![]() “We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. “We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare,” the telegram read in part. In exchange for launching an attack on the United States, Mexico would be free to annex a chunk of the American Southwest. The note informed Eckardt that if the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies, he was to begin backchannel negotiations to strike up a military partnership with the Mexicans. In January 1917, German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann dispatched a secret letter to Heinrich von Eckardt, the German minister to Mexico. No one in the United States knew it at the time, but before declaring unrestricted submarine warfare, the Germans had also set a now-infamous diplomatic scheme in motion.
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