SECRET HISTORY
The Zimmermann Telegram
By Alan Simpson
How an intricate British Naval Intelligence Plot Brought the United States into the Great War Alfred Zimmermann
breaking process had long outgrown the original Room 40, it was such a good nondescript cover that the title was retained. As in WWII it was naval codes sent by wireless that were the most important for Britain and its survival.
The Zimmermann Telegram planted with Western Union by British Naval Intelligence
T
he Zimmermann Telegram is probably the most important and far reaching intercepted message in the history of espionage and intelligence. Historians acknowledge that it helped sculpture the world we live in today. And in the ongoing debate over Echelon and the USA interception of e-mails, faxes and telephone calls, we often forget that this is not a new process. Intercepting communications has been the source of intelligence for centuries. At the beginning of the twentieth century there were no satellites, no encrypted microwave relay networks, just copper wire, telegraph operators and undersea cables between continents. Most were considered secure. And Gentlemen would surely not dream of listening to each other’s private conversations! But the British Foreign Office had other ideas. At the time, the world’s major undersea cables were either British, or ran through British-
40
controlled countries or territorial waters. The trans-Atlantic cables were classic examples. They were monitored and their contents copied for the benefit of the British Empire.
On 17 January 1917, one of thousands of coded messages thumped into Room 40, along the old pneumatic message tubes (some people may still remember this type of system running in offices and retail stores). The message was picked up by Nigel de Gray, a seconded thirtyone-year old publisher, and Reverend William Montgomery, a forty-six-year old scholar. Neither fitting the image of today’s James Bond. But they were about to begin the process that changed the course of the WWI and history. To ‘paint’ the background to that eventful day, Britain, France and Germany had been locked in a bloody three-year-war, and their troops had just
been through a terrible campaign on the Somme. Over a million lay men dead, sixty thousand casualties on a single day, half a million soldiers lost at Verdun alone for nothing, or perhaps more correctly, a few hundred feet of mud-soaked land. It was a gigantic slaughtering machine in the barbed wire and trenches. America sat back and watched, feeling safe and secure in isolation. Britain and much of Europe seemed puzzled by apparent American indifference. In the drab confides of Room 40, Nigel de Grey rolled out a message. It was a string number grouping from the German code book. The Germans used printed code books, then used another book to encrypt the message again for additional security. The mechanical encryption machines such as Enigma had yet to be invented. Room 40 had acquired copies of the code books from sinking ships a fact unbeknown to the Germans.
On the first day of the Great War in 1914, the Admiralty ordered the British cable-laying ship, Telconia, to drag up the German undersea cables off Emden on the Dutch/German border, cut them and deprive the Kaiser of his key communication links’. They were left with wireless or cables through a neutral country. Either way they would be read by Whitehall. Most of their communications’ traffic was subsequently switched to Nauen, a high-powered transmitter outside Berlin. A half-century before the National Security Agency was even conceived, the British Empire was running its own low-tech Echelon.
This message interested de Grey, for it was long, too long for a normal cable. It was also coded only once and not enciphered again to make it more secure. To this day no one knows why it did not have the second, ‘extra layer’ of protection.
Checked, and re-checked, it still came back ‘Mexico’. Why would the Germans be talking about Mexico? Further down the words “US and Japan” appeared. This caused alarm.
The first thing that caught the mens attention was the code - 13042, which signified a diplomatic code variant. They also noticed 97556 near the end of the message. This turned out to be Alfred Zimmermann, the German Foreign Secretary. At the beginning they found ‘Most Secret’ and ‘for your Excellency’s personal information’, addressed to Washington. The cable was therefore intended for Count von Bernstorff the German Ambassador in Washington. Whilst considering to put the message aside for future analysis, the word ‘Mexico’ was found.
US President Woodrow Wilson
BRITISH ADMIRALTY OFFICE - ROOM 40 During WWI, Britain had a very effective codebreaking organisation housed in Room 40 at the Admiralty. Though war had meant the code-
The Lusitania
E Y E
S P Y
I S S U E
10,
2 0 0 2
E Y E
S P Y
I S S U E
10,
2 0 0 2
41