Henry Morgenthau (1856-1946) was United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide. A naturalized American from a German Jewish family, Morgenthau was a successful lawyer active in Democratic Party politics. With the election of President Woodrow Wilson, he was appointed United States Ambassador to the Sublime Porte in 1913. In Constantinople he established personal contact with the Young Turk leaders of the Ottoman Empire, especially the Minister of the Interior, Talaat, with whom he unsuccessfully intervened to alleviate the plight of the Armenian population when beginning in April, 1915, news of the deportations and massacres began to reach the Embassy. The US consulates in the interior of the Ottoman Empire relayed a stream of alarming reports detailing the extent of the measures taken against the Armenians...

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) was the founder of the Republic of Turkey and the consummator of the Armenian Genocide. Kemal was an officer in the Turkish army whose defense of Gallipoli in 1915-1916 defeated the Allied campaign to breach the Dardanelles and quickly eliminate the Ottoman Empire from World War I. A supporter of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), he stayed out of politics until 1919 when he organized the Turkish Nationalist Movement in the drive to oust the Allies who had placed strategic portions of the country under occupation after its defeat. Kemal established headquarters in Ankara, amnestied CUP members who joined his movement, and regrouped the remaining Ottoman army and other irregular units under his general command...

During and immediately after World War I, the atrocities committed against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were public knowledge. In their May 24, 1915 joint declaration, the Allied Powers, namely Great Britain, France, and Russia had accused the Young Turk regime of crimes against humanity and civilization. In 1919 the post-war Ottoman government prosecuted a number of Young Turk conspirators of the crimes of massacre and plunder. By signing the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920, Turkey obligated itself to the apprehension of those "responsible for the massacres." The international community did not question at the time the veracity of the reports on the extermination of the Armenians...

Ismail Enver Pasha (1881-1922) was an instigator of the Armenian Genocide. A military officer, Enver was the principal proponent of Germanophile policies in the Young Turk government. Enver demonstrated organizational and leadership skills at an early age. He was one of the organizers of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. In 1911 he organized the defense of Libya against Italy and in 1913, after leading the January 23 coup which installed the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in power, he reversed the Ottoman defeat in the First Balkan War by recapturing Edirne (Adrianople) from the Bulgarians. By 1914 he was married into the Ottoman imperial family and was Minister of War. He steered the Ottoman state into war on the side of the Central Powers by entering into an alliance with Germany. While nominal command of the Ottoman armies was exercised by Turkish officers, planning, strategizing, and financing devolved to the large German military mission serving out of the War Ministry. In pursuit of his quest for a Pan-Turkic empire stretching to Central Asia, Enver personally led the first major campaign against Russia which resulted in a disastrous defeat at the border outpost of Sarikamish in the Armenian highlands...

Adana Massacre was the second series of large-scale massacres of Armenians to break out in the Ottoman Empire. The atrocities committed in the province of Adana in April 1909 coincided with the counter-revolution staged by supporters of Sultan Abdul Hamid (Abdulhamit) II (1876-1909) who had been forced to restore the Ottoman Constitution as a result of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). A prosperous region on the Mediterranean coast encompassing the old principality of Cilicia...