YOuNg WiNo said:
the german government wanted the mexican army to invade america during ww1 and ww2. the standing mexican government during revoultion in the early 1900s government had german weapons.
SMARTY :cheeky:
ya, the note was sent by Zimmerman right???
http://www.disappearing-inc.com/Z/zimmermantelegram.html
Cyclopedia Cryptologia
Cyclopedia Cryptologia copyright 2001-2003 by Ray Dillinger
The Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmerman Telegram was a message from the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman, to the German Embassy in Mexico City, sent in January of 1917. It stated, briefly, German intentions to begin unrestricted submarine warfare against England while trying to keep the United States neutral, and proposed an alliance of Germany and Mexico against the United States if the US should be drawn into the war. It offered, among other things, generous financial support and the territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. California, evidently, was to be given to the Japanese, who were also being called upon to ally with Germany. The Mexican government was asked to mediate with the Japanese on behalf of Germany.
The Zimmerman telegram, in one of Germany's best codes, was intercepted in England and decrypted. Oddly, the Germans had worked out an agreement with the Americans that enabled them to use American diplomatic channels to send their messages, in their own code, to their operatives in Mexico. Thus, the message would be sent to Washington, then forwarded on to Mexico City.
The English, after deciphering the message, realized that this would be sufficient provocation to get the United States into the war, but did not want to reveal their capabilities to intercept and decrypt Germany's new diplomatic code, or their knowledge of the American diplomatic channel for German messages. If they had publicly made the accusation, German diplomatic codes would have been changed, the Americans would have known that their diplomatic correspondence was being monitored, and the English would have lost two very important sources of intelligence.
It being only shortly after Pershing's expedition into Mexico, anti-american sentiment was high among the mexicans. In Europe, World War I was dragging into its third year and in America, Wilson had just been reelected on the slogan "He kept us out of war". The Lusitania, an American civilian ship carrying many noncombatants and civilian passengers, but also military supplies bound for England, had been sunk a few months before.
The primary hope of the English was that the Americans were allowing the Germans to use American Diplomatic channels but were also, like themselves, able to decipher the German codes. In this event, the English would need to do nothing except wait for the Americans to notice the message and enter the war. However, if that turned out not to be the case, then what should they do?
The Englishmen hit upon a plan, which was to make it look as though the Americans had intercepted the telegram as it traversed further communications links in North America and Mexico. The message had to be forwarded from the American embassy to the German embassy in Washington, and from the German embassy in Washington to the German embassy in Mexico City. England and America owned the transatlantic cables at the time, so since the English had cut off german access to them, this type of circuitous route had become necessary.
If the English could could procure a copy of the message as it appeared on one of the other legs of its journey -- with the different date, serial number, etc, so that the Germans would know a point of interception other than London, then the message could be delivered to the Americans without compromising England's intelligence.
The English managed to actually do this; one of their agents actually walked in and took a copy of the message directly from the western Union office where it was sent -- a truly remarkable feat of timing and subterfuge. The English still did not reveal the message, thinking that the US would be drawn into the war anyway as the German blockade of England and France caused it to lose valuable international markets.
However, finally the message was disclosed to the Americans on February 17 1917, at the American embassy in London. Once the Americans were convinced of its genuine nature, they spent several hours working out how best to explain its existence, interception, and decipherment. Eventually they told the US government the half-truth that an English spy operating in Mexico had intercepted the message and sent it back to London, where it was decrypted. The code used by the Germans in Mexico was a more obsolete code, one which the Germans already knew the English could decrypt. Thus even if the Germans discovered this cover story, it wouln't reveal English capabilities that the Germans didn't already know about. To the general public, however, no information was given except a statement that the US Government had solid evidence that the telegram was genuine.
However, Germany, Japan, and Mexico were all steadfast in denying it. Rumors and doubt abounded. Eventually Arthur Zimmerman, the German Foreign Minister who had sent the message in the first place, simply acknowledged it. "I cannot deny it", he said. "It is true." American public opinion swung around wildly, in two scant months going from isolationism to entering the war on the side of the allies. On april 2, Wilson asked the US congress to enter the war.
That is why the Zimmerman telegram is one of the most famous cryptograms in existence, and why the United States entered World War I when it did, just in time to save the English from destruction.