February, 1917 : The Zimmermann Telegram

February 1917: When Britain and France had gotten to Autumn of 1917, they found themselves at the end of a rope financially speaking. They had spent a lot of money to prosecute the war against the Germans. And the Germans were preparing to announce to the world that they were about to re-start their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. This meant that they would proceed to sink any ship of either the Allies, or their friends, any place that the found them. The Germans had come to figure that if the Americans were tied up with the Germans in submarine combat on one hand and had to deal with combat with the Mexicans on their southern boarder, then the Germans might prevail. The brits were frankly desperate to bring the the americans into the fray on their side.

Alfred Zimmerman,(right) the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs during a portion of Kaiser Wilhelm's reign, thought that this idea of dragging the Americans into the European war might just be the trick that would put them over the top against the Allies. The man who received the coded message, Ambassador Heinrich von Eckardt, was really hot to make this happen for his side. It would really shut down the Allies The text of the telegram read in part: "We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace. Signed, ZIMMERMANN" This document was being reviewed by the director of British naval intelligence, Rear Admiral William Reginald Hall, the director of Naval intelligence. Hall

was a hot-tempered maverick who blinked his clear blue eyes so regularly that his colleaugues called him "Blinker." An American who worked with him called him the most cold blooded proposition there had ever been. His interrogations of German P.O.W.s were as ruthless as anything the Old Bailey had ever seen. ,,,,,To Bell, secretary of the United States Embassy in Britain it seemed at first incredible, and he thought that it was a forgery. But when he was convinced, Bell sent a copy to United States Amb. Walter Hines Page.

Page who then reported the story to President Woodrow Wilson (right) "Good Lord!" he yelled. "Good Lord!" One would think he had much more by way of anger, but whtever he felt he kept it to himself until any doubts as to the authenticity of the telegram were done away with by Zimmermann himself. At a press conference on 3 March 1917, he told an American journalist, "I cannot deny it. It is true." On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.