author
Henry Morgenthau
1856–1946
A German-born American diplomat and businessman, he is best remembered for serving as U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I and for speaking out about the mass atrocities he witnessed there. His memoir, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, helped bring those events to a wide American audience.
3 Audiobooks
Ambassador Morgenthau's Story
by Henry Morgenthau
All in a Life-time
by Henry Morgenthau, French Strother
Secrets of the Bosphorus
by Henry Morgenthau
About the author
Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1856, he immigrated to New York with his family as a boy and went on to study law at Columbia. He built a successful career in real estate and became active in Democratic politics before entering diplomacy.
In 1913, he was appointed United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, a post he held during the early years of the First World War. He later became one of the most prominent American witnesses to the persecution and destruction of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and his reports and public statements made him an important historical figure in the record of those events.
After leaving diplomacy, he remained engaged in public affairs and wrote about his experiences, most notably in Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. He died in 1946, leaving behind a legacy shaped by both public service and his efforts to alert the world to crimes unfolding in wartime.