One of the blackest pages in the already dark book of WWI is the Armenian genocide that took place in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 and that costed the lives of at least 800,000 people. 

To understand how this could happen, we must look not only at the different stages in the Ottoman policies of 1915 that ultimately led to the genocide, but also at the historical context. 
The Balkan Wars of 1912-13, which had led to loss of the European provinces of the Empire, were a point of no return. 

To a large extent, the way the actual genocide played out in 1915-16 was the result of the determination of the Ottoman leaders that what had happened in the Balkans should not be allowed to repeat itself in Anatolia, and it should be understood as a mixture of planning and improvisation.