Zimmermann dispatch

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Zimmermann dispatch

The Zimmermann Telegram (also: Zimmermann Telegram ) was an encrypted telegram that Arthur Zimmermann , the German State Secretary of the Foreign Office , received on January 19, 1917 (other sources speak of January 13 or 16) about the German embassy in Washington, DC to the German envoy in Mexico .

The aim was an alliance between the German Reich and Mexico in the event that the United States should give up its neutrality in the First World War . The government of Mexico was promised assistance in this case for the recovery of parts of the territory lost to the United States in 1848; in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , Mexico had to cede over 40 percent of its territory (California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and parts of Colorado and Wyoming).

The telegram was intercepted and deciphered by the British naval secret service . His boss, Captain RN William Reginald Hall , prompted the United States government under President Woodrow Wilson to rethink its policy of neutrality and made a decisive contribution to getting the American public in the mood for entering the war. The memory of the Mexican enterprise of Napoleon III. 1861–1867 played a role in Mexico, who had made Archduke Maximilian , a brother of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria , Emperor of Mexico in 1864 (1864–1867) in order to make the monarchical principle a breakthrough on the American continent over the republican idea help.

content

Deciphered plain text of the carpenter's telegram translated into English
Deciphered terms

Originally, the British cryptanalysts only deciphered part of the telegram, but this too was explosive enough:

"Top secret

Unrestricted submarine war starts on February 1st. Stop Efforts to keep the United States neutral. Stop (?) Shouldn't that ... So we (Mexico?) Propose an alliance on the following basis: ... warfare ... peace agreement and ...

They will inform the President ... as secretly as possible ... (outbreak of the?) War with the United States ... (Japan) ... mediation should stop. Please make it clear to the President that ... submarines ... stop forcing England to make peace within a few months. Confirm receipt

Carpenter "

In the sequence of numbers “67893” the analysts recognized the fixed group, which meant “Mexico”. So they waited until the German ambassador to the United States forwarded the encrypted telegram to Mexico. And this was done according to an older code that was already known to the British secret service. The message of the completely decrypted telegram is:

“We intend to start unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1st. An attempt will be made to keep America neutral anyway. In the event that this does not succeed, we propose an alliance for Mexico on the following basis. Joint warfare. Joint peace agreement. Ample financial support and approval on our part for Mexico to recapture formerly lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. Leave regulation in detail to your high-born. Your High Honors wish to open the President of the United States in top secret, as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States is certain, and add a suggestion to invite Japan to join immediately and at the same time to mediate between us and Japan. Please advise Presidents that ruthless use of our submarines is now a prospect of forcing England to peace in a few months. Confirm receipt.

Carpenter "

consequences

The British withheld the contents of the telegram for over a month; they did not know how to communicate the content to the public without the Germans discovering that their code had been cracked . Finally it was announced that the telegram had fallen into the wrong hands due to a carelessness in the German embassy.

On March 1, 1917, the US Secretary of State announced the contents of the telegram to the press.

Earlier this year, President Woodrow Wilson insisted it was a "crime against civilization" to lead his nation to war, but on April 2, 1917, he told Congress :

“I note that the recent policy of the German imperial government is nothing less than a war against the government and the people of the United States. May Congress formally accept the state of war that has been imposed on us. "

Background to decipherment

At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, encryption technology in the German Reich had not reached a particularly high level. Mostly it boiled down to the use of code books . These were large dictionaries in which certain terms were assigned corresponding numbers. For example, the word "Bodenstück" was encoded as the number "53431", "Bodenventil" as "53432" and "Bohrer" as "53442". Much then followed in alphabetical order. The German Navy used the so-called signal book of the Imperial Navy (SKM) from January 7, 1913. Several such books were carried on all warships.

On 25 August 1914, there was a critical incident: After the Battle of Gumbinnen , the German Reich had in East Prussia before the Russian army to withdraw, but was with several cruisers and torpedo boats in front of the entrance to the Gulf of Finland went into position to to attack Russian armored cruisers there . In the course of the war, the German cruiser Magdeburg ran aground on the Estonian island of Odinsholm ( Estonian : Osmussaar). The cause has never been fully clarified. According to the service instructions, all secret items should be destroyed. Among other things, the set of rules stated: "If there is a risk that the signal book will fall into the hands of the enemy, it must be thrown overboard or destroyed (by fire)". In the course of the hectic rescue operations, sailors threw various books and papers overboard; the signal books were supposed to be burned because of the shallow water. Of the three signal books on board, however, two were overlooked and not destroyed by fire.

During the next few weeks, the wreck of the Magdeburg was thoroughly examined by Russian naval divers who found two signal books that were still completely intact on the seabed. Less than two weeks after the valuable books were recovered, the Russian decryption specialists were already able to decipher the first radio messages from the German side. The Imperial Navy was clueless and assumed that all code books had been completely destroyed.

As early as October 1914, the British Naval Minister Winston Churchill received one of the two copies from Russian officers. A specially created cryptological department ( Room 40 ) now began to attempt to decipher the German radio messages. A total of over eight hundred radio operators and almost eighty cryptologists dealt with the encrypted texts in the course of the next time and had to overcome the hurdle of an additional, but simpler, encryption, with which the messages from the German side had been secured again. With the help of other captured materials, it was possible to decipher the secret messages without the knowledge of the German side.

Even on January 16, 1917 - the day the dispatch was sent - the experts of the German Reich were not aware that the essential tools for deciphering their code were available on the British side. It was even decided not to carry out a “double” encryption . This meant that the three British codebreakers Nigel de Gray , "Dilly" Knox and William Montgomery were able to partially decipher them the very next day. On February 5, the British Admiral William Reginald Hall handed the - though not yet completely - deciphered telegram to Undersecretary of State Lord Hardinge , who was supposed to bring this version to the attention of US President Wilson in order to induce the United States to enter the war.

After some concealment tactics intended to convince the German side that the telegram had been decrypted on the US side, an article appeared in the New York Times on the morning of March 1 that has now completely deciphered the text of the German proposal to Mexico - spreads out in full length. The telegram put an end to the US illusion that the United States could live independently and carefree from the “rest of the world” ( isolationism ). It influenced the course of history by causing the country to declare war on the German Reich on April 6, 1917. The reopening of unrestricted submarine warfare (contrary to the express warning of the USA in 1915), which was already announced in the dispatch - and actually implemented on February 1, 1917 - contributed to this.

literature

Web links

Commons : Zimmermann-Depesche  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see references. Zimmermann released the text on January 13 in Berlin. On January 16, it was transmitted in encrypted form to the German ambassador to the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff , and sent by him on January 19 to the German ambassador to Mexico , Heinrich von Eckardt . The dispatch was intercepted on January 16.
    According to: The Zimmermann Telegram: Diplomacy, Intelligence and the American Entry into World War I; Dr. Thomas Boghardt, November 2003, Working Paper No. 6-04, Georgetown University.
  2. ^ Document of the NSA. The Zimmerman Telegram (PDF; 1.1 MB) - member of the Naval Reserve Security Group Devens, Massachusetts (name made illegible).
  3. ^ Text of Germany's Proposal to Form an Alliance With Mexico and Japan Against the United States The New York Times. March 1, 1917.
  4. ^ Formal US Declaration of War with Germany, April 6, 1917 . See also Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted Messages , Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-499-60807-3 .