#Zimmermann telegram free#

Dugdale described the historic occasion: ‘Delight was unbounded in Whitehall and the Foreign Secretary himself was unusually excited. On the afternoon of February 23, Page called on Balfour, who presented him with the coded and uncoded versions of the telegram. Armed with this support, Hall decided that Balfour should ask Page to visit him at the Foreign Office where he would formally give him the telegram.

#Zimmermann telegram free#

Later that day, Balfour told Hardinge: ‘I think that Captain Hall may be left to clinch this problem as he knows the ropes better than anyone.’ He was giving Hall a free hand – a testament to the degree to which the Director of Naval Intelligence had gained the confidence of one of Britain’s most experienced and distinguished statesmen. She was the first and for many years the only author to imply that Room 40 had been intercepting American diplomatic traffic. Till – at last – information about the Mexican plot reached London through channels which enabled the Intelligence Service to cover up the traces of how it had first been got.’ĭugdale had been close to her uncle and her comment confirms de Grey’s account that Hall had revealed the contents of the initial telegram intercepted by Room 40 to Balfour without delay, rather than waiting several days as some commentators, including Diana Preston, have alleged. Therefore for over a month Balfour read in his despatches from Washington of the slow awakening of the American will to war, but could do nothing to hasten the process.

This was the famous telegram from Zimmermann … The method by which this information had reached the British Intelligence Service had made it impossible for some time to communicate it to the United States Government. ‘Ever since the middle of January … a piece of information had been in the possession of the British Government, which would move, if anything could, the populations behind the Atlantic seaboard States, who still read of the European War with as much attachment as if it be raging in the moon. His niece and biographer, Blanche (Baffy) Dugdale, described his reaction: Hall’s intelligence of German intrigues in Mexico and Cuba, about which he had briefed Hardinge earlier that day, persuaded him that the time had come to take the bull by the horns. Like Hall and Page, Balfour had become convinced that the US would eventually be forced into the war by German intransigence. Author David Ramsey reveals the day President Wilson learned of the telegram’s contents. The revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram, surely one of the most exciting and significant events in the history of intelligence, astutely handled by Admiral Sir Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), was the catalyst that brought America into the war in April 1917. On 24 February 1917 the American ambassador to the United Kingdom was given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledged to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declared war on the United States.