Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which extremist groups in power led to mass atrocities in the period from 1900 to present.

Document 1

Source: Report of Allied warning to the Ottoman government to stop the massacres of Armenians, May 29, 1915

“The British . . . have for many decades had settled notions about India’s future. Their concept of party government and parliamentary rule has become the ideal with them as the best form of government for every country. . . .

Department of State, Washington May 29, 1915,

Am[erican]embassy, Constantinople.

French Foreign Office requests following notice be given Turkish Government. Quote. May 24th. For about a month the Kurd and Turkish population of Armenia has been massacring Armenians with the connivance and often assistance of Ottoman authorities. Such massacres took place in middle April (?) at Erzerum, Dertchun, Eguine, Akn, Bitlis, Mouch, Sassoun, Zeitoun, and through Cilicia. Inhabitants of about one hundred villages near Van were all murdered. In that city Armenian quarter is besieged by Kurds. At the same time in Constantinople government ill treats inoffensive Armenian population. In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization the Allied governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible these crimes all members of the Ottoman government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres. Unquote.

(signed) [William Jennings] Bryan

Document 2

Source: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Document 3

Source: David Olère: L'Oeil du Témoin (New York: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989), 86. The painting shows the author, who was forced to work in a unit of inmates responsible for disposing of the bodies of those killed in Auschwitz, rummaging through the food left behind by the dead. To the left of the author, smoke emanates from a chimney in a crematorium that connects to a gas chamber.

Document 4

Source: A May 10, 1976, memo from National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft to President Ford reports on executions taking place in Cambodia and the fanatical nature of the new regime. Archived in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.

--Since January 1 the Communists have executed former teachers, students, and even low ranking enlisted men of the Lon Nol military forces. Moreover, anyone who shows any sign of being educated also risks arrest or execution.

--Executions are reportedly widespread and in many cases member of the entire family of former government officials or soldiers are executed along with the head of the family. Almost all executions occur in the same manner: several Communist cadre beat the person to death with hoe handles or other blunt instruments.

--The regime is extremely anti-intellectual. One former school teacher described book burnings in Phnom Penh following the Communist takeover including one instance in which the entire contents of the National Library were destroyed.

Document 5

Source: Rudolph Rummel, United States political scientist, Death by Government, 1994

“The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit mass violence. At the extremes of power, totalitarian governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions. In contrast, many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers.”

Document 6

Source: Leonid Denysenko, "Why!?". 2008. This is a poster commemorating the Ukrainian Holodomor Genocide of the 1930s carried out by the Soviet Government.

Document 7

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