Archive of tournaments in the Seventh Quarter of the War.
[spoiler=kosovo offensive april 5 to 12]
Kosovo OffensiveAfter the debacle in Vardar Macedonia, the Serbian Army was in rapid retreat. It had been at war for 15 months and had surprised the world with the robustness of its defense against attacks by the much larger Austro-Hungarian Empire. The entry of Bulgaria into the war, however, totally unbalanced the situation and led to Serbia's rapid collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Offensive_%281915%29wikipedia wrote:The battle began with the forcing of the South Morava by the Bulgarian 1st Army and ended with the total defeat of the Serbian army. The main blow was made by the 1st Army at the direction Niš-Pristina. For 2 days, the Serbian army seized Prokuplje, where they mounted a short-lived resistance.
The greatly outnumbered Serbian army retreated, then made a futile stand near the city of Gnjilane. The Serbs then tried a desperate counter-attack towards Vranje and Kumanovo to join the Anglo-French troops but were again defeated. The 6th and 9th Infantry Divisions of 1st Army easily took Priština on 24 November. Then the whole of the Bulgarian army advanced, supported from the north by parts of 11th German Army and the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army. The battle ended on 4 December when Debar was captured.
The battle raged from November 10th to December 4th. In terms of commemorating all Great War battles on their 100th anniversary, I am more than four months late with this. My apologies. I have no real excuse, except that I just don't have as much time for this project as I wish I did.
Each round in this tournament will have 3 games on the same 3 maps: Austro-Hungarian Empire, Macedonia, and Balkan Peninsula. The settings and game types will vary from round to round. There is an innovation. For the first time, I will be using the feature BW has added to the autotourney engine that allows different numbers of points for different games in the same tourney. Games will score as follows:
- 1 base point for each player in the game (2 points for 2-player, 5 points for 5-player, etc.)
- 1 extra point for every added difficulty (1 point for fog, 1 point for trench, 1 point for any spoils other than escalating, 1 point for any reinforcement other than chained or parachute)
- 2 extra points for Assassin games.
24 players beginRound 1: Serbia had been at war for 15 months
2-p games, default settings
(2 points)Round 2: Serbia's tough defence against Austria had amazed the world
2-p games, flat rate, parachute, trench
(4 points)21 players advanceRound 3: The entry of Bulgaria into the war totally unbalanced the situation
3-p games, nuclear
(4 points)Round 4: With the forcing of the South Morava, the road to Kosovo was opened
7-p games, fog
(8 points)15 players advanceRound 5: The Serbs tried to hold the line at Prokuplje and then at Gnjilane
5-p games, flat rate, fog, trench, adjacent
(9 points)Round 6: They even tried to counter and link up with the Anglo-French forces
3-p games, fog
(4 points)9 players advanceRound 7: Led by the 9th Infantry Division, the Bulgarians advanced
9-p games, parachute, fog, trench
(11 points)6 players advanceRound 8: The carnage was brutal
6-p games, zombie, parachute
(7 points)Round 9: The battle ended with the fall of Debar
6-p games, assassin
(8 points)-- DK[/spoiler]
[spoiler=evacuation of gallipoli]
Evacuation of Gallipolihttp://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/evacuation_dec15.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign#Evacuationhttp://www.gallipoli.gov.au/north-beach-and-the-sari-bair-range/evacuation-of-anzac.phpAfter the failure of the great August Offensive,
firstworldwardotcom wrote:Mediterranean Commander-in-Chief Sir Ian Hamilton telegraphed London in a state of increasing despondency. In his telegram Hamilton requested a further 95,000 reinforcements from British war minister Lord Kitchener. He was offered barely a quarter, 25,000.
Allied confidence in the Gallipoli operation was fading fast. Numerous considerations militated against a resumption of offensive operations on the peninsula. The bulk of officers on the Western Front, including the French high commander Joffre and the British high commader considered it a criminal waste of troops who were desperately needed elsewhere. The entry of Bulgaria into the war and the collapse of Serbian resistance was changing the strategic situation in the Balkans. After the fall of Serbia, there was a continuous rail link from Berlin to Istanbul. The Allies' chances of knocking Turkey out of the war seemed remote even if the Gallipoli peninsula was taken. The need to hold Thessaloniki and defend Greece put a further strain on Allied resources in the Mediterranean.
Reports of catastrophes at Gallipoli were being published in British and Australian newspapers despite censorship rules. Jean Augagneur, the only major French personality in favour of the operation, was removed from his post in October of 1915. Winston Churchill, the great advocate for the Gallipoli operation in the British Cabinet, was demoted in October and resigned in November. The departures of Augagneur and Churchill left the operation without major political proponents.
Simultaneously with the demotion of Churchill from the Admiralty, Hamilton was removed from the command on land. Sir Charles Munro was brought in. Munro quickly saw the situation was lost and made the rational decision to begin an evacuation. Some see Munro's decision as being courageous, accepting reality instead of persisting in his predecessor's self-delusion. Others disagree.
firstworldwardotcom wrote:Winston Churchill however viewed Monro's achievement with a somewhat jaundiced eye: "he came, he saw, he capitulated" he wrote of Monro, and the sneer has remained through the years to blight Monro's correct decision and remarkable follow-through.
Kitchener came himself to survey the situation on November 13th. He quickly confirmed Munro's decision.
Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood, Commander, Mediterranean Expeditionary force; Field Marshal Lord Kitchener; Major-General Alexander Godley, Commander, New Zealand and Australian Division; and Major-General John Maxwell at North Beach, 13 November 1915. [AWM A00880] http://www.gallipoli.gov.au/north-beach-and-the-sari-bair-range/evacuation-of-anzac.phpIn preparation for the withdrawal, numerous ruses were arranged to make the Turks think that it was business-as-usual on the front.
wikipedia wrote:The evacuation was the best-executed segment of the entire Allied campaign.[181][182] Suvla and Anzac were to be evacuated in late December, the last troops leaving before dawn on 20 December 1915. Troop numbers had been slowly reduced since 7 December 1915 and ruses, such as William Scurry's self-firing rifle,[183] which had been rigged to fire by water dripped into a pan attached to the trigger, were used to disguise the Allied departure. At Anzac Cove troops maintained silence for an hour or more, until curious Ottoman troops ventured to inspect the trenches, whereupon the Anzacs opened fire. A mine was detonated at the Nek which killed 70 Ottoman soldiers.[184] The Allied force was embarked, with the Australians suffering no casualties on the final night,[181][185] but large quantities of supplies and stores fell into Ottoman hands.[186]
The evacuation of Anzac Cove and Suvla took place from December 10th to December 20th. In addition to the various ruses used by the Allies, a great snowstorm at the end of November helped cover the retreat and the evacuation preparations. The Allies expected tens of thousands of casualties; instead they suffered three. After nine months of horrific casualties, the Anzacs withdrew in good order.
Cape Hellas was held a little longer. The withdrawal from Hellas began on December 28th and was completed by January 9th. The last unit to leave was the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Forty-six weeks after the initial bombardment of the Dardanelles forts began, the Gallipoli campaign was over.
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The tournament:
32 players begin
Phase 1: Carnage at Gallipoli had been ongoing for 8 monthsEight 8-player games on WWI Gallipoli, randomly flat, escalating, and no spoils, random fog and trench, randomly chained, adjacent, unlimited, and parachute.
(10 points per win)30 players advance
Phase 2: The Bulgarian declaration of war and the Serbian collapse changed the strategic pictureFour 6-player games on Balkan Peninsula, randomly flat, escalating, and no spoils, random fog and trench, randomly chained, adjacent, unlimited, and parachute.
(8 points per win)Phase 3: The political winds in London turned against Churchill, Augagneur, and HamiltonThree 5-player games on Classic Cities London, randomly flat, escalating, and no spoils, random fog and trench, randomly chained, adjacent, unlimited, and parachute.
(7 points per win)Scores reset, 24 players advance
Phase 4: A Charles Munro took over and organised the withdrawalSix 4-player games on Alexander's Empire, Pelo War, WWI Ottoman, Middle East, Eurasia Mini, and Transsib1914, randomly flat, escalating, and no spoils, random fog and trench, randomly chained, adjacent, unlimited, and parachute.
(6 points per win)Phase 5: A massive snowstorm helped hide the final preparationsSix 8-player Terminator games on Antarctica, escalating and foggy
(9 points per win)Phase 6: The ANZACs embarked with few casualtiesEight 6-player games on Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and WWII Australia, randomly flat and escalating, half foggy, randomly chained and parachute.
(7 points per win)Scores reset, 14 players advance
Phase 7: The evacuation of Hellas began a week laterSeven 7-player games on Random map, randomly flat, escalating, and no spoils, random fog and trench, randomly chained, adjacent, unlimited, and parachute.
(9 points per win)10 players advance
Phase 8: The Royal Newfoundland Regiment was the last to embarkSeven 5-player games on Golfe de St. Laurent, flat rate and otherwise default
(6 points per win)8 players advance
Phase 9: Farewell to GallipoliNine 8-player games on WWI Gallipoli, randomly flat, escalating, and no spoils, random fog and trench, randomly chained, adjacent, unlimited, and parachute.
(10 points per win)-- DK[/spoiler]
[spoiler=the fokker scourge]
The Fokker Scourge
Although fighter aircraft manufactured by Fokker were used almost the entire war from beginning to end, the term "Fokker Scourge" is used to refer to a period running approximately from August of 1915 to June of 1916, when the Fokker Eindecker ruled the skies and gave the Germans air superiority over the Western Front.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/airwar/fokkerscourge.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_ScourgeEarly fighter aircraft used guns fired from inside the cockpit or on top of the cockpit. The ideal was a gun that would fire straight forward from the nose, so that aiming the aircraft would also aim the gun. How to avoid damage to the propeller was the key problem. In the early days of the war, the Allies began working with deflector gear, which were metal plates on the back of the propeller that would simply deflect bullets if they were in danger of hitting the propeller blades. They also experimented with synchronization gear, which would fire the gun correctly timed to not hit the propeller. Although the Allies began their experiments in this regard first, they finished second. It was the German (Dutch-born, working in Germany) designer Anthony Fokker who perfected the first really reliable synchronization gear. Whether he developed this, as he claimed, in 48 hours of brilliant thinking, or whether he copied much of his design from other inventors, has always been debated. It really doesn't matter. He perfected the idea while others failed.
By Gsl - Version with English text of Image:Interrupter_gear_diagram.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1820853Fokker first demonstrated the new Eindecker in May of 1915. By July of 1915 it was having an effect, wresting air control away from the Allies. In the period of December 1915 to April 1916, the Germans enjoyed almost total air supremacy, and this was a major factor in the fact that the French had almost no air reconnaissance in the opening phase of the Battle of Verdun. During that battle, the new French Fighter, the Nieuport 11 "Bébé", was being introduced, and by July of 1916 the Eindecker was essentially obsolete. Its reign, therefore, was pretty close to one year. In April of 1916, the Allies lost 2 aircraft for every German aircraft lost. In August of 1916, it was exactly the opposite, with 2 Germans going down for every Allied pilot.
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The tournament.
Although fighters sometimes faced each other in large groups, the classic picture of an aerial dogfight is one-on-one, mano a mano. Consequently, this will be a straightforward 1v1 elimination bracket.
Spoils are randomly escalating, flat, nuclear, and none. There is sometimes fog and sometimes not, just as in the real thing. There is never trench. Fortifications follow a progression that reflects the evolution of aerial combat. The slow-moving, almost static, nature of balloons and kites gives Adjacent, the invention of the airplane switches us to Chained, and the outbreak of war adds Parachute.
The number of games per round follows an unusual progression: five in phase 1, three in phase 2, seven in phase 3, nine in phase 4, and eleven in phase 5.
Phase 1: Air warfare originates with balloons and kites.The map selection commemorates the following:
- Three Kingdoms of Korea - kites were used both for signalling and propaganda in ancient Korean warfare
- Steamworks - ballooning in general
- Three Kingdoms of China - use of balloons as a signaling device in Three Kingdoms war
- Napoleonic Europe - use of hot-air balloons for surveillance by Napoleonic forces
- American Civil War - expanded role of balloon surveillance by Union Balloon Corps
Phase 2: Soon after the invention of the airplane, it became a weaponThe map selection commemorates the following:- USA Southeast - invention of the airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
- Africa - first bomb dropped from an airplane, by Italian attacking Turkish positions in Lybia
- Balkan Peninsula - first co-ordinated air/naval strike, by Bulgarians in First Balkan War
Phase 3: Britain, France, and Italy had an early lead in aircraft production at the outbreak of warThe map selection commemorates the following:- London, British Isles, England, Celtic Nations, Eastern Hemisphere (British Empire) - (Britain)
- France, France 2.1, France1789 - (France)
- Italy, Unification Italy, Imperium Romanum - (Italy)
Phase 4: It was Germany, however, and specifically Anthony Fokker, who created the first really effective fighter aircraftThe map selection commemorates the following:
- Netherlands - Fokker's original citizenship
- Unification Germany, Germany -- (Germany)
Phase 5: The Fokker Eindecker ruled the skies for 11 monthsThe map selection commemorates the following:
- Random - in the wild days of aerial combat, anything could happen
-- DK[/spoiler]
[spoiler=the Armenian Genocide]
The Armenian GenocideA tournament for 18 players, this will commemorate the history of the Armenian people and the shameful attempt by the Ottoman Turks to exterminate them.
Settings: All games will be Standard, with Automatic deployment, 24-hour Sequential turns.
Reinforcement: randomly Chained/Parachute.
Spoils: Randomly Escalating (representing escalating violence) Nuclear (representing destruction) and Zombie (representing death.)
Trench: No Trench in any round.
Fog: Randomly Fog/No Fog.
Part 1: Ancient Armenia.Armenia has a long and fascinating history. The existence of this nation in some form goes back at least 6,000 years and probably more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Armenia We mark the 6 millenia of Armenian history with 6-player games. The Areni-1 cave complex has been explored and found to contain artisans' workshops for the manufacture of wine, dresses, and the world's first known leather shoe. (Commemorate ancient artisans with the
Age of Merchants map.) The first known use of the term "Armenia" is on an Akkadian inscription dated to 2300 B.C. (Commemorate Akkadian neighbours with
Gilgamesh map.) Armenia was eventually absorbed into the Persian Empire, after which it became one of Alexander's conquests and on his death became an important part of the Seleucid Empire. (Commemorate the Persian-Macedonian-Seleucid phase with the
Alexander's Empire map.) Herodotus placed Armenia near the centre of his world map. (Commemorate Herodotus' ellipsoid world map with
Vertex map.) Armenia changed hands between the Parthians and the Romans a few times before finally becoming a self-governing vassal state of the Roman Empire. (Commemorate Roman Armenia with
Imperium Romanum map.)
Part 2 and 3: Medieval and Crusade-era Armenia.Armenia was mostly Zoroastrian in the pre-Christian era. It was Christianized fairly early in its history. According to legend, two of Jesus' original disciples, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, preached there from 42 to 62 A.D. Armenia became the world's first officially Christian kingdom in 301 A.D., a decade before Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan. During a brief occupation by the Sassanids, Zoroastrianism was forcibly restored, leading to a period of religious civil war. By the Treaty of Nvarsak, religious freedom was guaranteed.
Armenia had the misfortune of being seen as a cushion or buffer state between the Roman world to the west and the Persian world to the east. As is common with such buffer states, its sovereignty was frequently violated by both sides and its territory inexorably eroded. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam took the place of Zoroastrianism in competing for dominance in the region. The Christian vs. Zoroastrian wars became Christian vs. Muslim wars without any notable period of peace in between. The first of many Muslim occupations took place in 645.
The ties between Armenia and the Byzantine empire were many -- religious, cultural, economic, military, and dynastic. Several Byzantine emperors were ethnically Armenian. As more and more of Armenia was conquered by Muslims, the remainder was more vigorously defended by its Christian majority and by the Byzantines. The final conquest of Armenia after the Battle of Manzikert is seen as the defining moment when Turkish power in Asia Minor exceeded Greek power. The only independent Armenian kingdom surviving after the debacle of Manzikert was Cilicia.
During the Crusades, Cilicia was a faithful ally of the Crusader states and gave them very significant help. A third religious faction arose, following the Roman Catholic rite, distinct not only from the Muslims but also significantly different from the Armenian Apostolic Christians. After the failure of the Third Crusade, Cilicia was the only significant Christian presence in the Middle East.
The only Conquer Club map that represents the Middle East during the Crusading/Medieval era is Third Crusade. We will commemorate this period through two phases. First, a round of six-player games (representing Armenians, Greeks, Romans, Persian, Arabs, and Turks) and then a round of five-player games (representing Zoroastrian, Muslim, Armenian Apostolic, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic influences.) Between these rounds we will cut the field from 18 to 15 players and after Phase 3 we will have a further reduction to 14 players.
Phase 4: Persecution and SlaveryIn the early days of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians had a significant degree of self-government within the Empire. As time went on, however, their autonomy was steadily eroded, and relations between the (overwhelmingly Muslim) Turks and (mostly Christian) Armenians became worse. By the 19th century, the Armenians were treated as a slave race.
[bigimg]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/0/05/20110929232326%21Ethnic_map_of_Asia_Minor_and_Caucasus_in_1914.jpg[/bigimg]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#Armenians_under_Ottoman_ruleArmenia had come largely under Ottoman rule during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The vast majority of Armenians, grouped together under the name Armenian millet (community) and led by their spiritual head, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, were concentrated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire (commonly referred to as Turkish Armenia or Western Armenia), although large communities were also found in the western provinces, as well as in the capital Constantinople. The Armenian community was made up of three religious denominations: the Armenian Apostolic to which the overwhelming majority of Armenians belonged, and the Armenian Catholic and Armenian Protestant communities. Through the millet system, the Armenian community were allowed to rule themselves under their own system of governance with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government. With the exception of the empire's urban centers and the extremely wealthy, Constantinople-based Amira class, a social elite whose members included the Duzians (Directors of the Imperial Mint), the Balyans (Chief Imperial Architects) and the Dadians (Superintendent of the Gunpowder Mills and manager of industrial factories), most Armenians – approximately 70% of their population – lived in poor and dangerous conditions in the rural countryside.[32][33] Ottoman census figures clash with the statistics collected by the Armenian Patriarchate. According to the latter, there were almost three million Armenians living in the empire in 1878 (400,000 in Constantinople and the Balkans, 600,000 in Asia Minor and Cilicia, 670,000 in Lesser Armenia and the area near Kayseri, and 1,300,000 in Western Armenia itself).[34] In the eastern provinces, the Armenians were subject to the whims of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors, who would regularly overtax them, subject them to brigandage and kidnapping, force them to convert to Islam, and otherwise exploit them without interference from central or local authorities.[33] In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the dhimmi system implemented in Muslim countries, they, like all other Christians and also Jews, were accorded certain freedoms. The dhimmi system in the Ottoman Empire was largely based upon the Pact of Umar. The client status established the rights of the non-Muslims to property, livelihood and freedom of worship but they were in essence treated as second-class citizens in the empire and referred to in Turkish as gavours, a pejorative word meaning "infidel" or "unbeliever". While the Pact of Umar prohibited non-Muslims from building new places of worship, it was not enforced in all regions of the Ottoman Empire. Since there were no laws concerning religious ghettos, the prohibition of non-Muslims building new places of worship led to their clustering around existing ones.[35][36] Writing in the late 1890s after a visit to the Ottoman Empire, the British ethnographer William Ramsay described the conditions of Armenian life as follows:
We must, however, go back to an older time, if we want to appreciate what uncontrolled Turkish rule meant, alike to Armenians and to Greeks. It did not mean religious persecution; it meant unutterable contempt ... They were dogs and pigs; and their nature was to be Christians, to be spat upon, if their shadow darkened a Turk, to be outraged, to be the mats on which he wiped the mud from his feet. Conceive the inevitable result of centuries of slavery, of subjection to insult and scorn, centuries in which nothing that belonged to the Armenian, neither his property, his house, his life, his person, nor his family, was sacred or safe from violence – capricious, unprovoked violence – to resist which by violence meant death![37]
In addition to other legal limitations, Christians were not considered equals to Muslims and several prohibitions were placed on them. Their testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels. Their houses could not overlook those of Muslims; and their religious practices were severely circumscribed (e.g., the ringing of church bells was strictly forbidden).[35][38]
With the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, hope arose that the Armenians might be liberated from the more onerous aspects of Ottoman rule. The Russians did, indeed attempt to get Armenian self-government guaranteed in the peace treaties, but the terms were first watered down and then ignored completely. An Armenian liberation movement was born, but rapidly repressed, and the familiar cycle of violence and repression accelerated.
By 1894 intentional massacres of Armenians were being carried out under the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. These
Hamidian massacres can be seen as the beginning of the Genocide, although the term is generally only applied to larger massacres that took place from 1915. Still, between 1894 and 1896 it is believed that 100,000 to 300,000 Armenians were intentionally murdered.
By W. L. Sachtleben. (d. 1953) - "The Graphic" December 7th 1895., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2225204Map:
WWI Ottoman, 7-p.
Players reduced from 14 to 12.
Part 5: RespiteAs a result of corruption, the Ottoman monarchy was weakened and Hamid was deposed in 1908 during the Young Turk Revolution. The "Young Turk" movement was composed of both liberals (who believed in protecting the rights of minorities) and conservatives (who did not, but were willing to play along in order to win friends in liberal Europe). During this time, the oppression of the Armenians was much reduced. It was a brief respite.
A round of 2-player games on Orient Express.
Part 6: Oppression resumes.A reactionary wave of Turkish nationalism and Islamic extremism swept the country, resulting in many random acts of violence against Armenians. In Adana province, Army units that were called in to suppress the violence actually joined in and participated, resulting in the deaths of 30,000 Armenians.
Worse was yet to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#The_Balkan_Wars wikipedia wrote:In 1912, the First Balkan War broke out and ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire as well as the loss of 85% of its European territory. Many in the empire saw their defeat as "Allah's divine punishment for a society that did not know how to pull itself together".[38]:84 The Turkish nationalist movement in the country gradually came to view Anatolia as their last refuge. That the Armenian population formed a significant minority in this region later figured prominently in the calculations of the Three Pashas, who carried out the Armenian Genocide.
An important consequence of the Balkan Wars was also the mass expulsion of Muslims (known as muhacirs) from the Balkans. Beginning in the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, including Turks, Circassians, and Chechens, were expelled or forced to flee from the Caucasus and the Balkans (Rumelia) as a result of the Russo-Turkish wars and the conflicts in the Balkans. Muslim society in the empire was incensed by this flood of refugees. A journal published in Constantinople expressed the mood of the times: "Let this be a warning ... O Muslims, don't get comfortable! Do not let your blood cool before taking revenge".[38]:86 As many as 850,000 of these refugees were settled in areas where the Armenians were resident from the period of 1878–1904. The muhacirs resented the status of their relatively well-off neighbors and, as historian Taner Akçam and others have noted, the refugees came to play a pivotal role in the killings of the Armenians and the confiscation of their properties during the genocide
We mark the significance of the Balkan Wars on events in the Ottoman Empire with a round of 6-p games on the
Balkan Peninsula map, followed by the elimination of 4 more players and a score reset.
From here on in, all games are 8-player and there are no more eliminations or score resets.
Part 7: World War I and Directive 8682In November of 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War 1 and declared war on Russia. There were Armenians on both side of the border, and both were actively courted by the opposition. Russia encouraged Armenians in the Ottoman Empire to revolt, and the Ottomans encouraged Armenians in the Russian empire to revolt. There was little success in raising revolts on either side, but much paranoia about the possibility.
Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and other significant Young Turks who had preached that "the Committee stood for the unionization of all the races in the empire" abruptly abandoned all pretense of ethnic equality and cloaked themselves in extreme Turkish nationalism.
wikipedia wrote:On 25 February 1915, the Ottoman General Staff released the War Minister Enver Pasha's Directive 8682 on "Increased security and precautions" to all military units calling for the removal of all ethnic Armenians serving in the Ottoman forces from their posts and for their demobilization. They were assigned to the unarmed Labour battalions (Turkish: amele taburlari). The directive accused the Armenian Patriarchate of releasing State secrets to the Russians. Enver Pasha explained this decision as "out of fear that they would collaborate with the Russians".[49] Traditionally, the Ottoman Army only drafted non-Muslim males between the ages of 20 and 45 into the regular army. The younger (15–20) and older (45–60) non-Muslim soldiers had always been used as logistical support through the labour battalions. Before February, some of the Armenian recruits were utilized as labourers (hamals), though they would ultimately be executed.[50]
Transferring Armenian conscripts from active combat to passive, unarmed logistic sections was an important precursor to the subsequent genocide. As reported in The Memoirs of Naim Bey, the execution of the Armenians in these battalions was part of a premeditated strategy of the CUP. Many of these Armenian recruits were executed by local Turkish gangs
The removal of Armenians from important posts may have been justified by security considerations, but their subsequent executions unquestionably escalated this from being a security operation to outright brutish genocide.
This puts one in mind of Stalin's purges, so we'll do a round of games on the Soviet Union map.
Part 8: The Siege of Vanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Van_%281915%29On 19 April 2015, Jevdet Bey, governor of Van district, ordered the Armenians of Van to immediately supply 4,000 "conscripts" for military service. By this point, the murders of Armenians in the Army were common knowledge, and Jevdet Bey had already conducted massacres in nearby villages, so the citizens of Van believed (and almost certainly were correct) that the 4,000 men were to be killed. They therefore did not comply. To avoid being portrayed as outright rebels, they offered 500 men and exemption money for the rest. Nonetheless, Jevdet Bey would not hear of compromise. He immediately declared the town to be in a state of rebellion and proclaimed that any resistance to his troops would result in summary executions.
The next day, Ottoman soldiers seized a woman who was attempting to enter the city. Two Armenian men who came to her aid were shot dead, and the battle was on. The Armenian militia easily won the first few encounters and fortified the city as well as they could. Nonetheless, the usual supply problems of a besieged place would have almost certainly have resulted in eventual starvation and defeat. The salvation of the city came with the arrival of the Russian Army. A month after the initial Turkish attacks, Russian troops were in control of key areas near Van, and by 31st of May the siege was over.
The entry of the Russian Army, while it did supply Van with a happy ending, allowed the Turks to claim that they had been right all along: the Armenians would be happy to co-operate with the invading Russians. It did not seem to concern them that their own barbaric treatment of the heretofore mostly-loyal minority had led to this situation.
I thought about a number of maps to mark this event. The "Siege" map, despite the name, doesn't really do a great job of portraying a siege. Stalingrad is closer to what I want to portray here, but it seems too big and complex for a relatively small conflict. In the end, I think Texan Wars will do, with its connotations of the siege of the Alamo and other places.
Part 9: The Great Deportations BeginIn May of 1915 a "Temporary Law of Deportation" was passed, giving the Pashas (military governors) the legal power to deport anyone they sensed as a threat to national security. Almost immediately, it became obvious that the "deportations" were genocidal death marches.
wikipedia wrote:Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser states that, from the statements of Talaat Pasha[61] it is clear that the officials were aware that the deportation order was genocidal.[62] Another historian Taner Akçam states that the telegrams show that the overall coordination of the genocide was taken over by Talaat Pasha.[63]
The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. There is no evidence that the Ottoman government provided the extensive facilities and supplies that would have been necessary to sustain the life of hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees during their forced march to the Syrian desert or after.[64] By August 1915, The New York Times repeated an unattributed report that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people".[65] Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha were completely aware that by abandoning the Armenian deportees in the desert they were condemning them to certain death.[66] A dispatch from a "high diplomatic source in Turkey, not American, reporting the testimony of trustworthy witnesses" about the plight of Armenian deportees in northern Arabia and the Lower Euphrates valley was extensively quoted by The New York Times in August 1916:
New York Times wrote: The witnesses have seen thousands of deported Armenians under tents in the open, in caravans on the march, descending the river in boats and in all phases of their miserable life. Only in a few places does the Government issue any rations, and those are quite insufficient. The people, therefore, themselves are forced to satisfy their hunger with food begged in that scanty land or found in the parched fields.
Naturally, the death rate from starvation and sickness is very high and is increased by the brutal treatment of the authorities, whose bearing toward the exiles as they are being driven back and forth over the desert is not unlike that of slave drivers. With few exceptions no shelter of any kind is provided and the people coming from a cold climate are left under the scorching desert sun without food and water. Temporary relief can only be obtained by the few able to pay officials.
Similarly, Major General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein noted that "The Turkish policy of causing starvation is an all too obvious proof, if proof was still needed as to who is responsible for the massacre, for the Turkish resolve to destroy the Armenians"
[bigimg]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Armenian_Genocide_Map-en.svg/1280px-Armenian_Genocide_Map-en.svg.png[/bigimg]
Source: wikipedia
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AArmenian_Genocide_Map-en.svg
By Sémhur [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsEnglish: Map of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.
- Each size shows a massacre. There are three types of massacre: in a control centre (red dot), in a station (pink dot), in a concentration and annihilation center (black dot). The size of the dot shows the relative number of killed Armenians.
- Each pair of swords shows an area of Armenian resistance: greater resistance (red swords) or lesser resistance (black swords). The different size of swords is to save space into the map, it means nothing.
- Dots in Black Sea representing Armenians (mainly women and children) drowned into the sea (see Armenian Genocide for references).
Map: Middle East
Part 10: The Full Horror UnfoldsEyewitness reports from Syria seem stunningly similar to eyewitness reports of the Jewish Holocaust a generation later.
wikipedia wrote:German engineers and labourers involved in building the railway also witnessed Armenians being crammed into cattle cars and shipped along the railroad line. Franz Gunther, a representative for Deutsche Bank which was funding the construction of the Baghdad Railway, forwarded photographs to his directors and expressed his frustration at having to remain silent amid such "bestial cruelty".[35]:326 Major General Otto von Lossow, acting military attaché and head of the German Military Plenipotentiary in the Ottoman Empire, spoke to Ottoman intentions in a conference held in Batum in 1918:
The Turks have embarked upon the "total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia ... The aim of Turkish policy is, as I have reiterated, the taking of possession of Armenian districts and the extermination of the Armenians. Talaat's government wants to destroy all Armenians, not just in Turkey but also outside Turkey. On the basis of all the reports and news coming to me here in Tiflis there hardly can be any doubt that the Turks systematically are aiming at the extermination of the few hundred thousand Armenians whom they left alive until now.[38]:349
Rape was an integral part of the genocide;[67] military commanders told their men to "do to [the women] whatever you wish", resulting in widespread sexual abuse. Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, including Mosul according to the report of the German consul there, constituting an important source of income for accompanying soldiers.[68] Rössler, the German consul in Aleppo during the genocide, heard from an "objective" Armenian that around a quarter of young women, whose appearance was "more or less pleasing", were regularly raped by the gendarmes, and that "even more beautiful ones" were violated by 10–15 men. This resulted in girls and women being left behind dying.[69]
Concentration camps
A network of 25 concentration camps was set up by the Ottoman government to dispose of the Armenians who had survived the deportations to their ultimate point.[70] This network, situated in the region of Turkey's present-day borders with Iraq and Syria, was directed by Şükrü Kaya, one of Talaat Pasha's right-hand men. Some of the camps were only temporary transit points. Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, were briefly used for mass graves and then vacated by autumn 1915. Camps such as Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ayn were built specifically for those whose life expectancy was just a few days.[71] According to Hilmar Kaiser, the Ottoman authorities refused to provide food and water to the victims, increasing the mortality rate, and Muslim men obtained Armenian women through recorded marriages, while the deaths of their husbands were not recorded.[72]
Bernau, an American citizen of German descent, traveled to the areas where Armenians were incarcerated and wrote a report that was deemed factual by Rössler, the German Consul at Aleppo. He reports mass graves containing over 60,000 people in Meskene and large numbers of mounds of corpses, as the Armenians died due to hunger and disease. He reported seeing 450 orphans, who received at most 150 grams of bread per day, in a tent of 5–6 square meters. Dysentery swept through the camp and days passed between the instances of distribution of bread to some. In "Abu Herrera", near Meskene, he described how the guards let 240 Armenians starve, and wrote that they searched "horse droppings" for grains.[73]
(...)
Mass burnings
Lt. Hasan Maruf of the Ottoman army describes how a population of a village were taken all together and then burned.[85] The Commander of the Third Army Vehib's 12-page affidavit, which was dated 5 December 1918, was presented in the Trabzon trial series (29 March 1919) included in the Key Indictment,[86] reporting such a mass burning of the population of an entire village near Muş: "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them".[87] Further, it was reported that "Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after".[88] Vahakn Dadrian wrote that 80,000 Armenians in 90 villages across the Muş plain were burned in "stables and haylofts"
Armenians were transported in overcrowded cattle cars in the desert heat, with little or no food and little or no water. Women were raped; children sold into slavery. Villages were burned. Property was confiscated with the thinnest veneer of legality. Prisoners were used in outlandish medical experiments. Everything about the inhumanity of the "deportation" procedures and the concentration camps foreshadows Hitler's genocide against the Jews, Slavs, and other peoples. Indeed, Hitler even said so himself. In the
Obersalzberg Speech,
Adolf Hitler wrote:Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?[13]
Due to all these parallels we will mark this phase with games on the WW II Europe map.
Nobody knows with certainty how many died during the peak of the Genocide. Estimates range from 600,000 to 1,500,000. Record-keeping in the Ottoman Empire was shoddy to begin with, and the combination of a Revolution, a World War, a Civil War, and a Genocide did nothing to improve it. The main part of the Genocide began in May of 1915, peaked late in 1915, and was mostly finished by the summer of 1916.
Part 11: Wind-down and AftermathAfter May of 1916 the policy did not immediately change, but there were few intact Armenian communities left to terrorize. The majority of the Armenian population had either died, fled, or been deported. Thus, the Genocide was winding down through a shortage of victims. In 1918, with defeat in the Great War looming over their heads, Turks began to show remorse. One can't help but be cynical. It is not that different from the Germans who suddenly found their conscience in the spring of 1945.
On the night of the 2nd to 3rd of November, the "Three Pashas" (Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha) who had ruled Turkey since 1913 as a triumvirate, were overthrown and fled the country. They were tried and sentenced to death in absentia. The sentences were never carried out, but two of the three were eventually assassinated by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. (Map: WW I Ottoman)
Between 1919 and 1921, a number of officials responsible for the genocide were transported to Malta to be tried by the Allied governments for crimes against humanity. However, unlike Nuremberg a generation later, in 1919 there was no generally accepted legal framework for such a trial, and all the officials were returned to Turkey with no result. (Map: Malta)
Also during the years 1920 to 21, a small war was fought between the new Turkish Government and the newly-independent First Armenian Republic. This war, though small and brief, showed that the ethnic hatred remained undiluted. Probably 90,000 Armenian civilians, and possibly more, were slaughtered by the new Turkish army.
The word "genocide" did not exist in 1920. It was coined in 1943 by
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew. Lemkin fought in Warsaw in 1939 before fleeing to Lithuania and thence to Sweden. Parallels between the Armenian and Jewish genocides were clear to Lemkin:
coined the term "genocide" in 1943, with the fate of the Armenians in mind; he later explained that:
Lemkin wrote: ...it happened so many times ... It happened to the Armenians, then after the Armenians Hitler took action.[197]
(Map: Baltic States)
The New York Times from beginning to end was crucial in bringing news of the Armenian genocide to the western world and keeping the issue in the public's eye. The Times advocated for western aid and intervention from beginning to end, with mixed results. (Map: NYC).
Despite overwhelming evidence of the Genocide, Turkish diplomatic efforts have succeeded in persuading many nations to accept the official Turkish version of events, in which the Armenians were simply being deported for security reasons and the deaths which occurred were mostly unintentional. Only 29 of the world's countries officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, those marked in dark green below:
(The countries marked in light green, including the United States and Australia, are countries where the federal government does not officially recognize the Genocide but many of the individual States have passed resolutions doing so.)
[bigimg]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Larnaca_monument.jpg/1024px-Larnaca_monument.jpg[/bigimg]
Armenian genocide monument in Larnaca, Cyprus. Cyprus was among the first countries to recognize the genocide. By Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=10744199(Map: Cyprus)
-- DK[/spoiler]
back to main indexThere were only four new tournaments launched in the 7th quarter, by far my lowest production since the start of this project. I will try very hard to do better in the 8th.
A new tournament about the Battle of Sheikh Saad launches later today.
ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)... 
