The Zimmermann Telegram Read online

  American journalists specializing in Germany rushed into print with rave notices. They contrasted Zimmermann’s amiability with what they called the cold, haughty, Junker reserve of von Jagow (in reality no more than a disinclination to deal with people, born of a sense of inferiority that led him to leave personal diplomacy to his more extrovert Under-Secretary). They described Zimmermann as “frank, direct and jovial,” as “having the best grip on world affairs of any man in the Foreign Office,” as extremely popular with press, public, and parliament, as “reminding one strongly of a practical American politician,” as “alert, keen, lucid and widely informed,” as the first German to have adopted the American habit of talking freely to journalists, as one who met visitors rising, with a smile of welcome, who was pleasant, helpful, and hearty, who understood American temperament and who never barked the Prussian official’s favorite word, ausgeschlossen—“quite out of the question.” They all made much of his bourgeois background, they found encouragement in the fact of his consular career which must have accustomed him to deal with businessmen, they said he was “believed” to belong to the liberal group advocating the democratizing of the German government, and they were curiously comforted by the legend of his being “essentially a man of the people.”

  They might have known, but not one said so, that it takes just such a man to become the most dangerously intoxicated by the fumes of grandeur he inhales upon entering the portals of royalty. Zimmermann traveling back and forth to Pless, doors bowed open for him by heel-clicking officers, Zimmermann amid the helmets and the Highnesses, Zimmermann having interviews with the All-Highest and conferences with Ludendorff, was not the man to champion a policy falling in any degree short of the extreme of military patriotism.

  Having committed himself to the U-boat, he realized he must quickly prepare for the American belligerency that would follow. Now that the moment was in sight and his, on the civilian side, the responsibility, he no longer counted on anything so frivolous as a German-American revolt. He saw a brighter vision, conceived a greater coup, no less than a Mexican and Japanese alliance combined. For two years the polished Hintze, intimate of admirals and kings, had tried and failed to bring in the Japanese. He, Zimmermann, the outsider, would do it. He would be the first to bring Germany new allies. For years the bitterest criticism of the Junkers who staffed the foreign service had been their failure to win friends for Germany and their success in managing to lose those she had. The possibilities of triumph that Zimmermann foresaw excited him. He interpreted certain remarks of the Japanese Ambassador in Stockholm as indicating “the possibility of our coming to an understanding.” He received assurances from Eckhardt of the close connections existing between Mexico and Japan. Further prompting evoked a flowery letter from President Carranza avowing his pro-German sympathies and his desire to seek closer economic and political ties with Germany, to strengthen his Navy with German help, and to acquire more arms. A supporting message from Eckhardt said that in spite of the British threat of reprisals, Carranza would nevertheless “help our submarines and eventually provide them with a permanent base on the Mexican coast.”

  Encouraged, Zimmermann began to plan for a military alliance that would carry Mexico’s pledge to attack the United States in case of war between the United States and Germany. Casting about for the right inducement, he too remembered the Alamo; he would tempt Mexico with her own lost territory. He did not for a moment believe Mexico could win back Texas and the other states, but he did believe that Carranza would find the lure irresistible. He thought that Mexico, given the prospect of recovering her former frontiers, would do everything possible to gain Japan’s assistance, and he was sure that once Mexico was bagged as an invasion base Japan would jump to the opportunity offered her.

  One small but potentially serious difficulty bothered him. How to negotiate a project of such delicacy in the necessary secrecy? Most unfortunately the Mexican Minister to Berlin was absent in Switzerland, so negotiations had to be carried on through Eckhardt across the Atlantic. To assure extra secrecy of communications Zimmermann decided to make use of a certain channel made available to Bernstorff for the express purpose of furthering his transmission of Wilson’s peace proposals. Using this channel, to be sure, entailed the regrettable necessity of violating a pledged word, but this was no time for scruples. “Neither duplicity nor secrecy is in Secretary Zimmermann’s lexicon of diplomacy,” had gushed an American commentator, and the same verdict may be found in Prince von Bülow’s opinion that Zimmermann “knew nothing of the art of diplomacy,” meaning, one may infer, that he was too clumsily honest to deceive. That underestimated Zimmermann. He could practice deceit as well as Bülow himself, but in this case he would have been happier and history different had he not tried.

  Eight

  The Trap

  “THE SITUATION IS DEVELOPING VERY FAST,” wrote Wilson to Colonel House at the beginning of November. Unless he could bring about peace soon, he feared, “we must inevitably drift into war with Germany on the submarine issue.”

  Ambassador Bernstorff too could hear the hurrying of time’s chariot at his country’s back. From America he could see more clearly what would be the consequences of unleashing the submarine than could his superiors who were making the decision in Berlin. Temperament helped him. Having escaped, through birth and education abroad, the usual Prussian affliction of arrogance and delusions of grandeur, he did not believe Germany could crush the Allies by draconian use of the U-boat. The man who after the war devoted all his zeal to the League of Nations, who upon the advent of Hitler left Germany never to return, was wrestling now with his government for the fate of Germany. A year before, in the crisis over the sinking of the Arabic, he had, by exceeding his instructions and earning a reprimand, soothed America away from severing relations. Now that a new fleet of U-boats was ready and the U-boat warriors in Berlin drumming for action, Bernstorff was again straining to swerve Germany from the path he believed certain to lead to defeat. He had become convinced that the only way to stop the militarists was to stop the war itself first.

  That was exactly the ambition of President Wilson, who had as great a reason for urgency as Bernstorff. War stifles reform and, if the United States was sucked in, all plans for the New Freedom would be thwarted. He was lured, too, by a vision of the New World, through himself, bringing to the Old the gift of peace and a league of nations to enforce peace, an old idea newly in vogue, which Wilson now embraced as his own. If he could stop the war he could save his own program and save Europe from itself. Ever since the war began he had been trying by exhortation and hints of pressure to persuade the belligerents to declare their peace terms, without a sign of success. At the end of 1916 two undertows sucking America toward war—economic involvement with the Allies and the submarine controversy with the Germans—were exerting such pull as to be almost impossible to resist. Wilson was bent on resisting; no man ever lived who was less willing to be the victim of events. He had made up his mind that if the November election confirmed him in office he would focus all his influence upon one last effort to substitute settlement for slaughter. He sensed, as Bernstorff knew, that little time, little room to maneuver was left.

  Bernstorff pleaded with his government to postpone the decision of the U-boats until after the election and allow Wilson a chance to make his peace appeal. Germany’s rulers were at this moment willing to allow Wilson to call off the war for them. They had known for some time that they could not win a decision on land and were ready to call quits if they could quit in possession of the spoils. They now bestrode Europe from the English Channel to the frontiers of Russia and from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. They occupied Poland, Rumania, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and industrial France as far as Reims. Their allied empires were still intact. Austria-Hungary held the Balkans from Italy to Greece; Turkey was still sovereign from Baghdad to Jerusalem. Germany’s idea of peace, according to a draft treaty circulating in the Reichstag at this time, was one that would
partition Russia, annex three-quarters of Belgium, and “incorporate into Germany the French Coast from Dunkirk to Boulogne.” And this modest document was drawn up by the Progressive People’s Party! What the Germans wanted Wilson to do was not to make peace as he understood it, but to make the Allies stop fighting and seal the status quo plus a little extra. Unless Mr. Wilson could perform this service for them, the military were set to throw everything into a smashing decisive assault upon victory by U-boat.

  But Germany was not united. Bethmann-Hollweg, Jagow, and others in the civil government desperately wished Wilson to stop the war before the military took to the U-boats. They believed Germany could never get a better peace than at this moment. They saw America looming on the brink. They saw the U-boat as a weapon of suicide. Yet the clamor for it was rising as from a lynch mob assembled beneath the Chancellor’s windows. In the mob were the military leaders, the court, the Junkers, the Right-wing parties, and a majority of the public, which had been carefully educated to pin its faith on the submarine as the one weapon to break the food blockade and vanquish England. The Chancellor trembled as he listened to their clamor. The issue was being fought out daily in secret sessions of the Reichstag. The Admiralty was preparing in feverish haste. All summer Bernstorff had been exhorting the Chancellor to stand fast until after the American election. Beleaguered Bethmann feared he could not wait that long. Unless Wilson acted quickly, he cried out to Bernstorff in September, the military would begin the U-boat war in “dead earnest.” A week later Jagow asked Ambassador Gerard to go home and personally urge Wilson to hurry.

  Gerard reached America on October 10 and was followed by a blustering memorandum, said to have been written by the Kaiser himself, which in effect told Wilson to make peace or else.

  With his curious distaste for hearing first-hand reports, Wilson refused even to see Gerard for ten days. When he did, under Lansing’s urging, he made no mention of the peace proposal but merely instructed his ambassador to be friendly and “jolly the Germans” and convince them of the wrongfulness of firing on armed merchant ships without warning. When Gerard said he would try, the President banged his fist on the desk and said, “I don’t want you merely to support my view; I want you to agree with it.”

  The fact was that he did not think highly of Gerard and habitually treated his ambassadors as if they were office boys who were asked merely to transmit his views without being informed of the policies behind them. And he did not wish to be hurried on the peace proposal; he felt he could not make a move of such importance in the midst of a political campaign and, if he won, could speak with more effect after the election.

  The initiative almost passed from him when for two days the election teetered upon the returns from California, then fell at last in Wilson’s lap. Even then he hesitated. He did not know how near Bethmann’s hourglass was to running out. On November 7 Joseph C. Grew, left in charge of the Berlin embassy, wired that an unknown number of submarines had suddenly left Kiel with fuel and stores sufficient for three months at sea. It was a portent, but still Wilson hesitated. On November 22, Grew was summoned to see the Chancellor, who seemed to him to be trying to ask America to act. Bethmann gave an impression of great weariness and discouragement. “He seemed like a man broken in spirit, his face deeply furrowed, his manner sad beyond words.” He had cause, for November 22 was the day of Jagow’s dismissal and replacement by Zimmermann, a further portent of danger to America, if anyone had had the wit to read it. Instead it was interpreted as “liberalization,” and Wilson allowed himself more time. Bernstorff tried to press for action. Wilson sent him a message saying he intended to move for peace “at the first opportunity.” Peace, replied the German Ambassador, was “on the floor waiting to be picked up.” That was wishful thinking and had as little effect on Wilson as any other form of persuasion.

  The truth was that Wilson was afraid to make the test. Anxious not to fail, he was waiting for some sign of encouragement from the Allies. None was forthcoming. On the contrary only signs of hardening intransigence. Lloyd George had already told the world in September that Britain would not “tolerate” intervention by neutrals but would fight till she could deliver the “knockout blow” that would break Prussian military despotism beyond repair. Aristide Briand had denounced the very idea of a negotiated peace as an “outrage” upon the memory of the fallen heroes of France. That was before the election. Now, from his pontificate on Fleet Street, Lord Northcliffe issued a bull proclaiming that “the suggestion that Great Britain should consider peace can only be regarded as hostile. … There will be no peace discussion while Germany occupies any portion of Allied territory.”

  In fact the Allies’ position was too poor to negotiate. Their Western Front strategy was bankrupt. Into the Moloch of the Somme they had poured thousands upon thousands of lives while for three months under the autumn rains, forgotten in the planning, General Douglas Haig shouted, “Attack!” to men mired in the mud and shattered by exploding shells. By the end of November the offensive was over, for a total gain in depth of seven miles and a total casualty list, on both sides, of one million. In January 1916, final failure of the Dardanelles expedition had been sealed; in December the Allies’ new recruit, Rumania, had surrendered; the Czarist regime was beginning to split at the seams and whispers of Russian readiness for a separate peace to seep through. On December 5 the dispirited Asquith government gave way to one headed by the militant Lloyd George, who would as soon negotiate as capitulate.

  The facts would have forced themselves upon anyone but Wilson, but the armor of fixed purpose he wore was impenetrable. He chose two main principles—neutrality for America, negotiated peace for Europe—as the fixed points of his policy and would allow no realities to interfere with them. He no longer read the long, informative letters which Ambassador Page wrote him week after week from London, the nerve center of the war, because he considered Page hopelessly pro-Ally. Although no two men in any one period of history were more unlike, Wilson shared one characteristic with the Kaiser—he would not listen to opinions he did not welcome. Wilhelm was afraid of them, but Wilson considered opinions which opposed his as simply a waste of time. Intent upon saving Europe, he ignored the mood of the Europeans. Just as he was determined to confer democracy upon Mexicans, ready or not, he was determined to confer peace upon Europeans, willing or not. He had no idea how like condescension his attitude appeared to them. He listened to himself rather than to them. He seemed unaware that two and a half years of fighting a war that was taking the best lives of nations had welded the combatants into a frame of mind in which compromise was impossible. He refused to recognize that each side by now wanted tangible gains to show that the pain and cost had been worth while, and each had aims—Alsace-Lorraine was only one, but it would have been enough—that were permanently irreconcilable.

  Wilson could see only expanding violence. Turks were killing Armenians with a savagery that, if the facts were told, reported the American Ambassador, “would make men and women weep.” Poland, trampled beneath the tremendous clash of armies, was a wasteland of wandering skeletons with snow falling and not a head of livestock or a stick of firewood left. Belgians were being shipped like cattle into Germany for slave labor. The belligerents after the Battle of the Somme were as helpless in the war’s vortex as ever and as powerless to find a way out. Wilson saw the world caught in a berserk carnage endlessly continuing unless stopped by a disinterested outsider—himself. The question of rights and wrongs he would not look at or professed, at this time, not to see. He recognized that a triumph of German militarism “would change the course of civilization and make the United States a military nation,” but he believed that the way to prevent this disaster was not to join the Allies but to stop the war. He felt obliged to be, or at least to act, impartial if he was to have any chance of getting both sides to listen to him. He was convinced that only a negotiated peace could endure, that a dictated peace forced upon the loser “would be accepted in humiliation, under du
ress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which the terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.”

  “Only a peace between equals can last,” a “peace without victory”—this was the wisdom that made him great, but it was a long-distance wisdom that ignored realities underfoot. The combatants were in no mood for it. Shivering in trenches in blood and mud and stench, they resented advice from a man in a far-off white mansion who said he was “too proud to fight.” Wilson thought he saw the better path, but Europe would not take it. Had all the world been a school and Wilson its principal, he would have been the greatest statesman in history. But the world’s governments and peoples were not children obliged to obey him. The world was a little group of willful men who would not and could not be made to behave as Wilson told them they ought to. He was a seer whose achievements never equaled his aims. In the few years left to him he was to become the symbol of the world’s hope and of its failure. He was one of those few who formulate the goals for mankind, but he was in the impossible position of trying to function as seer and executive at the same time. He held political office and would not acknowledge that politics is the art of the possible. He obeyed the injunction that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp; it was his tragedy that he reached too high.