The Harbord Commission was a U.S. commission tasked by President Wilson to study the relationship between the United States and Armenia following World War I. Major General James G. Harbord led the group and produced the final report which came to be called ‘The Harbord Report’. An excerpt follows:
"Massacres and deportations were organized in the Spring of 1915 under definite system, the soldiers going from town to town. The official reports of the Turkish Government show 1,100,000 as having been deported. Young men were first summoned to the Government building in each village and then marched out and killed. The women, the old men and children were, after a few days, deported to what Talaat Pasha called “Agricultural Colonies”,—from the high, cool, breeze-swept plateau of Armenia to the malarial flats of the Euphrates and the burning sands of Syria and Arabia. The dead from this wholesale attempt on the race are variously estimated from 500,000 to more than a million, the usual figure being about 800,000. Driven on foot under a fierce summer sun, robbed of their clothing and such petty articles as they carried, prodded by bayonet if they lagged; starvation, typhus and dysentery left thousands dead by the trail-side."
Those struggling in Anatolia are firmly determined about their work.
In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson sent two missions to the Near East to gather information on issues relating to the future of the region in the immediate aftermath of World War I.
One group, later known as the "King-Crane Commission", was civilian, centered on Istanbul (Constantinople), and tasked to interview community leaders and representatives of the Ottoman government.
The second group, the "American Military Mission to Armenia" was sent to travel to the centre of Anatolia and Armenia. Secretary of State Robert Lansing instructed James G. Harbord to "investigate and report on the political, military, geographic, administrative, economic, and such other considerations involved in possible American interests and responsibilities in the region.
