Ambassador Morgenthau’s memoirs of his years in the service of the United States in Constantinople, (today Istanbul), are an important primary historical resource for the study of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide. During this genocide, approximately 1,500,000 Armenians living in Anatolia were murdered in an attempt to rid Turkey of its non-Turkish populations. Mr. Morgenthau left Turkey a frustrated man, having done all that he was able through diplomatic circles to halt the murders, to no avail.
Today, Turkey’s official position is that their attempt to annihilate the Armenian population in Turkey was not a genocide. In 2010, the American House Foreign Relations Committee passed House Resolution 252, officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
“If we hope to stop future genocides we need to admit to those horrific acts of the past. When Hitler had to convince his cohorts that the world would let them get away with it, he turned to them and said, ‘Who today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?’,” said Congressman Brad Sherman, co-sponsor of the resolution. “The last act of any genocide is genocide denial, and the first act of preventing the next genocide is to acknowledge past acts of genocide.” (Introduction by Margaret Espaillat)