On Atrocities

Armesto-Fernandez refers to the 20th century as a "century of atrocities" for quite literal reasons, with the author tying the term directly to the two major world wars fought over the course of the century. Certainly, if we examine the century chronologically, we can see that there was an uncommon amount and level of violence in the 20th century, surpassing both previous centuries and the 21st century thus far in both size and scope. Tracing the "long century" that Armesto-Fernandez formulates from 1898 (Spanish-American War) to 2010 (global financial crisis), we can isolate three historical events/periods -- World War I, World War II, and the post-colonial period in the developing world -- to demonstrate the extent to which the 20th century was marked by atrocities, using the specific lens of genocide.

World War I was expected to be a short war by those who engaged in it, but it dragged on for four years and ended up taking millions of lives due to the tactics with which it was fought. However, it was also marked by being the first modern war in which one of the belligerents engaged in genocide. The Ottoman Turks, angry at pre-war European demands for Ottoman reform on the basis of Europeans' shared Christian faith with the Armenians, fearful of Armenian collusion with invading Russian forces, and angry at limited but damaging attacks on Ottoman military positions by the Armenian Liberation Front guerrilla organization decided in April 1915 to eliminate the Armenian population of Anatolia through mass deportation, deliberate starvation, murder, torture, and rape. At least half a million Armenians died, but perhaps three times that many. The Armenian genocide also reflected the 20th century implementation of extreme nationalism. The Young Turk movement that seized power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908 was marked by Turkish nationalism that sought to united Turkic peoples throughout Asia and "Turkify" non-Turkish ethnic minorities through language policy and forced conversion to Islam. The atrocities committed against the Armenians represents only the most extreme example specific to the Young Turks; Greeks and Assyrians were also ethnically cleansed between 1898 and 1923.

If the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians was motivated in part by Turkish nationalism, then the Holocaust that occurred during World War II was an even more extreme example. The Nazis' nationalism was more radical that the Ottomans', complicated by the militant authoritarianism of fascism and what Saul Friedländer has called the Nazis' "redemptionist anti-Semitism." While the Nazis would likely have been satisfied to deport all of Europe's Jews elsewhere, it was Hitler's miscalculation on the Eastern Front in the war with the Soviet Union that ultimately led to genocide. Beginning in the summer of 1941 but culminating in final decision making that winter, roughly six million Jews were consigned to extermination, as well as other racial and political enemies, including Soviet POWs, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and the political left. In so far as the war crimes committed by the Nazis with the invasion of the Soviet Union determined the ferocity of the Soviet counteroffensive and the resolve of the Soviet people to continue to fight, it could be argued that the industrialization of warfare worldwide during the 20th century had the consequences of causing the Nazi-Soviet war to be long and drawn out, with genocidal consequences for Jews caught between the two regimes.

Although the Cold War of 1944 (Yalta) to 1991 (fall of the USSR) was a period during which major wars were avoided and the major genocidal campaigns that accompanied the world wars similarly avoided, only three years after the Soviet Union was dissolved did Hutu extremists in control of the government commit genocide against the Tutsi minority in that country, with a death count again numbering at least a half million. The Rwandan genocide, recent as it was, is perhaps the least completely understood of these three genocides, but it can fairly be said that radical ideology and protracted warfare, as seen in the earlier examples, played key roles here. The decision of the extremists in the government and army to engage in genocide was both the direct result of a radical nationalist ideology among a minority of Hutus, but it was also a decision made in the context of a civil war -- a point often omitted from discussion. A Tutsi militia constituted of exiled Rwandans had invaded Rwanda four years earlier and committed horrendous war crimes, and the genocide against Tutsis in 1994 was in part a reaction borne of fear of the ongoing civil war resulting in Tutsis overthrowing the government establishing a supremacist government over the majority Hutus -- which was, in fact, the status quo under the old monarchy abolished in 1959. Sadly, the backlash in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide resulted in precisely what these Hutu extremists feared. Paul Kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front seized power in 1994 and has remained in power ever since, with dire consequences for any Rwandan who dares question the wisdom of Kagame's authoritarian rule.

In conclusion, it is clear that the 20th century was a century of atrocities. The three genocides discussed here -- the Armenian genocide, Jewish Holocaust, and Rwandan genocide -- all occurred during that century and all involved radical nationalist ideologies. In the case of the Holocaust, industrialization also played an essential role. Were these the only incidences of mass killing to have occurred during the 20th century, the point would be made, but events in modern-day Namibia, Guatemala, Burundi, the Balkans, Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, and elsewhere emphasize the point even more. While it is true that genocidal violence occurred in previous centuries, the sheer scale of the killing of civilians during the 20th century is unique.