Munitions of the Mind by Philip M. Taylor

Author:Philip M. Taylor [Taylor, Philip M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

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Propaganda in the Age of Total War and Cold War he had done, thereby jeopardizing the code breaking operation.

Good fortune, also in the summer of 1915, revealed the where-abouts of a complete German diplomatic codebook – in the base-ment of the India Office where it had been left as part of the abandoned luggage of a German vice consul who had been forced to flee Persia! As a result the British were able to monitor the cable traffic in and out of Germany; by the end of 1915 they could also decipher most of it.

All this was carried out in Room 40 at the Admiralty. When, therefore, in the early hours of the morning of 16 January 1917, the night duty officers in Room 40 intercepted a telegram from the German foreign minister, Zimmermann, to the German ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, proposing to introduce unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February and suggesting an alliance with Mexico in the event of American intervention, they knew immediately that they had a propaganda bombshell on their hands. Most of the message was deciphered immediately; enough at least to grasp its meaning and significance. But two major problems remained: first, how to convince the Americans that it was authentic, especially since American code-breakers could not crack the ciphers and thereby verify the telegram; and, second, whether to risk publicizing it and thereby inform the enemy that their codes had been broken. Moreover, the telegram had been sent via the American cables, which the British were reluctant to admit they had also been tapping for fear of antagonizing Washington.

While Room 40 and its flamboyant chief ‘Blinker’ Hall pondered the problems, the Germans, right on schedule, launched their unrestricted U-boat campaign to starve Britain into submission. A copy of the telegram was obtained from the Mexican end and duly deciphered using the India Office fluke; this eased the worry about revealing to the Americans the degree to which Britain’s codebreaking activities extended to neutrals. On 23 February, Balfour handed the telegram over to the American ambassador in London, Walter Page, and it was published in the United States on 1 March.

Not unnaturally, it caused a sensation. The Germans were actually threatening to bring the Old World’s war into America’s back garden; Mexico had been offered their lost territories of Texas and Arizona in return for offering a springboard to invasion. Remember the Alamo!

In fact, President Wilson, who barely six months earlier had Munitions_06_Chap20-21

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4/11/03, 10:52

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