Prima Mexicana

We knew we'd find it eventually — a world where the Zimmerman telegraph was never intercepted.

Parallel History

On Earth Prime, it wasn’t the sinking of the Lusitania that brought the United States into the Great War, it was a telegram sent from Germany to Mexico asking our neighbor to the south to invade us. In the confusion, American troops would be too occupied fighting a border war to commit troops to Europe, and the war would be over.

However, the British intercepted the secret communiqué, sent it to President Woodrow Wilson and finally convinced him that American interests lay across the Atlantic.

Not so here. On this world, the cryptologist on duty was asleep at the job, and his assitant, looking at the glyphs for the beginning found the telegram innocuous enough. Mexico accepted and invaded on February 14, 1917, in what on this world would be known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Germany pumped up its unrestricted submarine warfare against the U.S. and infused the Mexican economy with heavy industry and troop committment. And sadly, the U.S. took a huge pounding, causing Mexico to take back all the lands Germany promised to help them reclaim and then some. California is now split in two, with the southern part, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas as part of the greater nation of Prima Mexicana.

San Francisco is now a border town and the United States, a loser in a war that saw Britain concede defeat to Germany. Most of France is German territory. On the other hand, without the U.S. to help Britain, there would be no Balfour Agreement, and Palestine and the Middle East are peaceful without Israel wedged in there.