Ottoman Empire
Talaat Pasha
1874–1921 Minister of the Interior, 1913–1917; Grand Vizier from 1917
A former telegraph clerk who rose in the Committee of Union and Progress, Talaat became the most powerful civilian in the empire. As Interior Minister he signed the orders for the arrests of 24 April 1915 and for the deportation of the Armenians, and he directed the policy through the provincial governors and the Special Organization, according to the Ottoman documents and the reports of foreign diplomats. American ambassador Henry Morgenthau pleaded with him without result. After the defeat in 1918 he fled to Germany; an Ottoman court sentenced him to death in his absence in 1919. He was shot in Berlin in March 1921 by an Armenian survivor, Soghomon Tehlirian, who was acquitted by a German jury.