Answering Critics of the Theory That Balfour Declaration Was Payoff for Zionist Services in WWI

By John Cornelius

Following the appearance of my article “The Balfour Declaration and the Zimmermann Note” in the Aug./Sept. 1997 issue of the WRMEA in which I put forth my theory of a trade, at the time of the First World War, with the Zionists getting Palestine and Britain getting America (as an ally—some might say a recovered colony), several readers have sent in comments, some of them critical. I believe I can answer them all, but perhaps it is better to address first the likely source of most of them.

Most people wanting to know more about the Zimmermann telegram would probably consult Barbara Tuchman’s book The Zimmermann Telegram. It is readable, entertaining, and widely available. Having read the 1938 Signal Corps bulletin on the subject by William Friedman and Charles Mendelsohn, however, it is hard for me to believe that it is not also disinformation. There have been two editions of Tuchman’s book. The first appeared in 1958. The second appeared in 1966 following the declassification of Friedman and Mendelsohn’s book in 1965, and is probably damage control. The second edition appears to differ from the first only in the inclusion of a new preface, which acknowledges the declassification of the Friedman and Mendelsohn book, states that the Berlin-to-Washington ZT was sent in code 0075, and says that the implications of that will be discussed in a then-forthcoming book, The Codebreakers, by David Kahn. Friedman and Mendelsohn state that the ZT was sent in code 7500. I do not know why Tuchman misquotes them.

Tuchman’s book overlooks the elementary fact that the ZT was sent from Berlin to Washington in one code (7500) and from Washington to Mexico City in another (13040 or 13042). The book appears to make the naive assumption that the Germans used only a single diplomatic code throughout the war. It was not necessary to await the declassification of the Friedman and Mendelsohn book to know that this was not so. In fact, in Chapter 12 of her own book Tuchman quotes Zimmermann as saying that the telegram “went to America in a special code.” Furthermore, in German Documents, German Ambassador to Washington Count Bernstorff is quoted as saying that he received new codes by submarine twice during 1917. (Code 7500 was received in November 1917.) It is interesting to read in Chapter 1 the story of how the British received and deciphered the ZT, with the realization that what one is reading is almost complete fabrication. Tuchman retained this story even in the second edition of her book, when she could have had no doubt that it was false. One has to wonder how much trust can be placed in her other books.

It is hard for me to believe that Tuchman’s book is not disinformation.

Kahn has a different and less implausible story of how the British decoded the Berlin-to-Washington ZT sent in code 7500 which, like Tuchman, he refers to as 0075. His explanation is simply that “somehow the British obtained copies of enough of the telegrams in this code” to make a start in breaking it. The result he presents, however, is far more than a start. It is about 70 percent of the ZT, with, in my opinion, only those parts omitted which the British wished to omit. Friedman and Mendelsohn have the following to say on the subject. “When all is said and done, the decipherment of the 7500 version of the Zimmermann telegram, even to the degree given in the Hendrick version, approaches the unbelievable.” (The Hendrick version is the incomplete version of the ZT referred to in Friedman and Mendelsohn and quoted by Kahn.)

In his letter, Reverdy Fishel maintains that what the British got in exchange for the Balfour Declaration was money. There may be some truth to this, but it was American money, incidental to America’s entering the war. There are some things money won’t do. The British were losing the war militarily, and money alone would no more have saved them than it would have saved Constantinople from the Turks in 1453.

I read Mr. Abbas’ letter and article with interest and agree with much of what he says, but I do not understand why he rejects my theory. I suspect he does not appreciate the degree to which Britain was losing the war by the time America became her ally. I suggest that he read the texts of two telegrams sent by American Ambassador to Britain Walter Page to President Woodrow Wilson on June 28 and 29, 1917. These can be found in Chapter 14 of “Hendrick,” reference 5, Volume 3. 1 have no doubt that Britain was imperialist before the war and had every intention of being so afterwards. But ever more important was not losing the war, and everything had to be secondary to that.

Mr. Abbas states in his article that the appointment of David Lloyd George as prime minister in December 1916 was a “great stroke of luck” for the Zionists. Later on, he seems to doubt that it was mere luck, and I share his doubt. It would seem that both Lloyd George and Balfour came to believe, well before 1916, that the key to victory lay in support for Zionism.

Lloyd George was an attorney in Zionist employ already at the 6th Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903, and he first met Weizmann in 1914, although he falsely states (according to Weizmann) in his War Memoirs that it was 1916.

Weizmann first met Balfour in 1906, and at their second meeting in 1915 Balfour greeted him with, “Well you haven’t changed much since we met. You know, I was thinking of that conversation of ours, and I believe that when the guns stop firing you may get your Jerusalem.”

It seems probable to me that by late 1916 there was a firm understanding among LG, Balfour, Weizmann and others that a change of government should be brought about and that Britain should commit to a Jewish Palestine in exchange for America’s being brought into the war. The entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica on LG and Balfour have the following to say:

“A series of maneuvers, too complicated to describe here, resulted in Asquith’s resignation on Dec. 5 and his replacement on Dec. 7 by Lloyd George” (1916). It also states that the old guard of his party never forgave LG for having jockeyed Asquith out of office.

In December 1916 Balfour moved “surprisingly from support of Asquith who had always defended him, to support of Lloyd George who had been a severe critic.” By accepting the foreign office in the new government he did as much as anyone to consolidate Lloyd George’s position.

I have read both the letter by Mr. Russell Warren Howe and his book, Mata Hari, The True Story, which would probably not otherwise have come to my attention, and which I found very interesting. Mr. Howe states, without supporting evidence, that Britain broke code 0075 a few weeks before the ZT, and managed to preserve the secret until the end of the war. On the contrary, if the British did break code 7500, which as I have said, Friedman and Mendelsohn strongly doubt, and wanted to keep the fact secret, they behaved very foolishly in making available the text of the“Hendrick version,” which was clearly obtained from the Berlin-to-Washington ZT, sent in code 7500. In this case, of course, making the contents of the telegram public was far more important than keeping from the Germans the “fact” that their code had been broken. It is of course possible that it was the code itself, rather than the ZT, that was betrayed to the British, but this would seem to have been more difficult, and I consider it unlikely, and also essentially immaterial to my theory.

Mr. Howe states that he was taught at Cambridge that the ZT was concocted in London to encourage Washington to join the Allies against the Central Powers. As a WRMEA editor has pointed out, German Foreign Minister Zimmermann stated, in response to a question in the Reichstag,that the telegram was genuine. If what Mr. Howe was taught at Cambridge can nevertheless be shown to be true, it would appear to me greatly to strengthen the case for my theory. The Germans were certainly well aware that the British were their enemy and would not knowingly have sent a message provided by them. However, they would not have been aware that the Zionists were also an enemy, and it is possible that they may have sent a message suggested, perhaps indirectly, by a Zionist.

It is interesting to reflect, by the way, that at the time we went to war “to make the world safe for democracy,” Germany had a functioning parliament, where questions could be asked, whereas Britain was governed by a wartime dictatorship.

The Germans may, in fact, have looked on the Zionists as friends. The year 1917 was not the first occasion on which America and Germany came close to war. It had happened before, at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. On that occasion the German ambassador to Washington, Count Bernstorff, demanded and was granted an audience with President Wilson. Bernstorff later discovered that on that very day “all preparations had been made for breaking off diplomatic relations, and for the inevitable resulting war. As a result of my interview, however they were canceled.” Without saying so, Bernstorff makes it appear that it was mere chance that he requested the interview just at that crucial moment. But perhaps it was not; perhaps he was tipped off. If so, by whom? One can only speculate, but if Bernstorff had waited just one more day, America would have entered the war in 1915 and Germany would have been defeated earlier. Britain would have had no need to issue the Balfour Declaration, and the Zionists would not have gotten Palestine.

The Royal Family’s Role

A matter we have not dealt with, but which needs to be considered, is the role of the British royal family in the Palestine-America trade. I have to confess to not knowing a great deal about the relationship between the British government and the royal family, but I find it impossible to believe that a matter so important as “the trade” could have taken place without the knowledge, and at least acquiescence, of the king. George V was king of England from 1910 to 1936.In April 1917, shortly before America entered the war, the king summoned the American ambassador, Walter Page, to an audience at Windsor Castle. In July 1917, he changed the name of the British royal family, which was German, to the English name, Windsor. Early in 1918, while the war was still in progress, it was decided to send a Zionist commission to Palestine, with Weizmann as chairman. Before its departure, in March 1918, Weizmann was granted an audience with the king, who is said to have wished him success in their endeavors. The audience was “of course, not given any publicity.”

Edward, the eldest son of George V, became prince of Wales when his father became king, in 1910. He was 20 when the war broke out in 1914 and immediately joined the armed forces. Although he was protected from any situation which might have carried the risk of his being taken prisoner, he is said always to have identified closely with those of the war generation. He was destined to become king, and I feel certain that his preparation would have included his having been fully informed concerning the nature and circumstances of any commitment to the Zionists that the British government and his father might have made. He became King Edward VIII in 1936 but was forced to abdicate after a reign of less than a year, ostensibly because of his marriage to an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, about whom ugly rumors were circulating. It is my understanding that the worst, if not all, of these rumors are now known to have been fabrications. It is also my understanding that Edward VIII showed a notable lack of enthusiasm for a second war with Germany. The present queen is the niece of Edward VIII and has no doubt also been fully informed concerning state secrets, as would have been her son, Prince Charles.

I believe I should add that it has not escaped my notice that my theory may have implications concerning the question of how responsibility should be apportioned for the killing of large numbers of Jews by the Germans during the Second World War.

References:

1. Tuchman, Barbara W. The Zimmermann Telegram. New York: Ballantine Books, 1958, 1966.

2. Friedman, William F. and Mendelsohn, Charles J., The Zimmermann Telegram of January 16, 1917 and its Cryptographic Background. Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1994.

3. Kahn, David. The Codebreakers. New York: Macmillan, 1967

4. German Government. Official German Documents Relating to the World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1923

5. Hendrick, Burton J. Life and Letters of Walter Hines Page. New York: Doubleday, 1923-26

6. Lloyd George, David. War Memoirs 1915-1916. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1933

7. Weizmann, Chaim. Trial and Error. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1949

8. Bernstorff, Count Johann Heinrich. My Three Years in America. New York: Scribner’s 1920.

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