The Zimmermann Telegram

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  On January 12 the Allies’ answer to Wilson’s peace offer came through, rejecting firmly any possibility of compromising with the enemy. They stated their aims and reaffirmed their immovable purpose to accept nothing less, and to fight on until they won unconditional victory. There was not a line or a sentence that could possibly be construed as leaving a loophole for negotiation. Upon Wilson their refusal to allow him to intervene had no more effect than a human sigh might have upon Olympus. He simply ignored it. What process of thought he followed that allowed him to do so was his own secret. Perhaps he felt he had no alternative but to go on trying. He kept the Bernstorff talks going, but after this Lansing, on being presented with an unusually long message, refused once more, demanding to know whether there was now any reason for its going through. Assistant Secretary William Phillips, whose uncomfortable office it was to be go-between, telephoned House to ask what to do and was informed with some asperity that the German government was talking to the President “unofficially through me” with the President’s approval. Certainly the message must go through, House said, and he might have added the Roman judge’s words, “though the heavens fall,” for they were about to.

  Still for a few days more the President stubbornly and Bernstorff despairingly pursued the goal of a peace parley. The messages kept going and coming, Lansing kept balking, Phillips kept telephoning House. Addicted to his wire-pulling and to the sense of power it gave him, House was far more concerned with keeping open the private wire he had so cleverly strung than with achieving the object for which it was intended. Deep down he had little sympathy with Wilson’s peace effort, yet, perhaps from a habit of telling the President what he wanted to hear, he went on saying that “if we can tie up Germany in a conference so that she cannot resume her unbridled submarine warfare it will be a great point gained.” When he wrote this it was already too late, but House was happily ignorant of what was going on in Germany. He was too absorbed in the game of playing the Germans along to suspect that they might be playing him, too occupied in oiling the machinery to question whether the Germans’ use of it might have some purpose other than peace.

  It was not he but Lansing who at last succeeded in inserting some cautionary doubts in the President’s mind. Annoyed by one more call from Phillips saying that Lansing had again refused to forward a long Bernstorff telegram, House suggested that Lansing see the President personally and get the matter settled once and for all. Lansing immediately went to the White House, and his deep distrust must have been persuasive, for the next day, January 24, Wilson warned House by letter that if the State Department continued to forward Bernstorff’s messages, “we should know that he is working in this cause [peace] and should in each instance receive his official assurance that there is nothing in his dispatches which it would be unneutral for us to transmit.”

  By the time the President came to have these doubts they were focused on the wrong person. Neither he nor anyone else seems to have asked at any time for assurances that the incoming telegrams to Bernstorff should also be confined to the subject of peace. Wilson presupposed honest intentions on the part of the German Foreign Office. With the barometer needle quivering close to war, that was incautious. But Wilson was his own barometer. “There will be no war,” he told House early in January. “This country does not intend to become involved in war. It would be a crime against civilization for us to go into it.” No country would then be left, he meant, with enough influence to make peace.

  Nine

  The Telegram Is Sent

  ON JANUARY 9, 1917, at the castle of Pless on the edge of Poland, where Supreme Headquarters was maintained in three hundred rooms served by liveried footmen, a momentous meeting was called—not to reach a decision but to seal one already made. A month earlier the Supreme High Command had reached their own decision to use the U-boat even if it brought America in against them. They calculated on the U-boat’s bringing victory within six months and on the impossibility of America’s recruiting, organizing, training, and transporting an army within that time. Secretary of the Navy Admiral Edvard von Capelle had flatly stated their article of faith: “From the military point of view, the assistance which will result from the entrance of the United States into the war will amount to nothing.” That the moral effect of America’s entrance would encourage the Allies to hold out long enough to upset the German time table was a possibility which everyone was conscious of but no one mentioned.

  Field Marshal von Hindenburg, despite a vague uneasiness stirring the heavy processes of his mind, had allowed himself to be persuaded by his demonic colleague, General Ludendorff. Together they persuaded the Kaiser, who, whatever his own doubts, had not the courage to appear less resolute than his commanders. All that remained was to bring round the Imperial Chancellor, who was at that moment on his way to Pless. Lugubriously the general, the field marshal, and Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, Chief of Naval General Staff, waited for him and discussed the prospects while a staff colonel sat recording in a corner.

  Holtzendorff: The Chancellor arrives here tomorrow.

  Hindenburg: What’s troubling him now?

  Holtzendorff: He wants to control the diplomatic presentation of the announcement in order to keep the United States out of it. … The Foreign Office is worried about what South America will do and our relations with them when the war is over.

  Hindenburg: We must conquer first. …

  Holtzendorff: Later today I will read my memorandum to His Majesty, who even this morning had no real understanding of the situation.

  Hindenburg: That is true.

  Holtzendorff: What shall we do if the Chancellor does not join us?

  Hindenburg: That is just what is bothering me.

  Holtzendorff: Then you must become Chancellor.

  Hindenburg: No, no. I cannot do that. I won’t do it. I cannot talk in the Reichstag. I refuse.

  Ludendorff: I would not try to persuade the Field Marshal …

  Hindenburg: Well, we shall hold together anyway. We have to. We are counting on the probability of war with the United States and we have made all preparations to meet it. Things cannot be worse than they are now. The war must be brought to an end by whatever means as soon as possible.

  Holtzendorff: His Majesty doesn’t understand the situation.

  Ludendorff: Absolutely not.

  Holtzendorff: People and Army are crying for the unrestricted U-boat war.

  Ludendorff: Quite so.

  Holtzendorff: Secretary of State Helfferich said to me, “Your plan will lead to ruin.” I said to him, “You are letting us drift into ruin.”

  Hindenburg: That is true.

  In this sparkling mood they reassembled next day in the presence of His Majesty, attended by the triumvirate known as the Hydra’s Head—Ernst von Valentini, Baron Moriz von Lyncker, and Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, chiefs of civil, military, and naval cabinets respectively—whose duty was to keep the Supreme War Lord in good humor. On this day they had not been notably successful; His Majesty was pale, irritable, and excited. Admiral von Müller himself looked “melancholy as an owl”; Valentini, who was to be rapporteur, far from cheerful.

  Driving up the long avenue between leafless trees to the white castle of Pless, Bethmann-Hollweg, huddled in his cloak, smoked cigarette after cigarette. The famous lawns, laid out to rival the best in England, were patched with snow; the sky was leaden. He entered the gigantic reception hall hung with boars’ heads embedded in red damask, wearily climbed the marble staircase, and was shown into the conference room, formerly the state dining room, where once the Kaiser, unburdening his feelings to Princess Daisy, had wept into his cigar.

  Admiral von Holtzendorff took the floor and proved beyond dispute that in unrestricted warfare, “in the course of which every enemy and neutral ship found in the war zone is to be sunk without warning,” his U-boats could sink six hundred thousand tons a month and force England to capitulate before the next harvest. It was all there on the table b
efore him in the massive two-hundred-page memorandum drawn up by the Admiralty, complete with charts of tonnage entering and clearing British ports; tables showing freight rates, cargo space, rationing systems; comparisons with last year’s harvest; statistics on everything from the price of cheese and the calorie content of the British breakfast down to the yardage of imported wool in ladies’ skirts. With mathematical precision the German Admiralty had worked out the month, almost the day, when England would be forced to give in. It had designated February 1 as the day when the U-boat war was to start.

  “If we fail to make use of this opportunity, which, as far as can be foreseen, is our last,” concluded the admiral, “I can see no way to end the war so as to guarantee our future as a world power. On its part I guarantee that the U-boat will lead to victory.” He looked around him. “I shall need three weeks’ notice,” he said and sat down. February 1 was precisely three weeks off.

  Bethmann pulled himself to his feet and spoke for an hour, the ghastly spectacle of a man knuckling under to ruin and knowing it. He repeated what he had been saying for the past year: that the United States’ entrance into the war would give Germany’s enemies new and enormous moral support and unlimited financial resources, revive their confidence in victory, and strengthen their will to endure. He cited the opinions of all the German envoys who knew the United States at first hand—Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, Counselor Haniel von Haimhausen, Major von Papen—who were unanimous and emphatic in declaring that American belligerency would be Germany’s defeat and that none of the arguments used at home to minimize it were valid; the German-Americans would not rise, ships and troops would get across, a united country would back the war. He reiterated the conviction in which he now stood alone, that Mr. Wilson’s offer to bring about a settlement was genuine and should be pursued to its last shred before making a choice that cut off all chance for peace and, if it failed to bring victory, would bring certain defeat.

  He paused. He knew the choice had been made. The Kaiser, who hated to listen to anyone for more than ten minutes consecutively, was making grunts of impatience and grimaces of disapproval. The moment of Bethmann’s Gethsemane was at hand. He could either bow to a course he believed fatally wrong or he could stand by his convictions and resign. Slowly and painfully he stumbled toward his choice. Yes, it was true the last harvest had been bad for the Allies. True, the increased number of U-boats now on hand offered a better chance of success than when he had opposed their use last summer. On the whole, perhaps, the prospects were favorable. Of course, it must be admitted that the prospects were not capable of proof. Certainly the situation was better than it was in September. … But we must be perfectly certain. … The U-boat was the “last card.” … A very serious decision. “But if the military authorities consider the U-boat war essential I am not in a position to contradict them.” On the other hand, America …

  Admiral von Holtzendorff jumped up. “I guarantee on my word as a naval officer that no American will set foot on the Continent!” The Field Marshal rose too. “We can take care of America,” he said. “The opportunity for the U-boat war will never be as favorable again.” The three commanders, the three secretaries, and the Kaiser looked at the Chancellor. The Chancellor looked out the French window to the frozen pond in the park below. In a familiar nervous gesture he rubbed a hand over his clipped gray hair and summoned his voice.

  “Of course,” he said, “if success beckons, we must follow.”

  The meeting was over. The Kaiser affixed his signature to the document already drawn up and ready: “I order that unrestricted submarine warfare be launched with the utmost vigor on the first of February. … Wilhelm I R.” Followed by the High Command, he marched out to lunch. A moment later Hugo von Reischach, a court functionary who had served the Kaiser’s father and grandfather before him, entered the room and found Bethmann slumped in a gilt chair looking utterly broken. Shocked, he asked, “What’s the matter? Have we lost a battle?”

  “No,” answered Bethmann, “but finis Germaniae. That’s the decision.” He told what had taken place. Von Reischach said simply, “You should resign.” Bethmann shook his head. He could not resign in Germany’s crucial hour, he said, for that would sow dissension at home and let the world know he believed Germany would fail. In the nakedness of lost dignity he wrapped himself in the cloak of duty. An officer must carry out a superior’s command, even against his own judgment, he said, and as Chancellor he could do no less. From that moment von Reischach ceased to believe in victory. Von Valentini, who was present, went upstairs and wrote Bethmann’s finis Germaniae in his diary. Bethmann went back to Berlin to face the final humiliation of carrying the decision through the Reichstag, to which he was responsible for the political conduct of the war. Vice-Chancellor Karl Helfferich, when he heard that the “last card” had been played at Pless, commented, “If it is not trumps, Germany is lost for centuries.” He too struggled with his conscience and emerged no less loyal to office than Bethmann. With admirable Teutonic subservience to military dictate, no one in the civil government resigned.

  For Zimmermann the three weeks of notice were busy ones. Announcement of the U-boat war was not to be made to the neutrals until the evening of January 31, the last moment before the torpedoes would be let loose. Meanwhile, to keep the Americans from suspecting what was in store, he had to keep them talking peace while at the same time taking his own measures to prepare for America’s entrance. He had been called down to Pless himself ten days earlier to confer on these measures with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, with whom he got on very well. As the expert on America, he had supplied them with comforting reasons why America could be discounted. He no longer talked so much about an uprising of German-Americans, for he had a new hobby that offered more exhilarating prospects of trouble—Mexico and Japan. He had worked up this hobby into a system of logic that was unassailable. Except for the Eastern seaboard, he argued, the United States was against war. Wilson did not want war, he had been re-elected on an anti-war platform, and he owed his election to the Western states. He could not declare war without the approval of Congress, where, according to Zimmermann, the Western and Middle Western states held a majority. The Western states, he declared, “will not wage war against us because of Japan.” Zimmermann had been talking up the Yellow Peril to the Americans for so long he had convinced himself. He had gone out of his way to impress this peril and the need “for solidarity of the white race against the yellow” upon Gerard, and he believed, as he told the Riechstag, that in this matter he “knew just the right tone to adopt with the American Ambassador to make him respond.”

  Since then he had given much thought to the possibility of enticing Mexico and Japan to attack the United States. He was sure that America could never become importantly active in Europe if her existing entanglement in Mexico were swollen into full-scale war and if her fear of Japan’s attacking from behind were given new reason for urgency. He intended to see to it that both these things happened. He proposed his plan of an alliance to his government colleagues and to the Supreme Command at Pless. He felt sure, he told them, that Mexico, given the prospect of recovering her lost territory, would do everything possible to get help and would persuade Japan to join. He argued that Japan, having seized all the loose pieces currently available in the Far East, would be looking for further loot. He was very convincing, and he was told to go ahead.

  While working out the terms to be offered Mexico, he was also busy trying to keep Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, as well as America, from the knowledge that the U-boat decision had been taken. Gasping for peace, Austria was even more frightened of the U-boat than Bethmann and dispatched a special emissary to Berlin to plead against it. Zimmermann told this gentleman that the matter was still under discussion (although it had already been decided six days earlier) and not to worry because America was not likely to go further than severing relations. She was unprepared for war, too entangled in Mexico, and too fearful of Japan. Japan would certainly jump
upon her if she entered the war, and in any event America would not be ready to fight for six or eight months and by that time England would be beaten. Later he told the Austrians that information he was receiving convinced him more and more that “America would very probably not allow it to come to a breach with the Central Powers.”

  While juggling the Austrians and Mexico, he had also to keep teasing the American peace talk along, but not too fast. “We are convinced that we can win,” he telegraphed Bernstorff. “You must therefore be dilatory in stating our conditions.” These last moments called for a delicate touch, but he felt confident he could handle the simple Americans. A magnificent dinner at the Hotel Adlon was arranged by the German-American Trade Association at which Zimmermann, Vice-Chancellor Helfferich, and an impressive mustering of business, government, and military tycoons was assembled in honor of the return of Ambassador Gerard. Toasts were drunk, hours of fulsome afterdinner speeches unreeled, mutual expressions of confidence and amity exchanged. Zimmermann and Gerard, each engaged in lulling the other, outdid each other in purring.