Morgento, Henry (Sr.)

Morgento was born in the German city of Mannheim into a Jewish family ^[5] . In 1865, he moved to the United States with his family. He graduated from law school at Columbia University , was an active member of the US Democratic Party .

As US Ambassador to Turkey (1913-1916), Morgento condemned the Armenian Genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Greeks as a “campaign of racial annihilation" ^[6] . When the Ottoman authorities began the extermination of Armenians in 1915, the Morgento desk was littered with reports from almost all American consuls living in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, with documentary evidence of mass killings and deportations. Having accumulated enough evidence of the mass extermination of Armenians, he officially informed the US government about the activities of the Ottoman government and asked him to intervene. However, the American government, unwilling to intervene, remained neutral, without commenting on the official atrocities of the Young Turkish authorities. Morgento held meetings with the leaders of the Ottoman Empire to discuss formats for alleviating the situation of the Armenians, but the official authorities ignored his protests. However, he warned the country's interior minister, Talaat Pasha , stating that "Our people will never forget these massacres." But, as the massacres continued, Morgento and several other Americans decided to create a public foundation that would help the surviving Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the Committee on Atrocities Against Armenians (later renamed the Committee for Assistance to the Middle East), raising more than $ 100 million as an aid (equivalent to $ 1 billion dollars today). Thanks to his friendship with Adolf Oaks, the publisher of The New York Times, he increased the coverage of the mass killings of Armenians from 1 article in 1915 to 145 articles. Such actions of Morgento irritated the Turkish authorities, which led to his resignation from the post of US ambassador to Turkey in 1916. Looking back at this decision in his book “Killing the Nation”, he wrote that he “came to the conclusion that Turkey is a territory of horror ...”; “I have exhausted my resources. I found that my continued daily conversations with kind and kind people were unbearable ... from which almost a million people still bled with blood ... ” . In 1918, Ambassador Morgento publicly made a statement in the United States that the Greeks and Assyrians had been “subjected to the same methods of deportation and massacre,” and that 2 million Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians had already died.

Morgento rejected the “politically correct” hypothesis about Turkish deportations of Armenians as a military necessity, and convincingly proved that the purpose of the Young Turks was the complete destruction of the Armenian people . Morgenthau condemned the indifference of the European powers, which, in turn, pushed the Turkish killers.

He headed the US government mission in Poland , was the representative of the United States at the Geneva Conference. In 1918, he published his memoirs, The History of Ambassador Morgento, where he described his conversations with the leaders of the Ottoman Empire and their role in the Armenian Genocide.

• The Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (1918) Russian translation: Henry Morgento “The tragedy of the Armenian people. The story of Ambassador Morgento
• The Secrets of the Bosphorus (1918)
• The Morgenthau Report (October 3, 1919)
• I was sent to Athens (1929)

• Ambassador Morgenthau's Story . An electronic copy of his most contentious book, at the World War I Document Archive.
• Ambassador Morgenthau's Story . With translations in French, German and Turkish.
• I was sent to Athens .