character that German superiority would triumph. When the Ottoman Empire declared war on the Entente in November 1914, Jagow directed Leo Frobenius to try to persuade the government of Abyssinia to also join the Central Powers. The Tripolitana as it was known managed by the Mannesmann brothers was determined by economic realpolitik "to collaborate with Turkey in raising the Sudan in revolt." Stirring revolt dominated German foreign policy in the East; at the heart of which was Jagow's dialogue for the "liberation of Poland". Instrumental was Under Secretary Zimmerman, one of Bethmann's governmental supporters, who ran Agent Parvus in Constantinople: the aim was "the complete destruction of Tsarism and the dismemberment of Russia into smaller states". Nonetheless Jagow was naturally cautious and particularly skeptical of the Turks' commitment to the alliance. At the same time however, he successfully secured Turkish sovereign rights over the Dardanelles on 18 April 1915. Yet determined to continue the fight in Galicia, when Jagow received President Wilson's offer of an international peace congress negotiations, American mediation was flatly refused. He called it a schwarmerei; but as the war dragged on he became domineered by Zimmerman's pretensions for the Chancellery. Successes in Russia encouraged him to keep Austria-Hungary in the war by finesse of any possible rapprochement with the Tsarists. Jagow subscribed to the school of thought that Russia had to be pushed back deep into her hinterland. The irredentist solution was one of the Polish Kingdom's independent enfranchisement, preventing the sullied blood to dilute German racial superiority. He told Baron Burian that the state must be ruled by Dualism and "very extensive autonomy" Austrian suzerainty. However, as in Belgium he sought "Pan-Germanisation", and a customs area from Austria-Hungary, safeguarding German exports. More sinister was a program for ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews conditional on an Austro-German military alliance. Jagow himself favoured the latter policy of annexation and germanisation. He sent a Memorandum on 11 September to Falkenhayn, who rejected any possibility of an alliance with Austria's "slipshod" army. By 30 October Jagow had developed the idea that Courland and Lithuania should be annexed in return for Austrian-Poland "chaining" the Dual Monarchy's destiny to Germany's. An able and skilful diplomat, he persuaded the General Staff to drop objections to the political proposal to impose Mitteleuropa on Vienna. The threat in Jagow's mind was Slavic nationalism. Wilson's aide, Colonel House, reassured Jagow that US policy in