Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story
Henry Morgenthau
New Age Publishers
Excerpts...
And thus, as the exiles moved, they left behind them another caravan—that of dead and unburied bodies, of old men and of women dying in the last stages of typhus, dysentery, and cholera, of little children lying on their backs and setting up their last piteous wails for food and water. There were women who held up their babies to strangers, begging them to take them and save them from their tormentors, and failing this, they would throw them into wells or leave them behind bushes, that at least they might die undisturbed. Behind was left a small army of girls who had been sold as slaves-frequently for a medjidie, or about eighty cents—and who, after serving the brutal purposes of their purchasers, were forced to lead lives of prostitution.
Frequently anyone who dropped on the road was bayoneted on the spot. The Armenians began to die by hundreds from hunger and thirst. Even when they came to rivers, the gendarmes, merely to torment them, would sometimes not let them drink. The hot sun of the desert burned their scantily clothed bodies, and their bare feet, trending the hot sand of the desert, became so sore that thousands fell and died or were killed, where they lay.
My only reason for relating such dreadful things as this is that, without the details, the English-speaking public cannot understand precisely what this nation is which we call Turkey.. I have by no means told the most terrible details, for a complete narration of the sadistic orgies of which these Armenian men and women were the victims can never be printed in an American publication. Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the-most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915... she shuddered to recall how hundreds of children were bayoneted by the Turks and thrown into the Euphrates, and how men and women were stripped naked, tied together in hundreds, shot, and then hurled into the river. In a loop of the river near Erzinghan, she said, the thousands of dead bodies created such a barrage that the Euphrates changed its course for about a hundred yards.
Contents
I. A German superman at Constantinople / 3
II. The “Boss System” in the Ottoman Empire and how it proved useful to Germany / 20
III. “The personal representative of the Kaiser.” Wangenheim opposes the sale of American warships to Greece / 41
IV. Germany mobilizes the Turkish army / 61
V. Wangenheim smuggles the Goeben and the Breslau through the Dardanelles / 68
VI. Wangenhem tells the American Ambassador how the Kaiser started the war / 82
VII. Germany’s plans for new territories, coaling stations, and indemnities / 90
VIII. A classic instance of German propaganda / 96
IX. Germany closes the Dardanelles and so separates Russia from her Allies / 105
X. Turkey’s abrogation of the capitulations. Enver living in a palace, with plenty of money and an imperial bride / 112
XI. Germany forces Turkey into the war / 123
XII. The Turks attempt to treat alien enemies decently, but the Germans insist on persecuting them / 130
XIII. The invasion of the Notre Dame de Sion School / 147
XIV. Wangenheim and the Bethlehem Steel Company. A “Holy War” that was made in Germany / 157
XV. Djemal, a troublesome Mark Antony. The first German attempt to get a German peace / 171
XVI. The Turks prepare to flee from Constantinople and establish a new capital in Asia Minor. The Allied fleet bombarding the Dardanelles / 184
XVII. Enver as the man who demonstrated “the vulnerability of the British fleet.” Old-fashioned defenses of the Dardanelles / 202
XVIII. The Allied armada sails away, though on the brink of victory / 217
XIX. A fight for three thousand civilians / 232
XX. More adventures of the foreign residents / 253
XXI. Bulgaria on the auction block / 262
XXII. The Turk reverts to the ancestral type / 274
XXIII. The “Revolution” at Van / 293
XXIV. The murder of a nation / 301
XXV. Talaat tells why he deports the Armenians / 326
XXVI. Enver Pasha discusses the Armenians / 343
XXVII.“I shall do nothing for the Armenians,” says the German Ambassador / 364
XXVIII. Enver again moves for peace. Farewell to the Sultan and to Turkey / 385
XXIX. Von Jagow, Zimmermann, and German - Americans / 397
An appreciation - Hon. Henry Morgenthau, Friend and Benefactor - on page / 1
The Following Photographs Have Been Added
to the Reprinted Edition
The President speaks / i
Via Dolorosa (illustration) / vi
Mound of skulls in Der-el-Zor / viii
Three generations of Morgenthaus / xvi
Facing Page
Kharput laid waste / 69
A starving child . . . Brought back to life by the Near East Relief / 94
Favorite Turkish sport / 128
Bashibozouks of .Asia Minor / 146
The destitute / 171
Human wreckage / 230
Armenian woman / 252
Armenian bread-seller / 253
Atrocities / 260
Weeding out the men / 292
The long line that leads to death / 293
Turkish hangmen and their victims / 301
Starving Armenians / 343
"Orphan City" of the Near East Relief / 384
Devouring a cadaver / 385
In the desert of Der-el-Zor / 397
Beheaded Armenian clergy / 408
List of illustrationsHenry Morgenthau / Frontispiece
Mrs. Henry Morgenthau with Soeur Jeanne / 8
Constantinople from the American Embassy / 9
Beylerbey palace on the Bosphorus / 16
The American Embassy at Constantinople / 16
Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey, 1913-1916 / 17
Talaat Pasha, ex-Grand Vizier of Turkey / 48
Turkish infantry and cavalry / 49
Bustany Effendi / 56
Mohammed V, late Sultan of Turkey / 57
Wangenheim, the German Ambassador / 68
The Sultan, Mohammed V, going to his regular Friday prayers / 72
Talaat and Enver at a military review / 73
Baron Von Wangenheim, German Ambassador to Turkey / 80
Djemal Pasha, Minister of Marine / 81
The Marquis Garroni, Italian Ambassador to the Sublime Porte in 1914 / 112
M. Tocheff, Bulgarian Minister at Constantinople / 112
The American summer Embassy on the Bosphorus / 113
Enver Pasha, Minister of War / 120
Said Halim, Ex-grand Vizier / 121
Sir Louis Mallet and M. Bompard / 136
Gen. Liman von Sanders / 137
German and Turkish officers on board the Goeben / 144
Bedri Bey, Prefect of Police at Constantinople / 145
Djavid Bey, Minister of Finance in Turkish Cabinet / 145
The British Embassy / 176
Robert College at Constantinople / 177
The American Embassy Staff / 184
The Modem Turkish soldier / 185
The Ministry of War / 200
The Ministry of Marine / 200
Halil Bey in Berlin / 201
Talaat and Kühlmann / 201
General Mertens / 201
The Red Crescent / 208
Enver Pasha / 209
Turkish quarters at the Dardanelles / 240
Looking north to the city of Gallipoli / 241
The British ship Albion / 248
The Dardanelles as it was March16, 1915 / 249
Tchemenlik and Fort Anadolu Hamidie / 264
Fort Dardanos / 265
The American ward of the Turkish hospital / 272
Students of the Constantinople College / 273
Abdul Hamid / 304
A characteristic view of the Armenian country / 305
Fishing village on Lake Van / 312
Refugees at Van crowding around a public oven, hoping to get bread / 313
Kaiser William II, in the uniform of a Turkish Field Marshal / 328
Interior of the Armenian church at Urfa / 329
Armenian soldiers / 336
Those who fell by the wayside / 337
A view of Harpoot / 337
View of Urfa / 368
A relic of the Armenian massacres at Erzingan / 368
The funeral of Baron von Wangenheim / 369
The Near East ReliefPhotographs facing pages 94, 171, 230, 384 are adapted from "Story of the Near East Relief" by James L. Barton, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1930.
The book is an account of the great humanitarian crusade undertaken by American missionaries and laymen to rescue Armenians and Greeks from the ravages of Turkish geno-cidal policy, whose avowed aim was the total extermination of all the minorities in Turkey.
PREFACE
By this time the American people have probably become convinced that the Germans deliberately planned the conquest of the world. Yet they hesitate to convict on circumstantial evidence and for this reason all eye witnesses to this, the greatest crime in modern history, should volunteer their testimony.
I have therefore laid aside any scruples I had as to the propriety of disclosing to my fellow countrymen the facts which I learned while representing them in Turkey. I acquired this knowledge as the servant of the American people, and it is their property as much as it is mine.
I greatly regret that I have been obliged to omit an account of the splendid activities of the American Missionary and Educational Institutions in Turkey, but to do justice to this subject would require a book by itself. I have had to omit the story of the Jews in Turkey for the same reasons.
My thanks are due to my friend, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, for the invaluable assistance he has rendered in the preparation of the book.
Henry Morgenthau
October, 1918
Hon. Henry Morgenthau
Friend And BenefactorSixty years ago a nation of more than two million people whose forbears had lived on the land continuously for some 2,500 years was not only uprooted en masse but almost totally decimated in the manner of European Jewry 25 years later. The two genocides were remarkably similar in method and inspiration. These pages show conclusively how Talaat and Enver, the Turkish hangmen, served as teacher and inspiration to Hitler and Himmler.
New York Post-war Germany took pains to cleanse itself; it made public penance; it made restitution to victims; it brought war criminals to trial. Not so with the Turks who committed the first genocide of the century. None were brought to trial; to this day Turks will not admit their hideous guilt; not a penny has been paid in restitution for the billions looted in homes, churches, jewels, moneys, lands, the priceless remains of an incredibly rich cultural heritage, the extermination of some 1,600,000 Armenian lives through famine, disease, massacre, torture and deportation. By conservative estimate three fourths of the Armenian nation perished, as against one third of Jewry.
Hitler died a fitting death in the ruins of Berlin. Talaat was finally assassinated in Germany, but his remains were brought to Turkey and respectfully laid to rest in Istanbul’s military cemetery. Thus Turkey exposed itself as a nation which to this day honors its Hitlers. Everything in Germany has now changed for the better. Basically the Turkish character has changed but little.
Contrast Germany which honorably renounced barbarism, with Turkey - which procreated barbarism in the invasion of Cyprus.
In the holocaust of 1915-20 the Allies protested vigorously but to no avail. One man above others, through his writings and speeches waged a heroic crusade for the Armenians. He defied the Talaats and the Kaiser’s emissaries in Turkey. He pierced the conscience of America and the world. If ever a people needed a friend and benefactor during the blood-letting of an historic nation it was Henry Morgenthau. This book is not only the story of an ambassador’s official performance, but that of a man with deep humanitarian instincts, compassion for the underdog and supreme qualities of courage and moral integrity. These traits made him unique among the men of his time and everlastingly blessed in the eyes of the Armenians.
