The Zimmermann Telegram: Cryptanalysis and the US Entry into WW 1

April meeting of the Association for Rational Thought

link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88689259309?pwd=VHegY8x0jCjtDPFP4bYfrBaAQgR2zB.1

The Zimmermann Telegram: Cryptanalysis and the US Entry into WW 1.
Speaker: Dave Siegel

As many will recall from your High School history classes, the Zimmerman Telegram was a secret telegram detailing a German alliance proposal to Mexico in 1917. The British revealed it to the US as a means of helping to force US entry into WWI on the side of the Allies. The British were deliberately deceptive about how they obtained it. It turns out that they had been decrypting both German and American diplomatic cable messages.

The decryption of the Zimmerman Telegram has been described as one of the most impactful single instances of cryptanalysis in history, yet its effects have proved hard to demonstrate objectively. The story of its interception and decryption is complex. Some of the principal actors falsified important aspects of the historical record, and these falsifications dominated the history of the Telegram for more than half of a century. As far as the British were concerned, the Zimmerman Telegram was an advantageous secret lying in the center of a potentially disastrous one: that they were currently reading American diplomatic traffic. They wished to continue to do so, and also avoid a scandal if the Americans found out. The German Foreign Office believed a different “cover story” for how the Telegram was obtained, for years after the War.

The tale has many of the elements that make a story irresistible to me. It is a story of cryptographic subtlety, historical contingency, and human foibles; as much as it is a tale of how states really act, as opposed to how they present themselves publicly as acting. George Kennan called The First World War the “great seminal catastrophe of the Twentieth Century”, and more than a century after it ended, there is still a lively debate about its origins. The Telegram played an important part in its final evolution, so I maintain that the affair is significant in its own right. As I’ll relate, if it hastened the US entry into the conflict by only a few weeks, which certainly seems plausible, it was enormously important.

I think the tale is relevant to the present day, because the behavior of some of the principals is an object lesson in the danger to nations, and to democratic government, of letting an intelligence service run amok.
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If you’d like more basis for discussion, either of these books is informative.

1. Barbara Tuchman, “The Zimmerman Telegram,” c.1965, Random House, NY. https://www.amazon.com/Zimmermann-Telegram-Barbara-W-Tuchman/dp/0345324250 An easy read; winner of a Pullitzer Prize.

2. Thomas Boghardt, #The Zimmerman Telegram,” c. 2012, Naval Institute Pres,, Annapolis MD. [https://www.amazon.com/Zimmermann-Telegram-Intelligence-Diplomacy-Americas/dp/1612511481 ](https://www.amazon.com/Zimmermann-Telegram-Intelligence-Diplomacy-Americas/dp/1612511481%20%20)