Ribbentrop, (Ulrich F. W.) Joachim von

Ribbentrop, (Ulrich F. W.) Joachim von (1893–1946),German wine salesman who was commissioned and decorated during the First World War before serving as the Nazi Party's foreign minister from 1938 to 1945. Hitler dubbed him ‘greater than Bismarck’, though by the end of his career his influence was zero.

Ribbentrop's background was affluent middle-class. He had studied in London and lived in Canada, and spoke English and French. Socially ambitious, he married the daughter of Otto Henkell, a German champagne magnate, in 1920 and in 1925 added the aristocratic ‘von’ to his name. He dabbled in right-wing politics and a meeting with Hitler, with whom he remained besotted throughout his life, led to his joining the Nazi Party in May 1932. This was very late in the day for someone who was to rise to the top of the Nazi hierarchy (his party number was 1,119,927). But the Ribbentrops, rich and well-connected, were useful to Hitler and it was at their house that the negotiations took place for Hitler to become chancellor in January 1933.

Once in power Hitler asked Ribbentrop to establish an office to advise him on foreign policy and to act as a rival to the German foreign ministry. In April 1934 Ribbentrop was given his first official appointment, ‘Plenipotentiary for Matters of Disarmament’ and in 1935, with the title of Ambassador Extraordinary of the German Reich on Special Mission, he concluded the Anglo-German Naval Treaty (see Versailles settlement). This triumph sealed his immediate future as Hitler's foreign policy adviser and his Büro was enlarged to become the Ribbentrop Agency. In September 1936 his friend Heinrich Himmler made him an honorary SS-Gruppenführer (maj-general); in October 1936 he took up his post as Germany's ambassador in London; and that November he persuaded Japan to join the Anti-Comintern pact. Then, when the foreign minister, von Neurath, was dismissed by Hitler in February 1938, Ribbentrop replaced him.

Ribbentrop's greatest coup was the Nazi–Soviet Pact which he signed with the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, in August 1939, but once the war had begun his influence waned rapidly. In March 1940 he failed to persuade Mussolini to join the war immediately and was equally unsuccessful with the French and Spanish leaders that October. His attempts to maintain German–Soviet relations were also doomed and discussions with Molotov in November 1940 had an embarrassing conclusion when an air raid interrupted dinner. While in the shelter Ribbentrop returned to his argument for German–Soviet co-operation by saying that Britain had already lost the war. Then why, Molotov asked, are we sitting here?

The Japanese pact of non-aggression with the USSR in April 1941 (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns) and finally the German invasion of the USSR that June (see BARBAROSSA) spelled the end of Ribbentrop's involvement in serious diplomacy, and he spent the rest of the war as Hitler's messenger to delinquent allies or to neutral countries. At the Nuremberg trials it became clear that German foreign office staff had, on Ribbentrop's orders, collaborated in the Final Solution and for this, and other, crimes he was sentenced to death and hanged.See also diplomacy.

Bibliography

Bloch, M. , Ribbentrop (London, 1992).
Weitz, J. , Hitler's Diplomat (London, 1992).