Armenian genocide how many deaths

They sought to create a new empire, called Turan , with one language and one religion. Christian Armenians constituted 10 percent of the empire, totaling approximately two million people. Most Armenians were well-educated compared to many Turks, who were largely illiterate. Although most Armenians were very poor, a small number had excelled, despite their second-class status. The Young Turks glorified the Turk peasantry at the expense of the Armenians, turning Armenians into pariahs.

While the world was focused on battle in Europe, the Ottoman Empire began a systematic campaign to eliminate the Armenian people within its borders. Because most Turks were illiterate, anti-Armenian propaganda was primarily disseminated in the sermons of Muslim mullahs and by town criers, who labeled Armenians as spies, infidels, and traitors. Armenian leaders and intellectuals were arrested, tortured, and killed. Many died as a result of the brutal living and working conditions. Armenian men were arrested and killed in mass shootings outside their towns and villages.

Women, children, and elderly were removed from their homes and forced to march hundreds of miles without food or water to the desert of modern-day Syria. Many women were kidnapped into a life of sexual servitude. Hundreds of eyewitnesses, including government representatives of the United States, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, recorded and documented the state-sponsored massacres.

Many foreign officials spoke out against the atrocities, including Pope Benedict XV, but claims were rejected and denied by the Ottoman administration. Although most of the killings took place during World War I, the violence continued until , when virtually all Armenians had been eliminated.

Despite widespread international awareness of the atrocities, an armed intervention to stop the genocide never occurred. Contemporary scholars estimate that as many as 1.

In a speech given prior to his invasion of Poland in , Hitler said:. With the outbreak of the First World War, the Young Turk government proceeded far more radically against the Armenians. Unknown numbers of others converted to Islam or in other ways survived but were lost to the Armenian culture.

At the time a number of influential people spoke out against these atrocities, most notably the distinguished historian Arnold J. The Young Turk conspirators, other leading figures of the wartime Ottoman government, members of the CUP Central Committee, and many provincial administrators responsible for atrocities against the Armenians were indicted for their crimes at the end of the war.

The main culprits evaded justice by fleeing the country. Even so, they were tried in absentia and found guilty of capital crimes. The massacres, expulsions, and further mistreatment of the Armenians between and were carried by the Turkish Nationalists, who represented a new political movement opposed to the Young Turks, but who shared a common ideology of ethnic exclusivity. How many people died in the Armenian Genocide? It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between and There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.

Well over a million were deported in Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps. Among the Armenians living along the periphery of the Ottoman Empire many at first escaped the fate of their countrymen in the central provinces of Turkey. Tens of thousands in the east fled to the Russian border to lead a precarious existence as refugees.

The majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city, were spared deportation. In , however, the Young Turk regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately 1,, Armenians lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres carried by the Nationalist Turks between and added tens of thousands of more victims.

By the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population. The destruction of the Armenian communities in this part of the world was total. Were there witnesses to the Armenian Genocide? There were many witnesses to the Armenian Genocide. Although the Young Turk government took precautions and imposed restrictions on reporting and photographing, there were lots of foreigners in the Ottoman Empire who witnessed the deportations.

Foremost among them were U. They were first to send news to the outside world about the unfolding genocide. Some of their reports made headline news in the American and Western media.

Also reporting on the atrocities committed against the Armenians were many German eyewitnesses. The Germans were allies of the Turks in W. Numerous German officers held important military assignments in the Ottoman Empire. Some among them condoned the Young Turk policy. Others confidentially reported to their superiors in Germany about the slaughter of the Armenian civilian population.