Ambassador Morgenthau's Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide

From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire ordered the systematic massacre and mass deportation of over 1.5 million its subjects.

Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story is an insightful, unique and, often, painful first-hand account of the Armenian genocide as seen from his role as American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

Henry Morgenthau assesses the tense political atmosphere in the strategically important Ottoman Empire at the beginning of WWI and examines Germany’s influence on Turkish actions.

Morgenthau’s position as an American representative to the Ottoman government allowed him a fascinating and disturbing insight into the policies and the lawmakers of the period. His memoir includes account of many high-level meeting with important heads of state, both in Turkey and on a wider international scale.

From 1915 onward, Morgenthau attempted to use his power to stop the genocide and on many occasions tried to reason with the Ottoman government. He was constantly ignored and dismissed.

Morgenthau brought the Armenians’ case to the U.S. government, appealing for intervention but Washington ignored his pleas for help.

Frustrated at his powerlessness to stop this mass genocide, Morgenthau renounced his position as U.S. Ambassador and used all his influence to bring attention to the oft-ignored plight of the Armenian people. He raised huge sums of money and awareness, leading to the first publication of this book in 1918.

Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story is regarded as one of the preeminent sources of information on the Armenian genocide.

"The power of Morgenthau’s book to move and instruct us eighty years after its publication, intimately connected with its truthfulness about the atrocities and the men behind them, but also about the capacities of humans to commit enormous evil with a light heart." — Roger Smith, historian.

Henry Morgenthau, born April 26, 1856 was an American lawyer, businessman and United States ambassador, most famous as the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. As ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Morgenthau has come to be identified as the most prominent American to speak about the Armenian Genocide. He wrote this book in 1918 and spent his life campaigning for acknowledgement of the genocide. He died on November 25, 1946.