Editing Pancho Villa (section)

===German involvement in Villa's later campaigns===
Before the Villa-Carranza irregular forces had left to the mountains in 1915, there is no credible evidence that Villa cooperated with or accepted any help from the German government or agents. Villa was supplied arms from the U.S., employed international mercenaries and doctors including Americans, was portrayed as a hero in the U.S. media, made business arrangements with Hollywood, and did not object to the 1914 [[United States occupation of Veracruz, 1914|U.S. naval occupation of Veracruz]]. Villa's observation was that the occupation merely hurt Huerta. Villa opposed the armed participation of the United States in Mexico, but he did not act against the Veracruz occupation in order to maintain the connections in the U.S. that were necessary to buy American cartridges and other supplies. The German consul in Torreón made entreaties to Villa, offering him arms and money to occupy the port and oil fields of [[Tampico]] to enable German ships to dock there, but Villa rejected the offer.

German agents tried to interfere in the [[Mexican Revolution]] but were unsuccessful. They attempted to plot with Victoriano Huerta to assist him to retake the country and, in the infamous [[Zimmermann Telegram]] to the Mexican government, proposed an alliance with the government of Venustiano Carranza.

There were documented contacts between Villa and the Germans after Villa's split with the Constitutionalists. This was principally in the person of Felix A. Sommerfeld (noted in Katz's book), who allegedly funneled $340,000 of German money to the [[U.S. Repeating Arms Company|Western Cartridge Company]] in 1915, to purchase ammunition. Sommerfeld had been Villa's representative in the United States since 1914 and had close contact with the German naval attaché in Washington [[Karl Boy-Ed]], as well as other German agents in the United States including [[Franz von Rintelen]] and [[Horst von der Goltz]].<ref>von Feilitzsch, Heribert, ''In Plain Sight: Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico, 1908 to 1914'', Henselstone Verlag LLC, Amissville, Virginia, 2012, p. 381.</ref> In May 1914, Sommerfeld formally entered the employ of Boy-Ed and the German secret service in the United States.<ref>Auswaertiges Amt, Mexiko V, Paket 33, Boy-Ed to Auswaertiges Amt, Marinebericht Nr. 88, 27 May 1914</ref> However, Villa's actions were hardly that of a German [[wikt:cat's-paw|catspaw]]; rather, it appeared that Villa resorted to German assistance only after other sources of money and arms were cut off.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/panvill.html |title=Pancho Villa as a German Agent? |first=Jim |last=Tuck |date=1 January 2006 |journal=Mexconnect}}</ref>

At the time of Villa's 1916 attack on Columbus, New Mexico, Villa's military power had been marginalized. He was repulsed at Columbus by a small cavalry detachment, albeit after doing a lot of damage. His theater of operations was limited mainly to western Chihuahua. He was [[persona non grata]] with Mexico's ruling Carranza constitutionalists and was the subject of an embargo by the U.S., so communication or further shipments of arms between the Germans and Villa would have been difficult.

A plausible explanation for contacts between Villa and the Germans, after 1915, is that they were a futile extension of increasingly desperate German diplomatic efforts and ''Villista'' dreams of victory as progress of their respective wars bogged down. Villa effectively did not have anything useful to offer in exchange for German help at that point. When assessing claims of Villa conspiring with Germans, portrayal of Villa as a German sympathizer served the propaganda needs of both Carranza and Wilson and has to be taken into account.

The use of [[Mauser]] rifles and carbines by Villa's forces does not necessarily indicate a German connection. These weapons were used widely by all parties in the [[Mexican Revolution]], Mauser longarms being enormously popular. They were standard issue in the Mexican Army, which had begun adopting 7&nbsp;mm Mauser system arms as early as 1895.<ref name=MarleyMauser>{{cite book |first=David F. |last=Marley |title=Mexico at War: From the Struggle for Independence to the 21st-Century Drug Wars |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LBqDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA213 |year=2014 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-61069-428-5|chapter=Mauser (1895–1907)}}</ref>