On January 16, 1917, a coded German dispatch was intercepted by British Naval Intelligence. Over the next weeks, cryptographers in the innocuous sounding Room 40 began deciphering the message. What they found was shocking. Germany was proposing to bankroll Mexico in a war that would serve two purposes: 1. Keep the U.S. from aiding the Allies, 2. Allow Mexico to recover its lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The message also asked Mexico to lure Japan, one of the Allied nations in World War I, into the alliance. Desperate to add the fresh strength of neutral America to their cause, the British shared the telegram with the U.S. Government. The public release of the Zimmerman Telegram convinced many Americans that neutrality had failed. Few wanted war, but as Barbara Tuchman concluded in her study of the affair, the Zimmerman Telegram “killed the American illusion that we could go about our business happily separate from other nations.”

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