(30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946)
Early lifeJoachim von Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Rhenish Prussia, to Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, a career army officer, and his wife Johanne Sophie Hertwig. From 1904 to 1908, Ribbentrop took French courses at Lycée Fabert in Metz, the German Empire's most powerful fortress. A former teacher later recalled Ribbentrop "was the most stupid in his class, full of vanity and very pushy". His father was cashiered from the Prussian Army in 1908 for repeatedly disparaging Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged homosexuality, and the Ribbentrop family was often short of money.
For the next 18 months, the family moved to Arosa, Switzerland, where the children continued to be taught by French and English private tutors, and Ribbentrop spent his free time skiing and mountaineering. Following the stay in Arosa, Ribbentrop was sent to Britain for a year to improve his knowledge of English. Fluent in both French and English, young Ribbentrop lived at various times in Grenoble, France and London, before travelling to Canada in 1910.
He worked for the Molsons Bank on Stanley Street in Montreal, and then for the engineering firm M. P. and J. T. Davis on the Quebec Bridge reconstruction. He was also employed by the National Transcontinental Railway, which constructed a line from Moncton to Winnipeg. He worked as a journalist in New York City and Boston but returned to Germany to recover from tuberculosis. He returned to Canada and set up a small business in Ottawa importing German wine and champagne. In 1914, he competed for Ottawa's famous Minto ice-skating team and participated in the Ellis Memorial Trophy tournament in Boston in February.
When the First World War began later in 1914, Ribbentrop left Canada, which, as part of the British Empire, was at war with Germany, and found temporary sanctuary in the neutral United States. On 15 August 1914, he sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey on the Holland-America ship Potsdam, bound for Rotterdam, and on his return to Germany enlisted in the Prussian 12th Hussar Regiment.
Ribbentrop served first on the Eastern Front, and was then transferred to the Western Front. He earned a commission and was awarded the Iron Cross. In 1918, 1st Lieutenant Ribbentrop was stationed in Istanbul as a staff officer. During his time in Turkey, he became a friend of another staff officer, Franz von Papen.
In 1919, Ribbentrop met Anna Elisabeth Henkell ("Annelies" to her friends), the daughter of a wealthy Wiesbaden wine producer. They were married on 5 July 1920, and Ribbentrop began to travel throughout Europe as a wine salesman. He and Annelies had five children together. In 1925, his aunt, Gertrud von Ribbentrop, adopted him, which allowed him to add the nobiliary particle von to his name.
Early career
In 1928, Ribbentrop was introduced to
Adolf Hitler as a businessman with foreign connections who "gets the same price for German champagne as others get for French champagne". Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff, with whom Ribbentrop had served in the 12th Torgau Hussars in the First World War, arranged the introduction. Ribbentrop and his wife joined the NSDAP on 1 May 1932. Ribbentrop began his political career by offering to be a secret emissary between Chancellor of Germany Franz von Papen, his old wartime friend, and
Hitler. His offer was initially refused. Six months later, however, Hitler and Papen accepted his help.
Their change of heart occurred after General Kurt von Schleicher ousted Papen in December 1932. This led to a complex set of intrigues in which Papen and various friends of president Paul von Hindenburg negotiated with
Hitler to oust Schleicher. On 22 January 1933, State Secretary Otto Meissner and Hindenburg's son Oskar met
Hitler,
Hermann Göring, and Wilhelm Frick at Ribbentrop's home in Berlin's exclusive Dahlem district. Over dinner, Papen made the fateful concession that if Schleicher's government were to fall, he would abandon his demand for the Chancellorship and instead use his influence with President Hindenburg to ensure Hitler got the Chancellorship.
Ribbentrop was not popular with the NSDAP's Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters); they nearly all disliked him. British historian Laurence Rees described Ribbentrop as "the nazi almost all the other leading nazis hated".
Joseph Goebbels expressed a common view when he confided to his diary that "Von Ribbentrop bought his name, he married his money and he swindled his way into office". Ribbentrop was among the few who could meet with Hitler at any time without an appointment, however, unlike
Goebbels or
Göring.
During most of the Weimar Republic era, Ribbentrop was apolitical and displayed no antisemitic prejudices. A visitor to a party Ribbentrop threw in 1928 recorded that Ribbentrop had no political views beyond a vague admiration for Gustav Stresemann, fear of Communism, and a wish to restore the monarchy. Several Berlin Jewish businessmen who did business with Ribbentrop in the 1920s and knew him well later expressed astonishment at the vicious antisemitism he later displayed in the National Socialist era, saying that they did not see any indications he had held such views. As a partner in his father-in-law's champagne firm, Ribbentrop did business with Jewish bankers and organised the Impegroma Importing Company ("Import und Export großer Marken") with Jewish financing.
Anglo-German Naval Agreement
Neurath did not think it possible to achieve the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. To discredit his rival, he appointed Ribbentrop head of the delegation sent to London to negotiate it. Once the talks began, Ribbentrop issued an ultimatum to Sir John Simon, informing him that if Germany's terms were not accepted in their entirety, the German delegation would go home. Simon was angry with that demand, and walked out of the talks. However, to everyone's surprise, the next day the British accepted Ribbentrop's demands, and the AGNA was signed in London on 18 June 1935 by Ribbentrop and Sir Samuel Hoare, the new British Foreign Secretary. The diplomatic success did much to increase Ribbentrop's prestige with Hitler, who called the day the AGNA was signed "the happiest day in my life". He believed it marked the beginning of an Anglo-German alliance, and ordered celebrations throughout Germany to mark the event.
Immediately after the AGNA was signed, Ribbentrop followed up with the next step that was intended to create the Anglo-German alliance, the Gleichschaltung (co-ordination) of all societies demanding the restoration of Germany's former colonies in Africa. On 3 July 1935, it was announced that Ribbentrop would head the efforts to recover Germany's former African colonies. Hitler and Ribbentrop believed that demanding colonial restoration would pressure the British into making an alliance with the Reich on German terms. However, there was a difference between Ribbentrop and Hitler: Ribbentrop sincerely wished to recover the former German colonies, but for Hitler, colonial demands were just a negotiating tactic. Germany would renounce its demands in exchange for a British alliance.
Ambassador to the United Kingdom
In August 1936, Hitler appointed Ribbentrop ambassador to the United Kingdom with orders to negotiate an Anglo-German alliance. Ribbentrop arrived to take up his position in October 1936, formally presenting his credentials to King Edward VIII on 30 October. Ribbentrop's 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.
Invited to stay as a house guest of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry at Wynyard Hall in County Durham, in November 1936, he was taken to a service in Durham Cathedral, and the hymn Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken was announced. As the organ played the opening bars, identical to the German national anthem, Ribbentrop gave the National Socialist salute and had to be restrained by his host.
At his wife's suggestion, Ribbentrop hired the Berlin interior decorator Martin Luther to assist with his move to London and help realise the design of the new German embassy that Ribbentrop had built there (he felt that the existing embassy was insufficiently grand). Luther proved to be a master intriguer and became Ribbentrop's favorite hatchet man.
Ribbentrop did not understand the limited role in government exercised by 20th-century British monarchs. He thought that King Edward VIII, Emperor of India, could dictate British foreign policy if he wanted. He convinced Hitler that he had Edward's support, but that was as much a delusion as his belief that he had impressed British society. In fact, Ribbentrop often displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of British politics and society. During the abdication crisis in December 1936, Ribbentrop reported to Berlin that it had been precipitated by an anti-German Jewish-Masonic-reactionary conspiracy to depose Edward, whom Ribbentrop represented as a staunch friend of Germany, and that civil war would soon break out in Britain between supporters of Edward and those of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Ribbentrop's civil war predictions were greeted with incredulity by the British people who heard them. Duke Carl Alexander of Württemberg had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Wallis Simpson, Edward's lover and a suspected National Socialist sympathizer, had slept with Ribbentrop in London in 1936; had remained in constant contact with him; and had continued to leak secrets.
Ribbentrop had a habit of summoning tailors from the best British firms, making them wait for hours and then sending them away without seeing him but with instructions to return the next day, only to repeat the process. That did immense damage to his reputation in British high society, as London's tailors retaliated by telling all their well-off clients that Ribbentrop was impossible to deal with. In an interview, his secretary Reinhard Spitzy stated, "He [Ribbentrop] behaved very stupidly and very pompously and the British don't like pompous people". In the same interview, Spitzy called Ribbentrop "pompous, conceited and not too intelligent" and stated he was an utterly insufferable man to work for.
In addition, Ribbentrop chose to spend as little time as possible in London to stay close to Hitler, which irritated the British Foreign Office immensely, as Ribbentrop's frequent absences prevented the handling of many routine diplomatic matters. (Punch referred to him as the "Wandering Aryan" for his frequent trips home.) As Ribbentrop alienated more and more people in Britain,
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring warned
Hitler that Ribbentrop was a
"stupid ass". Hitler dismissed
Göring's concerns:
"But after all, he knows quite a lot of important people in England." That remark led
Göring to reply
"Mein Führer, that may be right, but the bad thing is, they know him".
In February 1937, Ribbentrop committed a notable social gaffe by unexpectedly greeting George VI with the "German greeting", a stiff-armed Nazi salute: the gesture nearly knocked over the King, who was walking forward to shake Ribbentrop's hand at the time. Ribbentrop further compounded the damage to his image and caused a minor crisis in Anglo-German relations by insisting that henceforward all German diplomats were to greet heads of state by giving and receiving the stiff-arm fascist salute. The crisis was resolved when
Neurath pointed out to Hitler that under Ribbentrop's rule, if the Soviet ambassador were to give the Communist clenched-fist salute, Hitler would be obliged to return it. On
Neurath's advice, Hitler disavowed Ribbentrop's demand that King George receive and give the "German greeting".
Most of Ribbentrop's time was spent demanding that Britain either sign the Anti-Comintern Pact or return the former German colonies in Africa. However, he also devoted considerable time to courting what he called the "men of influence" as the best way to achieve an Anglo-German alliance. He believed that the British aristocracy comprised some sort of secret society that ruled from behind the scenes, and that if he could befriend enough members of Britain's "secret government" he could bring about the alliance. Almost all of the initially-favourable reports Ribbentrop provided to Berlin about the alliance's prospects were based on friendly remarks about the "New Germany" that came from British aristocrats such as Lord Londonderry and Lord Lothian. The rather cool reception that Ribbentrop received from British Cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats did not make much of an impression on him at first. This British governmental view, summarised by Robert, Viscount Cranborne, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was that Ribbentrop always was a second-rate man.
In February 1937, before a meeting with the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop suggested to Hitler that Germany, Italy and Japan begin a worldwide propaganda campaign with the aim of forcing Britain to return the former German colonies in Africa. Hitler turned down the idea, but nonetheless during his meeting with Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop spent much of the meeting demanding that Britain sign an alliance with Germany and return the former German colonies. The German historian Klaus Hildebrand noted that as early as the Ribbentrop–Halifax meeting the differing foreign policy views of Hitler and Ribbentrop were starting to emerge, with Ribbentrop more interested in restoring the pre-1914 German Imperium in Africa than the conquest of Eastern Europe. Following the lead of Andreas Hillgruber, who argued that Hitler had a Stufenplan (stage by stage plan) for world conquest, Hildebrand argued that Ribbentrop may not have fully understood what Hitler's Stufenplan was or that in pressing so hard for colonial restoration, he was trying to score a personal success that might improve his standing with Hitler. In March 1937, Ribbentrop attracted much adverse comment in the British press when he gave a speech at the Leipzig Trade Fair in Leipzig in which he declared that German economic prosperity would be satisfied "through the restoration of the former German colonial possessions, or by means of the German people's own strength." The implied threat that if colonial restoration did not occur, the Germans would take back their former colonies by force attracted a great deal of hostile commentary on the inappropriateness of an ambassador threatening his host country in such a manner.
Ribbentrop's negotiating style, a mix of bullying bluster and icy coldness coupled with lengthy monologues praising Hitler, alienated many. The American historian Gordon A. Craig once observed that of all the voluminous memoir literature of the diplomatic scene of 1930s Europe, there are only two positive references to Ribbentrop. Of the two references, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, the German military attaché in London, commented that Ribbentrop had been a brave soldier in World War I, and the wife of the Italian Ambassador to Germany, Elisabetta Cerruti, called Ribbentrop "one of the most diverting of the Nazis". In both cases, the praise was limited, with Cerruti going on to write that only in National Socialist Germany was it possible for someone as superficial as Ribbentrop to rise to be a minister of foreign affairs, and Geyr von Schweppenburg called Ribbentrop an absolute disaster as ambassador in London. The British historian/television producer Laurence Rees noted for his 1997 series The Nazis: A Warning from History that every single person interviewed for the series who knew Ribbentrop expressed a passionate hatred for him. One German diplomat, Herbert Richter, called Ribbentrop "lazy and worthless", while another, Manfred von Schröder, was quoted as saying Ribbentrop was "vain and ambitious". Rees concluded, "No other Nazi was so hated by his colleagues".
In November 1937, Ribbentrop was placed in a highly-embarrassing situation since his forceful advocacy of the return of the former German colonies led British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos to offer 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 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. Immediately after turning down the Anglo-French offer on colonial restoration, Ribbentrop, for reasons of pure malice, ordered the Reichskolonialbund to increase the agitation for the former German colonies, a move that exasperated both the Foreign Office and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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". Ribbentrop and Hitler, for that matter, never understood that British foreign policy aimed at the appeasement of Germany, not an alliance with it.
When Ribbentrop traveled 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 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 that denounced Britain. In the first report to Hitler, which was presented on 2 January 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 to destroy the British Empire.
Ribbentrop wrote in his "Memorandum for the Führer" that "a change in the status quo in the East to Germany's advantage can only be accomplished by force" and that the best way to achieve it was to build a global anti-British alliance system.[99] Besides converting the Anti-Comintern Pact into an anti-British military alliance, Ribbentrop argued that German foreign policy should work to "winning over all states whose interests conform directly or indirectly to ours." By the last statement, Ribbentrop clearly implied that the Soviet Union should be included in the anti-British alliance system he had proposed.
Foreign Minister of the Reich
In early 1938, Hitler asserted his control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, in part by sacking
Neurath. On 4 February 1938, Ribbentrop succeeded
Neurath as Foreign Minister. Ribbentrop's appointment has generally been seen as an indication that German foreign policy was moving in a more radical direction. In contrast to
Neurath's cautious and less bellicose nature, Ribbentrop unequivocally supported war in 1938 and 1939.
Ribbentrop's time as Foreign Minister can be divided into three periods. In the first, from 1938 to 1939, he tried to persuade other states to align themselves with Germany for the coming war. In the second, from 1939 to 1943, Ribbentrop attempted to persuade other states to enter the war on Germany's side or at least to maintain pro-German neutrality. He was also involved in Operation Willi, an attempt to convince the former King Edward VIII to lobby his brother, now the king, on behalf of Germany. Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate the Duke of Windsor as king in the hope of establishing a fascist Britain. If Edward would agree to work openly with National Socialist Germany, he would be given financial assistance and would hopefully come to be a "compliant" king. Reportedly, 50 million Swiss francs were set aside for that purpose. The plan was never realised.
In the final phase, from 1943 to 1945, he had the task of trying to keep Germany's allies from leaving her side. During the course of all three periods, Ribbentrop frequently met leaders and diplomats from Italy, Japan, Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, and Hungary. During all of that time, Ribbentrop feuded with various other National Socialist leaders. As time went by, Ribbentrop started to oust the Foreign Office's old diplomats from their senior positions and replace them with men from the Dienststelle. As early as 1938, 32% of the offices in the Foreign Ministry were held by men who previously served in the Dienststelle.
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 in persuading Hitler to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and to renounce German claims upon its 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 and all other Western businesses from Japanese-occupied China. At the same time, the end of the informal Sino-German alliance led Chiang to terminate all concessions and contracts held by German companies in Kuomintang China.
French-German Non-Aggression pact, December 1938
In December 1938, during Ribbentrop's visit to Paris to sign the largely-meaningless French-German Non-Aggression pact, he had conversations with French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, which Ribbentrop later claimed included a promise that France would recognize all of Eastern Europe as Germany's exclusive sphere of influence.
German threat to Poland and British guarantee
Initially, Germany hoped to transform Poland into a satellite state, with Ribbentrop and Japanese military attache Hiroshi Ōshima trying to convince Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact. By March 1939, German demands had been rejected by the Poles three times, which led Hitler to decide, with enthusiastic support from Ribbentrop, upon the destruction of Poland as the main German foreign policy goal of 1939. On 21 March 1939, Hitler first went public with his demand that Danzig rejoin the Reich and for "extra-territorial" roads across the Polish Corridor. That marked a significant escalation of the German pressure on Poland, which had been confined to private meetings between German and Polish diplomats. The same day, on 21 March 1939, Ribbentrop presented a set of demands to the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski about Poland allowing the Free City of Danzig to return to Germany in such violent and extreme language that it led to the Poles to fear their country was on the verge of an immediate German attack. Ribbentrop had used such extreme language, particularly his remark that if Germany had a different policy towards the Soviet Union then Poland would cease to exist, that it led to the Poles ordering partial mobilisation and placing their armed forces on the highest state of alert on 23 March 1939. In a protest note at Ribbentrop's behaviour, Poland's Foreign Minister Józef Beck reminded him that Poland was an independent country and not some sort of German protectorate that Ribbentrop could bully at will. Ribbentrop, in turn, sent out instructions to the German Ambassador in Warsaw, Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, that if Poland agreed to the German demands, Germany would ensure that Poland could partition Slovakia with Hungary and be ensured of German support for annexing Ukraine. If the Poles rejected his offer, Poland would be considered an enemy of the Reich. On 26 March, in an extremely-stormy meeting with the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski, Ribbentrop accused the Poles of attempting to bully Germany by their partial mobilisation and violently attacked them for offering consideration only of the German demand about the "extra-territorial" roads. The meeting ended with Ribbentrop screaming that if Poland invaded the Free City of Danzig, Germany would go to war to destroy Poland. When the news of Ribbentrop's remarks was leaked to the Polish press, despite Beck's order to the censors on 27 March, it caused anti-German riots in Poland with the local NSDAP headquarters in the mixed town of Lininco destroyed by a mob. On 28 March, Beck told Moltke that any attempt to change the status of Danzig unilaterally would be regarded by Poland as a casus belli. Though the Germans were not planning an attack on Poland in March 1939, Ribbentrop's bullying behaviour towards the Poles destroyed any faint chance Poland allowing Danzig to return to Germany.
Pact with Soviet Union and outbreak of World War II
Ribbentrop played a key role in the conclusion of a Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in 1939 and in the diplomatic action surrounding the attack on Poland. In public, Ribbentrop expressed great fury at the Polish refusal to allow for Danzig's return to the Reich or to grant Polish permission for the "extra-territorial" highways, but since the matters were intended after March 1939 to be only a pretext for German aggression, Ribbentrop always refused privately to allow for any talks between German and Polish diplomats about those matters. Ribbentrop feared that if German–Polish talks took place, there was the danger that the Poles might back down and agree to the German demands, as the Czechoslovaks had done in 1938 under Anglo-French pressure, depriving the Germans of their excuse for aggression. To block German–Polish diplomatic talks further, Ribbentrop had the German Ambassador to Poland, Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, recalled, and he refused to see the Polish ambassador, Józef Lipski. On 25 May 1939, Ribbentrop sent a secret message to Moscow to tell the Soviet Foreign Commissar, Vyacheslav Molotov, that if Germany attacked Poland "Russia's special interests would be taken into consideration".
Throughout 1939, Hitler always privately referred to Britain as his main opponent but portrayed the coming destruction of Poland as a necessary prelude to any war with Britain. Ribbentrop informed Hitler that any war with Poland would last for only 24 hours and that the British would be so stunned with this display of German power that they would not honour their commitments. Along the same lines, Ribbentrop told Ciano on 5 May 1939, "It is certain that within a few months not one Frenchman nor a single Englishman will go to war for Poland".
Ribbentrop supported his analysis of the situation by showing Hitler only the diplomatic dispatches that supported his view that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland. In that, Ribbentrop was particularly supported by the German Ambassador in London, Herbert von Dirksen, who reported that Chamberlain knew "the social structure of Britain, even the conception of the British Empire, would not survive the chaos of even a victorious war" and so would back down over Poland. Furthermore, Ribbentrop had the German embassy in London provide translations from pro-appeasement newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express for Hitler's benefit, which had the effect of making it seem that British public opinion was more strongly against going to war for Poland than it actually was. The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the newspapers used by Ribbentrop to provide his press summaries for Hitler were out of touch not only with British public opinion but also with British government policy in regard to Poland. The press summaries Ribbentrop provided were particularly important, as Ribbentrop had managed to convince Hitler that the British government secretly controlled the British press, and just as in Germany, nothing appeared in the British press that the British government did not want to appear. Furthermore, the Germans had broken the British diplomatic codes and were reading the messages between the Foreign Office in London to and from the Embassy in Warsaw. The decrypts showed that there was much tension in Anglo-Polish relations, with the British pressuring the Poles to allow Danzig to rejoin the Reich and the Poles staunchly resisting all efforts to pressure them into concessions to Germany. On the basis of such decrypts, Hitler and Ribbentrop believed that the British were bluffing with their warnings that they would go to war to defend Polish independence. In mid-1939, Ribbentrop sabotaged all efforts at a peaceful solution to the Danzig dispute, leading the American historian Gerhard Weinberg to comment that "perhaps Chamberlain's haggard appearance did him more credit than Ribbentrop's beaming smile", as the countdown to a war that would kill tens of millions inexorably gathered pace.
Neville Chamberlain's European Policy in 1939 was based upon creating a "peace front" of alliances linking Western and Eastern European states to serve as a "tripwire" meant to deter any act of German aggression. The new "containment" strategy adopted in March 1939 was to give firm warnings to Berlin, increase the pace of British re-armament and attempt to form an interlocking network of alliances that would block German aggression anywhere in Europe by creating such a formidable deterrence to aggression that Hitler could not rationally choose that option. Underlying the basis of the "containment" of Germany were the so-called "X documents", provided by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, in 1938–1939. They suggested that the German economy, under the strain of massive military spending, was on the verge of collapse and led British policy-makers to the conclusion that if Hitler could be deterred from war and that if his regime was "contained" long enough, the German economy would collapse, and, with it, presumably the National Socialist regime. At the same time, British policymakers were afraid that if Hitler were "contained" and faced with a collapsing economy, he would commit a desperate "mad dog act" of aggression as a way of lashing out. Hence, emphasis was put on pressuring the Poles to allow the return of Danzig to Germany as a way of resolving the crisis peacefully by allowing Hitler to back down without him losing face. As part of a dual strategy to avoid war via deterrence and appeasement of Germany, British leaders warned that they would go to war if Germany attacked Poland, but at the same time, they tried to avoid war by holding unofficial talks with would-be peacemakers such as the British newspaper proprietor Lord Kemsley, the Swedish businessman Axel Wenner-Gren and another Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus, who attempted to work out the basis for a peaceful return of Danzig.
In May 1939, as part of his efforts to bully Turkey into joining the Axis, Ribbentrop had arranged for the cancellation of the delivery of 60 heavy howitzers from the Škoda Works, which the Turks had paid for in advance. The German refusal either to deliver the artillery pieces or refund the 125 million Reichsmarks that the Turks had paid for them was to be a major strain on German-Turkish relations in 1939 and had the effect of causing Turkey's politically powerful army to resist Ribbentrop's entreaties to join the Axis. As part of the fierce diplomatic competition in Ankara in the first half of 1939 between von Papen and French Ambassador René Massigli with British Ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen to win the allegiance of Turkey to either the Axis or the Allies, Ribbentrop suffered a major reversal in July 1939 when Massigli was able to arrange for major French arms shipments to Turkey on credit to replace the weapons that the Germans had refused to deliver to the Turks.
In June 1939, Franco-German relations were strained when the head of the French section of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, Otto Abetz, was expelled from France following allegations that he had bribed two French newspaper editors to print pro-German articles. Ribbentrop was enraged by Abetz's expulsion and attacked Count Johannes von Welczeck, the German Ambassador in Paris, over his failure to have the French readmit him. In July 1939, Ribbentrop's claims about an alleged statement of December 1938 made by French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet were to lead to a lengthy war of words via a series of letters to the French newspapers between Ribbentrop and Bonnet over precisely what Bonnet had said to Ribbentrop.
On 11 August 1939, Ribbentrop met the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, and the Italian Ambassador to Germany, Count Bernardo Attolico, in Salzburg. During that meeting, both Ciano and Attolico were horrified to learn from Ribbentrop that Germany planned to attack Poland and that the Danzig issue was just a pretext for aggression. When Ciano asked if there was anything Italy could do to broker a Polish-German settlement that would avert a war, he was told by Ribbentrop, "We want war!" Ribbentrop expressed his firmly held belief that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland, but if that occurred, he fully expected the Italians to honour the terms of the Pact of Steel, which was both an offensive and defensive treaty, and to declare war not only on Poland but on the Western powers if necessary. Ribbentrop told his Italian guests that "the localisation of the conflict is certain" and "the probability of victory is infinite". Ribbentrop brushed away Ciano's fears of a general war. He claimed, "France and England cannot intervene because they are insufficiently prepared militarily and because they have no means of injuring Germany". Ciano complained furiously that Ribbentrop had violated his promise given earlier that year, when Italy signed the Pact of Steel, that there would be no war for the next three years. Ciano said that it was absurd to believe that the Reich could attack Poland without triggering a wider war and that now the Italians were left with the choice of going to war when they needed three more years to rearm or being forced into the humiliation of having to violate the terms of the Pact of Steel by declaring neutrality, which would make the Italians appear cowardly. Ciano complained in his diary that his arguments "had no effect" on Ribbentrop, who simply refused to believe any information that did not fit in with his preconceived notions. Despite Ciano's efforts to persuade Ribbentrop to put off the attack on Poland until 1942 to allow the Italians time to get ready for war, Ribbentrop was adamant that Germany had no interest in a diplomatic solution of the Danzig question but wanted a war to wipe Poland off the map. The Salzburg meeting marked the moment when Ciano's dislike of Ribbentrop was transformed into outright hatred and of the beginning of his disillusionment with the pro-German foreign policy that he had championed.
On 21 August 1939, Hitler received a message from Stalin: "The Soviet Government has instructed me to say they agree to Herr von Ribbentrop's arrival on 23 August". The same day, Hitler ordered German mobilisation. The extent that Hitler was influenced by Ribbentrop's advice can be seen in Hitler's orders for a limited mobilisation against Poland alone. Weizsäcker recorded in his diary throughout the first half of 1939 repeated statements from Hitler that any German–Polish war would be a localized conflict and that there was no danger of a general war if the Soviet Union could be persuaded to stay neutral. Hitler believed that British policy was based upon securing Soviet support for Poland, which led him to perform a diplomatic U-turn and support Ribbentrop's policy of rapprochement with the Soviet Union as the best way of ensuring a local war. That was especially the case as decrypts showed the British military attaché to Poland arguing that Britain could not save Poland in the event of a German attack and that only Soviet support offered the prospect of Poland holding out.
After the outbreak of World War II, Ribbentrop spent most of the Polish campaign travelling with Hitler. On 27 September 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow. There, 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 favour, most notably agreeing to Stalin's demand for Lithuania to go to the Soviet Union. The imposition of the British blockade had made the Reich highly dependent upon Soviet economic support, which placed Stalin in a strong negotiating position with Ribbentrop. On 1 March 1940, Ribbentrop received Sumner Welles, the American Under-Secretary of State, who was on a peace mission for US President Franklin Roosevelt, and did his best to abuse his American guest. Welles asked Ribbentrop under what terms Germany might be willing to negotiate a compromise peace, before the Phoney War became a real war. Ribbentrop told Welles that only a total German victory "could give us the peace we want". Welles reported to Roosevelt that Ribbentrop had a "completely closed and very stupid mind". On 10 March 1940, Ribbentrop visited Rome to meet with Mussolini, who promised him that Italy would soon enter the war. For his one-day Italian trip, Ribbentrop was accompanied by a staff of thirty-five, including a gymnastics coach, a masseur, a doctor, two hairdressers and various legal and economic experts from the Foreign Office. After the Italo-German summit at the Brenner Pass on 18 March 1940, which was attended by Hitler and Mussolini, Count Ciano wrote in his diary: "Everyone in Rome dislikes Ribbentrop". On 7 May 1940, Ribbentrop founded a new section of the Foreign Office, the Abteilung Deutschland (Department of Internal German Affairs), under Martin Luther, to which was assigned the responsibility for all antisemitic affairs. On 10 May 1940, Ribbentrop summoned the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg ambassadors to present them with notes justifying the German invasion of their countries several hours after the Germans had invaded those nations. Much to Ribbentrop's fury, someone leaked the plans for the German invasion to the Dutch embassy in Berlin, which led Ribbentrop to devote the next several months to an investigation aimed at identifying the leaker. The investigation tore apart the agency, as colleagues were encouraged to denounce each other, and was ultimately unsuccessful.
In early June 1940, when Mussolini informed Hitler that he would finally enter the war on 10 June 1940, Hitler was most dismissive, in private calling Mussolini a cowardly opportunist who broke the terms of the Pact of Steel in September 1939 when the going looked rough, and was entering the war in June 1940 only after it was clear that France was beaten and it appeared that Britain would soon make peace. Ribbentrop shared Hitler's assessment of the Italians but welcomed Italy coming into war. In part, that seemed to affirm the importance of the Pact of Steel, which Ribbentrop had negotiated, and in addition, with Italy now an ally, the Foreign Office had more to do. Ribbentrop 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.
Declining influence
As the war went on, Ribbentrop's influence waned. Because most of the world was at war with Germany, the Foreign Ministry's importance diminished as the value of diplomacy became limited. By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations only with Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Italian Social Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime in China. Later that year, Argentina and Turkey severed ties with Germany; Romania and Bulgaria joined the Allies and Finland made a separate peace with the Soviet Union and declared war on Germany.
Hitler found Ribbentrop increasingly tiresome and started to avoid him. The Foreign Minister's pleas for permission to seek peace with at least some of Germany's enemies—the Soviet Union in particular—played a role in their estrangement. As his influence declined, Ribbentrop spent his time feuding with other National Socialist leaders over control of antisemitic policies to curry Hitler's favour.
Ribbentrop suffered a major blow when many old Foreign Office diplomats participated in the 20 July 1944 putsch and assassination attempt on Hitler. Ribbentrop had not known of the plot, but the participation of so many current and former Foreign Ministry members reflected badly on him. Hitler felt that Ribbentrop's "bloated administration" prevented him from keeping proper tabs on his diplomats' activities. Ribbentrop worked closely with the SS, with which he had reconciled, to purge the Foreign Office of those involved in the putsch. In the hours immediately following the assassination attempt on
Hitler, Ribbentrop,
Göring,
Dönitz, and Mussolini were having tea with Hitler in Rastenberg when Dönitz began to rail against the failures of the Luftwaffe.
Göring immediately turned the direction of the conversation to Ribbentrop, and the bankruptcy of Germany's foreign policy. "You dirty little champagne salesman! Shut your mouth!"
Göring shouted, threatening to smack Ribbentrop with his marshal's baton. But Ribbentrop refused to remain silent at this disrespect. "I am still the Foreign Minister," he shouted, "and my name is von Ribbentrop!"
On 20 April 1945, Ribbentrop attended Hitler's 56th birthday party in Berlin. Three days later, Ribbentrop attempted to meet Hitler, but was rejected with the explanation the Führer had more important things to do.
Arrest
After Hitler's suicide, Ribbentrop attempted to find a role under the new president, Karl Dönitz, but was rebuffed. He went into hiding under an assumed name (Herr Reiser) in the port city of Hamburg. On 14 June, after Germany's surrender, Ribbentrop was arrested by Sergeant Jacques Goffinet, a French citizen who had joined the 5th Special Air Service, the Belgian SAS, and was working with the British Army near Hamburg. He was found with a rambling letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill criticizing British foreign policy for anti-German sentiments, and blaming Britain's failure to ally with Germany before the war for the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and the advancement of Bolshevism into central Europe.
Trial and execution
Ribbentrop was a defendant at the Nuremberg trials. The Allies' International Military Tribunal convicted him on four counts: crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to the judgment, Ribbentrop was actively involved in planning the Anschluss, as well as the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was also deeply involved in the "final solution"; as early as 1942 he had ordered German diplomats in Axis countries to hasten the process of sending Jews to death camps in the east. He supported the lynching of Allied airmen shot down over Germany, and helped to cover up the 1945 murder of Major-General Gustave Mesny, a French officer being held as a prisoner of war. He was held directly responsible for atrocities which took place in Denmark and Vichy France, since the top officials in those two occupied countries reported to him. Ribbentrop claimed that Hitler made all the important decisions himself, and that he had been deceived by Hitler's repeated claims of only wanting peace. The Tribunal rejected this argument, saying that given how closely involved Ribbentrop was with the execution of the war, "he could not have remained unaware of the aggressive nature of Hitler's actions." Even in prison, Ribbentrop still remained loyal to Hitler: "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'do this!', I would still do it."
Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, was allowed to examine the National Socialist leaders who stood trial. Among other tests, he administered a German version of the Wechsler–Bellevue IQ test. Ribbentrop scored 129, the 10th highest among the National Socialist leaders tested. At one point during the trial, a US Army interpreter asked Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker how Hitler could have promoted Ribbentrop to high office. Von Weizsäcker responded, "Hitler never noticed Ribbentrop's babbling because Hitler always did all the talking."
On 16 October 1946, Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged, after
Göring committed suicide just before his scheduled execution. The hangman was U.S. Master Sergeant John C. Woods. Ribbentrop was escorted up the 13 steps of the gallows and asked if he had any final words. He 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. I wish peace to the world." Nuremberg Prison Commandant Burton C. Andrus later recalled that Ribbentrop turned to the prison's Lutheran chaplain, Henry F. Gerecke, immediately before the hood was placed over his head and then he whispered,
"I'll see you again." Due to his execution being botched, it took 14 minutes for Ribbentrop to die. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and of the suicide
Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and his ashes were scattered in the river Isar.
