THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF WW1 – A LITTLE-KNOWN EVENT

Many people will recognise that today marks the 112th anniversary of the start of WW1, but few will know that on this day, the British Communications Ship Alert cut the German telegraph cables running under the English Channel, in accordance with the Admiralty’s War Plan. As a result, Germany could only communicate with her embassies in the Americas and Africa via High Frequency (HF) wireless traffic, mail or by telegram over British controlled cables. This was to have a significant outcome on the course of the war. Unbeknown to the Germans, Naval Intelligence, with the assistance of the General Post Office and Marconi, had begun setting up wireless listening stations on the east coast of England and a team of codebreakers in Room 40 of the Admiralty to read the German HF traffic.

With the Royal Navy having command of the seas and the ability to intercept German mail shipments, Germany became extremely reliant on communicating with her embassies and ships overseas via its now vulnerable wireless transmissions. The British codebreaking effort commenced slowly and was headed by the Director of Naval Education, Sir Alfred Ewing as he was formerly a professor of engineering with a particular interest in cyphers. With naval education of young officers temporarily paused whilst the cadets were sent to sea on active service, Ewing recruited staff from the naval colleges to help analyse the growing piles of signal intercepts. German linguists were especially useful and, once the Navy had captured copies of a series of German codebooks, Room 40’s task became easier and their output quicker. By 1916 and with considerable ingenuity, Room 40 was capable of decrypting German naval signals within hours of their transmission, greatly assisting Royal Navy operations. However, its greatest coup was in January 1917.

In the fifth of my WW1 series of naval historical novels, The Suicide Club, and in a previous post, I give fuller details of the interception and handling of The Zimmermann Telegram. Briefly, however, the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, sent a telegram to his Mexican ambassador to warn him that the German Navy was about to reinstate its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. The Germans fully expected this to persuade the United States to enter the war against Germany. Accordingly, Zimmermann instructed the Mexican ambassador to offer arms and financial support to the Mexican government to invade the southern states of the US as a means to distract the US Government. The careful leaking of the contents of the telegram to the Americans by Naval Intelligence was enough to incense the US Government to declare war on Germany, bringing about a huge strategic shift in the balance and eventual outcome of the war.

From the above, it can be seen that a little-known event on this day in 1914 was to have gigantic ramifications later in the war.