better not persist in its current
submarine policy.
WORLD WAR I
50 to 100 Armenian deportees were reported to be dying of starvation every day in Meskene, Abu Herir
(Abuharar), Sabkha (Sebka), and Hammam (Hamam).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 23: Sir Roger Casement came ashore from a German U-boat at Tralee. He was arrested by British authorities.
The Finnish Senate awarded a professorship to Jean Sibelius.
April 25: In an effort to support the Easter Rebellion, German ships bombarded Lowestoft and Yarmouth. They were
chased away by the Royal Navy. Three submarines were sunk — two German and one British.
April 28: The Turkish government again rejects foreign relief for the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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MAY
May:
72,000 Armenian deportees were reported in Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
At some point during the late spring or early summer of this year –according to a footnote in a sociological
report at the Hay Library (not presently locatable)– in Duluth, Minnesota four blacks were lynched.9
COLDBLOODED MURDER
May 3: According to the New York Times, before the fall of Erzerum, 15,000 Armenians had been massacred in the
nearby town of Mamakhatun, west of the city of Erzerum.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 10: Khairi, the Shaikh-ul-Islam, a Turkish religious leader, resigned under pressure. Musa Kiazim, a war criminal,
succeeded him as Shaikh-ul-Islam and as Minister of Pious Foundations.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 12: 1,400 Armenian orphans were distributed to various places by the Ittihad Committees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 19: Enver Pasha, one of the triumvirate rulers of Turkey, publicly declared:
The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the
Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall
destroy the latter through starvation.
In reply to US Ambassador Morgenthau, who was deploring the massacres against Armenians and attributing
them to irresponsible subalterns and underlings in the distant provinces, Enver Pasha’s reply was:
You were greatly mistaken. We have this country absolutely under
our control. I have no desire to shift the blame onto our
underlings
and
I
am
entirely
willing
to
accept
the
responsibility myself for everything that has taken place.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
9. Presumably what we have here are two reports of the same event, one saying “May” and the other saying “Spring,” although I
don’t have the evidence on that.
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May 21: News was received concerning the fate of 19,000 deportees in one caravan, of whom 16,500 were reported
killed on the banks of the Khabur River, northeast of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), and 2,500 survivors were
reported having arrived at Mosul.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 24: The New York Times reported that 80,000 Armenians had died of starvation around Damascus.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 30: 60,000 Armenian deportees were reported scattered between Hejaz District in central Arabia and Aleppo in
northern Syria.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
JUNE
June:
The Arab governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District, Ali Suad, was sent to Baghdad for refusing to carry
out the extermination of the deportees. He was replaced by Salih Zeki, the former vice-governor of Everek in
Kayseri Province, reputed for his cruelty.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 3: The report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions on the massacres of Erzerum was
published.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 7: All the Armenians remaining in the Aleppo area were ordered to leave for Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 20: The Armenians working in labor corps in Sivas were instructed to convert to Islam. At least 95% refuse.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 25: 7,000 Armenian soldiers stationed in Sivas were imprisoned for nine days in the old Seljuk buildings where
formerly the civilian Armenian leaders and intellectuals had been imprisoned before being killed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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June 30: Ambassador von Wolff-Metternich reported to the German Chancellor that Ittihad was devouring the
remaining Armenian refugees.
On the argument that those who refused were going to be deported into the desert again, the proposal was made
to the Armenian labor battalions in Damascus and to the civilian deportees that they convert to Islam. Very few
would accept.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Sarah Brown, one of the younger of John Brown’s 20 children, who had come west with her mother Mary Ann
Day Brown and lived in Rohnerville for a number of years, died at her daughter’s home in Campbell,
California.
Mexico released the 23 prisoners of war taken at Carrizal.
WORLD WAR I
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JULY
July 1, Saturday: At 7:28AM a huge mine blew up the German positions near Beaumont-Hamel.
At 7:30AM the week-long bombardment of the Germans, consuming over 1.7 million shells, stopped. There
was a moment of silence. Then 60,000 British and some French soldiers went over the top across a 25kilometer front along the Somme River, 130 kilometers north of Paris just east of Amiens. 40,000 more would
join the attack later in the day. They captured Montauban, two kilometers past the German line, but lost 60,000
casualties on the 1st day of battle, the greatest number of losses in any one day in the history of the British
army. Germans loses totaled 8,000. British attacks at Gommecourt, Beaumont-Hamel, Thiepval, and La
Boiselle were repulsed with extremely heavy casualties. The offensive would last five months.
Turkish forces captured Kermanshah.
Both north and south of the Somme River, the British and the French forces went on the attack.
WORLD WAR I
Lord Bryce submitted to Lord Grey, British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, his book on THE TREATMENT OF THE
ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The State of Georgia granted a new charter to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
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July 1916-March 1917: By March 1917, the Turkish Army on the Caucasian Front would have lost 60,000 of its
current 80,000 effective fighting men to starvation, disease and other causes, leaving effective only 20,000
soldiers of that army. Marshal Liman von Sanders would attribute these losses to the destruction of Turkish
agricultural production consequent upon their deportations of the Armenians!
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 5, Wednesday: The massacre of the 7,000 Armenian troops imprisoned in Sivas began. The massacre would last
for 21 days with an average of 1,000 killed every 3 days.
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July 6, Thursday: The Russian Army occupied Bayburt and Erzinjan.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Your Uncle Sam wanted to know what YOU were doing for “preparedness,” which consisted, apparently,
in getting yourself psyched up to be sent off to some foreign country to kill people you had never met:
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July 10, Monday: The U.S. Congress proposes a day of commemoration for the collection of funds for the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 19, Wednesday: The U.S. House of Representatives adopts the resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate
establishing a day of commemoration for the Armenian victims.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 23, Sunday: In order to further the Islamization and Turkification of the Armenian remnants in the Hawran
District, all the Armenian clerics found there were murdered by the Turks.
The proposal was made to the Armenian military doctors in Sivas that they become Muslims. Almost all refuse
and were at once killed.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
AUGUST
August 1: The Interior Ministry abolished the Armenian Patriarchate and the legal rights of the Armenian community
(the Millet Ermeni), on the grounds that there was no Armenian community remaining in Turkey.
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August 7: The newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Abram E. Elkus, left for Constantinople.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 8: 15,000 Armenian deportees were removed from Aleppo to the desert.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 12: The Turkish government again refused aid to the Armenian deportees by a neutral commission.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 13: Salih Zeki, the governor of Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor), informed Talaat that he was changing the location of
the deportees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 14: 200,000 Armenian deportees were reported killed in massacres by this date in the Zor District, at a delta
formed by the juncture of the Khabur and Euphrates River near Suwar (Suvar), Marrat (Marat), and Elbusayra.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
SEPTEMBER
September 3: A five member commission of Turks arrives in the Hawran District to convert the Armenian deportees
to Islam.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 5: The government orders all Armenian orphans to be given Turkish names.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 7: 60,000 more Armenian deportees were reported massacred in the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) area.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 16: Turkish authorities enter American consular offices to search for British records.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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September 29: The Roumanians began a retreat out of Transylvania.
WORLD WAR I
The German Cabinet, in its 86th session, discussed the Turkish massacre of the Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
OCTOBER
October 3: Advancing Germans forced Romanians back across the Danube and to the Transylvania-Romania border.
Count Wolff-Metternich left his post as ambassador to Turkey, recalled by the German General Staff at the
request of Enver because he had protested against the Armenian massacres. Wilhelm Radowitz was interim
Chargè d’affaires for Germany until November 16 and the arrival of the new ambassador, Richard von
Kuhlmann.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 4: The German charge d’affaires in Constantinople, Wilhelm Radowitz, reported to Chancellor Theobald von
Bethman Hollweg that 1,175,000 Armenians have been killed by the Turks, whereas 1,500,000 had been
deported. He further stated that 325,000 were still alive and in Turkey.
A revised version of Ariadne auf Naxos, an opera by Richard Strauss to words of Hoffmannsthal, was
performed for the initial time, at the Vienna Court Opera. This one was received cautiously at 1st, but would
soon replace the original.
Water Colors, a song cycle for voice and piano by John Alden Carpenter to words of Chinese poets, was
performed completely for the 1st time, in Chicago, the composer at the keyboard.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 5: The Turkish government confiscated by a provisional law all the real estate of the Armenians.
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October 7: At about 2:30 PM, Captain Hans Rose’s submarine U-53 surfaced in the Narragansett Bay near the Naval
War College. Numerous prominent Rhode Island residents, such as the Arthur Curtis Jameses and their house
guests, and the wealthy Kathleen Vanderbilt, boarded the German U-boat, and its captain indicated an intention
to pay a courtesy call on Rear Admiral Austin Knight. The captain handed a letter to one reporter, asking that
it be forwarded to the German ambassador. The U-53 remained in the bay for only three hours. According to
this captain, “Admiral Knight obviously thought it most desirable that the U-53 should leave again the same
evening. If I had not announced that such was my intention, I think I should have been given a pretty broad
hint on the subject.”
WORLD WAR I
October 8-9: President Woodrow Wilson, acting on the resolution of Congress, proclaimed these two days “Armenian
Relief Days.”
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 11: A highly secret Ittihad convention was convened in Constantinople to review existing policy toward the
Armenians and to decide on a future course of action.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Macmillan published Robinson Jeffers’s CALIFORNIANS. At about this point the poet was entering into
negotiations with the War Department towards enlistment in the collective war effort, but he would discover
his wife Una to be bitterly opposed to any such idea:
As to my motives in offering (rather late) to become a soldier:
I did feel a duty to protect the country that had protected me
and my few possessions.... On the other hand I felt a duty to
stay home and help take care of year old sons ... I had no
conscientious objection to fighting; it seems to me a natural
condition of the race. But I was never deluded with ideas of a
noble or crusading war; it seems to me an unavoidable
spectacular madness.
Throughout the call for troops my mind was perplexed and at
conflict with itself. I felt quite sure that this conflict
emotionally realized the external world for me and made much of
the difference between my verses before the war and my verses
since.
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NOVEMBER
November 16: Appointment of a new German ambassador in Constantinople, who would serve until July 1917 (he
would be becoming the new German Foreign Minister).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
DECEMBER
December 4: Omer Naji, an inspector-general of the Ittihad Committee, was reported to have announced that Ittihad
was seeking to organize a purely Turkish state.
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1917
JANUARY
January 4, Thursday: Calhoun Doty Geiger was born in Jacksonville, Florida.10
On the first day of New York’s legislative session, a bill was introduced to give women in the state the right
to vote.
FEMINISM
A Mr. Goppert of the German Embassy visited Enver, Talaat, and Foreign Minister Halil to convey the
message that this “forced Islamization” thingie that was going on in their country –something that had no
conceivable connection either with military exigency or with the security of the state– needed to cease
instantly.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
At 5:45PM there was an aurora borealis, and then at 10:45PM a very pronounced one. “Notwithstanding the
advanced phase of the moon, the whole northern half of the hemisphere was affected by it, and had the moon
been absent the sight would have been truly magnificent. As it was, great beams shot up vertically and
horizontally, the latter forming great arches, and the former appearing like searchlights. Frequently an
immense area of the sky would become illuminated as if by a great cloud of mist, and the light would pass up
to the zenith with lightning rapidity, appearing like clouds of light being wafted upwards from the N. horizon.
The clouds were mostly greenish, like a gas-mantle, but the background of the sky was pale ruby.”
FEBRUARY
February 1, day: Germany announced the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against shipping of all flags around
the allied nations.
Paul Claudel arrived in Rio de Janeiro as the minister of France to Brazil. He had brought with him Darius
Milhaud. Milhaud would remain two years in Brazil and become good friends with Heitor Villa-Lobos.
WORLD WAR I
10. The family pronounces its name with the G as in “go” and the EI as in “eager.”
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February 3, day: British and colonial troops routed the Turks from their trenches at Hai. The Turks redeployed at the
confluence of the Hai and Tigris rivers.
The German offensive toward Riga halted after minimal gains and heavy casualties.
Off the coast of Sicily, the US liner Housatonic was sunk by a German submarine. In response to Germany’s
policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States broke diplomatic relations (it would soon be
followed by Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and other South American nations). Because of this action of the American
government, Otto Luening was expelled from the Royal Academy of Music in München (the assembled
student body applauded politely as he departed).
WORLD WAR I
Several works by Heitor Villa-Lobos were performed for the 1st time, in the Salão Nobre do Jornal do
Comércio, Rio de Janeiro: Preludio no.2 for cello and piano, Sonata fantasia no.1 for violin and piano, Elégie
for violin or cello and piano, the String Quartet no.2, Fábulas características for piano and five songs for voice
and piano: Noite de luar to words of Junior, L’oiseau blessé d’une flèche, Les Mères to words of Hugo, Il bove
to words of Carducci and Il nome di Maria to words of Stechetti.
February 4, day: Talaat became the Grand Vizier of Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 14, day: Halide Hanum, Turkish female author, head of an orphanage established in Syria, received a
shipment of 70 Armenian orphans — along with instructions that she was to Turkify them.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 15, day: Another group of 70 Armenian orphans were sent to an orphanage in Lebanon, to be Turkified.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 5: The Turkish government distributed 400 Armenian orphans from Aleppo by rail to various villages and
towns.
In Syria, in order to keep the 350 residents of an Armenian orphanage from falling into the hands of the Turks,
these foundlings were distributed to surviving relatives no matter how distantly related.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 15: Tsar Nicholas of Russia abdicated. Prince Lvoff would head a new cabinet.
WORLD WAR I
20,000 Armenians in the city of Aleppo were reported in extreme distress. The Turkish government declined
American offers of aid to these Armenian survivors. Everything’s as it should be.
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March 20: In Aleppo District, 45,000 Armenian deportees were reported living in dire conditions. Of these, 10,000
were women, with the remainder consisting mainly of orphaned children.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 23: The governor-general of Damascus, Huseyin Kiazim, reported that there were 60,000 Armenian deportees
in Damascus District, of whom only about one in ten were still physically capable of performing any sort of
work.
10,000 Armenian deportees were reported in the city of Damascus, and 30,000 in Homs and Hama.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 26: Ernst E. Cristoffel, a German missionary in Malatia who witnessed massacres and deportations, estimated
that roughly a million Armenians had been murdered.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April: The Turkish government ordered that all surviving Armenians in Urfa District be Turkified.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 1: The Aztec, an armed American ship, was sunk in the submarine zone.
WORLD WAR I
12,000 Armenian deportees were murdered in Buseira, near Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 20: Walter Roy Harding was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. In World War II, he would be a conscientious
objector.
Turkey severed relations with the United States of America.
WORLD WAR I
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June:
Harry S Truman rejoined the National Guard and was elected first lieutenant of Battery F, 2nd Missouri
Artillery. Was it at about this time that he became a swordsman?
Skilled Swordsmen
Saint Ignatius Loyola
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President Harry S Truman
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Skilled Swordsmen
Michel Angelo
General George Patton
Sir Walter Raleigh
Heinrich Himmler
René Descartes
Hermann Göring
John Milton
Juan Péron
George Frederick Handel
Francisco Franco
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Benito Mussolini
Karl Marx
Oswald Mosley
Sir Richard Burton
Reinhard Heydrich
Aleksandr Pushkin
The Turkish government ordered the Turkification and Islamization of the surviving Armenian Christians.
The appointment of a new German ambassador in Constantinople (Johann Heinrich Count on Bernstorff,
former ambassador to Washington — Bernstorff would serve until October 27, 1918).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 5: The Interior Ministry ordered the deportation of all Armenian railroad employees.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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November 27: President Woodrow Wilson urged former ambassador Henry Morgenthau to write a book based on his
experiences.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
1918
When the German Ambassador insisted upon bringing up the Armenian question, Talat Pasha responded
“with a smile”:
What on earth do you want?
The question was settled.
There were no more Armenians.
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January 9: In order to select those who were to be executed upon the completion of their labors, the Police Department
of Aleppo obtained the list of all the Armenian labor battalion workers who were constructing the Aleppo
Normal School.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 28: Since the Russian armies had fallen apart in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Turks were
advancing almost unopposed, the German General Hans Friedrich von Seeckt, at the time Chief of Staff of the
Turkish Army, received instructions from home to intercept any Turkish atrocities against Armenians in the
Caucasus.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 27: Realizing that the values of Duluth, Minnesota (above) were of great importance, with malice
aforethought the Interior Ministry of Turkey requested that he be provided without delay with a complete list
of any Armenians being employed by the Turkish railways.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 3: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers was signed by Russia, Turkey, and
Germany. The hostilities with Russia were officially ended. Talaat declared that he would grant amnesty to the
Armenians (meaning, any we missed, any that might still happen at this point to be alive).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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Russia recognized the independence of Ukraine, Georgia, and Finland while handing over Poland and the
Baltic States to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Kars, Ardahan, and Batum were given to the Ottoman Empire.
The Armenians still alive in these districts were placed back under Turkish rule.
Communal riots began in Baku between Azeris and Armenians. They would continue through March.
German troops took Kiev.
WORLD WAR I
The Second String Quartet of Béla Bartók was performed for the initial time, in Budapest.
Sonata in b minor for violin and piano by Ottorino Respighi was performed for the initial time, in Bologna,
with the composer at the keyboard.
The Volunteers, a march by John Philip Sousa, was performed for the initial time, at the New York
Hippodrome.
March 12: Enver ordered that all civilian Armenians over five years of age, inclusive of the remaining Armenians in
the Turkish military, were to be killed within the next 48 hours. The Germans attempted to stop the Turks from
committing this massacre.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Turkish forces reoccupied Erzerum.
March 26: The governor-general of Aleppo Province provided a list of the Armenian railway employees to the Turkish
Military Commissioner for Railways.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 1: The Military Commissioner for Railways sent a reply to Osman Bedri, the governor-general of Aleppo
Province, relating to the destruction of the Armenian railway workers, and on the same day the list of these
workers was delivered to the Aleppo Police Department — which was serving as the concentration and transit
center for the deportations and massacres.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 13: Harry S Truman arrived in Brest, France, on board the USS George Washington.
WORLD WAR I
Turkish forces occupied Kars.
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April 14: The registration book of all the remaining Armenian construction workers (the labor battalions of the Turkish
Army) was sent to the Aleppo Police Department.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 15: The Turkish government announced that as soon as Talaat got back from the Peace Conference at BrestLitovsk, he would grant amnesty to the Armenians of Turkey. Practically, this was an empty gesture for the
benefit of the Europeans — as most surviving Armenians were living outside of Turkey proper and those still
remaining in Turkey were at the time being systematically destroyed, and were expected by the time he got
back home to be all dead.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 24: Enver returned from Batum to Constantinople and reported that he would be issuing instructions for the
return of “peaceful” Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 28: Turkey formally recognized the Transcaucasian Federative Republic consisting of Georgia, Armenia, and
Azerbaijan. (This federation would disintegrate one month later, on May 28th.)
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 28: An Armenian Republic was proclaimed in Russian Transcaucasia.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 9: Hindenberg wired Enver requiring the Turkish forces to evacuate all Caucasian areas except Kars, Ardahan,
and Batum. The Turks would ignore this demand. Local massacres were being reported throughout the
occupied areas.
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June 24: 2,000 remaining Armenians were massacred in Kara-Kilise in Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 28: Sultan Mehmet V Reshad, who had been a complete a rubber-stamp for the Ittihadists, died. He was
succeeded by Mehmet VI Vahideddin.
To destroy the survivors, the Turkish government condemned 14,000 Armenians to hard labor.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 5: Avedis Aharonian, President of the Armenian Delegation, met with the German ambassador to
Constantinople, Count Bernstorff, on behalf of the Armenian Republic.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 24: 2,000 remaining Armenians were massacred in Kara-Kilise in Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 28: Sultan Mehmet V Reshad, who had been a complete a rubber-stamp for the Ittihadists, died. He was
succeeded by Mehmet VI Vahideddin.
To destroy the survivers, the Turkish government condemned 14,000 Armenians to hard labor.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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September 15-17: Three days of slaughter by Turkish military forces under the command of Nuri Pasha (Enver’s
younger brother) and Halil Pasha (Enver’s uncle) in the city of Baku resulted in the death of 30,000 Armenian
civilians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 19: Allied forces aided by an Armenian Legion recruited from Armenian colonies throughout the world
opened a large-scale offensive on the Syrian front.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
October 2, day: Boston registered 202 deaths from Spanish influenza. Soon the city would cancel its Liberty Bond
parades and sporting events. Churches would be closed and the stock market would be put on half-days.
An emissary from the general staff informed the Reichstag, to its consternation, that the war might be
continued, but could not be won.
The Joint Council of Ministers of Austria-Hungary asked for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points of
President Wilson.
Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Allies. Armenian refugees in Bulgaria were now safe, as the Bulgarian
government would cease returning them to Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
WORLD WAR I
October 8: The Red Army takes Samara, thus opening up the Volga region.
The National Council of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was formed in Zagreb by leading south Slav
politicians.
Corporal Alvin C. York, USA., after becoming separated from his unit in the Argonne Forest, kills 20
Germans, and captures a hill, 35 machine guns and 132 German soldiers, singlehandedly.
Béla Bartók contracts the Spanish influenza, now a worldwide epidemic. He was confined to his bed in
Budapest.
WORLD WAR I
Allied forces captured the city of Beirut (Beyrut).
The Ittihad Cabinet of Enver, Jemal, and Talaat resigned and the three of them prepared to flee from Turkey.
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October 18, day: In Washington, Tomás Garrigue Masaryk issued the Czechoslovak declaration of independence.
In the midst of an epidemic, Berlin counted 1,700 deaths from Spanish influenza on this day alone.
October 19, day: Dr. C.Y. White announced in Philadelphia that he has developed a vaccine to prevent influenza. Over
10,000 complete series of inoculations were delivered to the Philadelphia Board of Health. Whether or not the
so-called vaccine was playing much of a role in loosening the flu’s grip on the city would become a matter of
debate.
October 29, day: British forces defeated the Turks at Ash Sharqat and Qayyarah on their way to Mosul.
Crews of the German High Seas Fleet took control of their ships at Wangerooge. Two ships ran up red flags.
Sergei Prokofiev made his 1st concert appearance in the United States, almost unnoticed, at the Brooklyn
Museum.
The Croatian Sabor proclaimed independence from Austria-Hungary in a new state of Slovenes, Croats and
Serbs.
Slovak leaders met in Turciansky Sväty Martin and agree to secede from Hungary and join in a common state
with the Czechs.
Kaiser Wilhelm departed Potsdam, where calls for his abdication were increasing, to join the high command
at Spa, Belgium.
The Ittihad Central Bureau resigned and the Party decided secretly to reorganize as the Tejeddut Firkasi
(Regeneration Party). Talaat, Enver, Osman Bedri, Behaeddin Shakir, and more than thirty other Ittihadist
ringleaders decided to flee from Turkey to Germany.
120,000 Turkish gold pounds and jewelry was transferred from the Ittihad Party to the Tejeddut Party, the
newly-organized front of the Ittihadists. This money and jewelry amounted to just a small part of the property
of the Armenians which had been misappropriated by the Ittihadists.
Dr. Nazim took with him to Germany 65,000 Turkish gold pounds and 600,000 Turkish gold pounds of
valuation in jewelry, out of the “abandoned” goods of the Armenians.
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October 30, day: British and Turkish delegations concluded an armistice aboard HMS Agamemnon in Mudros Bay to
take effect at noon tomorrow. Allied troops would occupy the Dardanelles and Bosporus forts, all mines would
be cleared, all Turkish war ships surrendered, the Turkish army demobilized, all prisoners freed and all
Germans and Austrians expelled. The Ottoman Empire ceases to exist. Total Turkish casualties in the war
number 2,920,000 men. The Armistice agreement makes provisions for the release of Armenian internees and
the return of the Armenian deportees to their homes.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Allied forces (mostly Italian) captured Vittorio Veneto and Sacile, breaking the Austro-Hungarian line and
sending them into wholesale retreat. Austria-Hungary asks for an armistice in Italy.
After a report circulated that the German Fleet was being readied for a last stand against the British, sailors at
Kiel Wilhelmshaven revolted.
A constitution for German-Austria was proclaimed. It declared Austria part of the German Republic.
Troops loyal to the Hungarian National Council seized public buildings in Budapest. Imperial troops were sent
to confront the council but most of them deserted along the way.
Five songs for voice and piano by Frank Bridge were performed for the 1st time, in Wigmore Hall, London:
Adoration to words of Keats, Come to me in my dreams to words of Arnold, Mantle of blue to words of Colum,
So early in the morning, to words of Stephens, and Where she lies asleep to words of M.E. Coleridge.
This would turn out to be the deadliest month in the history of the United States of America, as 195,000
Americans fell victim to influenza.
November 1, day: In Turkey, the Ittihad Party, with 120 delegates attending, convened under the guise of the Tejeddut
Party.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The American forces broke through the German defences at Meuse. The US Marine Brigade entered MeuseArgonne.
WORLD WAR I
USMC
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«La guerre est une série de catastrophes qui produisent
la victoire.»
— Georges Clemenceau
November 1, day: The Norwegian ship Bergensfjord, with Sergei Rakhmaninov and his wife aboard, steamed out of
Christiania for the United States. The composer had three offers in the US, but no definite plans except for
them to get the hell out of Europe.
180 mutineers were arrested by German naval authorities at Kiel.
War began between Poland and Ukraine over Galicia.
Mihály, Count Károlyi proclaimed the independence of Hungary.
The Society for Private Performances was formed in Vienna.
Italian troops took Belluno, north of Venice.
French forces entered Belgrade.
American forces began an offensive toward Sedan, smashing through the German lines at Buzancy and
advancing eight kilometers.
YMCA Music Organizer Gustav Holst arrived in France.
Seven leaders of the ruling party of Turkey escaped Constantinople aboard a German destroyer.
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November 2: Talaat, Enver, and Jemal fled Turkey aboard a German freighter.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 2, day: The July 13 proclamation of Wilhelm von Urach, Duke of Wurttemberg as King Mandaugas II of
Lithuania was rescinded. The country reverts to a republic under Chairman of the Lithuanian National Council
Presidium Antanas Smetona and Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras.
The Germans release General Pilsudski from prison. He returns to Warsaw.
East African Germans invade Northern Rhodesia.
The new Hungarian government recalls all Hungarian troops from the front.
November 3: The German Sailors Soviet took control of Kiel.
The American forces in France cut the vital Lille-Metz rail link.
WORLD WAR I
The second session of the Ittihad convention as the Tejeddut Party was held under the chairmanship of Ismail
Janbolat Bey, Talaat’s former assistant. An Executive Committee of twenty-one members was elected.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 4: The third session of the Ittihad convention instructed its provincial branches to go underground and
announced their abolishment.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 4, day: Delegates from Austria-Hungary and the Allied nations sign an armistice in Padua. Hostilities cease
on the Italian front.
Rebellious sailors in Kiel arm themselves and take control of Kiel. Loyal troops and ships flee. Ships still in
port raise the red flag. Workers in Kiel create a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, disarm their officers and
liberate their arrested comrades. Delegations were sent to other ports. Within two days, all important German
ports, including Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, were in revolt.
American forces capture Beaufort.
British forces renew their offensive in the Cambrai sector, crossing the Sambre Canal and reaching the Mormal
Forest.
25-year-old poet Wilfred Owen was killed in battle in France.
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November 5: All Ittihadist clubs in Anatolia were closed. The units went underground.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 7, day: Thousands of workers demanding bread, peace and removal of the monarchy demonstrate
peacefully in München. At night, King Ludwig III leaves his palace and would never return.
Mutinous sailors reach Cologne precipitating insurrection in the Rhineland.
French forces enter Sedan.
British troops cross the Scheldt River.
The United Press flashes a false armistice report setting off celebrations in France and the US Richard Strauss
conducts Salome in Berlin. It was the last production at the Berlin Court Opera. In two days, the German court
would cease to exist.
November 8, day: German negotiators reach the forest of Compiègne near Rethondes and the train of Allied
commander Ferdinand Foch. They were handed Foch’s armistice demands, in effect a surrender, and given 72
hours to decide.
The monarchy under King Ludwig III of Bavaria was abolished in favor of a republic. The Constituent
Soldiers’, Workers’ and Peasants’ Council proclaims the Bavarian Social and Democratic Republic, in
München. They name Kurt Eisner as head of government.
With riots and uprisings occurring in major German cities, the government turns Berlin into an armed camp.
Police arrest revolutionary leader Ernst Dämig and find plans for an insurrection to began November 11.
Chancellor Prince Max von Baden makes one last plea by telephone for Kaiser Wilhelm to abdicate. The
Kaiser refuses.
Prime Minister Constantin Coanda of Romania repeals all laws of the previous government including
universal suffrage. Romania declares war on Germany and forces troops of the Central Powers out of
Wallachia.
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November 11, Armistice Day: On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, an Armistice was signed between
the Allies and the Central Powers effectively halting the Great War. (The final treaty would be signed at
Versailles on June 28, 1919.)
There’s no sense in killing people until the very last minute, is there? Captain Harry S Truman’s Battery D
fired off its final round at 10:45AM.
WORLD WAR I
The Fifth Committee of the Turkish Parliament issued a summons for Talaat Bey, the principle architect of the
Armenian genocide, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, to appear within 10 days for an inquiry.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
In Duluth, Minnesota, John R. Kellam, son of the pharmacist, formed his 1st long-term memory:
I have a pretty good memory for things of long, long ago anyway.
My first memory was for something that happened when I was about
three and a half weeks more than two years old. Shortly after I
was two years old, and that birthday was in late October 1918,
the original Armistice Day occurred. Now I wouldn’t have been
able to understand the first thing about Armistice Day. But in
our neighborhood there was some excitement and something
happened so that my father called upstairs from the drugstore —
we lived in a flat above— and said that the front of the train
is off the tracks over at the station. That was only a half a
block away. Lester Park Station in Duluth. This was the train
headed up toward the Iron Range in Minnesota. Some wheels were
off the track.
My father said, “Let’s go over and watch it. They’re trying to
get it back on.”
That’s all he had heard. So we all went across the street, down
half a block and into the railroad station and beyond and the
train was off the track. The two little wheels under the front
cowcatcher of this old steam train had somehow gotten dislodged
and this train with extra cars on it full of people was waiting
for people working, trying to get this pair of wheels, heavily
weighted down by the springs under this cowcatcher, back on the
rails. They had iron wedges and iron poles with wedged tips,
curved, working. They’d get to a certain place and the engineer
would back up a little bit, slowly, and then there’d be a
cracking sound and the wheels would slip off of whatever they
were on and down on the ties again. Then they’d try it again a
different way. I was fascinated by this. Trains were something
that always stayed on the tracks, of course! So this was really
odd. In my short memory it even seemed unusual, in view of what
little I knew about trains. Well, they finally got the flange
of one wheel across the rail and the other flange still up enough
so that a tire went flack! right into place on top of the rail,
both sides at once. After all that struggling they had done,
then they were ready to make it go. There was no damage to the
railroad, the engine, or any other cars and so they were free
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to go. The track was all right. There were some ties that had
been marked, but pretty soon they got the engine heated up, the
steam started to flow and the engine pulled and chugged away
until the train was a little speck on the horizon and
disappeared.
Well, I guess I didn’t think about that very many times, but
when I was somewhere around seven or eight years old, we always
had dinner together in the evening, with a relief man taking
over the drugstore, and this was above the new drugstore that
we built a mile away, we were talking about this and that.
I said, “I remember a train that went off the track! They were
putting it back on!”
My dad said, “John, where was that?”
I said, “Oh, that was out at the Lester Park station before we
moved here.” Dad said, “Well, that’s right! What more do you
remember?”
I said, “There were so many people watching the workmen trying
to get this train back on and so I told you I couldn’t see. So
you lifted me up over your head so I was sitting on the back of
your neck with my knees along side your ears. I had my hands
clasped in front of your forehead. Way up there, where it was
higher than you were, Daddy, I was able to see everything! It
was wonderful!”
(I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing in between the people
— I would have moved in too close and been taken away.)
“Well,” he said, “John, are you sure you remember this or did
somebody tell you about it later?”
I said, “I haven’t heard anybody say anything about that. I saw
it. I was right there!”
He said, “The reason why I’m finding it so hard to realize that
it’s really your own memory is that that train full of people
with wheels off the rails and back on again was on their way to
the Iron Range for celebrations of the Armistice on November 11,
1918, when you were too young, I thought, to have remembered the
derailing incident.”
WORLD WAR I
1919
Henry Morgenthau, Sr., former US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, reported in AMBASSADOR
MORGENTHAU’S STORY that:
When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these
deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a
whole race; they understood this well, and, in their
conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to
conceal the fact.... I am confident that the whole history of
the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.
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The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost
insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian
race in 1915.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February: A court martial to address war crimes was convened in Constantinople.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
February 6: Dr. Reshid, former governor-general of Diyarbekir Province in Turkey and a major war criminal,
committed suicide.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The National Assembly of the German Republic convened in the Court Theater of Weimar.
WORLD WAR I
The Central Labor Council of Seattle voted to support dock workers in a general strike. This was the 1st
general strike in a United States city — more than 100,000 were off the job.
Two songs by George Gershwin were performed for the initial time as part of the musical comedy Good
Morning, Judge in the Shubert Theater, New York: I was so young, to words of Bryan and Caesar, and There’s
more to the kiss than the x-x-x, to words of Caesar.
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February 26: During the tenth session of the court martial on the Yozgat massacres, testimony was presented that the
local gendarmery commander, Tevfik, had used 50,000 Turkish gold pounds to purchase property that had
been confiscated from Armenians.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 5: The eleventh session of the trial on the Yozgat massacres was held.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 8: An imperial decree was published in Constantinople calling for the courtmartial of the Ittihadist leaders.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 13: The Grand Vizier, Ahmet Tevfik Pasha, attempted to justify the genocide against the Armenians on the basis
of false accusations. They had it coming.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Remaining revolutionaries in Berlin under arms asked the German government for surrender terms. No
conditions were allowed. Some surrendered, the rest fought to the death. Between 1,500 and 2,000 leftists died
in the insurrection. About 10,000 were wounded.
After ten days of an offensive against the Red Army, German troops controlled most of Lithuania and held the
port of Windau, Latvia. In every area they conquered, suspected communists were simply gunned down.
US President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France for a 2d time, at Brest.
The Violin Sonata op.82 by Edward Elgar was performed for the initial time, privately, at the British Musical
Society.
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March 24: The twelfth session taking testimony on the massacres at Yozgat was held.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
March 30: In an attempt to disrupt the Yozgat courtmartial, shots were fired in the courtroom.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 5: In Turkey, the fifth session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres was held.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Friend Elbert Russell’s “A Society of Peace-makers” appeared in the Friends’ Intelligencer.
THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY
April 7: The Soviet Republic of Bavaria was proclaimed in München, declaring its solidarity with the soviet republics
in Russia and Hungary. This was Bavaria’s 3d simultaneous government. Their manifesto called for secession
from Germany, alliance with Russia and Hungary, the nationalization of industry, and confiscation of large
landholdings.
French forces evacuated Odessa taking with them 40,000 Russians who had sought their protection.
Panic by civilians in anticipation of a Bolshevik takeover caused many suicides.
Trials of Turkish officials accused of the murder of thousands of Armenians in Ankara Province concluded in
Yozgat Province, with former governor Kemal Bey being sentenced to hang. The commander of local Yozgat
troops, Major Tevfik Bey, was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
160,000 Belgian women signed a petition demanding the right to vote.
Incidental music to Bennet’s play Judith by Granville Bantock was performed for the initial time, in
Devonshire Park, Eastbourne.
Piano Sonata in a minor op.11 and Three Miniatures op.12 for piano by Howard Hanson were performed for
the initial time, at the College of the Pacific, San Jose, California.
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April 10: Former Governor Kemal Bey, found guilty of the murder of thousands of Armenians in Ankara Province,
was hanged in Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Four days of balloting in Hungary for a national soviet came to an end.
The Belgian government decreed universal suffrage.
The comédie musicale Masques et bergamasques by Gabriel Fauré, to words of Fauchois, was performed for
the initial time, in Monaco.
Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was gunned down by federal troops at the hacienda of San Juan
Chinameca in Morelos.
April 12: Kemal Bey, the chief culprit of the Yozgat massacres, having been sentenced to death by the military tribunal,
on this day was publicly hanged.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 15: In Turkey, the court martial investigated the role of the Ittihad Party in the Armenian massacres.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
In Russia, the Cheka initiated concentration camps for political opponents.
After a German officer was arrested by Latvian officials in Libau, German troops broke him out of jail and
placed under arrest all the officers of the Latvian army.
In the midst of a general strike in Milan, leftists battled fascists in the streets. The socialist newspaper Avanti!
was ransacked by fascists. Five people were killed, 30 injured. When police finally gained control of the
situation, 50 rioters were arrested.
Antonio Maura y Montaner replaced Alvaro Figueroa y Torres, Count Romanones as Prime Minister of Spain.
May 4: Demonstrations were held in Peking and throughout China to protest the transfer of Germany’s rights in
Shantung province to Japan. The events of this day spawn a new movement among intellectuals to reform the
nation and awaken the masses.
It was revealed during the 2nd session of the tribunal investigating the Ittihad Party that the Ittihad cabinet
ministers had been simultaneously serving as executive members of the Ittihad Party.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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May 5: The 13th session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres was held.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 6: Captain Harry S Truman was discharged from the US Army.
WORLD WAR I
The 3rd session of the tribunal on the Ittihad Party revealed that the original Convention of the Ittihad had
consisted of merely 300 members.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 7: The victorious Allies presented the draft Treaty of Versailles to the German delegation, heretofore excluded
from any and all negotiations. They were given two weeks to submit any comments they might have. In a brief
statement, the German delegation rejected the war guilt clause.
The former German South West Africa was taken over by South Africa.
Violin Sonata op.165/2 by Charles Villiers Stanford was performed for the initial time, in Wigmore Hall,
London.
May 8: The 4th session of the Ittihad tribunal was held.
180,000 Turkish gold pounds were requisitioned from the Tejeddut Party.
The 5th session of the Ittihad tribunal was held and the trial of Young Turk propagandist Zia Gokalp began.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 11: The 16th session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres was held.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 12: The German National Assembly was moved from Weimar to Berlin as a gesture of national unity. They began
to debate, and rejected the Versailles Treaty. All parties denounced all sections of the document.
“Something about Love” by George Gershwin to words of Paley, was performed for the initial time as part of
the musical comedy Lady in Red in the Lyric Theater, New York.
May 15: The 18th session of the trial on the Trebizond massacres was held.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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May 19: A mass meeting of 100,000 persons was organized by the Constantinople Police Department to protest the
landing at Smyrna on May 14th of the Greek Army.
Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) landed at Samsun on assignment from the Ministry of War and the Grand Vizier in
Constantinople, as inspector-general of central Anatolia. Kemal began organizing new Turkish armies to
oppose the Allies. Former Ittihadist leaders joined forces with Kemal.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 22: German troops captured Riga.
WORLD WAR I
An Ottoman court in Trebizond handed down verdicts in the Armenian genocide. It found Governor-General
Jemal Azmi and Yenibahcheli Nail Bey of the Committee of Union and Progress responsible for the order to
massacre Armenians. They were sentenced to death in absentia. Hehmet Ali, a customs inspector, was
sentenced to ten years of forced labor. The Chief of Police was sentenced to one year in prison. Others
implicated were acquitted.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
May 28: On the 1st anniversary of independence, the Republic of Armenia declared the unification of Caucasian and
Turkish Armenia.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 10: For their war crimes, Mehmet Talaat Pasha (1874-1921), Ismail Enver Pasha (1881-1922), Ahmed Jemal
Pasha (1872-1922), and Dr. Nazim were condemned to death in absentia by the Turkish court martial.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July:
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The Constantinople branch of the Ittihad Party planned to send Javid, Dr. Adnan, and his wife Halide Hanum
as their delegates to the Congress convened in Sivas by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). To escape trial for war
crimes, Javid had for the eight months following the Armistice been in hiding in Turkey.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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July 5: In the brief interim (1918-1920) between the Ottoman collapse and the ascendancy of the nationalist Ataturk
regime, the Turkish government would hold trials for dozens of accused war-criminals. However, only 15
death sentences would be handed down, and of these 15 mass-murderers, only 3 persons, insignificant
subordinates, would actually be executed. Although the three main organizers of the genocide would
subsequently meet violent ends, Enver Pasha while leading an anti-Bolshevik revolt in Turkestan in 1922 and
Cemal Pasha and Talat Pasha when tracked down by Armenian assassination squads, their violent deaths
would be unrelated to these courts-martial. The Verdict (“Kararname”) on this day of the Turkish Military
Tribunal conducted by the Ottoman Turkish government against the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide
would be first published in the Official Gazette (Takvim-i-Vekayi), No. 3604 (supplement), of July 22, 1919.
The transcript would be translated into English by Haigazn K. Kazarian and published in the Armenian
Review, Vol 24 (1971, 4), pp. 19-26.
During the course of this trial, having heard the petitions and
statements of both sides; having studied and examined in detail
documents relating to this case; and after holding many
consultations in the interest of the proper disposition of the
matters under dispute, the following verdict is handed down:
Although the accused and their attorneys entered a motion that
the accused be set free, in accordance with the decrees
(Idianname) of the Attorney General dated May 3, 20 and 22, June
9, 16 and 25, all 1919, (saying) that the accused were in fact
moral representatives of the now defunct Ittihad and Terakki
Party, which had committed countless crimes, as were the members
of the Ittihad General Council (Medjlisi Oumumi), who were the
authors of the abovementioned crimes (jerayim fayilleri), (it
was ruled) that all the accused were then competent to stand
trial and face punitive judgment.
It was first deemed necessary to study the acts and deeds of the
abovementioned Party (Djemiet) since its establishment. Before
the Turkish Revolution (of 1908), there were individuals and
organizations, which remain secret today, which expressed
patriotic sentiments and aims. The record compiled since the
Revolution by these people, parties and movements may be
summarized as follows:
(Certain) Ottoman subjects who thirsted for justice and freedom
withdrew on July 9, 1324 (1908) to the mountains of Resneh to
fight for freedom.
To all Ottomans who thirsted for justice and freedom, July 9,
1324 (1908), the withdrawal to Resneh represented the bursting
forth of a torrent of pure water bursting on them from heaven.
The conviction was born that this was the only remedy for the
oppression and injustices which we suffered; and the people in
nowise obstructed the spread of the movement, supporting the
revolutionaries with sincerity and loyalty until normal
conditions were restored in all the provinces of the vast
Ottoman Empire, which rang with the hope that justice and
freedom would in fact be established. These sweet cries often
reached the ears of the revolutionaries and their movement
became stronger.
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But with the passing of time, as a result of political errors,
many portions of Ottoman territories were lost, one after the
other, to the Empire. Efforts were made to rectify these
failures by pointing up the errors of the old regime. The errors
followed on one another. Even the (dreadful) consequences of the
Italian and Balkan wars did not lead to the initiation of
programs of administrative reform. Those who had hoped were
disillusioned; those who thirsted for freedom were seized with
anguish and concern; and a segment of those who were thought to
be working for the national weal surrendered themselves to their
own personal aspirations, and they followed an entirely wrong
path; and some of those who had cried out “We are thirsty for
freedom” committed such strange acts that they laid the country
open to ruin — they dried up the land and subjected it to a
painful situation. They practiced selfishness and thoughtlessly
misled the government, outwardly pretending to be abiding by the
law, but actually, through deception, creating a system of
bodied in the Provinces which took over their local provincial
administration and finally subordinated the Ministers’ Council.
They accomplished this by taking over their general assemblies.
Thus did they achieve their goals.
It is apparent from the statements of Minister of Finance Djavid
Bey, and the written records of the Fifth Committee of
Parliament, especially those of October 24-26, 1334 (1918) that
the Executive of the Ittihad and Terakki Party had taken
decisive and audacious steps involving the fate of the nation
and the country, that it declared war on its own without even
consulting the Council of Ministers and obtaining that body’s
consent, something which it found to be unnecessary — although
even the kings cannot arbitrarily declare war.
No good could come out of such behaviour. Everyone understood
this.
The opponents of the Ittihad Party who, however, had practiced
a certain degree of respect toward that Party, now began openly
to criticize it.
After the revolution it had been deemed necessary to declare
martial law, which the Party did — but without cessation,
indefinitely. They enlisted the mob, the rabble, collectively
to assail the Sublime Porte. They assassinated Nazim, the
Minister of War, and his chief Aide, and they proceeded to
overthrow the Cabinet of Kiamil Pasha, establishing a Cabinet
of the Ittihad and Terakki. They summarily dismissed the
experienced and honorable members of the Cabinet and replaced
them with persons who belonged to the Party. There arrived a
moment when people sought again the days of the tyrant. Everyone
began to protest the rampant arbitrariness and tyranny.
There was even more to it. They created an even greater
atmosphere of harassment of the non-Islamic elements of the
land, the Armenians in particular, who had hoped, from our
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precious Constitution, for justice and peace. These people now
understood that they had been victimised by hypocrisy, and they
assumed the posture of awaiting that opportune moment when they
would be able to realize their former national aspirations. And
the cause of all this were the Ittihadists themselves. They even
raised national and racial issues among the Moslems of the land,
they promoted divisiveness and conflict and jeopardized Ottoman
unity. All this has been established by the intensive studies
and examinations done of the matter as they appear in the charge
of the Attorney General.
The Court Martial has confirmed the following five points which
are irrefutable, which substantiate the Attorney General’s
demand that a verdict of guilty be arrived at.
These facts relate to the active body of the Ittihad and Terakki,
the Party’s moral representative. The personal crimes attributed
to this representation have tainted the name of the Party. Of
these crimes, all of us (i.e., members of the Court) have in all
good conscience formed our own convictions.
Consequently, the adjudged abovementioned crimes cannot be
ascribed to all members (i.e., the accused). Special legal
disposition must be made to judge the degree of guilt or
innocence of all participants in these crimes in accordance with
the degree of their guilt.
Counsel for the accused in the course of his defense declared
that under the constitutional regime the presence of political
parties has been deemed to be necessary, that even today in our
land other political parties in fact exist, in particular the
“Hurriet and Ittilaf” party, which has a Central headquarters,
a General Assembly and branches, just as the Ittihad and Terakki
party; and (defense counsel said), the “Hurriet and Ittilaf” has
even called those of its members who are Ministers to a meeting
of their own.
It is the contention of this court, after many consultations,
that although the presence of parties and coalitions is
necessary in countries governed by a Constitution, these parties
and movements must never interfere in the affairs of the
Government and its Executive Branch. After defining their aims
and goals through majority actions taken at their national
conventions, they leave the Ministers who enjoy their confidence
alone to express their own views and cast their votes in
accordance with the dictates of their own conscience.
Parties and movements then aspire simply to influence
Governmental actions to be in accordance with their own plans.
They work solely to that end. They do not meddle on other
business and they try to influence those Ministers whose actions
they do not approve to resign, not by threats but by votes of
“no confidence.” This is the natural way of doing things.
As to the parties which exist in Turkey, up to the convening of
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the National Assembly, the majority party cannot exert any
influence on, or intervene in, the operations of the Executive
of the Government which it has not chosen; on the other hand,
if such a Party tries to alter the Government’s legal and
constitutional form, the end result will be just as bad. Thus,
in examining the diverse offices of this Government, one must
conclude that the views of defense counsel have no validity.
The five points projected by the Court are then the following:
(1) On the evidence of the trial which has taken place before
this Military Court, it is obvious that the massacres which took
place in the Kaza of Boghazlayan (Ankara), the Sanjak of Yozgat,
and the Vilayet of Trebizond, were organized and perpetrated by
the leaders of the Ittihad and Terakki Party.
(2) The Defense argued that the news of these was communicated
(to the Party) only after they had been committed. But even if
this hypothesis were true, it is plain that even after the news
was received of the atrocities, no steps were taken to prevent
their repetition; nor were arrangements made for the punishment
of the original criminals.
We note that the President of the Ittihad (Sadrazam), Prime
Minister Said Halim Pasha, upon the proclamation of general
mobilization, invited to his seacoast residence the members of
the Central Committee of the Ittihad (Merkezi Oumoumi), advising
them that it would be extremely perilous for Turkey to take part
in the war, that they adopt a policy of neutrality. He backed
up his views with explanations and factual data, but failed to
convince them. So, they took part in the war; and based on the
minutes of the Parliament, as confirmed by Riza Bey, it is
obvious that the responsible representatives of the Ittihad and
Terakki had, even before the declaration of war, organized
bandit bands in Trebizond which entered Russian territory and
committed acts of aggression. Riza Bey confessed this to be a
fact. The war itself was not declared with the full assent of
the Council of Ministers; and it was after the step to war had
been taken that Minister of Finance, Djavid Bey, Churouk Sulu
Mahmoud of Postal Services, and Suleyman el Boustani Effendi,
Minister of Commerce, resigned their posts. This confirms
further the fact that war was not declared on the DECISION OF
THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, that such a step was decided upon by
the Ittihad and Terakki Party, that that Party alone declared
war.
(3) From the testimony of former Prime Minister Ahmed Izzet
Pasha it is clear that his resignation as Minister of War was
brought about by the intervention of the Ittihad Party — was the
direct result of that Party’s hostility to him.
(4) The world congress of the Ittihad and Terakki Party, having
come to an understanding on the subject of the logistical
support of the army, the Party’s Istanbul headquarters handed
over the direction of that task to its representative, Kemal
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Bey. First, they created a businessmen’s body which took over
the operations and rights of a number of firms and factions and
seized private property. Public institutions were forced to
transfer their assets to a limited number of individuals,
including members of bodies mentioned above. As a result,
countless numbers of Ottoman subjects have perished from lack
of nourishment; many have suffered paralysis, and many have
died. The result was that to a considerable degree the
government’s potential defense force was diminished. That the
Ittihad and Terakki Center interfered in Governmental operations
was confirmed by the records of the Ittihad Congress of 1332
(1916) which show that a report to this effect delivered there
was warmly received.
This Court demanded and received from the Municipality (of
Istanbul) an explanation of this event.
(5) Musa Kiazim Effendi, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, while consulting
with the Senate on the matter of transfer of the religious court
(Sheriye) to the Ministry of Justice, in replying to a question
put to him, said: “Do not ask for my vote. The Party (Firka)
wants it that way and that way it shall be.” These circumstances
were fully explained and understood during this trial.
They simply mean that the Ittihad in fact interfered (in the
operations of the Government).
These five points were familiar to all of them; as were other
matters, the consequences of which we have all seen. With
reference to important matters of State, no opportunity was
given the Council of Ministers to determine issues by their own
vote and on their own counsel. There were instances of
intervention to render the Government subservient to their own
interests and their purposes. All this have been proved.
The legal form of the Ottoman Government called for authority
to be divided into three agencies: Legislative, Executive, and
Judicial. The Ittihad rendered itself superior to the three
branches of Government, brought itself to the fore as a fourth
power, prevailed through the force of threat, and disfigured our
form of Government.
The authors of the above-mentioned crimes, representing the
moral person of the Ittihad and Terakki Party, are the members
of its General Assembly, the fugitives — Prime Minister Talaat
Pasha and Minister of War Enver Effendi, now expelled from his
military career; Djemal Effendi, Minister of the Navy, likewise
expelled from the service; Dr. Nazim, Minister of Education —
these were the principal criminals (fayili asli) and their guilt
has been determined by a unanimous vote. As for the case of
another member of the Ittihad General Assembly, the Seikh-ulIslam, Musa Kiazim Effendi, who was present throughout the
trial, and on whose behalf both defense counsel and the Attorney
General pleaded as if he were a man of virtue, a person of
character and great learning, a man whom they could not possibly
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envision as having participated in the crimes: Musa Kiazim
Effendi, however, has been one of the important members of the
Party since the Revolution but has obviously convinced such
people of high education as defense counsel and the Attorney
General of his innocence.
The truth is that he is a person of inadequate education, who
represented to ignorant people the deeds of the Party as logical
and legal. He exerted no effort (to discourage the crimes
committed) and even obstructed attempts to rectify erroneous
opinions. In this trial it came to light that he directed the
scientific and religious affairs of the Ittihad and Terakki
Party, acting contrary to the Sheri Sherif (the law of the noble
religion of Islam), and gave advice contrary (to the spirit of
Islam). He has told this Court that the advice which he rendered
was not proper and admitted that he made no attempt to forestall
(the events); he also said that to resign from the Ittihad and
Terraki is to resign from Islam — and these and similar concepts
are in ill-keeping with the virtues and perfection ascribed to
him. They simply exacerbate his guilt. During the examination
and interrogation of this individual it was made clear that,
being very busy with his work in the scientific branch of his
Party, although not included among the principal authors of the
crimes, he nevertheless became a participant and for this his
guilt has been confirmed by a unanimous vote and his case has
been decided on a two-thirds majority vote.
It has not been confirmed that Rifaat Bey, the former President
of the Senate, participated in the Ittihad and Terakki Party;
neither was he a participant in the crimes committed. The court
decided unanimously to grant him freedom provided that he is not
jailed for another cause. “Former Minister of the Postal
Service, Hashim Bey, was in Berlin. Without receiving his
consent, he was elected a Minister and, despite his refusal, he
was appointed a Minister upon his return to Istanbul. His period
as Minister coincided with the last years of the Ittihad
Ministerial Council and he attended only three general meetings
of the Ittihad in which he busied himself with issues outside
of the Constitution. He was never personally present at any of
their consultations, he was a mere listener. This was confirmed
in the ensuing examinations. He too therefore has been set free
by a majority vote provided that he will not [have] been arrested
for any other cause.
As to the sentences: punishment is to be meted to the
abovementioned persons: Talaat, Enver, Djemal and Dr. Nazim,
whose crimes were the greatest according to the first paragraph
of the 45th Article of the Imperial Municipal Punitive Lawbook;
also to be punished are Djavid, Mustafa Sheref and Musa Kiazim,
by virtue of the second paragraph of the same Article and in
accordance with the last paragraph of the 55th Article of the
same Lawbook. The Articles in question are:
“When a number of persons commit together a crime, or commit a
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crime which itself comprehends a number of criminal acts, when
each of these persons has been responsible for the commission
of one or a few facets of that crime, such people will be termed
as co-participants and will be punished individually as
principal criminals.
When it is a question of altering the form of the constitutional
government or plotting against the Sultanate, or committing a
violent murder — when such acts are confirmed, the accused shall
be sentenced to death.
Accomplices in a felonious crime who are not subject to a legal
exception shall be punished in the following manner: If the
principal has been sentenced to death or to permanent forced
labor, accomplices shall be sentenced to a term of hard labor
of not less than ten years.”
In accordance therefore with the abovementioned paragraphs in
the law code, Talaat, Enver, Djemal and Dr. Nazim are sentenced
to death and Djavid, Mustafa Sheref and Musa Kiazim are
sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor; and
Although the abovementioned Rifaat and Hashim Beys are to be set
free, this will pose no obstacle to issuance of Supreme Court
summons to them to appear before that Court on matters relating
to their offices; and Former Minister of Postal Services, Vosgan
Effendi, and Minister of Commerce Suleyman-el Boustani Effendi,
having departed for Europe quite a while ago, and it having been
confirmed that even now they are unaware of invitations issued
them (by this Court) to appear before it, and it being known
that even if they were aware of this Court’s invitation their
return would have been improbable, their cases are therefore
tabled.
These verdicts have been rendered unanimously in absentia in the
cases of Talaat, Enver, Djemal and Dr. Nazim; Djavid, Mustafa
Sheref, Vosgan and Suleyman-el Boustani Effendis; they have been
likewise rendered in the presence of Rifaat, Hashim Beys, and
Musa Kiazim.
July 5, 1919 (1335), 6 Shevval 1337: signatures: The President
of the Military Court, Ferik (General) of Staff; Mustafa Nazim
Binni Ahmed; Member of the Military Court; Mirliva (General) of
Staff, Ali Nazim; Member of the Military Court, Colonel of
Infantry, Rejeb Ferdi Binni Mehmed Ali.
(PERSONAL EXCEPTION): Having considered the confessions of
Mustafa Kiazim Effendi and the circumstances revealed by his
statements, the undersigned is in full agreement (with the Court
sentence) that he was not an accomplish to the crimes of the
Merkezi Oumoumiya; but (it is the view of the undersigned) that
he used his religious and scientific responsibilities in such a
way as to hide the crimes of the Central body, that he made no
effort to prevent or forestall the commission of those crimes,
that he did not resign from office (because of those crimes),
and that therefore he was one of the principal criminals. Hashim
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Bey, too, according to the evidence of his own confessions,
adhered with all his heart to the Central Body and has been loyal
to it both during his tenure of office and before he assumed the
responsibilities of his position. He posed not a single
objection to the crimes committed up to the day of his trial,
and is convinced of the Central Body’s innocence (of those
crimes). The undersigned is inclined to consider him an
accomplice-criminal. — (Signed) Member of the Military Court and
Mirliva (General of Staff) Mustafa Binni Aziz, Suleymaniye.
It is confirmed that the signatures affixed to this sentence are
the authentic signatures of the Members of the Military Court:
July 5, 1919 (1335)
Military Court: NAZIM.
Head of the Secretariat empowered to Record the Minutes of this
Military Tribunal: Abidin Daver.
Official organ: No. 3604.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 3: The trial on the Kharput massacres began. Halil Pasha was heard as a witness. Evidence was introduced
revealing that Behaeddin Shakir had used two separate ciphers, one for use with the Sublime Porte, the other
for use with the War Ministry.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 13: Halil Pasha and Kuchuk Talaat, both accused as war criminals, were able to escape from Constantinople
and join the forces of Mustafa Kemal.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November 2: Jelal Bey, the former Governor-General of Aleppo Province who during May 1915 had resigned in
protest against the order to exterminate the Armenians and had been transferred, was reinstated as GovernorGeneral of Aleppo Province.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December: Francois Georges-Picot, the former French High Commissioner in Syria, and Mustafa Kemal held a secret
meeting in Sivas concerning the status of Cilicia. Kemal demanded that the French Army including the
Armenian volunteer forces serving with it be withdrawn. Picot agreed, leaving the Armenian survivors in
Cilicia, who had returned home from their ordeals in the desert, again quite defenseless.
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1920
January 19: The Allies formally recognized the independence of Armenia.
Tried in Constantinople in absentia, Behaeddin Shakir was sentenced to death and Dr. Nazim to fifteen years
hard labor.
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January 21: Turkish Nationalist forces affiliated with Mustafa Kemal attacked Marash.
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February 5: 10,000 Armenians were massacred in Marash.
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April 1: The Ittihadists distributed relief funds to party members in hiding in Turkey accused of crimes, and to those
who had fled to foreign countries.
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April 22: The United States of America officially recognized the Independent Republic of Armenia.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
April 23: The Ottoman government in Constantinople announced that it would seek a new review by higher judicial
bodies, of the sentences against those tried by the courts martial.
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April 25: United States President Woodrow Wilson received an invitation from the San Remo Conference to determine
the borders of Armenia.
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May:
The French and Turkish Nationalists agreed to an armistice.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 22: Jemal Oguz, the murderer of the poet Daniel Varoujan and other Armenian intellectuals, with the assistance
of the Military Governor of Constantinople, escaped from custody.
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July 29: Five war criminals were tried for the massacres in Erzinjan, all of whom had conveniently escaped from
custody — and were sentenced in absentia.
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August: The Turkish Nationalist and Bolshevik forces formed an alliance.
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August 5: The Turkish court martial condemned to death Nusret, vice-governor of Bayburt District.
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August 10: The Treaty of Sèvres was signed. According to articles 226, 227, 228, 229, 230 pertaining to the massacres,
the Turkish government promised to hand over all documents and any persons requested by the Allies. Articles
88 and 89 recognized Armenia as a free and independent state.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
November: Of 10,000 Armenians living in Hadjin (Hajen), only 480 survived a massacre by Turkish Nationalist
forces.
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November 22: President Woodrow Wilson presented his delineation of the borders of Armenia.
(deathmask)
A week later Armenia was partitioned by Turkish Nationalist forces and Sovietized by Russian Bolsheviks.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
December 30: The trial on the massacres in Mosul began.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
1921
January: Naim Jevad, an accused war criminal, was sent by Enver as an envoy from Moscow to Constantinople.
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January 3, 4, and 5: An acquittal was handed down for those accused of the massacre in Adrianople (Edirne).
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January 18: The Ottoman government abolished the courts martial.
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January 20: The Turkish Nationalist Pact demanded the inclusion of Armenia, Smyrna, and Thrace in Turkish territory.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
January 21: The trial on Erzerum massacres was reviewed by a new and higher court.
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January 22: The first national congress of the NSDAP (Nazi party) was held in München, Germany.
January 30: Mustafa Kemal proclaims his government in Angora (Ankara) to be the only legitimate government of the
Ottoman Empire.
A week-long conference in Paris concludes with a decision on German reparations payments to be spread out
over the next 42 years.
Incidental music to Rode’s play Moderen by Carl Nielsen is performed for the first time, in the Royal Theater,
Copenhagen.
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February 8: Mustafa Pasha, presiding judge of the court martial which had condemned Nusret to death on August 5,
1920, after six months of imprisonment and trial was acquitted of the charge of having joined in a conspiracy
against the government. This verdict signaled the beginning in Turkey of the reversal of the policy on bringing
the Ittihadists to justice.
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February 11: After a ten-months siege, Aintab capitulated to Turkish Nationalist forces.
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February 17: The trial on the Keghi massacres was held.
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February 18: Some of the war criminals of the Keghi massacres were acquitted.
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February 24: Investigation of the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) massacres began.
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March 10, Thursday: The investigation of the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) massacres continued.
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March 14, Monday: Talaat Pasha, who had presided over the murders of more than one million persons, had been
condemned to death by a Turkish court martial on July 11, 1919. A 24-year-old Armenian student, Soghomon
Tehlirian, approached Talaat Pasha from behind as he was strolling along swinging his cane on this day in the
Charlottenberg district of Berlin, and shot him in the back of the head, shouting “This is to avenge the death
of my family.”11 (In 1943, the Turkish government would obtain Talaat’s remains from Nazi Germany and
enshrine them on Liberty Hill in Constantinople.)
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
June 1: The German Foreign Office obstructed the former German Consul at Aleppo, Rossler, from testifying in the
Berlin court trying Talaat’s assassin.
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June 2: Tehlirian’s trial was held in Berlin.
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June 3: Tehlirian was acquitted.
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December 6: Said Halim was assassinated in Rome.
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1922
April 7: Jemal Azmi, the governor-general of Trebizond during the massacres, and Behaeddin Shakir were
assassinated in Berlin.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
July 25: Jemal Pasha, the former Minister of the Marine and the Fifth Army commander in Syria, was assassinated in
Tiflis (Tbilisi).
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August 26: Anarchy spread in Smyrna as Turks pressed in on the city.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
11. During June 1915, Tehlriian’s hometown in Armenia had been emptied and the gendarmes in charge of the column of civilians
had raped his sisters. His brother’s head was split with an ax. His mother was shot. Tehlirian was knocked unconscious. When he
came back to consciousness everyone around him was dead. He managed to find the mutilated body of one sister among the corpses.
He presumed that he must be the sole chance survivor of this slaughter.
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September 9: The advance guard of the Turkish Army entered Smyrna and pillaged Armenian and Greek homes and
stores. Armenians and Greeks were killed in the thousands. Religious institutions, including the Armenian
Prelacy in Smyrna, were ransacked.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
September 13: The burning of Smyrna by the Turks. Within 24 hours, 50,000 houses, 24 churches, 28 schools, 5
consulates, 7 clubs, 5 banks, and an unknown number of stores and warehouses were destroyed.
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1923
February 4: The Lausanne Conference deadlocked over the Armenian Question.
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July 24: The Treaty of Lausanne was signed by Turkey and the Allies, excluding any mention of Armenia or the
Armenians. The new Turkish Nationalist state was extended international recognition. The Ottoman Empire
went out of existence.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
August 23: The Turkish Nationalist congress, known as the Grand National Assembly, meeting in Ankara, ratified the
Lausanne Treaty. The Allies began to evacuate the following day from all places in Turkey that had been
occupied in accordance with the terms of the Armistice of October 30, 1918.
October 29: The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed by the Turkish Grand National Assembly, with Mustafa Kemal
as its President.
Worried about Communist attempts at revolution, the German government took over direct rule of Saxony and
sent troops into the area.
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1939
August 22, Tuesday: According to Kevork B. Bardakjian’s HITLER AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The Zoryan Institute, 1985), Führer Adolf Hitler actually did ask “Who, after all, speaks today
of the annihilation of the Armenians?” He did so on this day while addressing his military commanders at
Obersalzburg a week before the invasion of Poland, and the German original of the confirming document is
printed in AKTEN ZUR DEUTSCHEN AUSWARTIGEN POLITIK 1918-1945, Serie D, Band VII (Baden-Baden, 1956,
pages 171-172).
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
We have the English version as it appeared in Louis P. Lochner’s WHAT ABOUT GERMANY? (New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co., 1942, pages 1-4; the material also appears in Appendices II and III in two other versions). The
Nuremberg Tribunal would identify the material as L-3 or Exhibit USA-28: “My decision to attack Poland was
arrived at last spring. Originally, I feared that the political constellation would compel me to strike
simultaneously at England, Russia, France, and Poland. Even this risk would have had to be taken. Ever since
the autumn of 1938, and because I realized that Japan would not join us unconditionally and that Mussolini is
threatened by that nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince, I decided to go with Stalin.
In the last analysis, there are only three great statesmen in the world, Stalin, I, and Mussolini. Mussolini is the
weakest, for he has been unable to break the power of either the crown or the church. Stalin and I are the only
ones who envisage the future and nothing but the future. Accordingly, I shall in a few weeks stretch out my
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hand to Stalin at the common German-Russian frontier and undertake the redistribution of the world with him.
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 formations 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 today of the annihilation
of the Armenians?”
WORLD WAR II
“If positive Christianity means love of one’s neighbor,
i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor,
the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those
who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive
Christians. For in these spheres, the community of the
people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a
prodigious work.”
— Adolf Hitler, February 24, 1939
WORLD WAR II
GERMANY
2005
February 6: Orhan Pamuk was reported in the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger as having made a comment about the
Armenian genocide, that “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but
me dares to talk about it.” (Later in the year Turkey’s most famous writer would, for this incautious comment,
be placed on trial on a charge of “belittling Turkishness” — his possible sentence to be three years in a Turkish
prison hell.)
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2012
October 29, Monday: Adam Gopnik’s “Faces, Places, Spaces: The renaissance of geographic history” in The New
Yorker pointed up that the most original and most audacious accusation in Timothy Snyder’s BLOODLANDS:
EUROPE BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN (Basic Books, 2010) was that Führer Adolf Hitler’s model for his
actions in the East had been America’s ethnic cleansing of the West — the Asian heartland was the Manifest
Destiny of the Nazi Reich. Hitler’s expectation was that “a similar process will repeat itself for a second time
as in the conquest of America.” Hitler planned to deal with Slavs much as Andrew Jackson had dealt with
Seminoles. He intended the Volga River to be Germany’s Mississippi. Snyder points out that it was not merely
the world’s indifference to Turkish Moslem genocide against Turkish Armenians but also the world’s
indifference to the fate of the native Americans that had given him the confidence that he was going to be able
to get away with it.
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
WORLD WAR II
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,
such as extensive quotations and reproductions of
images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great
deal of special work product of Austin Meredith,
copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will
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Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by
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“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until
tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”
– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”
in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
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ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE
Prepared: July 6, 2013
143
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we
have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of
the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What
these chronological lists are: they are research reports
compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules
which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.
144
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE
To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a
button.
Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious
deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules
stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and
then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of
the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely
resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and
love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,
and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes
available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the
creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out
of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking
and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of
a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and
upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge.
Place your requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.
Arrgh.
145
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith