Cracking the Code is a historical fiction short story with emphasis on historical

accuracy. It has a military drama theme based on historical truths from WWI. It is written from

the perspective of Nigel De Gray, who was one of the British cryptanalysts responsible for

analyzing and interpreting coded German intelligence after Germany’s underwater cables had

been cut by British Naval intelligence. Germany was forced to use public communication cables

which made creating the intricate coded language a necessity. One of the most important

messages received and interpreted by British Intelligence operatives was the Zimmermann

Telegram.

The Zimmermann Telegram was one of the deciding factors that led to the United States

entering World War I in 1917. It was written by German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman

and was intended to be a coded message to the German Ambassador to the US, Johan von

Bernsdorff. In the message, Mexico was promised financial resources and recovery of territory

in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona that was lost during the Mexican-American War, in

exchange for initiating attacks on the United States southern border.

Lt. Commander Nigel De Gray was responsible for decrypting the Zimmermann

Telegram. He was a British codebreaker or cryptanalyst during WWI. He was recruited to work

in Room 40 in the Naval Intelligence Division’s code breaking section at the Admiralty Building

in Whitehall.

Admiral Reginald Hall was in charge of room 40, and was responsible for releasing the

telegram to President Wilson after it had been retransmitted from the British Embassy to the

Mexican Western Union office. It was Hall who had the telegram amended from its original

code into a lower level code that Germany already knew had been broken. This way, Germany

would continue using the original message code to send messages being unaware that British

Intelligence operatives could read the messages.

When President Wilson learned of the contents of the Zimmerman Telegram, he

released the message to the American press on March 1, and declared war on Germany during a

special session of Congress on April 2, 1917. The telegram was one of Great Britain’s greatest

intelligence coups of the war and it helped to sway public opinion in the United States from a

stance of neutrality to one of outrage.

Bundle includes vocabulary studies and discussion questions with 1 journal prompt and 2 essay prompts.