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Henry Morgenthau (Mannheim, April 26, 1856 – New York, November 25, 1946) was a lawyer, businessman and U.S. diplomat.
Henry Morgenthau (April 26, 1856 – November 25, 1946) was a lawyer, businessman and United States Ambassador. It is also known as the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Morgenthau is considered the most important American talk about the Armenian genocide. Henry Morgenthau is the father of the politician Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Among his grandchildren Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney of Manhattan for 35 years, and Barbara Tuchman, known author and historical.
Morgenthau, son of Lazarus and Babette Morgenthau, ninth child of eleven living, was born in 1856 in Mannheim, Grand Duchy of Baden in an Ashkenazi Jewish family of twelve children. His father was a successful manufacturer of cigars; had cigar factories in Mannheim, Lorsch and Heppenheim, employing up to 1,000 people (Mannheim then had 21,000 inhabitants). After suffering a severe financial setback during the American Civil War, due to a tax on the import of tobacco in 1862 that finally ended the German tobacco exports to the United States, the family emigrated to New York in 1866. There, despite a decent "nest egg" in hand, his father could not recover in business and also the development and marketing of various inventions and investments were not successful. Lazarus Morgenthau was able to avoid bankruptcy and stabilize its income by becoming a collector funds for Jewish houses of worship. Henry attended the City College of New York (BA), and graduated in law at Columbia Law School. He started his career as a lawyer and made a considerable fortune in real estate investments. He married Josephine Sykes in 1882; had four children: Helen, Alma, Henry Jr. and Ruth. Morgenthau in addition to being a successful lawyer was also the head of the community "Reform Jewish" in New York.
The professional success of Morgenthau has allowed him to contribute generously to the election campaign of President Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Had known Wilson in 1911, during a dinner to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the founding of the Free Synagogue Society. In this meeting the two "seem to have tied up", marking the "turning point in the political career of Morgenthau". His role in American politics increased in the following months and since the his desire to become president of the campaign finance was not true, Wilson offered him the role of Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He would also want a place in the government, but this goal was not followed.
Main article: Armenian Genocide
Being one of the first supporters of Wilson, Morgenthau believed to be appointed to a government position, but the new President had other plans: he wanted to appoint him Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire as, previously, other important American Jews, Oscar Straus and Solomon Hirsch. Wilson’s hypothesis that the Jews somehow represented a bridge between Muslim Turks and Christian Americans are not convinced Morgenthau, but Wilson assured him that the "Sublime Porte" of Istanbul "is the place which is concentrated in the interest of American Jews for the welfare of the Jews of Palestine, and it is almost essential that I have a Jew in that position." Although non-Zionist, has committed fervently to the situation of his coreligionists. Initially Morgenthau rejected the offer, but after a trip to Europe and the Holy Land, and with the encouragement of his friend, pro-Zionist, Rabbi Wise, has reconsidered its decision and accepted the offer of Wilson. He was appointed United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1913 and held that role until 1916.
Although the safety of American citizens, mostly Christian missionaries and Jews, was a major concern in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of his tenure, Mr. Morgenthau said that the greatest concern was the Armenian issue. After the outbreak of the war, the United States remained neutral, so the U.S. Embassy – and then Morgenthau – has represented many of the interests of allies in Constantinople, as these had withdrew their diplomatic missions as a result of hostilities. Since the Ottoman authorities had started the campaign of extermination of the Armenians in 1914-1915, Morgenthau’s desk was flooded, almost every hour, from reports from American consuls residing in different parts of the Empire, documenting the massacres and deportation marches that were taking place.
Faced with the evidence accumulated, officially informed the Government of the United States the activities of the Ottoman Government, asking them to intervene.
The U.S. government, however, remained neutral in the conflict and not wanting to be involved, has had only limited official reaction. Morgenthau has held high-level meetings with the leaders of the Ottoman Empire to help alleviate the situation of the Armenians, but his protests were rejected and ignored. It is his famous warning to the Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha: "Our people will never forget these massacres." As the massacres continued without stop, Morgenthau and many other Americans decided to form a public fund by forming a committee to help the Armenians, the "Committee on Armenian Atrocities" – Committee for the atrocities towards Armenians (later renamed "Near East Relief" – Aid in the Middle East ), collecting more than $ 100 million in aid, the equivalent of $ 1 billion today. Thanks to his friendship with ], publisher of the New York Times, has also secured a prominent journalistic information on the continuation of the massacres, with 145 articles, only in 1915. Exasperated by his relationship with the Ottoman government, has resigned as ambassador in 1916. Looking back that decision, in his "The Murder of a Nation "- The murder of a nation", he wrote that he had met Turkey as "a place of horror. I had reached the end of my resources. I found intolerable my further daily association with men, however nice and accommodating… they were still stinking blood of nearly a million human beings ". His conversations with the leaders of the Ottoman and his story of the Armenian genocide was later published in 1918 under the title "Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story". In 1918, Ambassador Morgenthau lectured in the United States, warning that the Greeks and Assyrians were subjected to "the same methods" deportation and "massacre", as the Armenians, and that two million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians were already dead. In June 1917, Felix Frankfurter accompanied him, as a representative of the War Department, on a secret mission to convince Turkey to abandon the Central Powers in the war effort, the stated purpose of the mission was to "improve the conditions of Jewish communities in Palestine".
After the war there was a great interest within the Jewish community, in preparation for the next Peace Conference of Paris, by groups both for and against the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In March 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson was leaving for the conference, Morgenthau and other 31 major American Jewish anti-Zionist signed the petition presented to the U.S. Congress by Julius Kahn, he and many other Jewish representatives participated in the conference. Morgenthau you participated as a consultant with regard to Eastern Europe and the Middle East and later collaborated with organizations related to the war, including the Relief Committee for the Middle East, The Commission on refugees Greeks and the American Red Cross. In 1919 he directed the Mission of Inquiry of the United States government in Poland that produced the report Morgenthau. In 1933, it was the American representative at the Geneva Conference.
He died in 1946 following a cerebral hemorrhage, in New York, and is buried in Hawthorne, NY. His son, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was the "Secretary of the Treasury." His daughter, Alma Wertheim, was the mother of the historian Barbara Tuchman.
He has published numerous books. The Library of Congress contains about 30,000 documents of his personal papers.