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Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr.

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Henry Morgenthau (1856-1946) was
United States ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire during the Armenian MEDIA
General
Genocide. A naturalized American from a
Turks in Movies
German Jewish family, Morgenthau was Turks in TV
a successful lawyer active in Democratic
Party politics. With the election of
COMMENT President Woodrow Wilson, he was
Mahmut Ozan appointed United States Ambassador to
Edward Tashji
the Sublime Porte in 1913. In ABOUT
Sam Weems This Site
Others Constantinople he established personal
Holdwater
contact with the Young Turk leaders of
the Ottoman Empire, especially the
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. Minister of the Interior, Talaat, with
whom he unsuccessfully intervened to
alleviate the plight of the Armenian population when beginning in April, 1915,
news of the deportations and massacres began to reach the Embassy. The
US consulates in the interior of the Ottoman Empire relayed a stream of
alarming reports detailing the extent of the measures taken against the
Armenians. Despite the difficulties of communication during the war, Oscar
H. Heizer in Trebizond, Leslie A. Davis in Mamuret-el-Aziz, or Harput
(Kharpert in Armenian), and especially Jesse B. Jackson in Aleppo regularly
posted the Embassy with their own eyewitness accounts of the treatment of
the Armenians. On June 5, 1915, Jackson shared his views about the
persecutions with the Ambassador and concluded that they constituted "a
carefully planned scheme to thoroughly extinguish the Armenian race."

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Morgenthau forwarded all the reports to Washington, D.C. The

accumulating evidence also led Morgenthau to cable the Department of
State on July 16, 1915, with his own dispatch that "a campaign of race
extermination is in progress." Drained by his failure to avert this disaster,
Morgenthau returned to the United States in 1916 and for the remainder of
the war years he dedicated himself to raising funds for the surviving
Armenians. In 1918 he published Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, a
memoir of his years in Turkey, in which he stressed the German influence
and role in the Ottoman Empire. He titled the chapter on the Armenians,
"The Murder of a Nation." He described the deportations and the atrocities
as a "cold-blooded, calculating state policy." He avowed at the time: "I am
confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible
episode as this." Morgenthau was the father of Henry Morgenthau Jr.,
Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of US President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.

Here is an example of the Ambassador's Thinking

The Independent
February 28, 1920

Shall Armenia Perish?

By Henry Morgenthau

Former Ambassador to Turkey, and National

Vice-Chairman of Near East Relief

Two hundred and fifty thousand Christian Armenian women enslaved in

Turkish harems call to the people of America for liberation! One hundred
thousand women already rescued by Near East Relief agents from
harems will perish unless support from America is continued! Two
hundred and fifty thousand children, orphaned by the unspeakable Turks,
are calling in the only English they know, "Bread, Uncle Sam." One
million two hundred thousand destitute, homeless, clotheless adults look
to the giant in the West for the succor that will keep them from
annihilation. What shall our answer be?

If they were good enough to fight and die for us when we needed their
help so sorely, are they not good enough to be given some crumbs from
our plenty?

Since the beginning of the war, the Turkish Armenians have been largely
refugees. A simple, agricultural people, they have been exiled from their
farms and deprived of all opportunity to support themselves. Now, more
than a year after the armistice, they are still living the life of nomads,
able to continue alive only by virtue of American philanthropy. If ever
unmerited suffering called for succor the plight of the Armenians should
be heeded now. A few months more and it may be relief will come too
late for those myriads whom only we can save.

Let the American slogan now become-Serve Armenians for a little while
longer with life's necessities that they may be preserved for the day of
national freedom and rebirth, which no people more truly and greatly
deserves.

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The belief, held by some persons, that

Turkey has repented and can do not
further harm, is without foundation.
The group that led Turkey into the
war on the side of Germany is now in
the saddle. The Turk has not been
disarmed and these leaders are now
aiding the Tartars. Kurds and
Bolshevists are urging them on to kill
and rob the surviving Armenians at
every opportunity. The deportations
and massacres during the war were
not spontaneous uprisings of
unorganized mobs, but were the
working out of a well-plotted plan of
wholesale extermination in which
regular Turkish officers and troops
took part as if in a campaign against Henry's main squeeze, at right
an enemy in the field.

More than 2,000,000 persons were deported. The system was about the
same everywhere. The Armenians, men, women and children, would be
assembled in the marketplace. Then the able-bodied men would be
marched off and killed by being shot or clubbed in cold blood at some
spot which did not necessitate the trouble of burial.

Next the women would be sorted out. Agents of the Turk officers picked
the youngest and fairest for their masters' harems. Next the civil officials
had their pick, and then the remainder either were sold for one medjidi-a
silver coin valued at about 80 cents-or were driven forth to be seized by
the lower class Turks and Kurds.

As a last step, those who remained, mothers, grandmothers, children,

were driven forth on their death pilgrimages across the desert of Aleppo,
with no food, no water, no shelter, to be robbed and beaten at every halt,
to see children slain in scores before their eyes, and babies dashed to
death against rocks or spitted on the bayonets of the soldier guards.

If America is going to condone these offenses, if she is going to permit to

continue conditions that threaten and permit their repetition, she is party
to the crime. These peoples must be freed from the agony and danger of
such horrors. They must not only be saved for the present but either thru
governmental action or protection under the League of Nations they
must be given assurance that they will be free in peace and that no harm
can come to them.

HAREMS??

"Two hundred and fifty thousand Christian Armenian women

enslaved in Turkish harems," indeed! So ordinary Turks had
harems... hmmmm. Contrary to Western belief, the only harem
I'm aware of — the Sultan's harem — wasn't even the kind of
place where the Sultan could "pick and choose" his sexual
partners. (The harem, by the way, was a Byzantine tradition.)

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Ambassador Morgenthau was playing up to Americans'

ignorance of the mysterious ways of the Orient. Not the only
time he expressed a willingness to demonstrate a total
disregard for the truth.

On the surface, the ambassador seemed to be your plain,

everyday Turk-hater common to the period, with descriptions
such as "The unspeakable Turks." (Morgenthau believed the
Turks were an inferior race, possessing "inferior blood.") He
certainly was not above repeating (or creating) sensational
stories, such as, "...babies dashed to death against rocks or
spitted on the bayonets of the soldier guards." Nor did he care
about citing actual statistics, claiming a deportation of a cool
two million Armenians, more than existed in the entire Ottoman
Empire. And check out his pat conclusion: "...not spontaneous
uprisings of unorganized mobs, but ... the working out of a
well-plotted plan of wholesale extermination." No wonder
Armenians still love to quote this man. (Californian Professor
Marashlian calls Morgenthau's testimony " unimpeachable."
Footnotes for Dr. Lowry's examination of the book give
examples of how Fellow Californian Professor Hovannisian
cites Morgenthau practically every chance he gets.)

What kind of a man was the ambassador, anyhow?

"Henry Morgenthau, who is frequently quoted by Armenian

Americans, visited the Ottoman Empire with political, not
humanitarian aims. His correspondence with President Wilson
reveals his intent was to uncover or manufacture news which
would goad the U.S. into joining the war. Given that motive,
Henry Morgenthau sought to vilify the Ottoman Empire, an
enemy of the Triple Entente." (From An Unjust Trial.)

Prof. Heath W. Lowry, in his article entitled "American

Observers in Anatolia CA. 1920: The Bristol Papers" states as
follows:
"Morgenthau was a confirmed 'Turcophobe' whose hatred for
the Turks was matched only by his unabashed support for the
Christian minorities under Ottoman rule...Armenian spokesmen
consistently refer to H. Morgenthau's statements as proof, in
their pursuit to convince the politicians that a so-called
genocide occurred. In his tenure, Mr Morgenthau has never left
Istanbul ..."

Morgenthau himself admits that he never visited eastern

Anatolia and he let his Armenian aide shape up his diplomatic
propaganda against the Ottoman Empire:

"I have really found it impossible to sit down and dictate a letter
quietly. So I have instructed Andonian to take my diary and
copy it with some elaborations of his own. Of course this
relieves me of all responsibility for any error."

Lowry, 1990; Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, New York,

Letters; Box 7 May 11, 1915; Box 1 2 September 1, 1915; Box 8 July 13,

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1915)

RELIEVES ME OF ALL RESPONSIBILITY

FOR ANY ERROR? That's convenient. It
reveals a lot about the man's character, too.
The Ambassador also wrote:

"You probably know that with the approval

of the President (Wilson), I have undertaken
to write a book. Mr. Andonian is assisting
Hagop S. Andonian
me in the preparation of that work and
owing to his intimate knowledge of the east
(Anatolia) and his unusual experience, his services to me are
really indispensable."

Lowry, 1990; Library of Congress, The Papers of Henry Morgenthau, Reel

No 8.

That does not help in building credibilty to the historical value

of his book, "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story." Moreover, as
influential as his Armenian assistants (his primary aide,
translator and confidant in Istanbul and Anatolia was an
Armenian, Arshag Schmavonian, his secretary, sometime
translator and soon-to-become sometime movie companion
[upon traveling to the States] was also an Armenian, Hagop
Andonian... possibly related to the forger, Aram Andonian,
since "Andonian" may not have been that common a name)
could well have had pull with false reports, and even to the
extent of shaping up his memoirs; the ambassador also
employed a ghost writer (Burton J. Hendrick) to actually write
his book... deviating by the truckload from his letters and
diaries.

Professor Heath Lowry exposes these deviations in his report,

The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.

George A. Schreiner in his "The Craft Sinister: A Diplomatico-

Political History of the Great War and its Causes, (G. Albert
Gayer, New York, 1920)" writes about Ambassador
Morgenthau¹s misleadings of the American government. ("It is
to be hoped that the future historian will not give too much
heed to the drivel one finds in the books of diplomatist-
authors.") The distinguished foreign correspondent (having
served in Turkey from February through the end of 1915) wrote
Morgenthau a biting December 11,1918 letter, criticizing him
for the fallacies in his unethically written book (Ambassador
Morgenthau's Story).

It seems to me Morgenthau let his ego run away with him,

enjoying the notion that his fellow Americans looked upon the
ambassador as the savior of a Christian people. The intensity
with which he communicated his thoughts (as with the article
above) provides a strong clue... he must have liked the fact
that he came across as a hero. There are a good number of
passages in his ghost-written book where his heroic deeds and
attitude is presented (or as Schreiner mocked, his
"omniscience and omnipotence"), even though some of his
letters and diaries paint an altogether different picture.

For example, there is a point where he forces himself on the

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Turkish leaders whenever he wants:

"I shall not be denied an interview," I replied. "I shall come up

And
to thethen withroom
cabinet greatatcleverness he Ifwould
four o'clock. play upon
you refuse the only
to receive me
emotion
then, I shall insist on going into the council room and of
which really actuates the Turk. The descendants
Osman hardly resemble
discussing the matteranywithpeople
the wholeI have ever known.
Cabinet. I shall beThey
do not to
interested hate, they
learn do not
whether thelove; theyCabinet
Turkish have no willlasting
refuse to
animosities or affections.
receive They only
the American fear. And naturally they
Ambassador."
attribute to others the motives which regulate their own conduct.
Immediately
"How stupid after which,
you are," Enver Pasha iswould
Wangenheim heardtell
to gasp
Talaatover
andthe
phone. As always, Morgenthau
Enver.... gets what he wishes.

The Turkish Soleaders

the Turkssnap aretocowards.
his everyCheck.
high and mighty
command throughout the book. For example, he brags about
The stateTalat
seeing of war had now
"nearly everymade
day."me,Yet,asinAmerican
the first sixAmbassador,
months of
the1914,
protector of all British,
his diaries French,
and letters Serbian,
indicate a Talatandtete-a-tete
Belgian subjects.
of no
I realized from the morebeginning
than that mytimes.
twenty task would be a difficult
one. On one hand were the Germans, urging their well-known
Someofofrepression
ideas the incidentsandhe has hiswhile
brutality, ghostwriter
on the tell
other us,were
if true,
the
must
Turks,have
withdone
theirwonders
traditionalfor his bloated
hatred ego. For example,
of Christians and their at
one point he once again manipulates the Turks
natural instinct to maltreat those who are helplessly placed to acquiesce to
his wishes by managing to get only
in their power. a handful of Ottoman
Britons and French shipped off. When he comes back to tell
the nervouslyThe awaiting
Turksflock the good
are brutes. news, they are so
Check.
stunned in disbelief that the women fall on their hands to kiss
hisTurks,
The hands,likeandmost
the primitive
men embrace himwear
peoples, (in the case
their of the latter,
emotions on the
much and
surface, to his "violent
with them protestations"...
the transition from Morgenthau
exultation wanted
to despairto is
make clear he was a manly man).
a rapid one... That kind of hero-worship
must have gotten pretty addictive.
The Turks are primitive. Check.
However, the greatest example, to my mind, of Ambassador
Essentially the Turk
Morgenthau's is a bully
mission and a coward;
to present himself as heaisheroic
bravesavior
as a lion
when things are going his is... way, but cringing, abject, and
nerveless when reverses are overwhelming him.

The Turks are bullies. Check. And cowards... hey. We already

covered cowards. However, let's make a note of how nerveless
Turks are against overwhelming odds. As in Plevna, for example.
And as with not settling to have the right of self determination
taken away from them, when the Allies came up with the Sevres
Treaty. Few chapters in history represented overwhelming odds
as those that governed the birth of the Turkish Republic.

We must realize that the basic fact underlying the Turkish

mentality is its utter contempt for all other races. A fairly insane
pride is the element that largely explains this strange human
species...

Pretty ironic this haughty fellow is one to look down on pride.

Building several empires over the course of a millennium has a
tendency to produce pride, it's a funny thing. And as far as utter
contempt for other races, those other races were allowed to rise
to high positions in Ottoman life centuries before blacks got the
right to drink from general water fountains in the United States.

At this point, I fear Ambassador Morgenthau just might have lost

his faith in human nature. Where, oh where, will he come up with
an example to offset this Turkish blight upon humanity? Hold on!
...His decision to appear in it1919's
Here RAVISHED ARMENIA as
comes...
HIMSELF! What an egomaniac..!

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What is definitely known about the Armenians, however, is that

for ages they have constituted the most civilized and most
industrious race in the eastern section of the Ottoman Empire.
From their mountains they have spread over the Sultan's
dominions, and form a considerable element in the population of
all the large cities. Everywhere they are known for their industry,
their intelligence, and their decent and orderly lives. They are so
superior to the Turks intellectually and morally that much of the
business and industry had passed into their hands.

Armenian.... Good. Turk.... Bad. Got it...

The most beautiful and healthy Armenian girls could be taken,

converted forcibly to Mohammedanism, and made the wives or
concubines of devout followers of the Prophet. Their children
would then automatically become Moslems and so strengthen the
empire, as the Janissaries had strengthened it formerly. These
Armenian girls represent a high type of womanhood and the
Young Turks, in their crude, intuitive way, recognized that the
mingling of their blood with the Turkish population would exert a
eugenic influence upon the whole.

Armenians.... Salvation for the Turkish Race. Got it.

Say, didn't those Janissaries weaken the empire? I thought that

was why they were gotten rid of, finally.....

...It was a complete revelation of Turkish mentality; the fact that,

above all considerations of race and religion, there are such
things as humanity and civilization, never for a moment enters
their mind. They can understand a Christian fighting for a
Christian and a Jew fighting for a Jew, but such abstractions as
justice and decency form no part of their conception of things.

Well, I think we have churned enough stomachs and now have

an excellent idea of where the good Ambassador was coming
from. We also now can see why the Armenians and Greeks
totally revere this man, and why Armenian professors are
desperate to still cling to his weighty words as the gospel truth.

More on Morgenthau (from guestbook

commentator, Nick, a Briton)

(Bold highlighting by Holdwater)

Re: Please read this message

From: NICK
Date: 11/22/1999

Comments
Interesting. But you don't think that somewhere in these
reports was the element of war time propaganda? Morgenthau

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is extremely unreliable and his book is not only an example of

war time propaganda but also of the pathology of 19th century
racism. I refer you to chapter XXII of Ambassador Morgenthau's
Story, "The Turk Reverts to Ancestral Type". It is full of
nonsensical stories of abducted women forced into harems or
auctioned at markets, forced adoption of children and so on.
He says the same things about the Germans and Austrians
incidentally — deportations of Belgians, wholesale violation of
Belgian women, the abduction by Austrians of Serb children
and the settlement in parts of Europe vacated by deportees by
good German stock! All stories proved false after the war. He
even states that the Turks, good with cudgels and knives, are
too dull and unimaginative to come up with the concept of
deportation — it was a German idea!

His book oozes with racial slurs and prejudice----"The most

beautiful and healthy Armenian girls could be taken, converted
forcibly to Mohammedanism, and made wives or concubines of
devout followers of the Prophet. Their children would then
automatically become Moslems and so strengthen the empire
as the janissaries had strengthened it formally. These
Armenian girls represent a high type of womanhood and the
Young Turks, in their crude intuitive way, recognized that the
mingling of their blood with the Turkish population would exert
a eugenic influence on the whole." This is ludicrous, ridiculous
and this nasty book is still in print, it is cited in Congress
and used in "education packs" for high school and college
students.

Sentiments like these expressed about any other ethnic

group would be considered abhorrent — yet aimed at the
Turks it seems to be acceptable. It is mystery to me how
any sensible person could, in this day and age, read this
rubbish without squirming in his seat with
embarrassment.

It is ironic that Morgenthau, as a Jew, should make these kinds

of racial comments and eugenic observations given what was
to follow. This book is a piece of propaganda and it is
interesting that Morgenthau is the source of many articles and
stories — he is a principle supplier of information to Bryce
whose role during the war was as a producer of propaganda.
Even Bryce's material, emanating as it does from a
professional, is interesting if you read between the lines; in a
letter from an American missionary woman in Van it says that
she had "thrust" upon her the care of 1000 Turkish refugees
from villages that Russo-Armenian volunteers were "cleaning
out"!

Now there is an interesting phrase with more than a little

contemporary resonance. The term "ethnic clearing" was used
by Serbs to describe the cleaning of Vukovar of Croat
Catholics. The interesting thing is that this comment is
dropped in in a matter of fact way — it must have been
commonplace and it illustrates her prejudices and priorities —
"While Armenian refugees had been mutually helpful and self
sacrificing, these Moslems showed themselves absolutely
selfish, callous and indifferent to each other's suffering. Where
Armenians had been cheery and hopeful, and had clung to life

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with wonderful vitality, the Moslems, with no faith in God and

no hope of a future life, bereft now of hope in this life, died like
flies of prevailing dysentry from lack of stamina and the will to
live."

This is a sample from what is common throughout these

reports. Muslims are brutal, barbaric, selfish and died like
"flies" because they lacked faith in God. Christians are cheerful
in adversity, meek, selfless and sustained by their Christian
faith. It should be obvious to a simpleton that these reports are
one sided, biased, carefully selected and presented to cater to
the baser prejudices and prurient fantasies that western
people had about the east, in the interest of promoting the war
effort.

These "stories" are accepted today without any reservation

because they serve an ideology. For example, the Christians of
Trebizond — 10,000 of them — are put into sailing boats and
(methods varying according to which source you read) taken
out to sea, and thrown overboard! All 10,000 of them and all in
an afternoon! Has anyone actually thought about the logistics
of this? Isn't this just a little complicated? Am I the only one
who thinks that Bryce is egging the pudding just a bit?

On Oct 6th 1915 Bryce

tells the House of Lords that
800,000 Armenians had
been murdered in six
months! What remarkable
access he had to
information from the interior
of an enemy country! And
yet we have all these
survivors. We are told that
1.5-2 million Armenians died
(time frame flexible) — and
yet the top estimate of the
Armenian population of
From the CENSUS page
Ottoman Anatolia at the turn
of the century is just under 1.5 million. If you look at population statistics for
this period you will see that between 1914 and 1922, in Anatolia, about
300,000 Greeks died, about 600,000 Armenians and about 2.75 million
Muslims died. If the argument were to be made that in the course of this war
Armenians suffered a catastrophe that was genocidal in its impact then
nobody would be arguing. But that is not what is being said. Bryce states that
Armenians are being destroyed as a policy of state — that there are orders
to this effect. Well, where are these orders?

The fact remains that there is not a single Ottoman government document in
existence that discusses, plans or commands the execution of these "orders".
The definition of genocide has to be made very elastic to make the
accusation credible in this case and there is reliance on propaganda of
dubious provenance and eighty years old and liberal use of repugnant racial
stereotypes in lieu of facts. The only fact that is certain is that this war was
genocidal in its impact for all the people of Anatolia. No other theatre of war
experience casualties of this magnitude not just amongst soldiers but civilians
as well. It is complicated by the fact that the distinction between regular and
irregular troops and civilians did not exist.

The Lawyer was a Liar

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"One day Talaat made what was perhaps the most

astonishing request I had ever heard. The 'New York Life
Insurance Company' and the 'Equitable Life of New York'
had for years done considerable business among the
Armenians. The extent to which these people insured their
lives was merely another indication of their thrifty habits.

'I wish,' Talaat now said, 'That you would get the American
Life Insurance Companies to send us a complete list of
Armenian policy holders. They are practically all dead now
and have left no heirs to collect the money. It of course all
escheats to the state. The Government is beneficiary now.
Will you do so?

This was almost too much, and I lost my temper. 'You will
get no such list from me,' I said, and I got up and left him.

The above is a passage often pointed to in Armenian friendly

sources to show the inhumanity of Talat Pasha; it is from
Henry Morgenthau's book, and only one of the many
fabrications exposed by the meticulous research conducted
by Dr. Heath Lowry in "The Story Behind Ambassador
Morgenthau's Story."

Today, lawyers enjoy the reputation of being perhaps the

sleaziest of professions in the United States, and the field's
practitioners are often perceived as people with no moral
scruples whatsoever. This was not always the case; there was
a time when those who were experts in the Law were seen as
among the most honorable of citizens. There were enough
examples of lawyers performing in immoral ways that turned
public opinion drastically against them, and we can now see
Henry Morgenthau must have done his utmost to assist this
tide that went against those of his chosen profession.

(By the way, it also didn't hurt for the unethical Mr.
Morgenthau to drop the name of an insurance firm [Equitable]
he happened to be on the Board of Directors of... a free plug
never hurts, especially in what was sure to be a sensationally
popular book.)

Oh, Henry!

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Was Morgenthau as rabid a

Turk-hater as he comes across?
When I read such words coming from
missionaries or from religiously-
inclined U.S. Consuls such as
George Horton, I can believe their
Turk-hatred truly emanates from their
hearts. However, Morgenthau
appears to be of a different breed.
As a lawyer and real estate
developer, and as a city person who
probably wasn't too wrapped up in
religion, I don't see how he could be
this venomous.

Morgenthau's purpose was to vilify

Turks and Germans to induce the Children loved Henry Morgenthau
Americans to enter the war. Thus, there was a strong possibility
he wasn't totally out there as his wild words indicate (although he
certainly must have had enough prejudice within him to have
gone as overboard as he did)... since he got along well with the
Turks, according to his letters/diaries, and any of this oozing
contempt seemed rare in those more reliable documents (some
letters of which secretary Andonian wrote, so they are not
completely reliable, either.)

This leads me to believe he mostly said such things in order to

achieve an end. If such is the case, what must we think of him?

It's one thing when a racist makes offensive statements... not that
it wouldn't be terrible, but while one's lip curls in disgust
somehow one could understand such people; they can't help
themselves, having been mentally deranged. This is why it's hard
to hate Armenians in their web sites.

However, if someone slanders to the ugly and vicious extent that

Ambassador Morgenthau allowed himself to do... regardless of
how noble he believed his cause was (similarly, his propagandist
co-conspirators on the other side of the ocean, Lord Bryce and
Arnold Toynbee, engaged in outright lies for their Queen, and the
holy man Lepsius, doing his bit for Christ)... that makes a person
a particularly low form of humanity, in my book. it's harder to
forgive someone who is calculatingly deceitful, and so easily
inclined to murder the reputation of an entire people, because
such a person has a choice. Unlike a mentally deranged racist,
such a person can help himself. I believe this lawyer, Henry
Morgenthau, was in full command of his faculties.

It's no wonder that George Schreiner was so absolutely disgusted

with Morgenthau's lack of ethics in the December 11,1918 letter
he wrote... where he declared, "You saw little of the cruelty you
fasten upon the Turks."

"Apart from that he (Enver Pasha) was in no respect what you

picture him. Of course, if we are to take it for granted that we of
the West are saints, then the Turk is any good. You will agree with
me, no doubt, that the Turks count among the few gentlemen still
in existence."

He then correctly declares something all Armenians and their

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supporters should bear in mind:

"Ultimately truth will prevail."

Like the movie MIDNIGHT EXPRESS where there was no

indication of "good" in the Turkish people, and the film was
incredibly successful in turning minds against the Turks,
Morgenthau's extremely popular book added in a significant way
the anti-Turkish hysteria already well in place. The book
effectively contributed (perhaps almost as much as that other
hoax-book, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh) to negative
perceptions against Turkey that Greeks and Armenians are well
aware of how to exploit. This is why they can keep conning
Westerners today, as they know they have their well-established,
solid foundation of hate and ignorance to work from. This is why a
Peter Balakian (among others) can con famous authors like
Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike and Arthur Miller,
who already have their deep-rooted prejudices and automatically
accept the anti-Turkish drivel they are told; and they don't think
twice about joining the bandwagon to smear a professor like
Heath Lowry because they can't believe any professor in his right
mind can deviate from the version of events they prefer to believe,
without being a tool of the Turks. Meanwhile, truly partial
historians like Richard Hovannisian teach at universities funded
by wealthy Armenian organizations, and these author-hypocrites
have no problem with that.

Dr. Lowry winds up his excellently-researched The Story Behind

Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by telling us:

One can not help but wonder how many of the young Armenians
who turned to the terrorist assassinations of Turkish officials (and
bystanders) in tl1e 1970's and early 1980's, were influenced by
reading Ambassador Morgenthau's Story?

Ambassador Morgenthau committed a great wrong, the

repercussions of which can still be felt today. I'd like to bring up
two other points from his book.

Bedri Bey, the police prefect, is in awe

of the American and always snaps to
attention when Morgenthau is around.
(He is one of those primitive people,
after all... and Morgenthau is just so
superior.) As a Turk, of course, Bedri
Bey salivates to cause damage to
defenseless people, but the moral,
upstanding Morgenthau is there to foil
his plans. The two engage in a kind of
power play, where Bedri Bey usually
winds up as the loser.

At one point, the Ambassador Constantinople Cop: Bedri Bey

manipulates the mentally sluggish Turk
by threatening:

"You are very foolish to try to play such tricks on us," I said. "Don't
you know that I am going to write a book? If you go on behaving
this way, I shall put you in as the villain."

Bedri Bey, afraid, magically comes to his senses. Turks are

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cowards, after all.

Unrelated to Bedri Bey, Morgenthau says, elsewhere in his

ghostwritten book:

I still attempted to persuade Talaat that the treatment of the

Armenians was destroying Turkey in the eyes of the world, and
that his country would never be able to recover from this infamy.

Now here is the great irony. It hasn't come true yet, but one day,
it inevitably will. It inevitably will, because as George Schreiner
said, "Ultimately truth will prevail."

Ambassador Morgenthau's record of his life will one day blow up

in his posthumous face, and his reputation will forever be
besmirched... just as he has been destroying the reputation of
the Turks these many years with his dishonesty and lies... and he
is the one who will never be able to recover from his infamy.

Far from Bedri Bey's being the villain of his book, Ambassador
Morgenthau will one day emerge as the villain of his book.

This is only a matter of time.

ADDITIONAL READING

Another reason for Mr. Morgenthau's ways involved his

commitment to Zionism and the creation of a Jewish state:

"The Burning Tigris" Critique; Chapter 17 on Henry

Morgenthau

Also:

Exposing the Lies of "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"

Ambassador Morgenthau "Proves" There was No

Genocide

Morgenthau the Hypocrite

Henry Morgenthau III: A Chip Off the Old Blockhead

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