Today in History: The Zimmerman Telegram

On this day (February 24) in 1917, Britain gave the U.S. their copy of the Zimmermann Telegram. The telegram originated in Germany and offered a military alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States, with the Germans promising the Mexicans that they would provide generous subsidies to fund Mexican war efforts and help the Mexicans recover the territory composed of the following U.S. states: Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

The release of the telegram ultimately brought the U.S. into the war by swaying American public opinion against Germany. The story of how the British got their hands on the telegram (both the ability to break the code and the copy from the German embassy in Mexico that the British handed over to the Americans) sounds like a James Bond thriller. A very readable account is Barbara Tuchman’s, The Zimmermann Telegram.