so we're learning about WWI in my social studies class, and my teacher mentions that the zimmerman telegram didnn't really come from the germany, but the U.S. did it to have an excuse to go to war. It sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, like the video taped moo landings, Bush knowing about 9/11, FDR knowing about Pearl Harbor, etc. Granted, i don't know nearly enough about history to make a serious challange. So I have 2 questions, 1) where did the telegram originally come from? 2) what view is commonly accpeted as mainstream?
that 2nd one's intended to make sure i'm not dealong with any conspiracy theorists myself here.
No conspiracy. The same German rulers (by 1917, effectively a Hindenburg-Ludendorf dictatorship) who brought about the brilliant defeat of Russia and the triumphantalist Treaty of Brest-Litovsk fumbled like rank amateurs with the Americans, bringing them into the war against the Reich. They would spend the whole of 1918, until the war's end in early November, trying to undo their own single and simple acts of stupidity in 1917 that brought the Americans into the war.
Initially, America looked like an easy target and the American government obviously sympathized with the Allies even if it was technically neutral, so the Germans assumed, 'Why not get it over with?' The American army in 1917 was barely 200,000 men total, and they were spread across the U.S. in groups of 1000 here, 5000 there, another 500 over there, etc. To boot, the American Army had barely modernized since its last spectacular efforts in the 1861-65 war, and clearly was not ready for the war of 1914-17, involving millions of men in a battle with modern artillery, machine guns, barbed wire, trenches and etc. The Americans, in their one great imperialist adventure against Spain in 1898, had won but barely, where even the Spanish colonial regiments had modern Mausers with smokeless powder while the Americans had the embarrassing and clumbsy - and dangerous - Krag-Jorgenson rifles still using black powder that left a large blue cloud over each soldier who fired a shot, immediately revealing to the Spaniards where each American soldier was. It was not an impressive record and to Berlin it looked like easy pickings.
However, the Germans, in their arrogance, overlooked a few critical details. While the American Army was in poor condition, the American navy had not been so neglected. Ludendorf declared when told of the American declaration of war that it was no matter; German submarines would ensure that not one American soldier saw Europe. He was wrong; joint American-British and Canadian convoys ensured that not one single American soldier died from a German torpedo or bullet while crossing the Atlantic. Secondly, the American industrial economy was overwhelmingly the world's largest at that point, and putting it openly at the Allies' disposal proved deadly for the Zweites Reich; by the spring of 1918 most of the shells falling on the Germans from French and British, as well as American, artillery were made in the U.S. While Germany scrounged to be able to supply its armies with basic ammunition and equipment in 1918, the Allies' main problems were of how to logistically get the massive amounts of supplies and ammunition arriving in French ports in orderly and priority fashion to the front lines. Finally, the Germans, even overlooking the horrendous condition of the American Army in 1917, seemed to have forgotten that regardless the quality of their equipment or training, the U.S. would be very quickly able to field 2 million soldiers, with another 2 million being available by early 1918. The hold up in getting American soldiers to the front lines was not the numbers of Americans, it was of getting the many Americans trained properly by their British and French allies fast enough to be available and useful for front line duty.
The Germans realized their error and, as I mentioned, their entire effort in 1918 was to end the war before the well-fed, well-equipped and increasingly well-trained Americans could arrive on the front lines in large enough numbers to make their numbers felt.
So, what act of stupidity brought all this on? Some moron in the German Foreign Office got the bright idea of asking the German embassy in Mexico City to feel the Mexicans (and later, Japanese too) out about a possible attack against the U.S. to keep Washington distracted from Europe, in exchange for which the Mexicans would receive back the lost territories from the 1846-48 war.
This sounds simple, but it actually has a lot of very basic problems.
First: To begin with, Mexico in 1917 was kind of like Lebanon in the 1980s, or Afghanistan. Mexico had erupted into revolution in 1911 and suffered several repeats over the next few years, while several little civil wars raged throughout the Mexican countryside. The Mexican "government" in Mexico City, though it had international recognition, barely controlled much outsaide of Mexico City. (BTW, I recommend the 2003 film with Antonio Banderas,
And Starring Poncho Villa as Himself for a glimpse of this period of Mexican history.) In short, Mexico was in no condition to rule itself in 1917 much less attack the United States. Remember that Germany went to war with the U.S. over this idiotic little piece of diplomacy....
Secondly, to send this telegram asking about this little fantasy adventure, the Germans had to do two things: To avoid direct culpability (more on this one later), the Germans sent the telegram through the Swedish embassy's (in Berlin) telegraph. (Sweden, although neutral in World War I, was very pro-German.) What this did was make it easier for the Americans to read the telegram because, well, quite frankly, what was Sweden (as opposed to Germany) going to do if the U.S. got caught reading Swedish diplomatic transmissions? It gave the espionage-squeamish Americans of 1917 an easy way to overcome their fear of losing the moral high ground by breaking diplomatic protocol with a great power.
Thirdly, to send this telegram, no matter what European embassy it was sent from, the Germans had to use the one and only trans-Atlantic telegraph cable that existed in 1917 - the one built, owned and operated by the Americans. Actually reading the telegram was not a problem at all on the technical front for the Americans. Think about that for a minute - the Germans had sent a screaming-red diplomatically dangerous telegram to a country embroiled in a civil war on a cable owned and operated by the country the Germans were proposing to have attacked.
The British had cracked the telegram, showed it to the Americans who, just to save some face, cracked and re-read it themselves (as Zimmerman sent follow-up telegrams like, "Did you get my last telegram? You know, the one where I suggested we try to have the Mexicans and Japanese attack the United States? That one? Well?"
FINALLY - and you haven't seen the dumbest part yet until now - here comes the absolute finale: U.S. President Wilson really did not want to get involved in this war, and he gave the Germans a chance to cover for themselves. He publically announced the telegram's existance, and asked - publically - if the Germans had
really meant for all this to happen, if they had
really sent this telegram - and all Berlin had to say was no, some low-level bureaucrat fanatic had sent it by mistake and we've since fired him, or something along those lines - but, no; Hindenburg and Ludendorf said, "Yes, we did send that telegram. Yes, we did try to provoke a war with the United States. Yup - it was us all right." The Germans confessed publically to trying to stage an unprovoked war against a hitherto-uninvolved country. Members of the U.S. Congress who wanted to enter the war screamed with glee and practically sent flowers to the Kaiser for Germany's stupidity, because Wilson now had no choice but to declare war.
Why did the Germans do this? This is one of those historical questions that gets beat around alot. In my narrative so far I've been having fun by portraying the German leadership as stupid but in reality of course there were deeper issues. The Germans of 1917, having just knocked Russia out of the war and seeing, as I described, a decrepit American Army, probably saw little danger in provoking the Americans and probably thought they could transfer their eastern armies to the Western front in time to sieze Paris and - theoretically - end the war before the Americans could do much of anything. Berlin was about to re-launch its unrestricted submarine warfare program, and as Ludendorf illustrated the Germans really believed that would solve the American-soldiers-and-supplies-flooding-Europe problem. However, as I described in my first paragraph the Germans seriously underestimated many facets of any American contribution to an Allied war effort, and the ultimate proof lies in the fact that the Germans lost the war in 1918 long before the Americans really
were able to make any meaningful military contribution on the land. Most of the crucial fighting of 1918 on the Allied side was done by the British and French. Any real American land-force impact would probably only have been felt if the war dragged on into 1919 - but the Reichswehr broke in September and October 1918, and would not survive to see any significant American army impact. It would be the French and British who would break the Kaiser's armies.
Before any Americans have a histy-fit; relax. Those Americans who did fight in 1917 and 1918 did so valiantly, and at a few junctions - Belleau Wood and Chateau Thierry in particular - American units played crucial roles. But overall, the American land effort in 1918 was piece-meal, and very limited. When the Americans did finally get their own front with the St. Mihiel offensive, they fought bravely but clearly were still inexperienced and made some costly mistakes, getting bogged down easily. They did make progress and, as I mentioned, if they'd had another several months would no doubt have become the spearhead of the Allied war effort but as it was, Germany crumbled before that time came. In fact, some modern historians - with the safety of distance in time - have speculated whether a German hold-out for another six months, resulting in an Allied thrust deep into the Ruhr or even further, might not have convinced the Germans they'd really lost the war and prevented World War II - but that is pure speculation and ignores the utter exhaustion of all sides (except the Americans) fighting in 1918.
So there you have it. German arrogance provoked and brought against them, at a time when they were celebrating having just removed a formidible foe from the war, an even greater threat which would lead to their ultimate defeat. In early 1917 German war planners were drooling over the prospects for victory they saw in Western Europe and Berlin filled with talk of what the post-war (German-dominated) European order would be like - but in a few short months all those plans would be blown apart by incredibly poor planning from soldiers, bureaucrats and politicians who should have known better.
And I suppose they hoped to occupy Metz or Sedan as well! And why not annex Luxembourg? Oh boy....
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