As Germany appears poised to reassert itself as the dominant economic and political power in Europe, it could be quite helpful to remember one of the major events that led up to US Involvement in the “War to end all Wars” of Woodrow Wilson.
The War in Europe had already been underway for two years with the United States refusing to get involved. The Foreign Minister Zimmerman of Germay sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico using a “peaceful” channel (From Sweden through the United States as an intermediary) -which was intercepted and decoded by the the British from their monitoring of US Diplomatic telegraphs and then again by getting a copy of the telegram from the office in Mexico. This gave a plausible explanation of how the British and U.S. decrypted the message without disclosing that the British had broken the German code.
The German government proposed an alliance – that Germany would provide support if Mexico declared war on the United States. When Mexico was successful, they would be allowed to reclaim the “lost” lands of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The purpose of doing this was to create a distraction for the U.S. so that Germany could force the U.S. to stop shipping goods to England and break the British blockade. They expected the U.S. probably was going to join the war soon anyhow. The telegram also suggested Mexico ally itself with Japan, creating a Pacific front against the U.S. as well.
Mexico didn’t take the bait. German didn’t have the ability to send war materials to Mexico past a British blockade and Mexico didn’t have the military resources or desire to launch an attack.
Many conspiracy theories exist that the telegram was a fabrication dreamed up by the British or the people in the United States wanting US involvement in the war – but Zimmerman himself declared it was true, and the U.S. had copies of the telegram (encoded) and the means to decode it to confirm that it wasn’t a British fake.
