Credit:
Media type: letter-image
Museum Number: ARC Identifier 302025
Annotation: In March 1917, newspapers published the Zimmerman Note, an intercepted telegram from the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman to the German ambassador to Mexico. The telegram said that if Germany went to war with the United States, Germany promised to help Mexico recover the territory it had lost during the 1840s, including Texas, New Mexico, California, and Arizona. The Zimmerman Note and German attacks on three U.S. ships in mid-March led Wilson to ask Congress for a declaration of war.