The Zimmerman Telegram
Wikimedia CommonsLeft, a copy of the telegram, sent by Arthur Zimmerman, right.
Though the United States played a large part in World War I, there was a time when many people thought they wouldn’t take part in it. Then, one single telegram changed everything.
In January of 1917, British Intelligence officers intercepted a telegram communication between the German Foreign Office and the German Ambassador to Mexico.
The telegram consisted of a proposal, from Germany, of a military alliance between Germany and Mexico, that would allow them to defeat the United States. In return for Mexican cooperation, the proposal said, Mexico would be allowed to reclaim Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico as Mexican territory.
As luck would have it, there were British Intelligence officers listening in on the transmitters the day that the telegram was sent, and they were able to intercept it. Two days after it was intercepted, the telegram was sent to Edward Bell, secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Britain.
At first, Bell didn’t believe it, thinking the telegraph was a forgery. It took two days to convince him that it was, in fact, real, at which point he sent a copy to the U.S. Ambassador Walter Hines. Hines then sent the copy of the telegraph to Woodrow Wilson, who released it to the media.
Two months later, Arthur Zimmerman, the man who had written the original telegram, admitted that it was real, sparking torment among the American people. Where the main ideal had been mostly anti-British (and truly, anti-foreigner) at that point, it drastically shifted to being anti-German. After the telegram was released, many people called for the U.S. to enter World War I, starting the push that the government needed.
It was also one of the first times in history that a piece of signal intelligence influenced world events.
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