Zimmermann admits the telegram

On 3 March 1917 the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, admitted that he was the author of the dispatch that all America had been talking about for two days. On 1 March the American press had published the text of the Zimmermann Telegram, with its German offer of an alliance to Mexico. Some Americans, including several senators, regarded it as a British provocation. Washington could not easily dispel these doubts, because it did not want to reveal that the dispatch had been decrypted by British intelligence. The author of the telegram did it for them.

“I cannot deny it”

The most often told version comes from Barbara Tuchman’s book about the telegram. According to her, on 3 March Zimmermann met journalists, and William Bayard Hale, the Berlin correspondent of William Randolph Hearst’s papers, known for his pro-German sympathies, offered him a convenient way out: “Of course Your Excellency will deny this story.” Zimmermann replied: “I cannot deny it. It is true.” The German cryptologist and historian Joachim von zur Gathen, however, found no trace of such a press conference in contemporary documents, and the German Federal Archives have no record of it. What is certain is that on the morning of that day most German newspapers, among them the Berliner Tageblatt and Vorwärts, printed an official statement dated Berlin, 2 March, and distributed by the semi-official Wolff agency. On the same day Zimmermann also spoke to an employee of the German Overseas News Agency, which broadcast news by radio to America, and his words reached the American papers.

The statement denied nothing. It explained that after the decision on unrestricted submarine warfare a conflict with the United States had to be reckoned with, and the facts had borne this assessment out, since Washington had broken off relations with Germany and was urging other neutral states to do the same. The Reich government therefore had not only the right but the duty to prepare for the eventuality of war. In mid-January it had instructed its minister in Mexico to propose an alliance, but only if the United States declared war on Germany, and had forbidden him to take any step towards the Mexican government until he was sure that the declaration had been made. Berlin did not know how the Americans had obtained the text, but suggested that the betrayal had taken place on American territory. Zimmermann said much the same in the interview: the whole “plot” collapsed if America did not declare war, and no one could reproach Germany for preparing to defend itself against an enemy.

In Berlin

The German newspapers, which could write about the affair only on 3 March, mostly confined themselves to reprinting the statement. The Kölnische Zeitung argued that the disclosure of the German offer had had a sobering effect on the Americans, because they had seen that Germany would defend itself by every means. The men around the Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, felt less sure. His adviser Kurt Riezler wrote in his diary that the author of the idea was the Foreign Office official Hans Arthur von Kemnitz, “that fantastic idiot”.

Zimmermann spoke briefly about the telegram on 3 March in the Reichstag budget committee, and on 5 March, at a secret session of the committee, the affair took up most of the proceedings. The Social Democrat Eduard David asked how parts of the United States could have been promised to Mexico when no sensible person believed that Mexico could conquer and hold them. Zimmermann admitted that the Mexicans could not win a war against America. His aim was that they should march north as soon as possible, so that the Americans would have to send troops to the Mexican border instead of to Europe. He also explained that he had sent the instruction over American diplomatic channels, which Washington had made available to Germany for peace talks, but in a cipher the Americans did not know. Another socialist, Oskar Cohn, replied that the Foreign Secretary had given Wilson a superb argument for uniting the American nation around him.

In America

In Washington 3 March was the last day of the session of Congress. The Senate was debating the bill on arming merchant ships, and Senator Lawrence Sherman of Illinois read out the dispatches from Berlin with Zimmermann’s admission. According to The New York Times, the news broke down the last barriers of restraint that usually bound senators in debating a foreign state. It did not save the bill, because a group of opponents dragged out the debate until noon on 4 March, when the session expired. The administration was, however, rid of a problem: it no longer had to reveal the British source or convince anyone that the text was genuine.

Those most taken aback were the Americans who sympathised with Germany. As late as 1 March their writers had argued that the telegram was a forgery, and on 3 March most of them refused to believe that Zimmermann had really admitted it. The New York Staats-Zeitung, the largest German-language daily in the country, declared that it could not support any combination of states that sought to invade and divide the territory of the United States, even if it was to come into effect only after war had been declared on Germany. The historian Thomas Boghardt points out, however, that the sensation soon faded. After a few days the telegram disappeared from the front pages, and most opponents of the war did not change their minds.

Zimmermann defended his offer once more on 29 March at a sitting of the Reichstag, replying to the socialist Hugo Haase. He insisted that he had not written any letter to the President of Mexico, Venustiano Carranza, but had only sent instructions to the minister, which the Americans had obtained “in a way that was not entirely blameless”. A week later, on 6 April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.