President Woodrow Wilson learns on February 26, 1917 of a Telegram message from the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between the U.S. and Germany.
The telegram, which came to be known as "The "Zimmermann Telegram", had been intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence on January 17, 1917 and provided to the US Ambassador to Britain on February 24, 1917. The communication stated that the Germans would provide Mexico with aid and support for Mexico to reconquer Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. He further suggested that the Mexican President invite Japan, nominally an Allied nation but of great strategic concern to the United States, to join the German-Mexican pact. President Wilson authorized the State Department to publish the telegram which appeared on the front pages of American newspapers on March 1. Altering the American view of Germany rapidly and profoundly. The telegram, combined with t,he renewed German submarine warfare, shifted American public opinion. Within five weeks on April 2, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany.
