Zimmermann becomes foreign secretary

On 22 November 1916, the day of Gottlieb von Jagow’s resignation, Dr Arthur Zimmermann became Germany’s foreign minister. Formally he took the post of State Secretary of the Foreign Office, because in the Reich the Chancellor was responsible for foreign policy and the State Secretary carried it out. Most accounts give this date for the appointment. The British chronology of the war records it under 21 November, and some sources speak of 24 or 25 November, which probably correspond to the days on which the appointment was formally approved and announced. Zimmermann was 52 and for five years had been the second man in the office after the State Secretary.

A consul from Masuria

Zimmermann was born on 5 October 1864 in Marggrabowa, today’s Olecko, in East Prussia. He studied law at Königsberg and Leipzig, and in 1893 entered the foreign service. He did not, however, follow the usual path of aristocratic diplomats through the embassies, but started in the consular service in China. He was vice-consul in Shanghai, Canton and Tientsin, where he distinguished himself during the Boxer Rebellion. In 1902 he moved to headquarters in Berlin, in 1910 he became director of the political department, and in 1911 Under-Secretary of State. Because Jagow was sickly and disliked appearing in public, it had for years been Zimmermann who conducted many of the conversations with foreign diplomats. In July 1914, while Jagow was on his honeymoon, he took part in the talks with Vienna’s envoy after which Germany assured Austria-Hungary of its support against Serbia.

His appointment was a breakthrough. Zimmermann came from a prosperous middle-class family and was the first man of non-noble birth, and one from the consular service at that, to head the Foreign Office. The American ambassador James W. Gerard recalled that the highest offices had for years been filled by the Prussian nobility, so the novelty was received throughout Germany “with the greatest astonishment”. According to Gerard, Zimmermann, relaxed and direct in manner, was better liked by ambassadors and Reichstag deputies than his elegant, aloof predecessor. He also had a violent temper, however. In 1915, during the dispute over submarine warfare after the sinking of the Lusitania, he banged his fist on the table and told Gerard that the United States would not dare to act against Germany, because there were half a million German reservists in America who would take up arms. Gerard replied that there were half a million and one lamp posts in America, and that is where the reservists would end up if they tried to rise.

Continuity or a change of course

Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg gave assurances that Zimmermann’s promotion meant the continuation of the same policy, only with new energy. In reality the new State Secretary was considered closer to the Supreme Army Command of Hindenburg and Ludendorff than Jagow, who left after losing the dispute over submarine warfare. Even earlier, as Under-Secretary, he had supported plans to stir up nations and revolutionary movements against the Entente. In 1914 he held talks with, among others, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement, who was seeking German help in Berlin for a rising in Ireland. Gerard, who knew both men well, judged years later that Jagow had understood the Americans better than his successor.

The appointment came at a turning point. Two weeks earlier Woodrow Wilson had won the election, and in Berlin the Central Powers’ peace offer, announced on 12 December, was being prepared. When the Entente rejected it, Zimmermann backed the opening of unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February 1917. In January 1917 he sent the German minister in Mexico an encrypted telegram which, in the event of war with the United States, offered Mexico an alliance and the recovery of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The British intercepted and decoded it, and the publication of the Zimmermann Telegram in March 1917 contributed to America’s entry into the war. Zimmermann himself publicly admitted that the telegram was genuine. He lost his post in August 1917, soon after the fall of Bethmann Hollweg.