Drastamat Kanayan, better known as Dro (Դրո), was an Armenian military commander and politician. He was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. He briefly served as Defence Minister of the First Republic of Armenia in 1920, during the country's brief independence. During World War II, he led the Armenian Legion, which consisted of Armenian POWs who opted to fight for Nazi Germany rather than face the brutal conditions of the Nazis' camps.
General Dro, third from the right, leading the second battalion in 1915
Dro's mausoleum in Aparan, Armenia
The First Republic of Armenia, officially known at the time of its existence as the Republic of Armenia, was an independent Armenian state that existed from May 1918 to 2 December 1920 in the Armenian-populated territories of the former Russian Empire known as Eastern or Russian Armenia. The republic was established in May 1918, with its capital in the city of Yerevan, after the dissolution of the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. It was the first Armenian state since the Middle Ages.
Caucasian Front WWI. The territory of Western Armenia occupied by Armenian Russian troops in the summer-autumn of 1916. Niva Magazine - 1916
Folk dancers celebrating Armenian Independence Day in 1918, Yerevan
Starving children on a street in Armenia
American Commission to Negotiate Peace telegram describing massacres around Nakhchivan