In 1902, he entered the
army as a trainee officer in the
1st Foot Guards regiment. He continued to serve after completing his training in 1907. However, in 1911 he withdrew from active service, becoming a reserve officer, in order to complete his study of
Jurisprudence, after which he entered the Prussian legal service. In July 1931, a couple of months after
republican government replaced
the Spanish monarchy, Mackensen was transferred again, to be appointed "first diplomat councillor" (
Botschaftsrat) at the embassy in
Madrid.
Régime change Following months of
political deadlock, everything changed in January 1933 when the
Hitler government, spotting a power vacuum,
filled it: they lost no time in
transforming Germany into a
one-party
dictatorship. There are no indications that Hans Georg von Mackensen had taken much interest in the party politics of the
German Republic up to this point. Nevertheless, in May 1933 he signed up as a member of the
National Socialist ("Nazi") Party. In September 1933 his transfer to
Budapest was announced, He thereby became the senior non-politician at the Foreign Ministry. It was a position that had been vacant since the death the previous summer of the former incumbent,
Bernhard von Bülow, possibly from natural causes. As
State Secretary Mackensen's political boss was the German Foreign Minister,
Konstantin von Neurath, who also happened to be his father-in-law. On 8 July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese war started with the
Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The war brought long-standing tensions between Neurath and Joachim von Ribbentrop to a boil. Ribbentrop, besides being the German ambassador in
London, also headed the
Dienststelle Ribbentrop, a sort of rival foreign office that competed with the
Auswärtiges Amt. Neurath and Mackensen favored continuing the policy started under the Weimar republic of supporting the Kuomintang regime via arms sales, a military mission to train the National Revolutionary Army and industrial sales in exchange for China selling Germany certain strategical materials at below market prices. Ribbentrop for reasons that remain unclear had a violent hatred of the Chinese and a corresponding ardent admiration for the Japanese. Ribbentrop was very close to the Japanese military attaché in Berlin, General
Hiroshi Ōshima, and once the Sino-Japanese war started lobbied Adolf Hitler very strongly to withdraw the German military mission from China and end the arms sales to the Chinese. By contrast, both Neurath and Mackensen favored China over Japan, arguing for keeping the military mission in China and for continuing arms sales. Ribbentrop had initially been rather vague about why he favored Japan over China, giving as his reasons merely that it was better to be with the "strong" (i.e. Japan) rather than the "weak" (i.e. China). However, by 1937, hurt by various social humiliations he suffered as ambassador in London, Ribbentrop had become a raging Anglophobe, which fitted in well with the increasing tendency towards an anti-British foreign policy. Ribbentrop started to play his trump card for a pro-Japanese foreign policy, arguing that China barely had a navy while Japan had the strongest navy in Asia, which led him to the conclusion that Japan was the better ally for the
Reich in Asia. The question of recognizing the Japanese sham state of
Manchukuo was a litmus test for whether a state preferred closer relations with China vs. closer relations with Japan. Ribbentrop became increasingly vocal as 1937 went on in demanding that Germany recognise Manchukuo over the opposition of Neurath and Mackensen. In August 1937 and again in September, the Austrian Foreign Minister
Guido Schmidt visited Berlin, where Mackensen bullied him during both visits, demanding that the Austrian government allow the Austrian Nazis a greater role in the political process. Neurath had been in post since 1932, but on 4 February 1938 he was removed from office and replaced at short notice by
Joachim von Ribbentrop, reflecting a determination on the part of Adolf Hitler to take a more "personally hands-on" approach to Germany's foreign policy. On 20 February 1938, Hitler gave a speech before the
Reichstag where he announced that Germany had just extended diplomatic recognition to Manchukuo. Despite his earlier opposition to recognizing Manchukuo, Mackensen supported this step, even through he knew that it would ruin Germany's relations with China. In one of his last acts as State Secretary, Mackensen had to accept the note of protest against the recognition of Manchukuo from
Cheng Tien-fong, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin. Mackensen treated Cheng with much rudeness during the meeting, saying that China was an insignificant nation, and the
Reich did not care about Chinese opinions. Ribbentrop was unwilling to accept the son-in-law of Neurath as State Secretary, and appointed Baron
Ernst von Weizsäcker as the new State Secretary.
Ambassador in Rome As part of the ensuing reshuffle at the top of the diplomatic service, Hans Georg von Mackensen was appointed
Ambassador to Rome in succession to
Ulrich von Hassell, Neurath believed that he had been fired as foreign minister at least in part because of his disagreements with Ribbentrop over East Asia. Mackensen was also closely associated with the pro-Chinese foreign policy advocated by Neurath, and Ribbentrop saw him as an obstacle to the pro-Japanese foreign policy he wanted to pursue. Macksensen might no longer be State Secretary, but the Rome embassy was, in the context of the diplomatic developments of the time, an exceptionally important posting. There were suggestions within and beyond the diplomatic establishment that his unusually rapid rise through the ranks of the German diplomatic service had been both the result of his inherited family connections and a direct reflection of Mackensen's uncritical and unhesitating execution of every order he received from his superiors, combined with an apparent reluctance to feed any ideas of his own back to Berlin. Another individual who declined to be dazzled by Mackensen's diplomatic cachet was the French ambassador to Berlin,
André François-Poncet: "J’ai visité l’Auswärtiges Amt; j’ai vu
le père, et j’ai vu le fils, mais je n’ai pas vu le Saint Esprit". In March 1943, Mackensen submitted a note to Ciano asking that the Italian government hand over all of the Jews living in the Italian occupied zone of France to be deported to the death camps. When his request was refused, Mackensen wrote in a dispatch to Berlin that the Italians were "too soft" to handle the "Jewish Question" properly, saying the Italian people were governed by "a sentimental humanitarianism, which is not in accord with our harsh epoch".
Military crisis and consequences The
Anglo-American invasion of Sicily in July 1943 brought forward various crises for
Benito Mussolini, including a crisis in his relationship with his dictator-ally in Berlin. On 25 July 1943, following a (completely unprecedented) overnight vote of no confidence by the
Grand Council of Fascism, the
king found the courage to dismiss Mussolini and, four days later, had him arrested. The king told
Pietro Badoglio that he would shortly be sworn in as the new prime minister, but in the event it would be around six weeks before
Badoglio took formal control over what remained of Italy: in the intervening weeks confusion and uncertainty reigned in Rome. Around Adolf Hitler there was consternation, even before Mussolini's dismissal, over the disastrous performance and poor morale of the Italian army. The German army could, they believed, defend the Italian peninsular successfully, but for that they would need Mussolini's support. Mussolini failed either to galvanise his own generals or to provide his ally with clear answers, and a group of advisors around Hitler, led by
the army chief, General Alfred Jodl, urged him to send an ultimatum to Mussolini, insisting on the need for agreement before 15 July 1943. Failing that, Mussolini needed to take drastic and immediate steps himself to arrest and reverse the deteriorating military situation. The German ambassador in Italy, Hans Georg von Mackensen, was naturally involved in these discussions, and suggested that the hugely admired
Field Marshal Rommel might be given military command over Italy. The crisis culminated in a hastily arranged meeting at
Feltre (near Belluno in northern Italy) between Hitler and Mussolini which took place on 19 July 1943, less than a week before Mussolini's dismissal by his king. The meeting was not a success, in that the dictators were evidently both surprised and disappointed by one another. Most of the time together was taken up with a furious two-hour harangue by Adolf Hitler. Since the facts on the ground and reactions to them in Rome and Berlin were highly fluid over the next few days, the details of the differing opinions between Adolf Hitler and Hans Georg von Mackensen that the crisis drew out are not entirely clear. What is clear is that on 2 August 1943, following a talk with Hitler, Mackensen was relieved of his post. == Personal life ==