Posted on 03/01/2007 3:43:16 AM PST by mainepatsfan
1917 : Zimmermann Telegram published in United States
On this day in 1917, the text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America.
In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter any future U.S-German conflict as a German ally. If victorious in the conflict, Germany also promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson learned of the telegram’s contents on February 26; the next day he proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. He also authorized the State Department to make public the Zimmermann Telegram. On March 1, the news broke. Germany had already aroused Wilson’s ire—and that of the American public—with its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and its continued attacks against American ships. Some of those in the United States who still held out for neutrality at first claimed the telegram was a fake. This notion was dispelled two days later, when Zimmermann himself confirmed its authenticity.
Public opinion in the United States now swung firmly toward American entrance into World War I. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver a message of war. The United States formally entered the conflict four days later.
One bad idea: piss off the Americans.
We know how that turned out for Germany.
We were a God send for the British and French...especially since the Russians pulled out of the war a year later.
And look how they repay us now.
Never again.
The Zimmerman telegram was intercepted and decrypted enough to get the gist of it by codebreakers Nigel de Grey, William Montgomery and Admiral William R. Hall of the British Naval Intelligence unit, Room 40. This was made possible because the code the Foreign Office used (0075) had been partially cryptanalyzed using, among other techniques, captured plaintext messages and a codebook for an earlier version of the cipher captured from Wilhelm Wassmuss, a German agent working in the Middle East.
The British government, which wanted to expose the incriminating telegram, faced a dilemma: if it boldly produced the actual telegram, the Germans would know that their code had been broken; and if it did not, it would lose a promising opportunity to draw the United States into World War I — the message was sent during a period when anti-German feeling in the United States was running particularly high, following the death of some 128 US travellers on British ships by German submarine attacks.
There was a further problem too — they could not simply confidentially show it to the United States government either. Because of its importance, the message had been sent from Berlin to the German ambassador in Washington, Johann von Bernstorff, for onward transmission to their ambassador in Mexico, von Eckardt, by three separate routes. The British had obtained it from just one of these — the Americans had given Germany access to their private diplomatic telegraph in an effort to encourage President Wilson's peace initiative.
The Germans were not afraid of using it because the messages were encrypted, because as a matter of principle the United States did not at that time read other countries' diplomatic correspondence and because, unlike Britain, the US did not have any code-breaking capability. The telegraph cable went from the US Embassy in Berlin to Copenhagen and then via submarine cable to the United States via Britain (where it was monitored). For the British to reveal the source of the telegram to the United States would have meant also admitting to the American government that they had tapped US diplomatic communications.
The cable to Washington was in code 7500, a newer, more difficult code. However, the embassy in Mexico did not yet have this code, so the German embassy in Washington would have to re-transmit the message in an older code, 13040 or 13042, both better known to the British.
The British solution
The telegram, completely decrypted and translated.The British government guessed that the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. would send the message on to the embassy in Mexico via the commercial telegraph system, and therefore a copy would exist in the public telegraph office in Mexico City. If they could get a copy, they could pass it on to the United States government stating that they had discovered it through espionage in Mexico. Therefore, they contacted a British agent in Mexico, known only as Mr. H., who bribed an employee of the commercial telegraph company to obtain a copy of the message. In his autobiography, Sir Thomas Hohler, the British Ambassador in Mexico at that time, claims to have been Mr. H. To the delight of the British code breakers, the message had been sent from the German embassy in Washington to Mexico using the older cypher in the Wassmuss codebook and could therefore be completely decrypted.
The telegram was delivered by Admiral Hall to the British Foreign Minister, Arthur James Balfour, who in turn contacted the U.S. ambassador in Britain, Walter Page, and delivered the telegram to him on February 23. Two days later he relayed it to President Woodrow Wilson.
As a sidebar, Wilson's dealing with the Tsar regarding US loans and the Russians remaining in WWI is another aspect of the story here.
Two men who would go on to lead their nations in the Second World War.
WWII is a separate "kettle of fish" altogether ...
The Germans were also trying to lure the Japanese, who were angry over the US treatment of Japanese immigrants in the US. Curiously enough their offer to Mexico omits mention of California. Maybe the Germans weren't aware that that was part of the territory Mexico lost in 1848.
I'm wondering just what kind of military capability Mexico had in 1916/17? Would they have been much help to Germany in event that the 'alliance' went forward?
I doubt Mexico could have taken the border areas by force. Of course all that Germany would have cared about was that the US would have had to maintain an sizeable Army of Observation on the southern border -- said troops would have been unavailable for duty in Europe.
Oooops, yeah, of course, you're right!
I saw a historical analysis that suggested that US attitudes about intervention (in WW1) varied from region to region. The Lusitania sinking (and U-Boat threat) were kind of academic to US citizens living in the west & southwest. The Zimmerman Telegram changed perceptions in those regions.
It was not until undersea photographs of her cargo were released in the mid-1970s that the US government admitted to purposely putting US citizens in harm's way. Released also was the original and quite explicit shipping manifest ... seems it was found behind a file cabinet in the Commerce Department where it had been ... for sixty years ... or so that story goes.
Of note, many documents relating to the SS LUSITANIA sinking remain sealed in the British Admiralty. English author Beesly highlights this as a "conspiracy" in his text "Very Special Intelligence".
The Mexicans don't seem to have shown much interest--probably they realized the whole idea was far-fetched. Anyway they were in the middle of their revolution. General John "Black Jack" Pershing had just been recalled from his futile pursuit of Pancho Villa in northern Mexico shortly before this.
''We were a God send for the British and French...especially since the Russians pulled out of the war a year later.''
Well, you certainly saved France, UK etc. After Russia had to accept a peace treaty Germany started bringing in additional troops to the western front. I believe it is save to say, that this new situation would have changed the course of WWI.
I guess Britain would have tried to 'discover' whatever 'facts' were helpful to involve USA into the war.
LOL.
The Germans had a small window between the time Russia quit and American troops arrived in significant numbers in France. They tried to win the war with the Kaiserschlacht offensive but it wouldn't be enough.
Perhaps Mexico would have adopted a guerrilla war strategy, drawing-in the US Army into Sonora & the other adjacent Mexican states. Just keep the US tied up chasing its tail.
Either way, Germany benefits.
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