Telegrams, Memoranda and Secret Bargains: Diplomacy Behind Closed Doors

On 13 July 1870 an internal telegram from Heinrich Abeken at Ems to Otto von Bismarck in Berlin described French demands over the Spanish royal succession. Bismarck released a statement to the press, and public emotion in France and Germany rose until France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870.

In January 1907 Eyre Crowe, a senior clerk in the British Foreign Office, wrote an unsolicited memorandum arguing that Germany was working toward hegemony and that concessions would only invite larger demands. Foreign Secretary Edward Grey circulated it, though historians still dispute how much it shaped British policy.

A secret agreement concluded on 26 April 1915 by the United Kingdom, France and Russia on one side and Italy on the other. It promised Italy territory at the expense of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire to entice it into the First World War.

A secret exchange of diplomatic correspondence among the Entente powers between 4 March and 10 April 1915. It promised Constantinople and the Dardanelles to Russia if the Entente won, while Britain and France put forward their own claims in Persia and in Syria and Cilicia.

A coded cable sent on 16 January 1917 by Arthur Zimmermann to the German minister in Mexico, proposing a military alliance if the United States entered the war. British naval intelligence decrypted it, and its publication on 1 March 1917 pushed American opinion toward the declaration of war in April.

A diplomatic note signed in Washington on 2 November 1917 by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and the Japanese envoy Kikujiro Ishii. Both sides pledged to respect China's independence, while the United States recognized Japan's special interests near its own possessions. China objected to terms it had no part in, and the two countries abrogated the note in 1923.

Sent on 22 February 1946 by George F. Kennan from the American embassy in Moscow, this dispatch ran past 5,000 words. It argued that Soviet leaders saw a world divided into socialist and capitalist camps and called for American self confidence and long range planning. Kennan later expanded it into the 1947 article on containment published under the name X.

Sent in September 1946 by the Soviet ambassador Nikolai Novikov, with Foreign Minister Molotov as co-author, this telegram described the United States as governed by monopoly capitalists preparing for a future war. It is remembered as the Soviet counterpart to the Long Telegram, and some of Novikov's papers were not released until 1990.