Zimmermann Telegram

What's happening? What does it mean for me? And when will I know? For an exercise intended to simplify the future of the people left, this is hopeless.

And as communications go, it's a Zimmerman telegram all over again.

And if you're not sure what that is, then look it up this morning.

It's interesting.

It's free country, bro.

A number of reasons were publicly given for Wilson's change of heart, including Germany's submarine warfare, Germany's sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania, and a diplomatic debacle known as the Zimmerman Telegram episode.

All complete propaganda.

germans took out ads and papers telling people don't go on any american ships we know they have weapons and munitions aboard them even if they're a passenger ship like the lusitania which sank in about four minutes because it was because it exploded as soon as it got hit by a by a torpedo because it had munitions on it they said don't do it And then the Zimmerman telegram, Thomas and I went over that in one of the World War I episodes, so go check out that series.

While Americans today are aware of many of these facts, few know that Zionism appears to have been one of those factors.

Diverse documentary evidence shows a Zionist push for the U.S. to enter the war on Britain's side as part of a deal to gain British support for their colonization of Palestine.

That's the one instance of the 20th century that's true.

But the other part of that, the other part of that equation has to do with the situation in, like the internal situation in America and these intrigues specifically between America and Mexico, which is why the Zimmerman Telegram was a big deal.

For those that don't know, I'll explain what the Zimmerman Telegram is in a minute.

But first I want to say it's cast by a lot of historians, both revisionists and core historians alike, that the Zimmerman Telegram was somewhat pretextual as a cause of belly or that it was like, or that it was like the communique issued by Wilhelm to Paul Kruger congratulating him on, you know, taking, on waging his guerrilla campaign against the British crown.

Okay, it was a lot more significant than that.

It wasn't a matter of pride or clout or of Washington DC not wanting to abide insults from what they viewed as a belligerent foreign power.

And there was the incumbent William Howard Taft.

So there was always kind of a, Wilson in the commander-in-chief role was not particularly strongly situated.

Having swayed from pro to anti-Germans throughout the course of the war, it was recognised by most that the US's contribution would be crucial to deciding its outcome.

It was with that knowledge that the German government sent a telegram, the Zimmermann Telegram, which would seal her fate.

Join me this week as I talk with Dan Hill, my good friend and fellow historian, about that telegram.

Say hello, Dan.

And the reality is the Germans were doing exactly the same thing.

But because of things like the Allied naval blockade, their options and opportunities to do so were more limited.

And the Zimmermann telegram and the efforts to get Mexico effectively into the war on their side is a really good example of that, alongside other things that actually were more successful, such as their support, and this was Zimmermann, the German foreign minister, again, their support for the Irish rebellion against the British in Ireland.

And again, he's the man who makes sure that Lenin makes it back to what will become the Soviet Union.

They're old, in Britain's case, a monarchy, but both of them are colonial powers.

And weirdly, one of the things that the Zimmerman Telegram and its discovery will do is it helps to persuade the US population that actually if there is, in inverted commas, a good side in this war to be on, then it is the side that is not doing dirty tricks against America.

And Woodrow Wilson and others will use that effectively and use the telegram as a vehicle of doing that.

They will say, look, we do need to be in this war.

Yeah, I think you're nicely summed up there.

I think that's pretty much the way things stand, particularly by 1917, when public opinion is, if anywhere, going, as you say, towards the Entente powers, albeit it's still not a done deal just yet.

But something like the Zimmerman Telegram is going to go a long way to kind of furthering, to really pushing the American public further away from a Germany who, in the pre-war years, they'd certainly been very close to.

I think the second most spoken language in about the turn of the century, 1900 United States, is German.

Nevertheless, the events immediately succeeding the withdrawal of Count von Bernstorff made a declaration of war increasingly probable.

The most important of these were the publication of the Zimmermann Note, the fact that several American merchant ships were actually sunk by German submarines, and the discovery that members of the German embassy and other German diplomatic representatives had been concerned in plotting on United States soil against the Allies, thus endangering our peaceful relations with them.

Not only so, but there was evidence that plots had been laid to destroy American lives and property in this country and to stir up internal disorders, such as strikes and riots.

The Zimmerman Note On the last day of February, the Secretary of State published a note that had come into his possession, which was addressed by Dr. Zimmerman, the German foreign minister, to the German minister in Mexico.

Now, you might recognize his name.

He's the same guy who offered military support to Mexico to retake Texas in his famous Zimmermann Telegram, which infuriated Americans at the time.

Zimmermann worked through intermediaries to transport Lenin, along with dozens of other revolutionaries, from Switzerland through Germany into Petrograd as quietly as possible.

It was a foreign subversion plot, probably the most successful one of all time.

Five months later, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare.

The Zimmermann Telegram revealed Germany was trying to convince Mexico to attack the United States.

Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 2nd, 1917.

“The world must be made safe for democracy,” he said.