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03 April 2016

The Zimmermann telegram

A fascinating programme from C-Span about  the famous Zimmermann telegram, sent by the German Foreign Office to Mexico in early 1917, offering them parts of the United States which had been surrendered after the Mexican War of 1846 if they would attack America in the event that the United States joined the war on the Allied side. The British decoded the message and used it very subtly to try to influence American public opinion about the war.

There is an interesting Russian angle about the German attempts to attack (in an early form of a-symmetric warfare) the Allies by raising colonial people against their imperial masters. The Irish uprising in 1916 was one example, but there were others. The Russian revolution of 1917 was the only one which succeeded (the British succeeded with the Arab revolt against the Ottomans in Palestine too). 


http://www.c-span.org/video/?308861-1/zimmermann-telegram

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