page_title: Zimmermann Telegram
section_title: American response
hierarchical_section_title: Zimmermann Telegram / American response
caption_attribution_description: "Exploding in his hands" - a political cartoon about the Zimmerman Telegram
context_page_description: The Zimmermann Telegram was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. If the United States entered World War I against Germany, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence.
  Revelation of the contents enraged Americans, especially after German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted on March 3 that the telegram was genuine, helping to generate support for the United States' declaration of war on Germany in April. The decryption was described as the most significant intelligence triumph for Britain during World War I, and one of the earliest occasions on which a piece of signal intelligence influenced world events.
context_section_description: Many Americans at the time held anti-Mexican as well as anti-German views, and in Mexico there was a considerable amount of anti-American sentiment in return (thanks in no small part to the American occupation of Veracruz). General John J. Pershing had long been chasing the revolutionary Pancho Villa for raiding into US territory and carried out several cross-border expeditions. News of the telegram further inflamed tensions between the United States and Mexico.
  However, many Americans, particularly German and Irish Americans wished to avoid the conflict in Europe. Since the public had been told falsely that the telegram had been stolen in a decoded form in Mexico, the message was widely believed at first to be an elaborate forgery created by British intelligence. That belief, which was not restricted to pacifist and pro-German lobbies, was promoted by German and Mexican diplomats alongside some American newspapers, especially the Hearst press empire. That presented the Wilson administration with a dilemma. With the evidence the United States had been provided confidentially by the British, Wilson realized the message was genuine—but he could not make the evidence public without compromising the British codebreaking operation. 
  Any doubts as to the authenticity of the telegram were removed by Zimmermann himself. At a press conference on 3 March 1917, he told an American journalist, "I cannot deny it. It is true." Then, on 29 March 1917, Zimmermann gave a speech in the Reichstag in which he admitted the telegram was genuine. Zimmermann hoped that Americans would understand that the idea was that Germany would only fund Mexico's war with the United States in the prior event of American entry into World War I.
  On 1 February 1917, Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships in the Atlantic bearing the American flag, both passenger and merchant ships.  Two ships were sunk in February, and most American shipping companies held their ships in port. Besides the highly provocative war proposal to Mexico, the telegram also mentioned "ruthless employment of our submarines". Public opinion demanded action. Wilson had previously refused to assign US Navy crews and guns to the merchant ships. However, once the Zimmermann note was public, Wilson called for arming the merchant ships, but anti-war elements in the United States Senate blocked his proposal.
  On 6 April 1917, Congress voted to declare war on Germany; Wilson had asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy".
  Woodrow Wilson considered another military invasion of Veracruz and Tampico in 1917–1918, so as to pacify the Tehuantepec Isthmus and Tampico oil fields and ensure their continued production during the civil war, but this time the relatively new Mexican President Venustiano Carranza threatened to destroy the oil fields in the event that the Marines landed there.
caption: "Exploding in his Hands"
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