Arthur Zimmermann

Arthur Zimmermann was born on 5 October 1864 in Marggrabowa, East Prussia, a town in the Kingdom of Prussia that is today known as Olecko and lies in the Mazury region of Poland. He studied law between 1884 and 1887 at universities in Königsberg and Leipzig, afterward working for a period as a junior lawyer before earning a doctorate in law. In 1893 he moved into diplomacy, entering the consular service in Berlin rather than following a conventional legal career.

In 1896 Zimmermann was posted to China, reaching Canton by 1898, and by 1900 he had risen to the rank of consul. His years in the Far East placed him in China during the Boxer Rebellion, giving him direct experience of a major international crisis. He returned to Germany in 1902 as part of a transfer to the Foreign Office, and a portion of that journey home took him by rail across the continental United States — a fact he would later invoke, somewhat misleadingly, to claim special knowledge of American affairs. He became Under Secretary of State in 1911 and steadily took on more of the day-to-day negotiations that his cautious superior left to him.

On 22 November 1916, Zimmermann was confirmed as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, succeeding Gottlieb von Jagow. The appointment was historically notable: Zimmermann was the first person without aristocratic status to hold the position of German foreign secretary. For years before his formal appointment he had already been carrying a large share of his superior's workload in negotiations with foreign envoys, so the transition represented recognition of a role he had in practice long been performing.

His involvement in German decision-making reached back to the very outbreak of the war. As acting secretary he participated in the deliberations of 1914 in which Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg resolved to back Austria-Hungary following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Zimmermann later distanced himself from the label attached to those discussions, arguing that it was ultimately the Kaiser's opinion that had been decisive, though he and Bethmann Hollweg had both concurred with that judgment.

Beyond the war's visible fronts, Zimmermann was deeply involved in efforts to destabilize Germany's enemies from within. In late 1914 the Irish nationalist Roger Casement visited him, and together they discussed landing 25,000 soldiers in western Ireland along with 75,000 rifles. The German general staff refused to commit those forces, but Germany still managed to ship 20,000 rifles aboard a vessel sailing under Norwegian colours, renamed the Aud. That cargo never reached the rebels — the ship failed to link up and was scuttled — yet the expectation of German support contributed to the planning of the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916. Although the Rising was suppressed, its political consequences eventually helped produce the Irish War of Independence and the formation of the Irish Free State.

Zimmermann was also involved in plans to support rebellions in India and to assist the Bolsheviks in undermining Tsarist Russia. In March 1917, with the Russian front near collapse, he moved to accelerate a separate peace with Russia. Among the measures he arranged was allowing Lenin and other émigré revolutionaries to travel through German territory by train to return to Russia. The strategic logic was clear: a Russian exit from the war would free German armies in the east to reinforce the western front.

In January 1917, as Germany prepared to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, Zimmermann sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico with instructions to propose a military alliance to the government of President Venustiano Carranza. The offer was extraordinary: if the United States entered the war against Germany, Mexico should join the German side, attempt to bring Japan into the alliance, and attack the United States. In exchange Germany promised financial support and help recovering the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona — land Mexico had lost to the United States decades earlier.

British intelligence intercepted and decoded the telegram, and on 24 February 1917 it was delivered to the American ambassador in Britain, Walter Hines Page, who passed it to President Wilson two days later. When the US government released the text to the press on 1 March, some newspapers, particularly those of the Hearst press, suggested it was a British forgery designed to drag the United States into the war. That argument collapsed on 29 March, when Zimmermann addressed the Reichstag and confirmed the telegram was genuine. By that point several American ships had already been torpedoed. On 2 April, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, and on 6 April Congress approved the resolution by a wide margin — 82 to 6 in the Senate.

Mexico never acted on the proposal. A general appointed by Carranza to evaluate the feasibility of reclaiming the three named states concluded that such a takeover would likely provoke a future war with the United States, that Mexico could not absorb a large Anglo population, and that Germany would be unable to supply the necessary arms. Carranza formally declined Zimmermann's proposals on 14 April 1917.

In the months before his departure from office, Zimmermann participated in a serious, if ultimately unsuccessful, diplomatic initiative. At the end of June 1917, the Bavarian Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli — later to become Pope Pius XII — arrived on a fact-finding mission. In meetings with Pacelli and his colleague Uditore Schioppa, Zimmermann and Bethmann Hollweg outlined terms for a negotiated peace: no territorial annexations, an independent Poland, evacuation of occupied French and Belgian territory, and the cession of Alsace-Lorraine to France, with Germany receiving only the return of its former colonies. Neither man remained in office long enough to pursue these plans further.

On 6 August 1917, Zimmermann resigned as foreign secretary, with the Zimmermann Telegram cited among the causes of his departure. He was succeeded by Richard von Kühlmann. Zimmermann lived for more than two decades after leaving office, dying in Berlin on 6 June 1940 from pneumonia.