'The Zimmerman Telegram.' Social Education 45, 4 (April 1981): 266 This text was adapted from the article 'The Zimmerman Telegram' by Mary Alexander and Marilyn Childress.Ĭitation: Alexander, Mary and Marilyn Childress. The Zimmermann Telegram had such an impact on American opinion that, according to David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, 'No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences.' It is his opinion that 'never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message. In this activity, students will analyze the Zimmermann telegram to determine if the United States should have entered World War I based on the telegram's information and implications. On April 6, 1917, the United States Congress formally declared war on Germany and its allies. The American press published news of the telegram on March 1. The Zimmermann Telegram was a message sent on January 12, 1917, from the German foreign minister Arthur Zimmerman to the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C., to be relayed to German representatives in Mexico. Government in an effort to capitalize on growing anti-German sentiment in the United States. The telegram was considered perhaps Britains greatest. Several weeks later, on February 24, the British presented the Zimmermann telegram to the U.S. The Zimmermann Telegram galvanized American public opinion against Germany once and for all. In response to the breaking of the Sussex pledge, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany. In frustration over the effective British naval blockade, Germany broke its pledge to limit submarine warfare on February 1, 1917. By March 1, its scandalous contents were. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson was reelected President for a second term, largely because of the slogan 'He kept us out of war.'Įvents in early 1917 would change that hope. The British cryptographic office known as Room 40 decoded the Zimmermann Telegram and handed it over to the United States in late-February 1917. While armies moved across the face of Europe, the United States remained neutral.

In this Decoding a Messageexercise, students decode a fictitious message using a simple substitution code.īetween 1914 and the spring of 1917, the European nations engaged in a conflict that became known as World War I.

Zimmerman telegram