Redirected from Zimmermann telegram
The telegram was delivered by Admiral Hall to the British Foreign Minister, Arthur James Balfour, who in turn invited the American ambassador in Britain, Walter Page[?], and delivered the telegram to him on February 23rd.
On March 1, the US Government gave the plaintext of the telegram to the press, on April 2, the United States declared war against Germany. Previously German submarines had already attacked US ships near England, so the telegram was not the only cause of the war; it was, however, critical for US public opinion. It was perceived as especially perfidious that the telegram was first transferred from the US embassy in Berlin to the German embassy in Washington before being passed on to Mexico.
Although German, Mexican and Japanese diplomats, and the American pacifist and pro-German lobbies all denounced the telegram as a forgery, Zimmerman himself, in a startling move, confirmed its authenticity. After he had done so it became all but inevitable that the US would join the Great War.
The Zimmermann telegram as it was sent from the German ambassador in Washington to Mexico. Every word was encrypted into a four or five digit number, using a codebook[?].
The telegram as decrypted by the British Naval Intelligence codebreakers. The word Arizona was not in the German codebook and was therefore split into smaller parts.
The telegram, completely decrypted and translated.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump