Supporters of the Armenian Genocide thesis often refer to Ambassador Morgenthau's story – a book published in the name of the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire shortly before, during and after World War One – to prove that they are justified in their accusation of genocide. Since Henry Morgenthau Sr. was an ambassador of an initially neutral country, many Westerners assumed around 1918 and continue to assume today that his 'diary' was objective in its reflections of what happened to the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey in 1915.