Henry Morgenthau - Ambassador Morgenthau's Story

version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> nonfiction Henry Morgenthau Ambassador Morgenthau's Story Ambassador Morgenthau's Story any2fb2.php class rev 1.55 2005/02/15 20:25:23

Formerly American Ambassador to Turkey

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

THE EXPONENT IN AMERICA OF THE ENLIGHTENED PUBLIC OPINION OF THE WORLD, WHICH HAS DECREED THAT THE RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS SHALL BE RESPECTED AND THAT SUCH CRIMES AS ARE DESCRIBED IN THIS BOOK SHALL NEVER AGAIN DARKEN THE PAGES OF HISTORY.

PREFACE

By this time the American people have probably become convinced that the Germans deliberately planned the conquest of the world. Yet they hesitate to convict on circumstantial evidence and for this reason all eye witnesses to this, the greatest crime in modern history, should volunteer their testimony.

I have therefore laid aside any scruples I had as to the propriety of disclosing to my fellow countrymen the facts which I learned while representing them in Turkey. I acquired this knowledge as the servant of the American people, and it is their property as much as it is mine.

I greatly regret that I have been obliged to omit an account of the splendid activities of the American Missionary and Educational Institutions in Turkey, but to do justice to this subject would require a book by itself. I have had to omit the story of the Jews in Turkey for the same reasons.

My thanks are due to my friend, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, for the invaluable assistance he has rendered in the preparation of the book.

HENRY MORGENTHAU.

I. A German superman at Constantinople

II. The "Boss System" in the Ottoman Empire and how it proved useful to Germany

III. "The personal representative of the Kaiser." Wangenheim opposes the sale of American warships to Greece

IV. Germany mobilizes the Turkish army

V. Wangenheim smuggles the Goeben and the Breslau through the Dardanelles

VI. Wangenheim tells the American Ambassador how the Kaiser started the war

VII. Germany's plans for new territories, coaling stations, and indemnities

VIII. A classic instance of German propaganda

IX. Germany closes the Dardanelles and so separates Russia from her Allies

X. Turkey's abrogation of the capitulations. Enver living in a palace, with plenty of money and an imperial bride

XI. Germany forces Turkey into the war

XII. The Turks attempt to treat alien enemies decently, but the Germans insist on persecuting them

XIII. The invasion of the Notre Dame de Sion School

XIV. Wangenheim and the Bethlehem Steel Company. A "Holy War" that was made in Germany

XV. Djemal, a troublesome Mark Antony. The first German attempt to get a German peace

XVI. The Turks prepare to flee from Constantinople and establish a new capital in Asia Minor. The Allied fleet bombarding the Dardanelles

XVII. Enver as the man who demonstrated "the vulnerability of the British fleet." Old-fashioned defenses of the Dardanelles

XVIII. The Allied armada sails away, though on the brink of victory

XIX. A fight for three thousand civilians

XX. More adventures of the foreign residents

XXI. Bulgaria on the auction block

XXII. The Turk reverts to the ancestral type

XXIII. The "Revolution" at Van

XXIV. The murder of a nation

XXV. Talaat tells why he deports the Armenians

XXVI. Enver Pasha discusses the Armenians

XXVII. "I shall do nothing for the Armenians," says the German Ambassador

XXVIII. Enver again moves for peace. Farewell to the Sultan and to Turkey

XXIX. Von Jagow, Zimmermann, and German-Americans CHAPTER I

A GERMAN SUPERMAN AT CONSTANTINOPLE

When I began writing these reminiscences of my ambassadorship, Germany's schemes in the Turkish Empire and the Near East seemed to have achieved a temporary success. The Central Powers had apparently disintegrated Russia, transformed the Baltic and the Black seas into German lakes, and had obtained a new route to the East by way of the Caucasus. For the time being Germany dominated Serbia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Turkey, and regarded her aspirations for a new Teutonic Empire, extending from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, as practically realized. The world now knows, though it did not clearly understand this fact in 1914, that Germany precipitated the war to destroy Serbia, seize control of the Balkan nations, transform Turkey into a vassal state, and thus obtain a huge oriental empire that would form the basis for unlimited world dominion. Did these German aggressions in the East mean that this extensive programme had succeeded?

As I picture to myself a map which would show Germany's military and diplomatic triumphs, my experiences in Constantinople take on a new meaning.

I now see the events of those twenty-six months as part of a connected, definite story. The several individuals that moved upon the scene now appear as players in a carefully staged, superbly managed drama. I see clearly enough now that Germany had made all her plans for world dominion and that the country to which I had been sent as American Ambassador was one of the foundation stones of the Kaiser's whole political and military structure. Had Germany not acquired control of Constantinople in the early days of the war, it is not unlikely that hostilities would have ended a few months after the Battle of the Marne. It was certainly an amazing fate that landed me in this great headquarters of intrigue at the very moment when the plans of the Kaiser for controlling Turkey, which he had carefully pursued for a quarter of a century, were about to achieve their final success.

For this work of subjugating Turkey, and transforming its army and its territory into instruments of Germany, the Emperor had sent to Constantinople an ambassador who was ideally fitted for the task. The mere fact that the Kaiser had personally chosen Baron Von Wangenheim for this post shows that he had accurately gauged the human qualities needed in this great diplomatic enterprise.

The Kaiser had early detected in Wangenheim an instrument ideally qualified for oriental intrigue; he had more than once summoned him to Corfu for his vacations, and here, we may be sure, the two congenial spirits had passed many days discussing German ambitions in the Near East. At the time when I first met him, Wangenheim was fifty-four years old; he had spent a quarter of a century in the diplomatic corps, he had seen service in such different places as Petrograd, Copenhagen, Madrid, Athens, and Mexico, and he had been chargŽ at Constantinople, several years afterward coming there as ambassador. He understood completely all countries, including the United States; his first wife had been an American, and Wangenheim, when Minister to Mexico, had intimately studied our country and had then acquired an admiration for our energy and progress. He had a complete technical equipment for a diplomat; .he spoke German, English, and French with equal facility, he knew the East thoroughly, and he had the widest acquaintance with public men. Physically he was one of the most imposing persons I have ever known. When I was a boy in Germany, the Fatherland was usually symbolized as a beautiful and powerful woman-a kind of dazzling Valkyrie; when I think of modern Germany, however, the massive, burly figure of Wangenheim naturally presents itself to my mind. He was six feet two inches tall; his huge, solid frame, his Gibraltarlike shoulders, erect and impregnable, his bold, defiant head, his piercing eyes, his whole physical structure constantly pulsating with life and activity-there stands, I would say, not the Germany which I had known, but the Germany whose limitless ambitions had transformed the world into a place of horror.