`A Jolly Sort of German'
By STRIX TN world affairs it was a German Minister's 'minor plot. In the lives of the American people it was the end of innocence.' With this large claim Mrs. Barbara W. Tuchman concludes an ex- tremely well-documented but jaunty study of an obscure episode in the First World War. Her book, called The Zimmermann Telegram, is published by Constable at I8s. It is a better, more solid work than you might deduce from the Saturday Re- view's tribute to 'a dramatic style that will grip even those readers whose mental pabulum is nor- mally confined to fiction.' Its faults are implicit in this encomium.
Zimmermann became Foreign Minister of Germany in November, 1916. 'A very jolly large sort of German' (as the United States Ambassa- dor in Berlin described him), he had risen to high office from the ranks of the middle class : a cir- cumstance which 'predisposed every American, bred to .the automatic assumption that to be self- made is simultaneously to be virtuous, in his favour.'
Whether this 'characteristic generalisation is valid is beside the point, which is that the German Foreign Minister sent on January 16, 1917, a message in code to the German Ambassador in Washington for onward transmission `by a safe route' to the German Minister in Mexico. This communication proposed a German-Mexican alli- ance aimed at (among less specific objectives) the reconquest of the junior partner's 'lost territory' in Texas, New Mexico and California; it also sug- gested that Mexico should secure Japan's seces- sion from the Allied camp and her participation in this new venture. Zimmermann sent this im- portant message on the eve of Germany's declara- tion of unrestricted U-boat warfare; its object was to avert America's consequent entry in the war by opening (or rather by reinvigorating, for an expeditionary force under Pershing was already committed, south of the Border, to the thankless pursuit of Villa) a second front on the North American continent.
To ensure their reception Zimmermann trans- mitted his instructions by three different channels, one of them being the official link between the State Department and Europe; this had at an earlier stage of the war been made available, in the cause of peace, to the German Embassy in Washington by President Wilson. The message was intercepted, in triplicate, and decoded by the legendary demonologists of Room 40, an offshoot of the Naval Intelligence Division. By mid- January, 1917—a fortnight before unrestricted U-boat warfare was due to begin—Admiral. 'Blinker' Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence, had in his hand a document potentially capable of dislodging even President Wilson from his limpet-like seat on the fence.
Hall faced the cryptographer's ever-present and often agonising problem : how to make use of unimpeachable information without compromis- ing its invaluable source. There was a strong probability that the contents of Zimmermann's telegram, if disclosed to the still neutral Adminis- tration in Washington, would be suspected as a fabrication, a ruse designed by the cunning British to draw America into the war. To divulge proofs of its authenticity was impossible, for it involved a grave risk (in a matter where not even the smallest risk was acceptable) of - alerting the Germans to the fact that the Admiralty were reading their secret codes. What was to be done?
Mrs. Tuchman has reconstructed what was done with loving care. Hall reasoned that Bern- storff, the German •Ambassador in Washington, would have telegraphed Zimmermann's instruc- tions to his colleague in Mexico City in a form substantially similar to that in which he had received them. If this version, with its minor differences of prefix, signature, date and so on, were made public, Germany would assume that the telegram had been intercepted or purloined after it reached Washington and would blame the carelessness of her envoys or the enterprise of a spy. Skulduggery in the Mexican post office pro- duced a copy of Bernstorff's telegram and proved Hall's surmise about its wording correct. Another copy was unearthed from the files of Western Union in Washington. Finally, the message was, with the help of a German code-book loaned for the occasion by Room, 40, deciphered by Ameri- cans in the American Embassy in London, thus technically authenticating the official claim that its contents had come to light 'on American soil.'
The bombshell was detonated on March 1, 1917. Its effect upon the American public was profound; but, as had been foreseen in London, an influential school of thought suspected forgery. The Mexicans falsely but categorically denied all knowledge of the German plot; so did the Japanese. For two days an inconclusive con- troversy raged. Then the author of the original telegram made a second disastrous appearance in the centre of the stage. At a press conference he was urged to deny the whole story. 'I cannot deny it,' said Zimmermann. 'It is true.' Back at the Wilhelmstrasse, he proceeded to conduct a far- flung post-mortem on the affair, using—to the edification of Room 40—the same code.
'Had the telegram never been intercepted or never been published,' Mrs. Tuchman concludes, 'inevitably the Germans would have done some- thing else that would have brought us in eventu- ally. But the time was already late and, had we delayed much longer, the Allies might have been forced to negotiate.' Mrs. Tuchman buttresses her claims for the telegram's capital importance with a great deal of evidence of its impact on public opinion, in Washington and outside it, and the case she makes out must be treated with respect.
So must the diligence of her researches, though these sometimes lead her up by-paths which she may be suspected of exploring in quest of material which is more colourful than relevant. She takes in this book a rather cops-and-robbers, blacks- begin-at-Calais view of history which I hope she will avoid in her next; for her the German nation is, by implication, composed entirely of heel- clicking fatheads, the Mexicans are so many dust- biting extras in a Western. These breezy over- 4 simplifications, embodied! in a Time-Life style, unnecessarily diminish her authority; but she has written, for all that, an absorbing book.
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