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Shmoop! What happens in a war? Artwork disappears, statues get toppled and

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that's about it. Oh wait, I almost forgot one little thing, people die. Like lots

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and lots and lots of people die. Well during World War One you could get

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killed in basically one of two ways. You could either meet your maker at the end

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of an old-fashioned bullet, or bayonet, or you could go to that big hoedown in the

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sky, with the help of some clever new technology. Like poison gas, or getting an [soldier in gassed war field]

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infection from barbed wire. Yeah neither sounds like a cakewalk.

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Hmm wonder if anyone died via cakewalk, never mind.

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Anyway if you were a soldier coming face-to-face with death, well that was

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not an unexpected thing. The problem was that during World War One soldiers

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weren't the only ones who died, civilians did too. This is because this conflict

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was a total war, where it was A ok to target innocent men, women and children.[family eating at table]

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Well nowadays we prosecute war crimes, or human rights violations that occur

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during a war. But war crimes didn't really become a thing until the Nazis

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got taken to task at the Nuremberg trials, for obvious reasons. However just

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because World War 1 predates the Fuhrer by 20 years, doesn't mean war crimes

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weren't happening on the Western Front and elsewhere. In earlier lessons we

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discussed how the British made much of German actions in Belgium, in 1914 when,

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the Schlieffen Plan driven army was racing towards Paris. And if you don't [Eiffel Tower]

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remember that, well go watch some earlier lessons, they're super fun. Well

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you know, as fun as lessons about war and death and destruction can be. While

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some of the stories spun by the British were greatly exaggerated.

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Thousands of Belgians were killed and numerous communities were destroyed in

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what came to be known as the rape of Belgium. And that report about the

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civilians being used as human shields by German soldiers, yep that one's true. But

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the Germans weren't the only ones who were extra naughty during the war. The [Santa's naughty list]

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Austro-Hungarians had a field day in Serbia and excused their actions as a

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legitimate response to the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Now the

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Russians killed civilians in eastern Germany and the Germans viewed the

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British naval blockade is monstrous. Because by keeping important

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supplies out, like food, from reaching Germany, the British directly contributed

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to the starvation, of hundreds of thousands, of central Europeans. Which

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brings us to the most famous atrocity of World War one, the Armenian Genocide. Well

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about 2.5 million Christian Armenians were citizens of the Ottoman Empire at[map of Ottoman Empire]

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the beginning of the war. Like many other minority groups they wanted their

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independence from the Ottomans. However a group of extreme Turkish nationalists

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took over the Empire. When they envisioned their country they believed

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it should be for Turks only. With no Armenians allowed in the a clubhouse.

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Well the genocide began in the spring of 1915. Between 800,000 and 1.5 million

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Armenians were murdered. While Armenia did gain independence after the Ottomans

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were defeated in World War one, the country would go on to have a difficult time as [satellite in space]

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a Soviet satellite country. The Armenian government finally declared independence

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in 1990 and its citizens supported that decision with a vote to leave the Soviet

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Union in 1991. Even now more than 100 years after the genocide began it's

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still a taboo subject in Turkey. Many Turks believe it's inappropriate to use

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the G word to describe what happened in Armenia. Clearly denial isn't just a [man in raging river]

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river in Egypt. Lowboy.

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