Germany's Warning - too little too late

31 January 1917 German Ambassador Heinrich von Bernstorff visits American Secretary of State Robert Lansing late on the afternoon of Wednesday 31 January and informs him of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the German Empire  8 hours before it is to start.

Peace without victory - Wilson's last try

22 January 1917 President Wilson delivers his famous "peace without victory' speech to Congress. It is his last plea to the belligerents in Europe to stop the fighting. Within 9 days events beyond Wilson's control will intensify the push of the US into the conflict in Europe.

The Zimmermann Telegram arrives in Mexico

19 January 1917 Count von Bernstorff transmits the Zimmermann telegram to von Eckhardt, the German envoy in Mexico City in the older and simpler German 13040 code. The newer code 0075 was being sent to German embassies one at a time, and von Eckhardt in Mexico City did not yet have the newer diplomatic code.

This was a break for the British because they had completely broken the 13040 code earlier in the war (the code had been in use since 1908). And since the 13040 code was older and known to the Americans, if they could intercept Bernstorff's telegram to Mexico City, the British could safely show the telegram from Bernstorff to von Eckhardt to the Americans without giving away the fact that they'd also nearly broken code 0075.

Later, in early February, this is exactly what the British did.

The British begin work on the Zimmermann Telegram

17 January 1917 The intercepted telegram sent by Alfred Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office to the German embassies in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City is delivered to the British Naval cryptographic office, Room 40.

The message itself is in two parts; the first part are instructions to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador to the United States on how to forward the message in the second part to the German Envoy in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt and also informs von Bernstorff of the German's intention to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. The second part is the Zimmermann Telegram everyone knows.

The British codebreakers in Room 40, William Montgomery and Nigel de Grey, immediately begin to decrypt the message, although because they have not completely solved the new German code, No. 0075, the decryption remains incomplete for several weeks. Code 0075, introduced in mid-1916, is a two-part code of 10,000 code groups. Despite this the British learn that its message outlines plans for an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States. According to the scheme, Germany would provide tactical support while Mexico would benefit by expanding into the American Southwest, retrieving territories that had once been part of Mexico.

The Zimmermann Telegram, Part I

I'll be writing a number of blog entries related to the 100th anniversary of the American participation in World War I. We'll start at the logical place - with the Zimmermann Telegram.

16 January 1917 The Germans send the Zimmermann Telegram from Berlin to the German Ambassador to the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff via the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. (Yes, the Americans sent the actual telegram from Berlin to Washington. How ironic.) The telegram apparently also goes via wireless from the German radio transmitter at Nauen outside of Berlin to the American receiving station at Sayville, Long Island, NY (although William Friedman and Charles Mendelsohn, in their monograph on the Zimmermann telegram dispute this),  and also via the Swedish government to South America and thence to Washington. It is intercepted via all three routes by the British. When decrypted, the telegram reads:

"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare.  We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral.  In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis:  make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.  The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.  Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace."  Signed, ZIMMERMANN.

100th Anniversary of the Kingsland Munitions Factory Fire and Explosion

Kingsland Burns (an excerpt from Codes, Ciphers and Spies by John F Dooley)

The Canadian Car and Foundry Company was based in Montreal, Canada and in early 1915 the company signed a contract with Russia for $83,000,000 to supply artillery shells for the Russian army. Because they didn’t have enough capacity at their Canadian plants for this contract and all their other war work, the company built an assembly plant in Kingsland, (now Lyndhurst) New Jersey. The Kingsland plant opened in the spring of 1916 and by early 1917 had 38 buildings on the site, all surrounded by a six-foot high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. All the employees entered and exited the plant through a single gate and searches were common. Explosives, shell casings, shell warheads, and fuses were shipped to the plant and assembled there and ultimately loaded on transports in New York harbor and shipped to Russia. By 1917 the plant could produce upwards of 3,000,000 shells per month. (Landau 1937, p. 93)

A little after 3:00PM on the afternoon of January 11, 1917 Theodore Wozniak was at his bench working on cleaning shells. He apparently spilled some gasoline and suddenly a small fire broke out. The fire spread quickly across Wozniak’s bench and leapt to adjacent benches. The men in the building ran as the fire engulfed the entire building within minutes. The fire spread to other buildings, setting off the explosives stored there in a series of titanic explosions heard in New York City and as far north as Westchester County and as far east as Long Island. The fire and explosions went on for more than four hours. According to Witcover, “The Kingsland plant itself was completely destroyed, with estimated damages of seventeen million dollars. A later inventory indicated that 275,000 loaded shells and more than a million unloaded shells, nearly half a million time fuses, 300,000 cartridge cases, and 100,000 detonators, plus huge amounts of TNT were destroyed in the fire.” (Witcover 1989, p. 193) The only saving grace was that no one was killed. All 1,400 workers managed to get through the fence and escape across a frozen marsh to safety.

Suspicion that the fire was intentionally set surfaced immediately. Several of Wozniak’s co-workers in Building 30 testified that the fire had started at his workbench. Wozniak himself admitted as much, but claimed that a spark from a rotating machine designed to hold the shell casings while they were being cleaned was the culprit. No one, however, could say whether Wozniak had deliberately started the fire, so he was never charged. Wozniak disappeared shortly after the fire and was not found again until more than a decade later when the American and German Mixed Claims Commission was looking for evidence of complicity in the fire. And it would be a decade after that, in 1939, that the German-American Mixed Claims Commission would finally decide that Hilken, Hinsch, Herrmann, and Wozniak were indeed responsible for the devastation at Kingsland. (Mixed Claims Commission 1940, pp. 308-310) The key evidence in their decision was not any documentation written before the event, but a message that Fred Herrmann sent to Paul Hilken from Mexico City in April 1917. This message was in code and written in two parts. First Herrmann wrote the text of his message on several consecutive pages of the January 1917 issue of Blue Book magazine using lemon juice as an invisible ink. The lemon juice disappears when dry and can be revealed using heat; Hilken used a hot iron to reveal the message. (Macrakis 2014, p. 25) In the message Herrmann used a numerical book cipher to hide the names of various people mentioned in the message. These numbers embedded in the cipher message were always four digit numbers and were constructed as follows. The first digit of the number was dropped. The remaining three digits were then reversed and these numbers indicated a page in the magazine. On these pages, over certain letters were tiny holes made with a pin that spelled out the name of the person or place in the message. If one holds the page up to a bright light, the pinpricks can be read and the rest of the message deciphered. The entire deciphered and translated message is:

Have seen 1755 [Eckardt] he is suspicious of me Can't convince him I come from 1915 [Marguerre] and 1794 [Nadolny] Have told him all reference 2584 [Hinsch] and I 2384 [Deutschland], 7595 [Jersey City Terminal], 3106 [Kings- land], 4526 [Savannah], and 8545 [Tonys Lab] he doubts me on account of my bum 7346 [German] Confirm to him thru your channels all OK and my mission here I have no funds 1755 [Eckardt] claims he is short of money Send by bearer US 25000. Have you heard from Willie. Have wired 2336 [Hildegarde] but no answer Be careful of her and connections. Where are 2584 [Hinsch] and 9107 [Carl Ahrendt} Tell 2584 [Hinsch] to come here I expect to go north but he can locate me thru 1755 [Eckardt] I don’t trust 9107 [Carl Ahrendt], 3994 [Kristoff], 1585 [Wolfgang] and that 4776 [Hoboken] bunch, If cornered they might get us in Dutch with authorities See that 2584 [Hinsch] brings with him all who might implicate us. tell him 7386 [Siegel] is with me. Where is 6394 [Carl Dilger] he worries me Remember past experience Has 2584 [Hinsch] seen 1315 [Wozniak] Tell him to fix that up. If you have any difficulties see 8165 [Phil Wirth Nat Arts Club] Tell 2584 [Hinsch] his plan O.K. Am in close touch with major and influential Mexicans Can obtain old 3175 [cruiser] for 50000 West Coast What will you do now with America in the War Are you coming here or going to South America Advise you drop everything and leave the States regards to 2784 [Hoppenburg] Sei nicht dum mach doch wieder bumm bumm bumm. Most important send funds Bearer will relate experiences and details Greetings (Landau 1937, p. 245)

           

The Kingsland explosion was the last big effort of the German spy network in Baltimore. Less than a month after the Kingsland explosion, on February 1, 1917, Germany would resume unrestricted submarine warfare and the United States would break diplomatic relations with Germany. Later, in March, the Zimmerman telegram would be released and the United States would declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917. The saboteurs would all disappear soon after that.

References

Landau, Captain Henry. 1937. The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of German Sabotage in America. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Macrakis, Kristie. 2014. Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to Al-Qaeda. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Mixed claims commission (United States and Germany). 1940. Opinions and Decisions in the Sabotage Claims Handed down June 15, 1939, and October 30, 1939 and Appendix. Washington D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015073384821.

Witcover, Jules. 1989. Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America - 1914 - 1917. New York, NY: Algonquin Books.

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