'', 1938 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 Nazi 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. 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 Nazi 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 per cent 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. with Ribbentrop at the Munich Summit, 1938 Before the Anglo-German summit at Berchtesgaden on 15 September 1938, the British Ambassador, Sir
Nevile Henderson, and Weizsäcker worked out a private arrangement for Hitler and Chamberlain to meet with no advisers present as a way of excluding the ultrahawkish Ribbentrop from attending the talks. Hitler's interpreter,
Paul Schmidt, later recalled that it was "felt that our Foreign Minister would prove a disturbing element" at the Berchtesgaden summit. Ribbentrop spent the last weeks of September 1938 looking forward very much to the German-Czechoslovak war that he expected to break out on 1 October 1938. During the Munich Conference, Ribbentrop spent much of his time brooding unhappily in the corners. Ribbentrop told the head of Hitler's Press Office, Fritz Hesse, that the Munich Agreement was "first-class stupidity.... All it means is that we have to fight the English in a year, when they will be better armed.... It would have been much better if war had come now". , the Secretary of State at the
German Foreign Office, 1938–1943 In the aftermath of Munich, Hitler was in a violently anti-British mood caused in part by his rage over being "cheated" out of the war to "annihilate" Czechoslovakia that he very much wanted to have in 1938 and in part by his realisation that Britain would neither ally itself nor stand aside in regard to Germany's ambition to dominate Europe. As a consequence, Britain was considered after Munich to be the main enemy of the
Reich, and as a result, the influence of ardently Anglophobic Ribbentrop correspondingly rose with Hitler. Partly for economic reasons, and partly out of fury over being "cheated" out of war in 1938, Hitler decided to destroy the rump state of
Czecho-Slovakia, as Czechoslovakia had been renamed in October 1938, early in 1939. Ribbentrop played an important role in setting in motion the crisis that was to result in the end of Czecho-Slovakia by ordering German diplomats in
Bratislava to contact Father
Jozef Tiso, the premier of the Slovak regional government, and pressure him to declare independence from
Prague. When Tiso proved reluctant to do so on the grounds that the autonomy that had existed since October 1938 was sufficient for him and that to completely sever links with the Czechs would leave Slovakia open to being annexed by Hungary, Ribbentrop had the German embassy in
Budapest contact the regent, Admiral
Miklós Horthy. Horthy was advised that the Germans might be open to having more of Hungary restored to its former borders and that the Hungarians should best start concentrating troops on their northern border at once if they were serious about changing their frontiers. Upon hearing of the Hungarian mobilization, Tiso was presented with the choice of either declaring independence, with the understanding that the new state would be in the German sphere of influence, or seeing all of Slovakia absorbed into Hungary. As a result, Tiso had the Slovak regional government issue a declaration of independence on 14 March 1939; the ensuing crisis in Czech-Slovak relations was used as a pretext to summon Czecho-Slovak President
Emil Hácha to Berlin over his "failure" to keep order in his country. On the night of 14–15 March 1939, Ribbentrop played a key role in the German occupation of the Czech part of Czecho-Slovakia by bullying Hácha into transforming his country into a German
protectorate at a meeting in the
Reich Chancellery in Berlin. On 15 March 1939, German troops occupied the Czech areas of Czecho-Slovakia, which then became the
Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. On 20 March 1939, Ribbentrop summoned Lithuanian Foreign Minister
Juozas Urbšys to Berlin and informed him that if a Lithuanian plenipotentiary did not arrive at once to negotiate to turn over the
Memelland to Germany the Luftwaffe would raze
Kaunas to the ground. As a result of Ribbentrop's
ultimatum on 23 March, the Lithuanians agreed to return Memel (modern Klaipėda, Lithuania) to Germany. In March 1939, Ribbentrop assigned the largely ethnically Ukrainian
Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia region of Czecho-Slovakia, which had just proclaimed its independence as the Republic of
Carpatho-Ukraine, to Hungary, which then proceeded to annex it after a short war. This was significant as there had been many fears in the Soviet Union in the 1930s that the Germans would use
Ukrainian nationalism as a tool to break up the Soviet Union. By allowing the Hungarians to destroy Europe's only Ukrainian state, Ribbentrop had signified that Germany was not interested, at least for now, in sponsoring Ukrainian nationalism. The talks with Bonnet were also conducted on the German side by
Ernst von Weizsäcker, a high-ranking German diplomat who worked under Ribbentrop.
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 until then 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 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 a 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. The German occupation of the Czech areas of Czecho-Slovakia on 15 March, in total contravention of the Munich Agreement, which had been signed less than six months before, infuriated British and French public opinion and lost Germany any sympathy. Such was the state of public fury that it appeared possible for several days afterwards that the Chamberlain government might fall because of a
backbench rebellion. Even Ribbentrop's standard line that Germany was only reacting to an unjust Versailles Treaty and wanted peace with everyone, which had worked so well in the past, failed to carry weight. Reflecting the changed mood, Conservative MP
Duff Cooper wrote in a letter to
The Times:Some of us are getting rather tired of the sanctimonious attitude which seeks to take upon our shoulders the blame for every crime committed in Europe. If Germany had been left stronger in 1919 she would sooner have been in a position to do what she is doing today. Moreover, the British government had genuinely believed in the German claim that it was only the Sudetenland that concerned it and that Germany was not seeking to dominate Europe. By occupying the Czech parts of Czecho-Slovakia, Germany lost all credibility for its claim to be only righting the alleged wrongs of Versailles. Shortly afterwards, false reports spread in mid-March 1939 by the Romanian minister in London,
Virgil Tilea, that his country was on the verge of an immediate German attack, led to a dramatic U-turn in the British policy of resisting commitments in Eastern Europe. Ribbentrop truthfully denied that Germany was going to invade
Romania. But his denials were expressed in almost identical language to the denials that he had issued in early March, when he had denied that anything was being planned against the Czechs; thus they actually increased the "Romanian war scare" of March 1939. From the British point of view, it was regarded as highly desirable to keep Romania and its oil out of German hands. Since Germany itself had hardly any sources of oil, the ability of the Royal Navy to impose a blockade represented a British trump card to deter and, if necessary, win a war. If Germany were to occupy oil-rich Romania, that would undercut all of the British strategic assumptions on Germany's need to import oil from the Americas. Since Poland was regarded as the East European state with the most powerful army, Poland had to be tied to Britain as the best way of ensuring Polish support for Romania; it was the obvious
quid pro quo that Britain would have to do something for Polish security if the Poles were to be induced to do something for Romanian security. On 31 March 1939, Chamberlain announced before the House of Commons the British "guarantee" of Poland, which committed Britain to go to war to defend Polish independence, though pointedly the "guarantee" excluded Polish frontiers. As a result of the "guarantee" of Poland, Hitler began to speak with increasing frequency of a British "encirclement" policy, which he used as the excuse for denouncing, in a speech before the
Reichstag on 28 April 1939, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the Non-Aggression Pact with Poland.
Turkey In late March, Ribbentrop had the German ''
chargé d'affaires in Turkey, Hans Kroll, start pressuring Turkey into an alliance with Germany. The Turks assured Kroll that they had no objection to Germany making the Balkans its economic sphere of influence but would regard any move to make the Balkans into a sphere of German political influence as most unwelcome. Anti-Polish feelings had long been rampant in the agency and so, in marked contrast to their cool attitude about attacking Czechoslovakia in 1938, diplomats such as Weizsäcker were highly enthusiastic about the prospect of war with Poland in 1939. On 23 April 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Șükrü Saracoğlu told the British ambassador of Turkish fears of Italian claims of the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum'' and German control of the Balkans, and he suggested an Anglo-Soviet-Turkish alliance as the best way of countering the
Axis. As the Germans had broken the Turkish diplomatic codes, Ribbentrop was well aware as he warned in a circular to German embassies that Anglo-Turkish talks had gone much further "than what the Turks would care to tell us". Ribbentrop appointed
Franz von Papen Germany's ambassador in Turkey with instructions to win it to an alliance with Germany. Ribbentrop had been attempting to appoint Papen as an ambassador to Turkey since April 1938. The German embassy in Ankara had been vacant ever since the retirement of the previous ambassador
Friedrich von Keller in November 1938, and Ribbentrop was able to get the Turks to accept Papen as ambassador only when Saracoğlu complained to Kroll in April 1939 about when the Germans were ever going to send a new ambassador. Instead of focusing on talking to the Turks, Ribbentrop and Papen became entangled in a feud over Papen's demand to bypass Ribbentrop and to send his dispatches straight to Hitler. Ribbentrop first seems to have considered the idea of a pact with the Soviet Union after an unsuccessful visit to
Warsaw in January 1939, when the Poles again refused Ribbentrop's demands about Danzig, the "extra-territorial" roads across the Polish Corridor and the Anti-Comintern Pact. During the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact negotiations, Ribbentrop was overjoyed by a report from his ambassador in Moscow, Count
Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, of a speech by Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin before the 18th Party Congress in March 1939 that was strongly anti-Western, which Schulenburg reported meant that the Soviet Union might be seeking an accord with Germany. Ribbentrop followed up Schulenburg's report by sending Dr. Karl Schnurre of the Foreign Office's trade department to negotiate a German-Soviet economic agreement. At the same time, Ribbentrop's efforts to convert the Anti-Comintern Pact into an anti-British alliance met with considerable hostility from the Japanese in late 1938 and early 1939, but with the Italians, Ribbentrop enjoyed some apparent success. Because of Japanese opposition to participation in an anti-British alliance, Ribbentrop decided to settle for a bilateral German-Italian anti-British treaty. Ribbentrop's efforts were crowned with success with the signing of the
Pact of Steel in May 1939, but it was accomplished only by falsely assuring Mussolini that there would be no war for the next three years.
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. 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 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 1938–39. 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 Nazi 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. 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. 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". 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. Ribbentrop had expected to see only the Soviet Foreign Commissar
Vyacheslav Molotov and was most surprised to be holding talks with
Joseph Stalin himself. During his trip to Moscow, Ribbentrop's talks with Stalin and Molotov proceeded very cordially and efficiently with the exception of the question of
Latvia, which Hitler had instructed Ribbentrop to try to claim for Germany. Ribbentrop had been instructed to claim the
Daugava as the future boundary between the
Greater Germanic Reich and the Soviet Union, but had also been ordered to grant extensive concessions to Stalin. When Stalin claimed Latvia for the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop was forced to telephone Berlin for permission from Hitler to concede Latvia to the Soviets. After finishing his talks with Stalin and Molotov, Ribbentrop, at a dinner with the Soviet leaders, launched into a lengthy diatribe against the British Empire, with frequent interjections of approval from Stalin, and exchanged toasts with Stalin in honour of German-Soviet friendship. 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 lead to a new British government that would abandon the Poles to their fate. Ribbentrop argued that with Soviet economic support, especially in the form of oil, Germany was now immune to the effects of a British naval blockade and so the British would never take on Germany. On 23 August 1939, at a secret meeting of the
Reich's top military leadership at the
Berghof, Hitler argued that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland without the Soviet Union, and fixed "X-Day", the date for the invasion of Poland, for 26 August. Hitler added, "My only fear is that at the last moment some
Schweinehund will make a proposal for mediation". Unlike Hitler, who saw the Non-Aggression Pact as merely a pragmatic device forced on him by circumstances, the refusal of Britain or Poland to play the roles that Hitler had allocated to them, Ribbentrop regarded the Non-Aggression Pact as integral to his anti-British policy. The signing of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 not only won Germany an informal alliance with the Soviet Union but also neutralized Anglo-French attempts to win Turkey to the "peace front". The Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and the signing of the pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy. The Anglo-French effort to include the Balkans into the "peace front" had always rested on the assumption that the cornerstone of the "peace front" in the Balkans was to be Turkey, the regional superpower. Because the Balkans were rich in raw materials such as iron, zinc and Romanian oil, which could help Germany survive a British blockade, it was viewed as highly important by the Allies to keep German influence in the Balkans to a minimum. That was the principal motivation behind efforts to link British promises to support Turkey in the event of an Italian attack, in exchange for Turkish promises to help defend Romania from a German attack. British and French leaders believed that the deterrent value of the "peace front" could be increased if Turkey were a member, and the
Turkish Straits were open to Allied ships. That would allow the Allies to send troops and supplies to Romania over the
Black Sea and through Romania to Poland. This was especially damaging to Ribbentrop, as he always assured Hitler, "Italy's attitude is determined by the Rome-Berlin Axis". Because of Ribbentrop's firmly held views that Britain was Germany's most dangerous enemy and that an Anglo-German war was inevitable, it scarcely mattered to him when his much-desired war with Britain came. Even if the British were serious in their warnings of war, Ribbentrop took the view that since a war with Britain was inevitable, the risk of a war with Britain was acceptable and so he argued that Germany should not shy away from such challenges. Ambassador Henderson stated that the terms of the German "final offer" were very reasonable but argued that Ribbentrop's time limit for Polish acceptance of the "final offer" was most unreasonable, and he also demanded to know why Ribbentrop insisted upon seeing a special Polish plenipotentiary and could not present the "final offer" to Ambassador
Józef Lipski or provide a written copy of the "final offer". The Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting became so tense that the two men almost came to blows. The American historian
Gerhard Weinberg described the Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting:When Joachim von Ribbentrop refused to give a copy of the German demands to the British Ambassador [Henderson] at midnight of 30–31 August 1939, the two almost came to blows. Ambassador Henderson, who had long advocated concessions to Germany, recognized that here was a deliberately conceived alibi the German government had prepared for a war it was determined to start. No wonder Henderson was angry; von Ribbentrop on the other hand could see war ahead and went home beaming. As intended by Ribbentrop, the narrow time limit for acceptance of the "final offer" made it impossible for the British government to contact the Polish government in time about the German offer, let alone for the Poles to arrange for a Polish plenipotentiary envoy to arrive in Berlin that night, thereby allowing Ribbentrop to claim that the Poles had rejected the German "final offer". As it was, a special meeting of the British cabinet called to consider the "final offer" and declined to pass on the message to Warsaw under the grounds that it was not a serious proposal on the part of Berlin. On 31 August, Ribbentrop met with Ambassador Attolico to tell him that Poland's "rejection" of the "generous" German 16-point peace plan meant that Germany had no interest in Mussolini's offer to call a conference about the status of Danzig. Besides the Polish "rejection" of the German "final offer", the aggression against Poland was justified with the
Gleiwitz incident and other SS-staged incidents on the German–Polish border. As soon as the news broke in the morning of 1 September 1939 that Germany had invaded Poland, Mussolini launched another desperate peace mediation plan intended to stop the German–Polish war from becoming a world war. Mussolini's motives were in no way altruistic. Instead, he was motivated entirely by a wish to escape the self-imposed trap of the Pact of Steel, which obliged Italy to go to war while the country was entirely unprepared. If he suffered the humiliation of having to declare neutrality, it would make him appear cowardly. French Foreign Minister
Georges Bonnet, acting on his own initiative, told the Italian Ambassador to France, Baron
Raffaele Guariglia, that France had accepted Mussolini's peace plan. Bonnet had
Havas issue a statement at midnight on 1 September: "The French government has today, as have several other Governments, received an Italian proposal looking to the resolution of Europe's difficulties. After due consideration, the French government has given a 'positive response'". Though the French and the Italians were serious about Mussolini's peace plan, which called for an immediate ceasefire and a four-power conference in the manner of the Munich conference of 1938 to consider Poland's borders, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated that unless the Germans withdrew from Poland immediately, Britain would not attend the proposed conference. Ribbentrop finally scuttled Mussolini's peace plan by stating that Germany had no interest in a ceasefire, a withdrawal from Poland or attending the proposed peace conference. On the morning of 3 September 1939, when Chamberlain followed through with his threat of a
British declaration of war if Germany attacked Poland, a visibly shocked Hitler asked Ribbentrop "Now what?", a question to which Ribbentrop had no answer except to state that there would be a "similar message" forthcoming from French Ambassador
Robert Coulondre, who arrived later that afternoon to present the
French declaration of war. Weizsäcker later recalled, "On 3 Sept., when the British and French declared war, Hitler was surprised, after all, and was to begin with, at a loss". In effect, Ribbentrop's influence made Hitler go to war in 1939 with the country he wanted as his ally, the United Kingdom, and ally with the country he wanted as his enemy, the Soviet Union. 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 35, 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. 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.
Relations with wartime allies Ribbentrop, a
Francophile, argued that Germany should allow
Vichy France a limited degree of independence within a binding Franco-German partnership. To that end, Ribbentrop appointed a colleague from the
Dienststelle,
Otto Abetz, as Ambassador to France with instructions to promote the political career of
Pierre Laval, whom Ribbentrop had decided to be the French politician most favourable to Germany. The Foreign Office's influence in France varied, as there were many other agencies competing for power there. But in general, from late 1943 to mid-1944, the Foreign Office was second only to the SS in terms of power in France. From the latter half of 1937, Ribbentrop had championed the idea of an alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan that would partition the
British Empire among them. The German historian
Klaus Hildebrand argued that besides Hitler's foreign policy programme, there were three other factions within the Nazi Party who had alternative foreign policy programmes, whom Hildebrand designated the
agrarians, the
revolutionary socialists, and the Wilhelmine Imperialists. Another German diplomatic historian, Wolfgang Michalka argued that there was a fourth alternative to the Nazi foreign policy programme, and that was Ribbentrop's concept of a
Eurasian bloc comprising the four totalitarian states of Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Japan. Unlike the other factions, Ribbentrop's foreign policy programme was the only one that Hitler allowed to be executed during the years 1939–41, though it was more due to the temporary bankruptcy of Hitler's own foreign policy programme that he had laid down in
Mein Kampf and
Zweites Buch following the failure to achieve an alliance with Britain, than to a genuine change of mind. The decision to award so much of Romania to the Hungarians was Hitler's, as Ribbentrop himself spent most of the Vienna conference loudly attacking the Hungarian delegation for their coolness towards attacking Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then demanding more than their fair share of the spoils. An angry Suñer replied that he would rather see the Canaries sink into the Atlantic than cede an inch of Spanish territory. An area in which Ribbentrop enjoyed more success arose in September 1940, when he had the Far Eastern agent of the
Dienststelle Ribbentrop,
Heinrich Georg Stahmer, start negotiations with the Japanese foreign minister,
Yōsuke Matsuoka, for an
anti-American alliance. The result of these talks was the signing in Berlin on 27 September 1940 of the
Tripartite Pact by Ribbentrop, Count Ciano, and Japanese Ambassador
Saburō Kurusu. In October 1940,
Gauleiters Josef Bürckel and
Robert Heinrich Wagner oversaw the near total expulsion of the Jews into the unoccupied
zone libre of
Vichy France; they deported them not only from the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed to the
Reich, but also from their
Gaue as well. Ribbentrop treated in a "most dilatory fashion" the ensuing complaints by the Vichy French government over the expulsions. Ribbentrop argued that the Soviets and Germans shared a common enemy in the form of the British Empire, and as such, it was in the best interests of the Kremlin to enter the war on the Axis side. In the aftermath of the failed coup in
Bucharest, the Foreign Office assembled evidence that the
SD had backed the coup, which led Ribbentrop to restrict sharply the powers of the SD police attachés. Since October 1939 they had operated largely independently of the German embassies at which they had been stationed. In early 1941, Ribbentrop appointed an assemblage of
SA men to German embassies in eastern Europe, with
Manfred Freiherr von Killinger dispatched to
Romania,
Siegfried Kasche to
Croatia,
Adolf-Heinz Beckerle to
Bulgaria,
Dietrich von Jagow to
Hungary, and
Hanns Ludin to
Slovakia. The major qualifications of all these men, none of whom had previously held a diplomatic position before, were that they were close friends of Luther and helped to enable a split in the
SS (the traditional rivalry between the SS and SA was still running strong). Hitler did not wish for any information that might lead the Japanese into attacking the Soviet Union to reach their ears. Ribbentrop tried to convince Matsuoka to urge the government in Tokyo to attack the great British naval base at Singapore, claiming the
Royal Navy was too weak to retaliate due to its involvement in the
Battle of the Atlantic. Matsuoka responded that preparations to occupy Singapore were under way.
Ante Pavelić (left) of the
Independent State of Croatia and Ribbentrop in Salzburg, 6 June 1941 In late 1940 and early 1941, Ribbentrop strongly pressured the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, despite advice from the German Legation in
Belgrade that such an action would probably lead to the overthrow of
Prince Paul, the Yugoslav Regent. Ribbentrop's intention was to gain transit rights through the country that would allow the Germans to invade Greece. On 25 March 1941,
Yugoslavia reluctantly signed the Tripartite Pact; the next day the
Yugoslav military overthrew Prince Paul in a
bloodless coup. As Hitler was displeased with Ribbentrop over his opposition to the invasion, the minister took to his bed for the next couple of days. 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." When it came to time for Ribbentrop to present the German declaration of war on 22 June 1941 to the Soviet Ambassador, General
Vladimir Dekanozov, the interpreter
Paul Schmidt described the scene: When Dekanozov finally appeared, Ribbentrop read out a short statement saying that the Reich had been forced into "military countermeasures" because of an alleged Soviet plan to attack Germany in July 1941. But Ribbentrop's motives in seeking to have Japan enter the war were more anti-British than anti-Soviet. Ribbentrop hoped that recognizing Wang would be seen as a coup that might add to the prestige of the pro-German Japanese Foreign Minister
Yōsuke Matsuoka, who was opposed to opening American-Japanese talks. Despite Ribbentrop's best efforts, Matsuoka was sacked as foreign minister later in July 1941, and the Japanese-American talks began. In August 1941, when the question of whether to deport foreign Jews living in Germany arose, Ribbentrop argued against deportation as a way of maximizing the Foreign Office's influence. To deport foreign Jews living in the Reich, Ribbentrop had Luther negotiate agreements with the governments of
Romania,
Slovakia and
Croatia to allow Jews holding citizenship of those states to be deported. On 7 December 1941, Ribbentrop was jubilant at the news of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor and did his utmost to support a declaration of war on the United States. He delivered the
official declaration to the American ''Chargé d'Affaires''
Leland B. Morris on 11 December 1941. Ribbentrop considered the acceptance of declarations of war from small states such as Costa Rica and Ecuador to be deeply humiliating, and he refused to see any of the Latin American ambassadors. He had Weizsäcker accept their declarations of war instead. From Ribbentrop's point of view, this had the dual benefit of ensuring popular support for the German Army as it advanced into the Caucasus and of ensuring that it was the Foreign Office that ruled the Caucasus once the Germans occupied the area. To Ribbentrop's disappointment, Hitler sided with Rosenberg. In 1942, Ambassador
Otto Abetz secured the deportation of 25,000 French Jews, and Ambassador
Hanns Ludin secured the deportation of 50,000 Slovak Jews to the death camps. Only once, in August 1942, did Ribbentrop try to restrict the deportations, but only because of jurisdictional disputes with the SS. In November 1942, following
Operation Torch (the British-American invasion of North Africa), Ribbentrop met French Chief of the Government
Pierre Laval in Munich. He presented Laval with an ultimatum for Germany's occupation of the French unoccupied zone and Tunisia. Ribbentrop tried unsuccessfully to arrange for the Vichy French
Armistice Army in North Africa to be formally placed under German command. Another low point in Ribbentrop's relations with the SS occurred in February 1943, when the SD backed a Luther-led internal
putsch to oust Ribbentrop as foreign minister. Luther had become estranged from Ribbentrop because the latter's wife treated the former as a household servant. She pushed her husband into ordering an investigation into allegations of corruption on Luther's part. Luther's
putsch failed largely because Himmler decided that a foreign ministry headed by Luther would be a more dangerous opponent than the current one under Ribbentrop. At the last minute, he withdrew his support from Luther. In the aftermath of the
putsch, Luther was sent to
Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In April 1943, during a summit meeting with Hungary's Regent
Miklós Horthy, Ribbentrop strongly pressed the Hungarians to deport their Jewish population to the death camps, but was unsuccessful. During their meeting, Ribbentrop declared "the Jews must either be exterminated or taken to the concentration camps. There is no other possibility".
Declining influence s 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 Nazi 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, and last, 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,
Großadmiral 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 written in English and Foreign Minister
Anthony Eden 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. In it Ribbentrop said it was Hitler's "last political will" and a friendship appeal and claimed to have met with Hitler shortly before his death who "having suddenly turned around to me and said: 'You will see, my spirit will arise from my grave and one will see that I have been right. ==Trial and execution==