Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story

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

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

Henry Morgenthau

Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story

New Age

New Age Publishers
Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story
By Henry Morgenthau
Formerly American Ambassador to Turkey

The Documented Account
of the Armenian Genocide
First of the Century
Reported by America’s
Ambassador to Turkey

Ambassador Morgenthau's Story

Memorial Edition
The copyright on “Ambassador Morgenthau’s
Story” originally published in 1919 by Doubleday,
Page & Co. has expired and the book is now in the
public domain. This is the reprinted edition.

New Age Publishers
P.O. Box 883
Plandome, New York 11030

To Woodrow Wilson
The Exponent In America Of The Enlightened Public
Opinion Of The World, Which Has Decreed That
The Rights Of Small Nations Shall Be Respected
And That Such Crimes As Are Described In This Book
Shall Never Again Darken The Pages Of History