The Zimmermann Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy, and America's Entry into World War I

I am very happy with this purchase.

This is an excellent book if one wants the low down on espionage in WWI

Boghardt has produced a solidly written and engaging study of the Zimmermann Telegram, which replaces the earlier work by Barbara Tuchman. Utilizing American, British, and German archival records supplemented by memoirs and secondary works, this volume is as close to a definitive work as one can get.The author corrects the historical record on several points. One is how the telegram was transmitted to the German embassy in Washington, D.C. It has been accepted that Zimmermann sent it by three separate routes--the Swedish "roundabout," wireless, and the American cable, which the State Department had opened for Berlin's use during President Wilson's peace effort in late 1916. In fact, the telegram was only dispatched by the latter route. British intelligence confused the issue in order to hide their hand in its interception and thus protect a crucial source of intelligence on the enemy. If the Germans were to learn that the British could read their code, they would have changed it.Second, many historians have accepted as fact that the publication of the Zimmermann Telegram broke the logjam in Congress and the public over the question of intervention in the European War. Now the American people demanded war with Germany, and Capitol Hill quickly responded. Boghardt clearly shows this not to be the case. By the time that Wilson asked for war, American newspapers had virtually forgotten about the telegram, and the president only mentioned it in one brief sentence in his war address. What the telegram, as well as how it was sent, did was to convince the president that peace negotiations with Germany were impossible.One of the interesting characters involved in this incident is Admiral William Hall, head of British naval intelligence. He not only oversaw collection, decrypting, and analysis of German naval signals, he also co-opted the acquisition of German diplomatic traffic from which he discovered the Zimmermann Telegram. Hall held back this crucial piece of material until he believed it was the right moment to reveal it for maximum effect. While he wanted to get the U.S. into war with Germany, he also wanted to protect his source of information. His actions in determining who and when they saw important documents were not unique in this case, but his standard practice.A major goal of the telegram was to pry Japan away from the Allies. For several years German diplomats had made inquiries to their Japanese counterparts, but with no luck. Since Japan and Mexico had good relations, the idea was to use an agreement with Mexico as an impetus for Mexico City to reach out to Tokyo. To entice the Mexican government to attack the United States, Berlin dangled Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in front of it. If you wonder why California was not part of the package, that state was to be used to induce Japan to leave the Allies for an arrangement with Germany and Mexico.The book is enhanced by numerous political cartoons and 16 pages of photographs. Also helpful is a biographical essay on how the Zimmermann Telegram has been interpreted from the 1920s into the 21st century. For those interested in World War I, wartime intelligence, and Wilson's presidency, especially his foreign policy, this book is a must read.

Finally! It has been a long 45 years since Barbara Tuchman's expose of German intrigues in the US in World War I are finally in review. The Zimmermann Telegram of yesteryear (Tuchman's famous 1958 book) lacked many of the meanwhile publicly accessible archival documents such as those of the FBI, MID, Mixed Claims Commission, as well as the various secret services of the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. Thomas Borghardt convincingly argues that the Zimmermann Telegram neither caused the US to enter the war against Germany in 1917 nor that it was an invention of some "brain dead" German Foreign Office officials. German support for Mexico in return for unsettling the US-Mexican border in case of an American entry into the war on the side of the Allies had floated in Mexican and German circles for years. Borghardt identified the failed mission of Colonel Gonzalo Enrile to Berlin in the spring of 1915 who outlined precisely what appeared two years later in the infamous telegram. Invaluable is also Borghardt's emphasis on the strategic purpose of the telegram to not only rouse Mexico against the United States but more importantly to pry Japan away from the Entente.Boghardt's book is hopefully one of several that will challenge a painfully antiquated historiography of German-American relations in World War I. While the author should be commended for his courage to undertake this task, the book could have benefited from a more thorough discussion of the Mexican Revolution around the time of the telegram. The telegram marked the embarrassing end of a German intelligence strategy against the United States that included multiple attempts to support various Mexican factions with weapons and ammunition, involved intelligence agents such as Arnold Krumm-Heller (identified in the book) and Felix Sommerfeld, and for years had sought ways to eliminate American war materiel from flowing to Germany's enemies in Europe through propaganda, sabotage, and labor unrest. Some important claims, while correct, are substantiated with secondary sources from Friedrich Katz and others. Going to the primary source would have allowed to evaluate the whole document and reveal misinterpretations by earlier authors. A host of typos slightly detract from the otherwise engaging text.All in all, however, this book is a valuable contribution that will challenge some of the holy cows (no pun intended) of a historiography in dire need of update.

Germany's offer to Mexico of an alliance should America enter the Great War served to bring the U.S. into the fighting. The telegram to Mexico, however, was intercepted by the Royal Navy's "Room 40" codebreakers, and soon found its way into American hands. How all this happened makes for fascinating reading. Barbara Tuchman's 1958 book with the same main title has largely defined this story in the half century since it first appeared. But Boghardt has done her one better with a book more closely based on sources not available to (or used by) Tuchman, including those recording the German side of the story. His is clearly the definitive version of the sometimes complicated story.