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Joachim von Ribbentrop

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Joachim von Ribbentrop

Birth April 30 1893 (Wesel, Rhine Province, Germany)
Death October 16 1946 (Nuremberg, Germany)
Party National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)
Political positions

Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (born Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim Ribbentrop) (April 30, 1893 – October 16, 1946) was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg trials.

Early career

Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Rhenish Prussia, the son of the Army officer Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop and Johanne Sophie Hertwig. Ribbentrop was educated somewhat irregularly until his mid-teens at private schools in Germany and Switzerland. Fluent in French and English, Ribbentrop lived at various times in Grenoble, France, and London, before traveling to Canada in 1910. He worked for the Molson's Bank on Stanley Street in Montreal and then for the engineering firm M.P. and J.T. Davis on the reconstruction of the Quebec Bridge. He was also employed by the National Transcontinental Railway, which constructed a line from Moncton to Winnipeg. Following a brief stint in New York City and Boston as a journalist and a period of rest recuperating from tuberculosis in his native Germany, he returned to Canada and set up a small business in Ottawa importing German wine and champagne. In 1914, Ribbentrop competed for Ottawa's famous Minto ice-skating team, participating in the Ellis Memorial Trophy tournament in Boston in February of that year.Following the outbreak of World War One, Ribbentrop fled from Canada, which as part of the British Empire was now at war with Germany and returned home. He made his way back to New York City and obtained passage on the Holland-America ship The Potsdam, which left Hoboken, New Jersey for Rotterdam on August 15, 1914. By the autumn of 1914, he was back in his homeland and joined the 125th Regiment of the Hussars.

Ribbentrop reached the rank of first lieutenant and was awarded the Iron Cross. He served on the Eastern Front , and then the Western Front and then in 1918 was stationed in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, (modern Istanbul, Turkey) as a staff officer. During his time in Turkey in World War I, Ribbentrop befriended another officer named Franz von Papen.

In 1919 Ribbentrop met Anna Elisabeth Henkell, known as "Annelies" to her friends. She was the daughter of wealthy champagne producer Otto Henkell and his wife Katharina "Käthe" Michel from Wiesbaden. They were married on July 5, 1920, in Wiesbaden, and Ribbentrop travelled Europe selling the family firm's wares. Between 1921 and 1940, Annelies gave birth to five children:

Annelies von Ribbentrop was a haughty, controlling woman and was often described as being a Lady Macbeth-type character. Ribbentrop persuaded his aunt Gertrud von Ribbentrop–whose husband had been knighted–to adopt him on May 15, 1925, allowing him to add the aristocratic von to his name. For most of the Weimar Republic era, Ribbentrop was apolitical and had no anti-Semitic prejudices. As a wealthy partner with his father-in-law in the Henckel-Trocken champagne firm, Ribbentrop did a great deal of business with Jewish bankers, and he was able to organize the Impegronma Importing Company with financing from a Jewish lender .

In 1928, Ribbentrop was introduced to Hitler, reportedly as a man who "gets the same price for German champagne as others get for French champagne" as well as a businessman with foreign connections . He joined the National Socialist party on May 1, 1932 at the urging of his wife. In January 1933, there was a complex set of intrigues which saw Franz von Papen and various friends of the President Paul von Hindenburg negotiating with Hitler to oust the Chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher. The end result of these talks was the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Ribbentrop, who was both a Nazi Party member and an old friend of von Papen, facilitated the negotiations by arranging for von Papen and Hitler to meet secretly at his house in Berlin. This assistance endeared Ribbentrop to Hitler. Because Ribbentrop was a latecomer to the Nazi Party, the Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters) of the party disliked him. Typical of this hatred for Ribbentrop was the diary entry of Joseph Goebbels: "Von Ribbentrop bought his name, he married his money, and he swindled his way into office" . To compensate for this, Ribbentrop became a fanatical Nazi, almost to the point of becoming a caricature of a Nazi brought to life. In particular, Ribbentrop became a vociferous anti-Semite.

He became German dictator Adolf Hitler's favourite foreign policy adviser, partly by dint of his knowledge of the world outside Germany, but mostly by means of shameless flattery and sycophancy. The professional diplomats of the elite Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) told Hitler the truth about what was happening abroad in the early years of Nazi Germany; Ribbentrop told Hitler what he wanted Hitler to hear. Ribbentrop quickly learned that Hitler always favored the most radical solution to any problem, and accordingly tended his advice in that direction. As one of Ribbentrop's aides, the SS man Reinhard Spitzy recalled "When Hitler said "Grey", Ribbentrop said "Black, black, black". He always said it three times more, and he was always more radical. I listened to what Hitler said one day when Ribbentrop wasn't present: "With Ribbentrop it is so easy, he is always so radical. Meanwhile, all the other people I have, they come here, they have problems, they are afraid, they think we should take care and then I have to blow them up, to get strong. And Ribbentrop was blowing up the whole day and I had to do nothing. I had to brake-much better!. Ribbentrop in his turn was a great admirer of Hitler. Ribbentrop was emotionally dependent on Hitler's favor to the extent that he suffered from psychosomatic illnesses if Hitler was unhappy with him. In 1933 he was given the title of SS-Standartenführer. For a time, Ribbentrop was friendly with the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, but ultimately the two became enemies mostly because the SS insisted upon the right to conduct its own foreign policy independent of Ribbentrop.

Traveling diplomat

In November 1933, Ribbentrop began his work as an unofficial diplomat when he visited London and met the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon. Nothing of any substance emerged from these talks. In August 1934, Ribbentrop founded an organisation linked to the Nazi Party called the Büro Ribbentrop (later renamed the Dienststelle Ribbentrop) that functioned as an alternative foreign ministry. Up to the time of his appointment as German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop aggressively competed with the Auswärtiges Amt and sought to undercut the current Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, at every turn. Initially, Neurath held his rival in contempt, regarding anyone whose written German, to say nothing of his English and French, was full of atrocious spelling and grammatical mistakes as unworthy of attention. Neurath informed Erich Kordt, the diplomat assigned to Ribbentrop as his aide not to correct any of Ribbentrop's spelling mistakes. Speaking of views of Prince Bernard von Bülow, the State Secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt between 1930-36 and the nephew of the former Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, one contemporary recalled that "Bülow could not regard as a serious competitor a man who had no formal training in diplomacy, who could not write a report in correct German, who did not listen carefully enough to the remarks of foreign statesmen to interpret them correctly, and who insisted upon seeing possibilities of alliance [with Britain] where none existed. Earlier, in April 1934, Ribbentrop was named by Hitler Special Commissioner for Disarmament, which made him part of the same Auswärtiges Amt that Ribbentrop was vying with. Ribbentrop was given the office of Special Commissioner in large part because of doubts created in foreign capitals over just what precisely was his status as a diplomat. In his capacity as Special Commissioner, Ribbentrop frequently visited London, Paris and Rome.

Hitler's aim was to persuade the world that he wished to reduce military spending by making idealistic but very vague offers of disarmament (in the 1930s, the term disarmament was used to describe arms-limitation agreements). At the same time, the Germans always resisted making concrete proposals for arms limitation, and they went ahead with increased military spending on the grounds that other powers would not take up German offers of arms limitation. Ribbentrop's task was to ensure that the world was convinced that Germany sincerely wanted an arms-limitation treaty while also ensuring that such a treaty never actually emerged. In the first part of his assignment, Ribbentrop was partly successful, but in the second part he more than fulfilled Hitler's expectations.

Ribbentrop was rewarded by Hitler by being made Reich Minister Plenipotentiary at Large (1935 – 1936). In that capacity he negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (A.G.N.A) in 1935 and the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. In regards to the former, Neurath did not think the A.G.N.A was possible, and so as to discredit his rival, appointed Ribbentrop head of the delegation sent to London in June 1935 to negotiate it. Once the talks began, Ribbentrop, who possessed a certain elan and sense of audacity, issued Sir John Simon an ultimatum. He informed Simon that if Germany's terms were not accepted in their entirety, the German delegation would go home. Simon was angry with this demand and walked out of the talks. Much to everyone's surprise, the next day, the British accepted Ribbentrop's demands and the A.G.N.A was signed in London on June 18 1935. This diplomatic success did much to increase Ribbentrop's prestige with Hitler.

Immediately after the signing of the A.G.N.A., Ribbentrop followed up with the next step that was intended to create the Anglo-German alliance, namely the Gleichschaltung (co-ordination) of all societies demanding the restoration of the former German colonies in Africa into the Reichskolonialbund (Reich Colonial League) under General Franz Ritter von Epp, who in turn reported to Ribbentrop, to press for Germany's “inalienable” right to her former colonies. It was the joint idea of Hitler and Ribbentrop that demanding colonial restoration would pressure the British into making an alliance with the Reich on German terms. However, there was a certain difference of opinion between Ribbentrop and Hitler in that Ribbentrop sincerely wished to recover the former colonies, whereas for Hitler, colonial demands were just a negotiating tactic that would see Germany “renounce” her colonial claims in exchange for a British alliance.

The Anti-Comintern Pact of November 1936 marked an important change in German foreign policy. The Auswärtiges Amt had traditionally favoured a policy of friendship with China, one that Neurath very much believed in following. Ribbentrop was opposed to the pro-China orientation of the Auswärtiges Amt and instead favoured an alliance with Japan. To this end, Ribbentrop often worked closely with Hiroshi Ōshima, who served first as the Japanese military attaché, and then as Ambassador in Berlin in strengthening German-Japanese ties, in spite of furious opposition from the Wehrmacht and the Auswärtiges Amt, who preferred closer Sino-German ties. The Anti-Comintern Pact marked the beginning of the shift on Germany's part from China's ally to Japan's ally.

During the same period, Ribbentrop often visited France to try to influence, not very successfully, French politicians into adopting a pro-German foreign policy. Ribbentrop enjoyed more success in the United Kingdom, where he was able to persuade an impressive array of British high society to visit Hitler in Germany. The most notable guest Ribbentrop brought to Hitler was the former Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1936. Most of Hitler's British guests were aristocrats, retired politicians, ex-generals, journalists such as Lord Lothian, and various businessmen like the newspaper magnate Viscount Rothermere or Lord Londonderry. Very few of these people were actual decision-makers in the British government such as Cabinet-level politicians or high-ranking bureaucrats. Neither Hitler nor Ribbentrop understood very well that when people like Lloyd George or Rothermere declared that they favoured closer Anglo-German ties, they were speaking as private citizens, not on behalf of Whitehall. As a German diplomat, Truetzschler von Falkenstein complained after the war that "Ribbentrop, having had contact with only a small group in England-representatives of the so-called two hundred families-did not know the great mass of the English people. The England with which he hoped to collaborate was the England of this select group, since he believed that its members controlled Britain. Another German diplomat commented Ribbentrop had the strange idea to "conduct international relations through aristocrats", and another German diplomat noted that "He [Ribbentrop] did not have the capacity to form an overview: to see things in perspective. In England, for example he relied upon people like Conwell-Evans who had no real influence. Earlier, speaking of Ribbentrop's activities and of the views of his British friends, Leopold von Hoesch, the German Ambassador in London from 1932-36 warned Berlin should they should "...not pay any attention to the Londonderrys and Lothians, who in no way represented any important section of British opinion.

In August 1936 the German government appointed Ribbentrop Ambassador to Britain with orders to negotiate the Anglo-German alliance that Hitler had predicted in Mein Kampf. Before leaving to take up his post in London, Ribbentrop was informed by Hitler that: “Ribbentrop…get Britain to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, that is what I want most of all. I have sent you as the best man I’ve got. Do what you can… But if in future all our efforts are still in vain, fair enough, then I’m ready for war as well. I would regret it very much, but if it has to be, there it is. But I think it would be a short war and the moment it is over, I will then be ready at any time to offer the British an honorable peace acceptable to both sides. However, I would then demand that Britain join the Anti-Comintern Pact or perhaps some other pact. But get on with it, Ribbentrop, you have the trumps in your hand, play them well. I’m ready at any time for a air pact as well. Do your best. I will follow your efforts with interest”. The vain, arrogant and tactless Ribbentrop was not the man for such a mission, but it is doubtful that even a more skilled diplomat could have fulfilled Hitler's dream of a grand Anglo-German alliance. His time in London was marked by an endless series of social gaffes and blunders that worsened his already poor relations with the British Foreign Office. In addition, the fact that Ribbentrop chose to spend as little time as possible in London irritated the British Foreign Office immensely. In May 1937, he greeted the King George VI with "Heil Hitler!. (Punch referred to him as Von Brickendrop.)

To help with his move to London, and with the design of the new German Embassy Ribbentrop had built (the existing Embassy was deemed insufficiently grand for Ribbentrop), Ribbentrop hired a Berlin interior decorator named Martin Luther. Upon the recommendation of his wife, Ribbentrop hired Luther to work for the Dienststelle Ribbentrop. Luther proved to a master intriguer, and became Ribbentrop's favorite hatchet man .

In his dealings with the British government, most of Ribbentrop's time was spent either demanding that Britain sign the Anti-Comintern Pact or that London return the former German colonies in Africa. In March 1937, Ribbentrop attracted much adverse comment in the British press when he gave a speech at the Leipzig Trade Fair in Leipzig, where he declared that German economic prosperity would be satisfied either "through the restoration of the former German colonial possessions, or by means of the German people's own strength”. Ribbentrop did not understand the King's limited role in government as he thought King Edward VIII could decide British foreign policy. He convinced Hitler that he had the Edward's support but this was, as was his belief that he had impressed British Society, a tragic delusion. During the Abdication crisis of December 1936, Ribbentrop reported to Berlin that only the reason why the crisis had occurred was because of an anti-German Jewish-Masonic-reactionary conspiracy to depose Edward, and that civil war would soon break out in Britain between supporters of the King and supporters of the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. This led to a false sense of confidence about British intentions with which he unwittingly deceived his Fuhrer.

His aggressive and overbearing manner towards everyone except his wife and Hitler meant that to know him was to dislike him. His negotiating style, a strange mix of bullying bluster and icy coldness coupled with lengthy monologues praising Hitler, alienated many. In November 1937, Ribbentrop was placed in a highly embarrassing situation when his forceful advocacy of the return of the former German colonies led to the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos offered to open talks on returning the former German colonies in return for which the Germans would make binding commitments to respect their borders in Central and Eastern Europe. Since Hitler was not really interested in obtaining the former colonies, especially if the price was a brake on expansion into Eastern Europe, Ribbentrop was forced to turn down the Anglo-French offer that he had largely brought about.

Ribbentrop's inability to achieve the alliance that he had been sent out for frustrated him as he feared it could cost him Hitler's favour, and it made him a bitter Anglophobe. As the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary in late 1937, Ribbentrop had come to hate Britain with all the “fury of a woman scorned”. When Ribbentrop travelled to Rome in November 1937 to oversee Italy's adhesion to the Anti-Comintern Pact, he made clear to his hosts that the pact was really directed against Britain. As Count Ciano noted in his diary, the Anti-Comintern Pact was "anti-Communist in theory, but in fact unmistakably anti-British. Believing himself to be in a state of disgrace with Hitler over his failure to achieve the British alliance, Ribbentrop spent December 1937 in a state of depression, and together with his wife, wrote two lengthy documents for Hitler denouncing Britain. In the first of his two reports to Hitler, which was presented on January 2, 1938, Ribbentrop stated that "England is our most dangerous enemy. In the same report, Ribbentrop advised Hitler to abandon the idea of a British alliance, and instead embrace the idea of an alliance of Germany, Japan and Italy, who would destroy the British Empire. Ribbentrop, and Hitler for that matter, never understood that British foreign policy aimed at the appeasement of Germany, not an alliance. While the Ribbentrops were in Britain, his son, Rudolf von Ribbentrop, attended Westminster School in London.

Peter Ustinov was Rudolph's schoolmate at this time, as related in his autobiography 'Dear Me' (1971). Ustinov is also supposed to have clandestinely leaked Rudolph's presence at his school to The Times. The result of this was the prompt withdrawal of the younger Ribbentrop from the school as a precautionary measure for his safety, as well as for security of his father's mission in London.

Royal visits

Ribbentrop's time in London was also marked by scandal. It was believed by many members of the British upper classes that he was having an affair with Wallis Simpson, the wife of British businessman Edward Simpson and the mistress of King Edward VIII. According to files recently declassified by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mrs. Simpson was believed to be a regular attendee at Ribbentrop's social gatherings at the German Embassy in London where it was thought the two struck up a romantic relationship . Ribbentrop was said to have used Simpson's access to the King to funnel important information about the British to the German government . Supposedly, Simpson was paid by the Germans for this information and was happy to continue the relationship as long as she received payment. The FBI took the matter seriously enough to advise President Roosevelt of their findings; he once commented to a confidante that Simpson "played around...with the Ribbentrop set."

However, although the success of the arrangement was supposedly one of the reasons for Ribbentrop's appointment to the position of Foreign Minister, it should be pointed out that the actual truth of the matter is still very much in doubt. Simpson, who later married the former King – he had abdicated to marry her – and was known in later life as the Duchess of Windsor, noted in her book The Heart has its Reasons that she met Ribbentrop on only two occasions and had no personal relationship with him whatsoever.

Foreign Minister of the Reich

On February 4 1938, Ribbentrop succeeded Baron Konstantin von Neurath as Foreign Minister in the German government. Ribbentrop's appointment was generally taken at the time and since as indicating that German foreign policy was moving in a more radical direction. In contrast to Neurath's less bellicose and cautious nature, Ribbentrop unequivocally supported war in 1938 - 39. Benito Mussolini commented, "Ribbentrop belongs to the category of Germans who are a disaster for their country. He talks about making war right and left, without naming an enemy or defining an objective" . During the May Crisis of 1938, Ribbentrop boastfully told the British Ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson that Germany was prepared to struggle to the death with Britain and France and that in regards to Czechoslovakia "...there would not be a living soul in that state. In response to objections from Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, (the Auswärtiges Amt State Secretary 1938-1943) that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, it would cause a world war that Germany could not win, Ribbentrop replied:"...the Führer had never yet been wrong...One must believe in his genius as he, Ribbentrop, did, from long years of experience. If I had not yet come to blind faith in this matter, he urged me to do so.

Ribbentrop's time as Foreign Minister can be divided into three periods. In the first, from 1938 - 39, he tried to persuade other states to align themselves with Germany for the coming war. In the second from 1939 - 43, Ribbentrop attempted to persuade other states to enter the war on Germany's side or at least maintain pro-German neutrality. In the final phase from 1943 - 45, he had the task of trying to keep Germany's allies from leaving her side. During the course of all three periods, Ribbentrop met frequently with leaders and diplomats from Italy, Japan, Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, and Hungary. During all this time, Ribbentrop feuded with various other Nazi leaders; at one point in August 1939 an armed clash took place between supporters of Ribbentrop and the Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels over the control of a radio station in Berlin that was meant to broadcast German propaganda abroad (Goebbels claimed exclusive control of all propaganda both at home and abroad whereas Ribbentrop asserted a claim to monopolize all German propaganda abroad).

One of Ribbentrop's first acts as Foreign Minister was to achieve a total volte-face in Germany's Far Eastern policies. Ribbentrop was instrumental in February 1938 persuading Hitler to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and to renounce German claims upon her former colonies in the Pacific, which were now held by Japan. By April 1938, Ribbentrop had ended all German arms shipments to China and had all of the German Army officers serving with the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek recalled (with the threat that the families of the officers in China would be sent to concentration camps if the officers did not return to Germany immediately). In return, the Germans received little thanks from the Japanese, who refused to allow any new German businesses to be set up in the part of China they had occupied, and continued with their policy of attempting to exclude all existing German (together with all other Western) businesses from Japanese-occupied China.

As Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop was noted for his virulent Anglophobia and anti-Semitism. At a meeting between Ribbentrop, Hitler and Henderson on March 3, 1938 during which Henderson offered on behalf of his government a proposal for an international regime to rule much of Africa, in which Germany would play a leading role in exchange for which Germany would agree not to change its borders through violence, the British offer flatly refused by Hitler, who had no real interest in colonies in Africa, and was more interested in the idea of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. At the same meeting, Ribbentrop stated that the British government secretly controlled the British press, and hence could silence at any moment all press criticism of the Nazi regime; the fact that the British government had not done so was proof of British malevolence towards Germany. After the meeting, Henderson reported to London about a private conversation with Ribbentrop:“He [Ribbentrop] talked so much…about what Great Britain should do that I warned at last that you [Lord Halifax] would be expecting rather to hear what Germany would be prepared to do. His reply was: “What can we do? We have nothing to give. Ribbentrop loathed Neville Chamberlain, and viewed his appeasement policy as some sort of British scheme to block Germany from her rightful place in the world. Ribbentrop regarded the Munich Agreement as diplomatic defeat for Germany, as it allowed Germany to gain the Sudetenland without the war Ribbentrop wanted. Starting in the fall of 1938, Ribbentrop attempted to convert the Anti-Comintern Pact into an anti-British alliance, without much success. Much to Ribbentrop's intense disappointment, the Japanese were more interested in 1938-39 in fighting the Soviets and the Chinese rather than fighting the British. With the Italians all Ribbentrop was able to achieve was the Pact of Steel in May 1939, and even that was accomplished only by falsely assuring Mussolini that there would be no war for the next three years.

In regards to the anti-Semitic policies, Ribbentrop emerged as one of the leading hardliners, and refused to even consider the idea (which some of the other Nazi leaders were open to, through on the pragmatic grounds as a way of encouraging Jewish emigration) that German Jews be allowed to bring their personal possessions with them when they left Germany. At a meeting in Paris with the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet in December 1938, when Bonnet asked if were possible for immigrating German Jews to bring their personal belongings with them, Ribbentrop replied: "The Jews in Germany were without exception pickpockets, murderers and thieves. The property they possessed had been acquired illegally. The German government had therefore decided to assimilate them with the criminal elements of the population. The property which they had acquired illegally would be taken from them. They would be forced to live in districts frequented by the criminal classes. They would be under police observation like other criminals. They would be forced to report to the police as other criminals were obligated to do. The German government could not help it if some of these criminals escaped to other countries which seemed to so anxious to have them. It was not however willing for them to take the property, which had resulted from their illegal operations with them.

Moreover, as time went by, Ribbentrop started to oust the old diplomats from their senior positions in the Auswärtiges Amt and replaced them with men from the Dienststelle. By 1943, 32% of the offices in the Foreign Ministry were held by men who previously served in the Dienststelle. Ribbentrop was widely disliked by the old diplomats in Auswärtiges Amt. Herbert von Dirksen who served as Ribbentrop's successor as German Ambassador in London in 1938-1939 described Ribbentrop as "an unwholesome, half-comical figure.

On December 6 1938 Ribbentrop visited Paris, where he and the French foreign minister Georges Bonnet signed a grand-sounding but largely meaningless Declaration of Franco-German Friendship. Ribbentrop was later to claim that Bonnet told him that France recognized Eastern Europe as being within Germany's exclusive sphere of influence. The latter claim was to lead to a lengthy war of words via a series of letters in the summer of 1939 between Bonnet and Ribbentrop over just what precisely Bonnet said to Ribbentrop. He played a role in the German annexation of Bohemia and Moravia (1939) by bullying the Czechoslovak President Emil Hacha into transforming his country into a German protectorate. More importantly, Ribbentrop played a key role in the conclusion of the Soviet-German nonaggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, and in the diplomatic action surrounding the attack on Poland. From March 1939, Ribbentrop had became the leading advocate within the German government of reaching an understanding with Moscow. Ribbentrop repeatedly advised Hitler that Britain would not go to war in the defence of Poland. The signing of the Non-Aggression Pact in Moscow on August 23 1939 was the crowning achievement of Ribbentrop's career. Ribbentrop flew to Moscow, where over the course of a thirteen hour visit, Ribbentrop signed both the Non-Aggression Pact and the secret protocols, which partitioned much of Eastern Europe between the Soviets and the Germans. For a brief moment in August 1939, Ribbentrop convinced Hitler that the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union would cause the fall of the Chamberlain government, and led to a new British government that would abandon the Poles to their fate. On the night of August 30, 1939, Ribbentrop had an extremely heated interview with Henderson, who objected to Ribbentrop's demand that if a Polish plenipotentiary did not arrive in Berlin that night, then the responsibility for the outbreak of war would not rest on the Reich. The Henderson-Ribbentrop meeting became so tense that the two men almost came to blows. When Chamberlain followed through with his threat of a British declaration of war if Germany attacked Poland on September 3, 1939, a visibly shocked Hitler asked Ribbentrop “Now what?”, a question to which Ribbentrop had no answer.

After the outbreak of World War II, Ribbentrop spent most of the Polish campaign traveling with Hitler. On September 27, 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow, where at meetings with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin, he was forced to agree to revising the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact in the Soviet Union's favor. On March 1, 1940, Ribbentrop received Sumner Welles, the American Under-Secretary of State, who was a peace mission for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and did his best to abuse his American guest. On May 7, 1940, Ribbentrop founded a new section of the Auswärtiges Amt, the Abteilung Deutschland (Department of Internal German Affairs) under Martin Luther, to which was assigned the responsibility for all anti-Semitic affairs.

After June 1940, Ribbentrop, who was a Francophile, argued that Germany should allow Vichy France a limited degree of independence within a binding new Franco-German partnership. To this end, Ribbentrop appointed a colleague from the Dienststelle named Otto Abetz as Ambassador to France with instructions to promote the political career of Pierre Laval. The amount of Auswärtiges Amt influence in France varied as there were many other agencies competing for power there such as the military, the SS and the Four Year Plan office of Ribbentrop's archenemy Hermann Göring, but in general from late 1943 to mid-1944, the Auswärtiges Amt was second only to the SS in terms of power in France. In 1941, Ribbentrop strongly pushed for German aid to for the Rashid Ali al-Gaylani government in Iraq.

From the later half of 1937, Ribbentrop had championed the idea of an alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan that would partition the British Empire between them. After signing the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, Ribbentrop expanded on this idea for an Axis alliance to include the Soviet Union to form an Eurasian bloc that would destroy maritime states such as Britain. Ribbentrop liked Stalin and was against the attack on the USSR in 1941. He passed a word to a Soviet diplomat: "Please tell Stalin I was against this war, and that I know it will bring great misfortune to Germany."

In the fall of 1940, Ribbentrop made a sustained, but unsuccessful effort to have Spain enter the war on the Axis side. During his talks with the Spanish foreign minister, Ramón Serrano Súñer, Ribbentrop affronted the Spaniard by his tactless behavior, especially by his suggestion that Spain cede the Canary Islands to Germany. Another area where Ribbentrop enjoyed more success occurred in September 1940, when Ribbentrop had the Far Eastern agent of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, Dr. Heinrich Georg Stahmer start negotiations with the Japanese foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka for an anti-American alliance (the German Ambassador to Japan, General Eugen Ott was excluded from the talks on Ribbentrop's orders). The end result of these talks was the signing in Berlin of the Tripartite Pact by Ribbentrop, Count Ciano and the Japanese Ambassador Saburo Kurusu.

Ribbentrop was found to have had culpability in the Holocaust on the grounds that he persuaded the leaders of satellite countries of the Third Reich to deport Jews to the Nazi extermination camps. He championed the so-called Madagascar Plan in June 1940 to deport all of Europe's Jews to Madagascar after the presumed imminent defeat of Britain. The Auswärtiges Amt played a key role in arranging the deportations of Jews to the death camps from France (1942 - 44), Hungary (1944 - 45), Slovakia, Italy (after 1943), and the Balkans. He assigned all of the Holocaust-related work to an old crony from the Dienststelle named Martin Luther, who represented the Foreign Ministry at the Wannsee Conference.

In August 1941, when the matter of foreign Jews living in Germany were subject to deportation or not, Ribbentrop argued against deportation, but had Luther negotiate agreements with the governments of Romania, Slovakia and Croatia to allow Jews holding citizenships of those states to be deported. In September 1941, the Reich Plenipotentiary for Serbia, Felix Benzler of Auswärtiges Amt reported to Ribbentrop that the SS had arrested 8, 000 Serbian Jews, whom they were planning to execute en mass, and asked for permission to try stop the massacre.. Ribbentrop assigned the question to Luther, whom in turn ordered Benzler to co-operate fully in the massacre.. In 1942, Ambassador Otto Abetz secured the deportation of 25, 000 French Jews and Ambassador Hans Ludin secured the deportation of 50, 000 Slovak Jews to the death camps. Only once, in August 1942, did Ribbentrop attempted to impede the deportations, but only because of jurisdictional disputes with the SS. Ribbentrop ordered the halt of deportations from Romania and Croatia, but because in the case of the former, he was insulted because the SS were negotiating with the Romanians directly and in the case of the latter because the SS and Luther were jointly pressuring the Italians in their zone of occupation in Croatia to deport their Jews without informing Ribbentrop first, who was supposed to personally kept abreast of all developments in Italo-German relations. In September 1942, after a meeting with Hitler, who was most unhappy with his Foreign Minister's actions, Ribbentrop promptly changed course and ordered that the deportations be resumed at once with all speed.

In the spring of 1944, the German Reich Plenipotentiary for Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer (formally Ribbentrop’s liaison man with the IRA) of the Auswärtiges Amt played a major role in helping to arrange the deportation of 400, 000 Hungarian Jews to the death camps. Veesenmayer kept Ribbentrop fully informed about the Hungarian deportations, sending the Foreign Minister weekly reports about the deportations, and threatened the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy when he ordered a halt to the deportations in July 1944. On April 28, 1944, Ribbentrop, who had finally won control of foreign propaganda, founded a new section at the Auswärtiges Amt called "Anti-Jewish Action Abroad" under Rudolf Schleier, which included Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and Rashid Ali al-Gaylani as members, and was given the responsibility of conducting anti-Semitic propaganda abroad.

As World War Two went on, Ribbentrop's once friendly relations with the SS became increasing strained. In January 1941, the nadir of SS-Auswärtiges Amt relations was reached when the Iron Guard attempted a coup in Romania with Ribbentrop supporting the government of Marshal Ion Antonescu and Himmler supporting the Iron Guard. In the aftermath of the failed coup in Bucharest, the Auswärtiges Amt assembled evidence that the SD had backed the coup, which led to Ribbentrop sharply restricting the powers of the SD police attaches, who since October 1939 had operated largely independently of the German embassies at which they had been stationed at. Another low point in Ribbentrop's relations with the SS occurred in February 1943, when the SD backed an internal putsch attempt by Luther to oust Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister. Luther had become estranged from Ribbentrop because he continued to be treated household servant by Frau Ribbentrop, who in her turn had pressured her husband into ordering an investigation into allegations of corruption on Luther’s part. The putsch failed and Luther was sent to Sachenhausen concentration camp.

Declining influence

As the war went on, Ribbentrop's influence declined. As much of the world was at war with Germany and as Germany was losing, the usefulness of the Foreign Ministry became increasingly limited. Moreover, many of the people Ribbentrop appointed to head German embassies were grossly incompetent. This was particularly true in Eastern Europe, where Ribbentrop appointed in the spring of 1941, an assemblage of SA men to German embassies there, such Manfred von Killinger to Romania, Siegfried Kasche to Croatia, Adolf Beckerle to Bulgaria, Dietrich von Jagow to Hungary and Hans Ludin to Slovakia, and whose major qualifications were that they were close friends of Luther and as a way of spiting the SS .

Hitler, for his part, found Ribbentrop increasingly tiresome and sought to avoid him. The Foreign Minister's ever more desperate pleas for Hitler to allow him to find some way of making peace with at least some of Germany's enemies — the Soviet Union in particular — certainly played a role in this estrangement.

A major blow against Ribbentrop was the participation of many of old diplomats from the Auswärtige Amt in the July 20 1944 putsch and assassination attempt against Hitler. Ribbentrop had no knowledge of the plot, but the involvement of so many former and serving members of the Foreign Ministry reflected badly on him. Hitler felt with some justification that Ribbentrop was not keeping proper tabs on what his diplomats were up to, because of his "bloated administration. After July 20, Ribbentrop (who by this time was reconciled with SS) worked closely with the SS in purging the Auswärtige Amt of those suspected of involvement with the putsch. Two of the more notable diplomats to be executed after July putsch were Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg and Ulrich von Hassell. As part of the purge effort, and at the instigation of his wife, Ribbentrop had Lieny Behlau, the widow of Frau Ribbentrop's younger brother sent to a concentration camp in August 1944, and the custody of her two children assigned to himself and his wife.

Ribbentrop worked in close co-operation with the SS for what turned out to be his last significant foreign policy move, Operation Panzerfaust. On October 15 1944, the coup that deposed Admiral Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary. Horthy was deposed because he attempted to seek a separate peace with the Allies.

On April 20 1945, Ribbentrop attended Hitler's 56th birthday party in Berlin. This was one of the last times he saw Hitler. On April 23, 1945 Ribbentrop attempted to have a meeting with Hitler, only to be told to go away as Hitler had more important things to do than talk to him. This his last meeting with Hitler.

On June 14 1945, Ribbentrop was arrested by a Belgian SAS sergeant (Jacques Goffinet) working with British forces near Hamburg. Found with him was a rambling letter addressed to the British Prime Minister "Vincent Churchill" criticizing British foreign policy for anti-German bias and blaming the British for the Soviet occupation of the eastern half of Germany and thus for the advance of "Bolshevism" into central Europe. The fact that Ribbentrop even in 1945 did not know that Churchill's first name was "Winston" reflected his general ignorance about the world outside of Germany.

Trial and execution

Ribbentrop was a defendant at the Nuremberg Trials, and the Allies' International Military Tribunal found him guilty of all charges brought against him. Even in prison, Ribbentrop remained subservient to Hitler, stating "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'Do this!', I would still do it." .

During the trial, Ribbentrop rather unsuccessfully attempted to deny his role in the war. For example, during his cross-examination, the prosecution brought up claims that he (along with Hitler and Göring) threatened the leader of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Emil Hacha, with a "threat of aggressive action." The questioning resulted in the following exchange between the British Prosecuter Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe and Ribbentrop:

MAXWELL-FYFE: What further pressure could you put on the head of a country beyond threatening him that your Army would march in, in overwhelming strength, and your air force would bomb his capital?

RIBBENTROP: War, for instance..

While not recorded in the trial transcript, Göring was said to have remarked, after hearing these words, that Ribbentrop deserved to hang, if only for his stupidity.

At one point during the trial proceedings, US Army interpreter for the prosecution Richard Sonnenfeldt asked Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, Ribbentrop's second in command, how Hitler could have made him a high official. Weizsacker responded "Hitler never noticed Ribbentrop's babbling because Hitler always did all the talking" .

Since Göring had committed suicide a few hours prior to the time of execution, Ribbentrop was the first politician to be hanged on the morning of October 16, 1946. After being escorted up the 13 steps to the waiting noose, Ribbentrop was asked if he had any final words. He calmly said: "God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be understanding between East and West." As the hood was placed over his head, Ribbentrop added: "I wish peace to the world." After a slight pause the executioner pulled the lever, releasing the trap door Ribbentrop stood upon. It took 17 minutes for Ribbentrop to die.

In 1953 Ribbentrop's memoirs, Zwischen London und Moskau ("Between London and Moscow"), were published.

See also

Endnotes

References

  • Bloch, Michael Ribbentrop New York: Crown Publishing., 1992 ISBN 0-517-59310-6.
  • Browning, Christopher R. The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office : A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940-43 New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978 ISBN 0-8419-0403-0.
  • Craig, Gordon "The German Foreign Office from Neurath to Ribbentrop" pages 406-436 from The Diplomats 1919-39 edited by Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.
  • Hildebrand, Klaus The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, translated by Anthony Fothergill, London: Batsford, 1973 ISBN 0-520-02528-8.
  • Hillgruber, Andreas Germany And The Two World Wars, translated by William C. Kirby, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981 ISBN 0-674-35321-8.
  • Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf "The Structure of Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-45" pages 49-94 from The Third Reich edited by Christian Leitz, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999 ISBN 0-631-20700-7.
  • Michalka, Wolfgang "From Anti-Comintern Pact to the Euro-Asiatic Bloc: Ribbentrop's Alternative Concept to Hitler's Foreign Policy Programme" pages 267-284 from Aspects of the Third Reich edited by H.W Koch, London: Macmillan 1985 ISBN 0-333-35272-6.
  • Oursler Jr., Fulton, "Secret Treason" in American Heritage, 42 (8) (1991)
  • Synder, Louis Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976 ISBN 0-07-059525-9.
  • The Munich Crisis, 1938 Prelude to World War II edited by Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein, London: Frank Cass Inc, 1999 ISBN 0-7146-8056-7.
  • Weitz, John Hitler's Diplomat : The Life And Times Of Joachim von Ribbentrop, New York : Ticknor & Fields, 1992 ISBN 0-395-62152-6.
  • Waddington, Geoffrey "`An Idyllic and Unruffled Atmosphere of Complete Anglo-German Misunderstanding': Aspects of the Operation of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop in Great Britain 1934-1939" pages 44-74 from History, Volume 82, 1997.
  • Windsor, Wallis, The Heart has its Reasons - the Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor, Bath: Chivers Press, 1956.

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