The Balfour Declaration and the Zimmermann Note

By John Cornelius

In trying to unravel the puzzle of why Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, perhaps the first need is to establish that a puzzle really exists. It has been suggested that it can all be explained by money, but I find this hard to accept. At least two statements lead one to believe that the true reason for the issuance of the Balfour Declaration remains hidden. The first is a statement to Parliament in 1922 by Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, that it should not be thought that, in the Balfour Declaration, Britain gave something to the Jews for which she received nothing in return. The second is Fromkin’s statement that, in his memoirs, written in the 1930s, Lloyd George says that he issued the Balfour Declaration in gratitude for Weizmann’s contributions in wartime acetone production. Fromkin calls this fiction. Usually when people tell lies, it is for the purpose of concealing the truth.

A possibility that should be considered is that Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in exchange, not for something she hoped would happen in the future, but for something that had already happened in the past. If we look back a few months before the time of the Balfour Declaration we find an event of extreme value to Britain—America’s entry into the war. What I suggest is that the Balfour Declaration was a reward to the Zionists for their part in having brought the United States into the First World War at Britain’s side.

To test this hypothesis we must ask what actually did bring the U.S. into the war. Long-term anti-German propaganda by the British certainly helped to set the stage. But there is little doubt that the actual trigger was the publication of the so-called Zimmermann Note or Zimmermann Telegram. This was a message sent on Jan. l6, 1917, by the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, via the German ambassador in Washington, to the German minister in Mexico City. It stated that Germany planned to begin unrestricted submarine warfare (meaning not restricted to British ships though still restricted to a war zone around the British Isles) on Feb. 1, that Germany would attempt to keep America neutral, but that should that attempt fail and war become inevitable, the German minister should propose a formal German-Mexican alliance to the Mexican president. One of the aims of the alliance would be the restoration of Mexican sovereignty over Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

The mere fact that the Zimmermann Note was sent had no effect whatever on America’s going to war. At no time did the German government want war with America, and the Zimmermann Note represented no change. It only represented contingency planning. Had it remained secret, and had America remained neutral, it would never have come into play.

What did have a dramatic effect was that the note was made public. Let us see how this came about.

Accepted history is that the Zimmermann Note was sent encrypted on Jan. 16, 1917, intercepted by the British and subsequently decoded. In late February the text was given to the U.S. Embassy in London. It was transmitted to Washington and was released to the press on March 1. An uproar followed in the press and in Congress, leading to a declaration of war against Germany on April 6, l9l7.

The Germans must have known that the Zimmermann Note, though only a contingency plan, could be used to their great disadvantage if it were to fall into British hands. The note is said to have been sent, encrypted, to Washington by three different routes, including direct radio transmission. The German Embassy in Washington then sent it, re-encrypted, on to the German legation in Mexico City in an ordinary Western Union telegram. The British should have had no difficulty in intercepting the original Berlin-to-Washington telegram, but the Germans must have been confident that they would be unable to decipher it. The Germans had themselves been intercepting and deciphering Allied radio messages since 1914, so they must have had a good idea what could and could not be done. We should examine the possibility that the Germans were right. We do not actually know that the British were able to decipher the Zimmermann Telegram. All we know is that somehow or other the unenciphered text of the Zimmermann Note came into British hands.

There is at least one other way in which this could have happened. The Zimmermann Note could have been betrayed by Zionists or into Zionist hands in Berlin and smuggled to England and there used for bargaining with the British government.

There were Jews in high places in the Germany of 1917, and some of them no doubt believed in Zionism rather than in assimilation.

If the above supposition is correct, we would expect negotiations between the Zionists and the British government to have taken place between the time the Zimmermann note was sent and the time it was made public. I have prepared the following chronology to help determine whether this did occur:

Chronology

Dec. 7, 1916—David Lloyd George becomes prime minister of Great Britain and quickly imposes a war dictatorship. C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, who had, according to Fromkin, been “converted to Zionism” in 1914 by Chaim Weizmann, was considered Lloyd George’s closest political confidant. A so-called War Cabinet is subsequently formed with Sir Mark Sykes as chief secretary. Sykes had been involved in British Middle East diplomacy for several years and was the co-author of the then-secret Sykes-Picot agreement which established which areas of Syria and Palestine were to be British and which French after the war.

Jan. 9, 1917—German government makes the decision to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1.

Jan. 16, 1917 —Zimmermann Note sent, encoded, from Berlin to the German ambassador in Washington by several routes.

Jan. 19, 1917—Zimmermann Note forwarded, encoded, from the German Embassy in Washington to the German legation in Mexico City by Western Union telegram.

Jan. 20, 1917—Presumed approximate date when the plain-language text of the Zimmermann Note comes into the hands of British Zionists.

Late January 1917—Chaim Weizmann is first introduced to Mark Sykes, submits to him a memorandum prepared by a committee of Zionists, and has several preliminary conferences with him (perhaps extending into February). The memorandum was entitled “Outline of Program for the Jewish Resettlement of Palestine in Accordance with the Aspirations of the Zionist Movement” and, according to Weizmann, “does seem to have anticipated the shape of things to come.”

Jan. 31, 1917—Germany announces unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain, to begin the following day.

Feb. 3, 1917—U.S. breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany. The German ambassador, Count Bernstorff, is given his passport and told to leave the U.S.

Feb. 7, 1917 —Sykes meets with Weizmann and other Zionist leaders.

Feb. 14, 1917—Count Bernstorff leaves New York on the Danish steamer Friedrich VIII bound for Copenhagen. Bernstorff and his party had been granted safe conduct by the British on condition that the ship stop for inspection at Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the time of the Lusitania sinking in 1915, Bernstorff had, as the result of a long conversation with President Wilson and two of his advisers, almost singlehandedly prevented war between Germany and the U.S. This had been a great disappointment to the British, who had, as a result, developed considerable respect for Bernstorff’s powers of persuasion.

Feb. 16, 1917—The Friedrich VIII enters Halifax harbor. Passengers and ship inspected and held for almost 2 weeks, with no communication with the outside world.

Feb. 17, 1917—“First full-dress conference leading to the Balfour Declaration.” Present were: Rabbi Gaster, Lord Rothschild, Herbert Samuel, James de Rothschild, Nabum Sokolow, Joseph Cowen, Herbert Bentwich, Harry Sacher, Chaim Weizmann and, from the British government, Sir Mark Sykes, ostensibly in an unofficial capacity.

Feb. 26, 1917—The U.S. State Department receives a telegram from London containing an English translation of the text of the Zimmermann Note.

Feb. 27, 1917—Friedrich VIII permitted to sail from Halifax.

March 1, 1917 —Text of the Zimmermann Note published in U.S. Greeted with great tumult by Congress and the press.

April 6, 1917—U.S. declares war on Germany.

April 1917 —British General Allenby commissioned by Lloyd George to invade and occupy Palestine and to take Jerusalem before Christmas.

April 16, 1917—Weizmann is dismayed to learn of the Sykes-Picot agreement to divide Palestine between Britain and France, after the war, in a way incompatible with Zionist aspirations, but comes to realize that the British government was giving priority to its agreements with the Zionists over those with the French.

Nov. 2, 1917—British government issues the Balfour Declaration.

Dec. 11, 1917—General Allenby enters Jerusalem.

It is evident from the above that negotiations did take place between the British government and the Zionists during the time in question.

Before trying to put together a complete picture relating the Balfour Declaration and the Zimmermann Telegram, it would be well to see what more we can learn about the Zimmermann Telegram.

In 1938 the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued a classified bulletin entitled The Zimmermann Telegram of January 16, 1917 and its Cryptographic Background, by William Friedman and Charles Mendelsohn. This bulletin was declassified in 1965 and published as a small book in 1976. This book contains a good deal of interesting information. (Barbara Tuchman’s similarly named book The Zimmermann Telegram demonstrably contains serious errors and omissions.) The Signal Corps bulletin identifies the code used in transmitting the Zimmermann Note from Berlin to Washington as German code 7500 and the code used to transmit it from Washington to Mexico City as German code 13040. It states that 7500 was a new code, sent to America on the submarine Deutschland, probably on its second voyage on which it docked in New London, CT on Nov. 1, 1916. Code 13040 was a simpler and rather old code. It was probably used because the German legation in Mexico City did not possess code 7500.

Friedman and Mendelsohn emphasize that code 7500 was very difficult to decipher—both intrinsically, and because it was a new code and the British would have had little material in that code with which to work. They nevertheless conclude that the British would have been able to read the original Berlin-to-Washington Zimmermann Telegram (ZT)—but only partially. They cite reasons for believing that the British could not have read the telegram completely, but none for believing that they could have read it at all. Perhaps they consider it self-evident.

Since they apparently never laid eyes on the original ZT, it is difficult to see how Friedman and Mendelsohn could have reached the conclusion that the British could have read it. One of the channels used to transmit the original ZT was one provided by the State Department via the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, so a copy of it should have been in State Department files, yet Friedman and Mendelsohn report that a “most diligent search” failed to locate it.

It must have been there at one time. It is unlikely that it was lost by accident, so it seems likely that someone removed it. We do not know who, but we can guess why. A careful examination of the original ZT by cryptographic experts would probably have raised serious doubts that the British would have been able to decipher it.

Let us now use our chronology to put together a picture of what must have happened in late 1916 and early 1917. Chaim Weizmann’s autobiography for this period makes interesting reading, especially if one keeps in mind the dates of the ZT.

One statement Weizmann makes is that in 1916 the German government approached German Zionists with the suggestion that they might serve as intermediaries in peace negotiations with the British. He states that some preliminary contacts were made but that ultimately they came to nothing. One cannot help wondering whether they came to nothing because the Zionists wanted them to come to nothing. It would certainly seem that there would have been nothing for Zionism in a negotiated end to the war.

In any case, in our picture, the ZT was sent on Jan. 16, 1917. It was intercepted by the British, but they were unable to decipher it. Once the British Zionists obtained the original plain-language text of the ZT, they would have done two things. First, they would have contacted like-minded people in America to obtain a copy of the ZT as sent from Washington to Mexico. And second, they would have provided the British with the gist of the telegram and informed them that they might be able to get an exact copy and help bring America into the war provided Britain agreed to an eventual Jewish homeland in Palestine.

It should be noted that the text of the original ZT differed slightly from that of the version forwarded to Mexico. The British at first (in late February) claimed only to have obtained the second, Washington-to-Mexico, version of the ZT, having obtained it in Mexico. Later, however, they allowed it to be discovered that they possessed both versions. Thus, rather than announcing it themselves, the British allowed others to conclude, erroneously in my opinion, that the British had succeeded in deciphering the original ZT.

There would have been nothing for Zionism in a negotiated end to the war.

On Feb. 1, Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare, and on Feb. 3, the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany.

On Feb. 16, the expelled German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, went into what was essentially British captivity when his ship entered Halifax harbor.

The next day, on Feb. 17, 1917, the “first full-dress conference leading to the Balfour Declaration” took place in London. At that meeting a formal agreement would have been signed by both the British and the Zionists, the terms of the Balfour Declaration would have been agreed to, and it would have been agreed that Britain would formally issue the Balfour Declaration within some specified period of time. On their side, the Zionists would have handed to the British the exact text of the original Berlin-to-Washington ZT and also a copy of the encrypted telegram sent by Bernstorff to Mexico City, this having been obtained, perhaps in Mexico, but more likely from the files of Western Union in Washington, DC—by bribery, if necessary.

The British would have immediately gone to work deciphering the Washington-to-Mexico ZT and fabricating a convincing story of how their agents had obtained a copy of this telegram in Mexico and how they had, after great effort, succeeded in deciphering it. By Feb. 26 this story was ready, and the text of the ZT was cabled to the State Department.

The next day, on Feb. 27, Bernstorff’s ship was allowed to leave Halifax. Had the British required another 3 or 4 days to get their story in order, Bernstorff’s ship would presumably have been held up another 3 or 4 days.

On April 6, 1917 the U.S. declared war on Germany, and on Nov. 2, the British issued the Balfour Declaration.

The details of the above story may be rather complicated, but at bottom, it would have been a matter of a simple trade: America-at-war for Palestine.

Parts of this story are, of course, not proven, but to my mind it explains too much not to be essentially true. Several things, otherwise rather mysterious, that it explains are as follows:

First and foremost, it provides a simple and reasonable explanation of why the British government issued the Balfour Declaration.
It explains how the British were able to obtain the verbatim text of the Zimmermann Telegram although it was sent in a code that the Germans were confident the British would be unable to crack.
It explains why the “first full-dress conference leading to the Balfour Declaration” took place the day after the expelled German ambassador, Count Bernstorff, sailed into virtual captivity in Halifax, and why Bernstorff’s ship was allowed to sail from Halifax the day after the text of Zimmermann Telegram was cabled from London to Washington.
It explains why Chaim Weizmann was initially startled on learning of the Sykes-Picot agreement, whose terms were incompatible with the Balfour Declaration, in April 1917—seven months before the Balfour Declaration was issued.
It explains what Winston Churchill was referring to when he stated, in 1922, that it should not be thought that the Balfour Declaration was something that Britain gave away and for which it received nothing in return.
It explains why the original enciphered text of the Zimmermann Telegram, sent from Berlin to Washington, is now nowhere to be found.

John Cornelius is an American with long-standing interest in the Middle East.

SIDEBAR

Washington Report Editor's Note

Scholars maintain that major causes of the chronic instability that has bedeviled the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire are the conflicting agreements into which Britain entered during World War I. The British promised the Arabs independence in return for their help against the Ottoman Turks. The British also entered into the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with their allies, the French (and originally with Czarist Russia as well), dividing the same areas that the Arabs thought were to be independent into British and French spheres of influence. These agreements indisputedly were designed to create or reinforce British alliances against the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with Germany. Finally, however, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration proclaiming that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status of Jews in any other country." Historians describe the negotiation of this third agreement which, in addition to its obvious internal conflict between the rights of "the Jewish people" and "the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," also was in conflict with Britain's other two secret agreements, as part of an effort to bring the United States into World War I. But this seemed to conflict with the awkward fact that while the U.S. declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, the Balfour Declaration was not issued until the following Nov. 2. Responding to an article on the Balfour Declaration by Ambassador Andrew I. Killgore in the May/June 1996 issue of the Washington Report, a reader noted that he found it "very thought-provoking." The reader's letter continued: "It inspired me to read further on the subject. Much of what follows comes from three books: A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin, 1989; Trial and Error, the autobiography of Chaim Weizman, 1949; and My Three Years in America by Count Bernstorff, 1920. I also have incorporated some ideas of my own. "Like Ambassador Killgore, I have been puzzled that in issuing the Balfour Declaration Britain should have committed herself to something which has caused her a great deal of grief and which seems to have provided her little benefit." After discussion with the author, an American with extensive personal involvement in the Middle East who has written under a nom de plume because of professional concerns, the editors have decided to present the remainder of his letter as an article. We consider it an original and very plausible explanation of a major event in world history for which no previous rationale has ever seemed satisfactory. Significantly, as with so many other events of this century, it provides one more example of the Palestinians being asked to pay, with their freedom and their country, political debts incurred by European and American politicians which had nothing, whatsoever, to do with Palestine or the Middle East. We will welcome reader comments.