The Armenian Atrocities When in 1915 some Armenians welcomed Russian armies as liberators after years of persecution, the Ottoman government ordered a genocidal mass deportation of its Armenian citizens from their homeland in the empire’s eastern provinces. American ambassador to Constantinople Henry Morgenthau included this photo in his 1918 autobiography, Ambassador Morganthau’s Story, with this caption: “Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms — massacres, starvation, exhaustion — destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation.” (© Bettmann/Corbis)