only caught wind of Zimmermann’s note because the British had been reading all the diplomatic correspondence that passed through the American Embassy in London, which at the time also included Germany’s cables to North America.
to think that it can make any peaceful coexistence with Germany.” “It’s not only a coding and decoding story, but how you also leak something to the right outlet at the right time with the maximum effect.”Īs America moves closer to its World War I centennial this spring, there are different facets of l’affaire Zimmermann that echo in a 2017 context. “It was a pretty long slow slide into the war, but after the Zimmermann Telegram, it becomes very difficult for the U.S. “He eventually releases it as a weapon to intervene in a congressional debate” where the telegram is used to freeze out anti-interventionist lawmakers. “Once Wilson learns about it, he doesn’t immediately release it,” Capozzola explained. You could make that argument, but let’s not mistake that for a cause.”ĭespite the fallout, which involved German backpedaling and Mexican disavowals, the aftershocks from the incident may have been felt more in the arena of domestic politics than international politics. “It might have accelerated America’s entry into the war by a few weeks, but America was on its way into the war. Army Center of Military History and the author of The Zimmermann Telegram.
“All the newspapers I looked at … had strong opinions about the telegram, but I couldn’t find a single newspaper that changed its opinion on intervention because of the telegram,” said Thomas Boghardt, who is the senior historian at the U.S. An entry in the National Archives concludes the communique “helped draw the United States into the war and thus changed the course of history.” Others argue that the impact of the telegram on pulling America into war was nothing compared to, say, Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, which threatened any ship crossing the Atlantic. “There was definitely some sense that some people believed from the beginning that it was fake, but it was confirmed very quickly.”ĭespite its incendiary nature and the breadth of the news coverage of it, history remains somewhat split about the material effect that the Zimmermann Telegram had on public sentiment or America’s decision to declare war on Germany just one month later. “There were accusations that it was fake news, that it was a hoax,” said Christopher Capozzola, a professor of history at MIT and the author of Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen. Following the publication of Zimmermann’s memo, some anti-interventionists, who opposed American entry into the war, immediately decried it as a forgery. Needless to say, news of a German plot to incite Mexico to go to war with the United States further inflamed an already contentious debate, which manifested itself in perhaps familiar ways. Months earlier, Woodrow Wilson had eked out the narrowest electoral win of the 20th century, save for 2000, on the strength of the re-election slogan “He Kept Us Out of War”-a reference to not only the trenches of Europe, but an ongoing civil war in Mexico.
The U.S., at the time, was highly divided about international conflict. “In the event of this not succeeding,” Zimmermann’s note read, “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.” The ambassador was also directed to urge Mexico to strike up an alliance with Japan in an eventual fight against America. By then, the United States was already on its slow and inexorable path to war with Germany and, in the telegram, German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann instructed his ambassador in Mexico on what to do if America failed to maintain its neutrality and joined the Allied forces. newspapers, about a German telegram that had fallen into the hands of the American government. On March 1, 1917, an explosive story hit the front pages of major U.S.
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