“Our personal friendship encourages me in the assurance that we can continue to work in a frank, open manner, putting all our cards upon the table, and subdue every difficulty together,” said the Secretary.
As long as his friends Bethmann, Helfferich, and, last but not least, his good friend Zimmermann remained at the head of affairs, “relations between our two countries are running no risk,” graciously replied the Ambassador. That was carrying out instructions and jollying them to the limit, he told Grew after the dinner.
From this farcical feast of good fellowship Zimmermann went straight to the drafting of his instructions to Eckhardt to propose an alliance with Mexico and Japan for the purpose of attack upon the United States.
He intended to send them in a letter by way of Washington to Mexico aboard the merchant submarine Deutschland which had made a much admired trip to the United States in the previous July and was scheduled to depart again on January 15. But at the last moment its trip was canceled; the instructions would have to go by telegram. Zimmermann decided that the telegram should go by the most direct way possible, and what more direct than the channel put at his disposal by the Americans themselves? The idiotic Yankees, as Papen called them, had given it to him to use for peace, but that was simply more of Mr. Wilson’s humbug. Germany was not to be fooled by such cant. If Wilson chose to hand them a key it would serve him justly—and struck Zimmermann as entirely fitting—to use the Yankee key to rob the Yankee roost.
When Zimmermann decided upon this stroke, America was not an enemy. The U-boat decision risked making her one, but Zimmermann himself, as well as many of the High Command, believed there was a good chance that Wilson might swallow this challenge with no more than an angry note or two, as he had done before. At this moment it was of the utmost importance to Germany to refrain from doing anything further to provoke America. Zimmermann’s choice of telegraph route could hardly have been more inappropriate, under the circumstances, yet it was perhaps predestined by the German character. The fatal German assumption of superiority, superior right, superior cleverness, led him straight into it. To the superior person it is permitted to deceive fools; it is not ungentlemanly of him, it is expected, it is nature, it is law. A U-boat commander once remarked to an English merchant-ship captain whose ship, which had not carried concealed weapons, the German had just torpedoed, “You British will always be fools, and we Germans will never be gentlemen.”
Zimmermann did not know that Room 40 had broken the German code, but had the Germans been less given to underestimating the enemy he might have thought twice before using the American cable route to propose a military alliance against America—just in case someone might be listening. Messages from the American embassy in Berlin went by overland telegraph to Copenhagen, and thence via the Atlantic cable, which touched at England. Zimmermann, however, did not think twice.
On January 16 he sent the telegram to Bernstorff for his information and for forwarding to Eckhardt in Mexico. He attached it to a longer telegram addressed by Bethmann-Hollweg to Bernstorff, conveying the final decision about the U-boats. Bethmann’s telegram was numbered 157. Following it came Zimmermann’s instruction to Bernstorff, numbered 158: “Most secret. For Your Excellency’s personal information and to be handed on to the Imperial Minister in Mexico by a safe route.” Following this came the message to Eckhardt. It was headed “No. 1” and the full text read:
We intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on the first of February. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you.
You will inform the President [of Mexico] of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.
Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the unrestricted employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England to make peace within a few months. Acknowledge receipt.
ZIMMERMANN.
To make sure of its arrival Zimmermann dispatched the telegram in code over three different routes: by the “main line” wireless from Nauen to Sayville, where, owing to the American censorship, it might or might not get through; by the Swedish Roundabout; and finally, dutifully tapped out by an American embassy clerk, over the State Department cable, courtesy of Colonel House. It passed through the State Department on January 17 and was delivered by the Department, with Lansing’s usual misgivings, to Bernstorff on the eighteenth. Ten days later Secretary Lansing, impatient for the Germans to do something to awake America to the peril of a German victory, wrote in his diary, “I hope those blundering Germans will blunder soon.” He did not know it, but the blunder had just passed through his hands.
In England Room 40 was “highly entertained” to discover Zimmermann’s telegram passing quietly over the American cable. In fact Room 40 intercepted the telegram along all three of its routes. First they picked the Nauen wireless message out of the air and subsequently found the same message coming in on the American cable and the Swedish Roundabout.
In Washington Ambassador Bernstorff, on receiving his copy from the State Department, forwarded the instructions, still in the same code, to Eckhardt on January 19 via Western Union. He struck out the instructions to himself beginning with “No. 158 …” and ending “… by a safe route,” and substituted his own number of telegram, 130, plus the additional line, “Foreign Office telegraphs January 16, No. 1, Most Secret, decode yourself.” At the end, he added, “End of telegram, Bernstorff.” These differences in text were to be of the utmost importance. As far as is known, Bernstorff’s responsibility ended there. The Zimmermann telegram was left, like a spark dropped in a forest, to smolder in secret while more public matters raced to a climax.
Bernstorff now knew the worst, yet continued trying desperately to convince Berlin that Wilson would be an honorable mediator and that some way must be found to accept his peace offer. If Germany accepted it, Bernstorff said, he was sure she would emerge with her world position maintained in full measure. No one in Germany believed him. Zimmermann believed that Wilson “would exert all his influence against us” because “he feels and thinks English”; Helfferich insisted there was a “trick of some kind” behind Wilson’s offer, and the Kaiser placed “absolutely no reliance” on it. But Bethmann, suffering the pains of remorse, replied that he was still looking for “any possible means likely to diminish the danger of a break.” Having swallowed the cake, he hoped to avoid the stomach ache.
It was at this moment that Wilson made his last and most moving appeal. He delivered the famous “peace without victory” speech before the Senate on January 22 but addressed it, in his mind, to the peoples of the world over the heads of their governments. The phrase “peace without victory” infuriated the Allies, but Bernstorff picked up hope. Still using the State Department cable, he begged Berlin for at least a period of grace for neutral ships, in which case he believed that Wilson would redouble his efforts for peace. Bethmann seized upon the idea but was curtly told by the Admiralty that it was too late; many of the U-boats were already at sea and could not be reached for a change of orders.
Only a week now was left for Bernstorff to work in. One more plea went out from him, imploring Berlin to answer Wilson’s last request for peace terms and then, if the Allies rebuffed Wilson, Germany would have put herself in a position to use the U-boat without, perhaps, provoking American retaliation. “In spite of all statements to the contrary, American war resources,” he warned, “are very great.”
When Bernstorff’s last-minute message came through on January 28, Zimmermann was at Pless, conferrin
g with the High Command. Hours counted now. At the Foreign Office they called in a trusted friend of Zimmermann’s, Jacob Noeggerath, a German-American who had long been his adviser on American affairs. All day Noeggerath tried to get Zimmermann on the telephone, and, when he did, passionately pleaded with him to ask the High Command to postpone the U-boats. And Bethmann, armed with Bernstorff’s telegram, took the night train for Pless, where on the following day, January 29, another meeting was held. It was brief and formal with Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Bethmann, Zimmermann, and the Kaiser present. No question of postponing the U-boats was raised because the Navy had emphatically stated they were beyond recall. All Bethmann could get was a decision to add a statement of Germany’s peace terms to the announcement of the U-boat war, plus a pious hope that the American government would continue its efforts toward peace and a promise that Germany would call off the submarines as soon as it became evident that the President’s efforts would lead to a peace “acceptable to Germany.”
On January 31, at the last possible moment, allowing less than eight hours’ notice, at the end of the working day, notice of the U-boat war was given to the American government. Bernstorff presented it to Lansing at four o’clock, and Zimmermann informed Gerard at six o’clock.
Washington was taken by surprise. Despite many warnings, the administration, believing the North Sea and North Atlantic too difficult for submarines in winter, had not expected the Germans to take this step until spring. For Bernstorff it was the end of his eight years’ embassy in America, the debacle of his long labor to keep the United States out of the war. Looking unnatural minus his customary smile, he presented the document to an amazed and angry Lansing, saying, “I know it is very serious, very. I deeply regret that it is necessary.” He managed a wan smile, murmured, “Good afternoon,” bowed, and departed. Later, when besieged by the press, he uttered what was perhaps the only impulsive remark he ever made in America—“I am finished with politics for the rest of my life.”
In Berlin the question everyone asked himself and his neighbor was, what will the United States do? Zimmermann, hearty with false courage, had for days been working to convince himself and everyone else that America might not come in after all. A Danish journalist who called to interview him found him on tenterhooks waiting for news. “If only the United States will keep hands off,” Zimmermann blurted out, “and leave us alone, two or three months will be enough.” On February 1, defending the U-boat decision before the Reichstag, he urged all the reasons—the Western states, the anti-war feeling, the menace of Japan—why the United States would not go to war. He was like a boy who, aghast at having opened a dam, tries to tell himself the waters will somehow not rush through.
In London expectancy was equally tense; in Washington it was highest of all. The long-awaited challenge, fended off so often, had suddenly been flung in America’s face. Freedom of the seas, commented one American paper, would henceforth be enjoyed “by icebergs and fish.” Eighty correspondents crowded Lansing’s press conference on the morning of February 1 and were still swarming in the corridors when he returned from the White House at five o’clock. For three days they and the country waited while President Wilson wrestled with himself. The President told Colonel House, who came down from New York, that he felt as if the world had suddenly reversed itself and was now going from west to east instead of east to west, and that he could not get his balance. He still insisted he would not allow German provocation to lead to war if it could possibly be avoided. He still said it would be a “crime” for his government to go to war, closing to itself all possibility of becoming peacemaker.
The fear of Japan that Zimmermann counted on was immediately manifest. With nice appreciation of a delicate moment, the Japanese Ambassador called at the State Department to protest two Alien Land Bills then up for passage in Idaho and Oregon. The senators of those states, summoned to an urgent conference by Under-Secretary Frank L. Polk, were sufficiently impressed, though both Republicans, to telegraph their home legislatures not to embarrass the administration “at this critical hour.” Responding admirably, Idaho and Oregon withdrew the bills.
On February 2 the regular Friday Cabinet meeting was called at half past two. “What shall I propose? I must go to Congress. What shall I say?” the President asked almost pleadingly. Restively the Cabinet members, of whom all but one or two were by now certain that America should join the Allies, spoke their minds. Which side did he want to see win? one of them asked the President. Neither, answered Wilson; he still wanted a peace without victory for either side. With startling effect, he then advanced upon his listeners a new argument for not going to war. The Boswell of the Cabinet, Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston, recorded it. In order “to keep the white race strong against the yellow—Japan for instance, in combination with Russia and dominating China”—it would be wise, Wilson said, to do nothing; indeed he would do nothing but would submit rather to any imputation of weakness or cowardice. The Cabinet was stunned. Next the President, still searching for an alternative, suggested a united demand for peace by all the neutrals, something which, while intent upon his own role as mediator, he had not before considered. Then he adjourned the meeting to make up his own mind privately, as usual.
Next day, February 3, he decided. Bernstorff was to be given his passports, diplomatic relations with Germany broken off—but without malice. “I refuse to believe,” he told Congress that afternoon when he went up to the Hill to announce his decision, “that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do … only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.”
While he was talking it was dinnertime in Europe. In London, Ambassador and Mrs. Page, First Secretary Laughlin and his wife, and the Ambassador’s secretary, Mr. Shoecraft, had been sitting all day in one room, hardly speaking, while they waited for news of Wilson’s decision. Suddenly they heard the front doorbell ring. The private secretary hurried downstairs and met Admiral Hall, the first man in Europe to hear the news, coming up. “Thank God!” said the admiral as he marched into the Ambassador’s room and pulled from his pocket a telegram from Captain Gaunt which read, “Bernstorff goes home. I get drunk tonight.”
In Berlin that same evening Ambassador and Mrs. Gerard were enjoying after-theater supper in the company of Secretary Zimmermann and a lady friend. “You will see,” Zimmermann told them, “everything will be all right. America will do nothing because Wilson is for peace and nothing else. Everything will go on as before.”
When he got the news next morning he showed great emotion, and his language to newspapermen was violent. To the Germans he said that it was a good thing—“At last we have gotten rid of this person as peace mediator.” When it came to saying good-by to Gerard and Grew, he had recovered enough to part “in the warmest way possible” and to convince the two diplomats that the break had come to him as a complete surprise for which he was genuinely and profoundly sorry.
It was not war yet, but Zimmermann, feeling the seat grow hot, decided not to wait. Although he had originally told Eckhardt not to broach the alliance with Mexico until war with the United States was certain, he now on February 5 telegraphed him to make the offer “even now.” As Bernstorff was now cut off, this second telegram in the same code as the first, was sent direct to Eckhardt, probably via the Swedish Roundabout. Zimmermann was fully conscious that he was handling explosives, for his telegram began: “Provided there is no danger of secret being betrayed to United States, Your Excellency is desired to take up alliance question without further delay with the President.” Zimmermann added that Carranza “might even now on his own account sound out Japan.” He concluded: “If the President declines from fear of subsequent revenge, you are empowered to offer him a definitive alliance after the conclusion of peace, provided Mexico succeeds in drawing Japan into the alliance.” Like its predecessor, this telegram was headed, “Most secret, decipher personally,” and signed “Zimm
ermann.”
A little bit earlier, and he would have caught Carranza in a more receptive mood. But just before Eckhardt received his instructions to go ahead, President Carranza’s bellicosity toward America was deprived of its chief stimulus by the sudden withdrawal of the Pershing expedition. Truculent to the end, Carranza had just rejected a formula for withdrawal beaten out in months of wrangling by a Joint High Commission of Mexicans and Americans. Helpless, the Commission had adjourned on January 15, 1917, leaving Wilson no choice but to flounder ever deeper into Mexico or withdraw unconditionally. He had never come well out of his contests with Mexican dignity, he had had a surfeit of this one which he had disliked from the start, American reputation was dwindling every day the bootless chase continued, and his advisers, uneasy over Germany, were strongly urging retrieving the Army now. Wilson agreed to back out. The withdrawal, ordered January 25, was completed by February 5, the same day Eckhardt was instructed to offer Carranza alliance “even now.”
Crowing over Pershing’s withdrawal as his personal triumph, Don Venus felt mollified, and to that extent less inclined to succumb to the German offer than he might have been two weeks earlier. Meantime Germany’s carefully prepared plans for Mexico were gaining momentum. American agents began picking up a fresh spurt of rumors. From Laredo on February 5: “A German captain arrived in Nuevo Laredo today for the purpose of organizing Mexicans to raid United States territory.” From El Paso on February 12: “The German Consul in Chihuahua has brought his wife across the border and left her there while he has returned and is running back and forth to Juárez buying unusual supplies of merchandise.” From San Salvador on February 13: “Large numbers of Germans are spreading through Mexico. The hotels of Torreón, Mexico City, and Monterrey are full of them and they associate mostly with Carranzista officers. They are working up feeling against Wilson as anti-Catholic.” Other reports told of an influx of Germans from the United States into all parts of Mexico, of Germans buying up ship coal on Mexico’s west coast, and of a German businessman who reported that Mexicans on the streets had suddenly taken to embracing him, saying, “It is high time Germany was getting after the schoolteacher.”