Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.On January 16, 1917, in a clear attempt to convince the Mexican government to help Germany in the war, Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign secretary, sent a telegram to Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington. The foreign secretary wanted to be certain that this message reached von Bernstorff, so he made arrangements for it to be carried aboard a U-boat to Sweden and from there to Washington through diplomatic channels.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.Cable messages from Europe to the United States traveled through transatlantic cables that passed deep in the English Channel. The British saw the cables as an opportunity to gain access to secret diplomatic messages sent from Berlin to its ambassador in Washington, D.C. Knowing they couldn't tap the cables the way they could tap phone lines, the British did the next best thing. The cable ship Telconia cut all five of the cables that carried communications through the channel. To make sure that the sabotage had a lasting effect, the Telconia rolled up a few of the cable ends on her drums and carried them to England. This act of sabotage was Great Britain's first offensive act of the war.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.The Russian admiralty decided that their British allies could make better use of the codebook than they could, so it was sent to London. The codebook was a bonanza for the British code breakers. Not only did it contain the columns of code "words"—groups of randomly selected numbers—on which the messages were based, but it also included a changeable key to the cipher systems used to obscure the coded messages.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.Mr. H. quickly began talking to his contacts in the city. Soon he heard of a British printer in Mexico City who had been falsely arrested for printing counterfeit money. Mr. H. intervened with the British minister, who got the frightened printer released from custody and the charges against him dropped. The printer, overjoyed to be free, told Mr. H. that he would welcome the opportunity to repay the agent for his intervention. As a matter of fact, Mr. H. told him, there was a favor the printer could do for him.
structureorderpatternarrangement
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.Arthur Zimmermann had no idea that "Blinker" Hall had read his secret message. But now that Hall had read it, what could he do with this information? On one hand, he believed that President Wilson, faced with the information in the telegram, would declare war on Germany. On the other hand, to share the telegram with Wilson would surely alert Berlin that the British had been reading their secret messages. As he walked back to his office, Hall considered ways that he could share the intelligence in the Zimmermann telegram and establish its authenticity without letting Berlin know that Room 40 had intercepted and read hundreds of their secret messages.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.But how would Hall get that telegram? That would take some doing, he admitted. Then Hall remembered Mr. H., one of his trusted operatives. It was Mr. H. who had alerted MI8 to the suspicious activities of Sweden's chargé d'affaires in Mexico City, Folke Cronholm. Sharp-eyed Mr. H. had noticed that Cronholm was making frequent visits to the telegraph office, far more visits than one would expect from a representative of the Swedish government, given the limited relationship between that government and Mexico.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.British government leaders didn't present the Zimmermann telegram to Wilson for a few weeks. Hall reminded them that outrage was growing in America over Germany's announcement late in the day of January 31 that the German navy would resume unrestricted submarine warfare. In fact, that policy provoked the U.S. government to cut diplomatic relations with Germany in February.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.As a result of the cut cables, Germany lost its most secure long-distance communications system. The Germans now had to rely on radio transmissions from their powerful wireless station at Nauen, a few miles from Berlin. Which was exactly what the British military knew they would have to do. And once the Germans began sending wireless messages, MI8, the British code breakers, began plucking them from the air. Of course, all German correspondence was sent in a complicated cipher system, so that was when the hard work began for the code breakers of MI8.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.As a result of the cut cables, Germany lost its most secure long-distance communications system. The Germans now had to rely on radio transmissions from their powerful wireless station at Nauen, a few miles from Berlin. Which was exactly what the British military knew they would have to do. And once the Germans began sending wireless messages, MI8, the British code breakers, began plucking them from the air. Of course, all German correspondence was sent in a complicated cipher system, so that was when the hard work began for the code breakers of MI8.
Did you find these answers helpful?