The message came in the form of a coded telegram dispatched by Arthur Zimmermann, the Staatssekretär (a top-level civil servant, second only to their respective minister) in the Foreign Office of the German Empire on January 17, 1917. The decryption has been described as the most significant intelligence triumph for Britain during World War I and it marked one of the earliest occasions on which a piece of signal intelligence influenced world events. It helped to generate support for the American declaration of war on Germany in April 1917. Revelation of the contents enraged Americans, especially after German State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted on March 3 that the telegram was genuine. The telegram was intercepted by British intelligence. With Germany's aid, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmermann Cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between the German Empire and Mexico if the United States entered World War I against Germany.
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