2RHPZ
10-26-2005, 03:47 PM
Telegram that brought US into Great War is found found
By Ben Fenton
(Filed: 17/10/2005)
An original typescript of the deciphered Zimmerman Telegram, one of the greatest coups mounted by Britain's intelligence services, has been discovered.
The document is believed to be the actual telegram shown to the American ambassador in London in 1917 that proved Germany's hostility to the United States and guaranteed President Woodrow Wilson's entry into the First Word War.
Historians say no single piece of paper did more to guarantee victory in the Great War for Britain and her allies.
It was intercepted and deciphered by Room 40, a predecessor of GCHQ, the Government's top secret listening post, in January 1917.
So many documents surrounding the affair were destroyed on the orders of Adml Sir Reginald "Blinker" Hall, the director of naval intelligence, it was assumed the original typed "decrypt" was gone for ever. But the official historian of GCHQ found it while researching an "official", that is to say secret, history of the organisation.
"It is a chance survival," said the historian, who asked not to be named. "It is thrilling to have got it."
The interception of the Zimmerman Telegram gave Britain the lever it needed to drag America into the war which had fallen into stalemate on the Western Front.
The decrypted message showed Arthur Zimmerman, the German foreign minister, instructing his representative in Mexico City to persuade the Mexicans to invade America.
In exchange, Germany would guarantee the "reconquest" of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, lost by Mexico to America 70 years earlier.
Zimmerman was assuming America would soon declare war on Germany anyway because, as was mentioned in his telegram, the Kaiser's navy was about to revive its policy of "unrestrained submarine warfare". This had cost many American lives when the Lusitania was sunk off Ireland in 1915. But even after the Germans announced their new policy on Feb 1, 1917, President Wilson held back.
The British had intercepted the telegram as the message passed along American-owned cables through London to Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington, on Jan 16.
On its electrical journey from Germany's foreign ministry in Berlin to its embassy in Washington, the Zimmerman note was encrypted in a new cipher, described on the document as "7500", which Admiralty codebreakers in Room 40 had only just begun to crack.
But when von Bernstorff forwarded the message, as instructed, to his colleague in Mexico City, who did not have a copy of the extra secret 7500 decoding book, he used an older code called "103040".
From the partial decipherment of the 7500 cable by the cryptanalysts Nigel de Grey and the Rev William Montgomery, Blinker Hall - his nickname derived from a facial tic - already knew enough to realise that it was of enormous importance.
He ordered his agent in Mexico City to get a copy.
Telegraph (http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/17/nzimm17.xml&site=5)
By Ben Fenton
(Filed: 17/10/2005)
An original typescript of the deciphered Zimmerman Telegram, one of the greatest coups mounted by Britain's intelligence services, has been discovered.
The document is believed to be the actual telegram shown to the American ambassador in London in 1917 that proved Germany's hostility to the United States and guaranteed President Woodrow Wilson's entry into the First Word War.
Historians say no single piece of paper did more to guarantee victory in the Great War for Britain and her allies.
It was intercepted and deciphered by Room 40, a predecessor of GCHQ, the Government's top secret listening post, in January 1917.
So many documents surrounding the affair were destroyed on the orders of Adml Sir Reginald "Blinker" Hall, the director of naval intelligence, it was assumed the original typed "decrypt" was gone for ever. But the official historian of GCHQ found it while researching an "official", that is to say secret, history of the organisation.
"It is a chance survival," said the historian, who asked not to be named. "It is thrilling to have got it."
The interception of the Zimmerman Telegram gave Britain the lever it needed to drag America into the war which had fallen into stalemate on the Western Front.
The decrypted message showed Arthur Zimmerman, the German foreign minister, instructing his representative in Mexico City to persuade the Mexicans to invade America.
In exchange, Germany would guarantee the "reconquest" of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, lost by Mexico to America 70 years earlier.
Zimmerman was assuming America would soon declare war on Germany anyway because, as was mentioned in his telegram, the Kaiser's navy was about to revive its policy of "unrestrained submarine warfare". This had cost many American lives when the Lusitania was sunk off Ireland in 1915. But even after the Germans announced their new policy on Feb 1, 1917, President Wilson held back.
The British had intercepted the telegram as the message passed along American-owned cables through London to Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington, on Jan 16.
On its electrical journey from Germany's foreign ministry in Berlin to its embassy in Washington, the Zimmerman note was encrypted in a new cipher, described on the document as "7500", which Admiralty codebreakers in Room 40 had only just begun to crack.
But when von Bernstorff forwarded the message, as instructed, to his colleague in Mexico City, who did not have a copy of the extra secret 7500 decoding book, he used an older code called "103040".
From the partial decipherment of the 7500 cable by the cryptanalysts Nigel de Grey and the Rev William Montgomery, Blinker Hall - his nickname derived from a facial tic - already knew enough to realise that it was of enormous importance.
He ordered his agent in Mexico City to get a copy.
Telegraph (http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/17/nzimm17.xml&site=5)