User blog comment:Swiss Ninja/World War One Parody?/@comment-1024726-20100223223709

Ahem. I'll explain what the said diplomacy fail was.

Germany is getting all whiny because they can't do anything about their stalemate in the trenches. So they decide to break their pledge to restrict submarine warfare and order their submarines to go trigger-happy. Of course, the USA responds by shutting off all diplomatic relations with Germany.

The Foreign Minister thinks he can do better. To make sure that America will not joint he war because of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, he sends a coded telegram over Swedish cables to Mexico, promising them free land from the USA in return for attacking it and getting Japan to betray the Allies, too.

(Germany has to send their messages over other lines because on the first day of the war, a British cable ship cut Germany's telecommunications off.)

Unfortunately, a few British geeks working for the Royal Navy rain on the Germans' parade. Room 40, the cipher-breaking unit of the Admiralty, intercepts the telegram (the cables run along British territory) and decodes it. Their brilliant leader, Captain William Reginald Hall, concocts a brilliant plan. Room 40 will be able to present the telegram to the President of the USA without making the Americans question the telegram's authenticity and without alerting the Germans that their oh-so-secret code has been cracked. Hall sends a British agent to Mexico City, who bribes the telegram company into giving him a copy of the decrypted telegram that had arrived. This copy is then presented to President Wilson, who immediately ask Congress for permission to UBER-PWN Germany. They declare war on it on April 6, 1917.