Henry Morgenthau (April 26, 1856 - November 25, 1946), was a U.S. diplomat and businessman, most famous as the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. He was father of the politician Henry Morgenthau, Jr..
Biography
He was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1856, the son of Lazarus Morgenthau, who emigrated to the US in 1866. His father was an unsuccessful inventor. Henry Morgenthau graduated from Columbia Law School and made a fortune in real estate.
His son, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., later became famous as Secretary of the Treasury, served in that post for an almost unprecedented eleven years, and was the proposer of the notorious Morgenthau Plan in the 1940s.
Morgenthau's career enabled him to contribute handsomely to President Woodrow Wilson's election campaign in 1912; he was made financial chairman of the United States Democratic Party in 1912 and again in 1916. He was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913-1916; he had hoped for a cabinet post, but was not successful in gaining one. After the outbreak of war, the American embassy - and by extension Morgenthau - also represented many of the Allies in Istanbul, as they had withdrawn their diplomatic missions due to the hostilities.
After the War he attended the Paris Peace Conference, as an advisor regarding Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and later worked with war-related charitable bodies, including the Relief Committee for the Middle East, the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission and the American Red Cross. In 1933, he was the American representative at the Geneva Conference.
He published several books, most notably Ambassador Morgenthau's story (1919) on the Armenian Genocide, drawing on his experiences as the Ambassador during this period of Turkish history. Secrets of the Bosphorus (1918) also covers this period, whilst I was sent to Athens (1929) deals with his time working with Greek refugees. The Library of Congress holds some 30,000 documents from his personal papers.
He died in 1946 following a cerebral hemorrhage, in New York City, and was buried in Hawthorne, NY.
Controversy over Armenia
His role in relation to the history of the Armenian Genocide is contentious; the first major work on the subject in the West was his Ambassador Morgenthau's story, still used as a source, which discusses Turkish atrocities against the Armenians. However, it has often been alleged that Morgenthau concocted specific incidents (and, indeed, that he never left Istanbul), exaggerated the general case, and sharply deviated from private letters in his published work. It has also been claimed the book was ghostwritten. The text also demonstrates a dislike of, and animosity towards, the Turks, which is often seen as supporting allegations of partisanship.
Some examples of this bias within his writing (Morgenthau is on record for having given his Armenian assistants [Hagop S. Andonian and Arshag K. Schmavonian] permission to write some of his letters) portrayed the Turks as less-than-human creatures: "inarticulate, ignorant, and poverty-ridden slaves" (p. 13), "barbarous" (p.147), "brutal" (p.149), "ragged and unkempt" (p. 276), and "parasites" (p.280). The Ambassador also wrote: "The descendants of Osman hardly resemble any people I have ever known. They do not hate, they do not love; they have no lasting animosities or affections. They only fear" (p.99). By contrast, he cites "The Armenians are known for their industry, their intelligence, and their decent and orderly lives. They are so superior to the Turks intellectually and morally."
Story was begun in late 1917, and began being serialised in newspapers and magazines in mid-1918; it is often suggested (through correspondence Morgenthau had with President Wilson) that it was written with the intent of bringing the United States into the First World War, but a look at the dates indicates it came too late for that. There is evidence that Morgenthau nonetheless intended the book as a work of propaganda, for domestic consumption by a population often actively hostile to the idea of being involved in a foreign war. However, even were this the case, it would not automatically imply that the contents were untrue, merely that he saw them to be politically useful.
On the other hand, there are several indications demonstrating the ambassador's deviation from reality. For example, on July 16, 1915, Morgenthau cabled the Department of State with his dispatch that "a campaign of race extermination is in progress." However, in September he recorded in his private diary that he heard from Zenop Bezjian, Vekil [representative] of Armenian Protestants, that half a million Armenians were displaced and presumably alive, and the ones "at Zor were fairly well satisfied; that they have already settled down to business and are earning their livings."
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