The Ottoman Empire had been in a steady decline for years and a new government and identified a problem, the Armenians, to blame. In an attempt to solve their problem, the Ottoman Turks attempted to exterminate the entire Armenian population, known as genocide, as the solution. However, the Turks deny the existence of a genocide and claim it was a civil war between the Armenians and themselves. Despite claiming the Armenian Genocide was a civil war, it is clear that the Armenian population suffered atrocities, genocide, at the hands of the Ottoman Turks because they were identified as a minority group by the government, subjected to expropriation meant to decrease their sense of humanity, concentrated which …show more content…
When the Turks eventually executed the Armenians, they looked for the most cost efficient method that killed large amounts of people at a time while sparing no one; innocent women and children lives were lost in an attempt to eradicate the Armenian population from the face of the earth. The purpose of DOC 1 is to provide an idea of how the Armenians were killed and on what scale. In order for mass killings to be considered genocide, enough people of the same ethnicity or group must be executed with the intent of removing them from the world. As stated in DOC 1, Armenians were killed en route to the desert since they were already concentrated in large numbers. Another method of execution was to starve the Armenians; starvation is a cheap way to kill thousands of people without sacrificing any money or resources needed for the war. In addition, only the government had the power to not only displace the Armenian population but have the weapons to kill them on such a large scale. The only people who know how to calibrate high power, efficient weapons are members of the military, a government entity. The POV of Doc 2 is a government official who directly states that the government’s ultimate goal is to eradicate all Armenians living in Turkey to any extent. Clearly, the government aimed to eliminate every single Armenian from their empire on a massive scale. Later in WWII, Adolf Hitler directly compares his plan to exterminate the Jews with the Armenian genocide of WWI. Society commonly associates genocide with the practices of Adolf Hitler, however he is following the example of the Armenians to commit these horrendous crimes implying that if Hitler modeled his genocide after the Armenian killings, the Armenians were, in fact, were subject to genocide. The purpose of doc 5 is to show that the Turks would round up any and all Armenians for