7.8: Mass Atrocities

Armenian Genocide

• 1915–1917

• Ottoman government controlled by Young Turks, who wanted to Turkify the Ottoman Empire

• Viewed Armenians as threat to this plan

• Justified their actions by saying Armenians were a threat to national security as they cooperated with Russia

• Between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were killed

Pandemic Disease

• Influenza pandemic of 1918–19, also known as the Spanish Flu killed over 20 million people in Europe, the US, India, etc

• Largely spread by the millions of soldiers returning home from the war

• Also the rapid advances in transportation technology helped facilitate the pandemic

Suffering and Famine in the Soviet Union

• In the Soviet Union, to protest Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture, peasants hid or destroyed their crops and killed their livestock rather than turning them over to state control

• Led to famines caused by human action (not weather or crop failures)

• Between 1932 and 1933, estimated 7 million to 10 million peasants died as a result of these famines

• Government took most of these crops to feed industry workers
• Although peasants starved, industry grew

Japanese Atrocities during WWII

• Rape of Nanking
• After capturing the city of Nanking, which was then the capital of China, Japanese army engaged in widespread rape, torture, and murder of Chinese civilians
• Killed at least 100,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians

• Asia for Asiatics
• Program in which Japanese forced people they had conquered into labor programs

• Japanese also employed system of “comfort women”

Rwandan Genocide

• Occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994

• Some 500,000-1,000,00 Tutsis massacred

• For historical context: Belgian colonizers treated the minority Tutsis better than the majority Hutus

• Hutus resented Tutsis for the power they enjoyed

• This resentment continued even after decolonization, and when the Hutus came into power, they perpetuated the genocide

• Highlights failure of UN and international community
• UN peacekeepers and individual nations failed to evacuate any Rwandans
• Individual countries, including the United States, evacuated their personnel from the country