Thomas Boghardt - Böcker

By the winter of 1916/17, World War I had reached a deadlock. While the Allies commanded greater resources and fielded more soldiers than the Central Powers, German armies had penetrated deep into Russia and France, and tenaciously held on to their conquered empire. Hoping to break the stalemate on the western front, the exhausted Allies sought to bring the neutral United States into the conflict. A golden opportunity to force American intervention seemed at hand when British naval intelligence intercepted a secret telegram detailing a German alliance offer to Mexico. In it, Berlin’s foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, offered his country’s support to Mexico for re-conquering “the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona” in exchange for a Mexican attack on the United States, should the latter enter the war on the side of the Allies. The British handed a copy of the Telegram to the American government, which in turn leaked it to the press. On March 1, 1917, the Telegram made headline news across the United States, and five weeks later, America entered World War I.Based on an examination of virtually all available German, British, and U.S. government records, this book presents the definitive account of the Telegram and questions many traditional views on the origins, cryptanalysis, and impact of the German alliance scheme. While the Telegram has often been described as the final step in a carefully planned German strategy to gain a foothold in the western hemisphere, this book argues that the scheme was a spontaneous initiative by a minor German foreign office official, which gained traction only because of a lack of supervision and coordination at the top echelon of the German government. On the other hand, the book argues, American and British secret services had collaborated closely since 1915 to bring the United States into the war, and the Telegram’s interception and disclosure represented the crowning achievement of this clandestine Anglo-American intelligence alliance. Moreover, the book explicitly challenges the widely accepted notion that the Telegram’s publication in the U.S. press rallied Americans for war. Instead, it contends that the Telegram divided the public by poisoning the debate over intervention, and by failing to offer peace-minded Americans a convincing rationale for supporting the war. The book also examines the Telegram’s effect on the memory of World War I through the twentieth century and beyond.

The American military occupation of Germany lasted five years. During this time, Germany made great strides along the road from fascism to democracy, Europe became the fulcrum of the Cold War, and the United States emerged as a global superpower. This book corrects numerous misunderstandings and fills many gaps in our knowledge about the occupation.

Germany was the epicenter of the Cold War. Across the Iron Curtain, hundreds of thousands of soldiers faced each other, and if World War III were to break out, contemporaries feared, surely it would happen here. The country’s frontline status made it an El Dorado for spies, who gathered information on military targets, penetrated political parties, and trained partisans for stay-behind operations. For the Americans, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) came to take the lead in this silent – and sometimes not so silent – contest. In the heyday of the Cold War, the agency’s German station employed nearly two thousand officers – in addition to countless spies and informants. Ultimately, this covert empire reported to the CIA station chief in West Germany and his deputy. And for many years, either of those positions was held by Gordon Matthews Stewart. Gordon Stewart was well prepared for this assignment. He studied German history and literature during the 1930s and lived in Munich and Hamburg as a visiting student. Here, he personally witnessed the Nazi takeover, even catching a glimpse of Adolf Hitler at one of his notorious rallies. When the United States entered the war in 1941, the newly established Office of Strategic Services (OSS) recruited him as a specialist on German affairs. In the summer of 1945, he arrived in Germany with an OSS detachment. Eventually, the OSS morphed into the CIA, and Gordon Stewart would run the agency’s espionage organization in Germany for some twenty years. 　 From CIA headquarters in Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, and eventually, Bonn, Mr. Stewart directed all intelligence operations in central Europe. Initially, he hunted down Nazi war criminals, but the Cold War compelled him to bend his efforts toward the Soviet bloc. During the 1950s, Mr. Stewart directed espionage operations against East Germany, organized the training of Ukrainian partisans at U.S. bases in Bavaria, and participated in a scheme to dig a tunnel into East Berlin to eavesdrop on Soviet and East German communications. He also recruited and handled sources inside the West German government, including the chief of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Reinhard Gehlen; the highest-ranking West German military officer, General Adolf Heusinger; and top policy-makers of the Christian and social democratic parties. 　　 Mr. Stewart’s memoirs, introduced by renowned intelligence scholar Thomas Boghardt, offer not only a fascinating look inside the CIA’s largest overseas station; they also tell the story of a deeply conscientious and highly accomplished intelligence officer, whose experience, intellect, and moral compass shaped American policy toward Germany and Europe during the turbulent years of the early Cold War.