Bernstorff was returned home on 3 February 1917 , when Woodrow Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare . Upon receiving the news , Colonel Edward M. House wrote to him , " The day will come when people in Germany will see how much you have done for your country in America . " In 1910 , Brown University had conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Bernstorff . At the school 's commencement in 1918 ( while World War I was going on ) , university president William Faunce read a resolution of the board of fellows revoking the degree , because " while he was Ambassador of the Imperial German Government to the United States and while the nations were still at peace , Bernstorff was guilty of conduct dishonorable alike in a gentleman and a diplomat . " He assumed his position as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1917 . Bernstorff conceded that the Ottoman policy against the Armenians was one of exterminating the race . Bernstorff provided a detailed account of the massacres in his memoirs entitled , '' Memoirs of Count Bernstorff '' . In his memoirs , Bernstorff recounts a conversation that he had with Talat Pasha after the massacres were concluded : " When I kept on pestering him about the Armenian question , he once said with a smile : ' What on earth do you want ? The question is settled , there are no more Armenians . ' " Bernstorff was proposed as Foreign Minister in Philipp Scheidemann 's cabinet in 1919 , but he refused this post and left the diplomatic service . He became a founding member of the German Democratic Party ( '' Deutsche Demokratische Partei '' ) and a member of the German Parliament in 1921 – 28 . He was the first President of the German Association for the League of Nations , President of the World Federation of Associations of the League of Nations and a member of every German delegation to the League of Nations
exterminating the race
Armenian Genocide
Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff