Ottoman Empire
Enver Pasha
1881–1922 Ottoman Minister of War, 1914–1918
Born in Constantinople (Istanbul), Enver Pasha made his name as an officer in Macedonia, where he joined the Committee of Union and Progress and helped lead the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. He led resistance to Italy in Libya from 1911 and in January 1913 took part in the raid on the Sublime Porte. Minister of War from 3 January 1914, he pursued the German alliance and let the Goeben and Breslau into the Dardanelles. His only field command, at Sarikamish in the winter of 1914–15, destroyed much of an army of about 90,000 men. He is counted among the main perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. Sentenced to death in absentia in 1919, he died in what is now Tajikistan on 4 August 1922 leading Basmachi rebels against the Bolsheviks.