Able bodied Armenian men serving in the Ottoman Empires armed forces were segregated into labor battalions. disarmed and either killed outright or worked to death. Henry Morgenthau. the United States Ambassador to Turkey during 191316. had no question that the treatment of the Armenians was part of a calculated plan to exterminate them. In 1918 he wrote. "When the 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." Morgenthau. who tried desperately to stop the horrible slaughter. asserted that these events "surpass the most beastly and diabolical cruelties ever before perpetrated or imagined in the history of the world." During the years between 1915 and 1923. 1 million Armenians were systematically massacred. and another 500.000 deported by the Ottoman Empire. Successive Turkish governments. in an attempt to rewrite history. have tried to cover up these events by denying their very occurrence. Where this has failed. they have warned of damage to TurkishAmerican relations should the United States persist in reminding the world of this terrible tragedy.
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deported deportations