[40] Ribbentrop wanted to buy time to complete German rearmament by removing preventive war as a French policy option. The signing of the Non-Aggression Pact in Moscow on 23 August 1939 was the crowning achievement of Ribbentrop's career. pp. 225–246 from, Offner, Arnold "The United States and National Socialist Germany" pp. It convinced many in France that Hitler was a man of peace, who wanted to do away only with Part V of the Versailles Treaty. [159] During the summer of 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. [47] Ribbentrop's personality, with his disdain for diplomatic niceties, meshed with what Hitler felt should be the relentless dynamism of a revolutionary regime.[47]. [149] The extent that Hitler was influenced by Ribbentrop's advice can be seen in Hitler's orders for a limited mobilization against Poland alone. Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's notice as a well-travelled businessman with more knowledge of the outside world than most senior Nazis, and apparently an authority on world affairs. [11][12], 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 moved to the neutral United States. [49], Immediately after the A.G.N.A. On 25th February, 1943, Ribbentrop protested to Mussolini against Italian slowness in deporting Jews from the Italian occupation zone of France. 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. [28], During most of the Weimar Republic era, Ribbentrop was apolitical and displayed no anti-Semitic prejudices. Matsuoka responded that preparations to occupy Singapore were under way. On 27 August 1939, Chamberlain sent the following letter to Hitler, which was intended to counteract reports Chamberlain had heard from intelligence sources in Berlin that Ribbentrop had convinced Hitler that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact would ensure that Britain would abandon Poland. [227] When Hitler ordered invasion of Yugoslavia, Ribbentrop was opposed, because he thought the Foreign Office was likely to be excluded from ruling the occupied Yugoslavia. Mussolini's motives were in no way altruistic. [256], In April 1943, during a summit meeting with Hungary's Regent Miklos Horthy, Ribbentrop strongly pressed the Hungarians to deport their Jewish population to the death camps, but was unsuccessful. "[262], Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who stood trial. From 1904 to 1908, Ribbentrop took French courses at Lycée Fabert in Metz, the German Empire's most powerful fortress. An area in which Ribbentrop enjoyed more success arose in September 1940, when he had the Far Eastern agent of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, Dr. Heinrich Georg Stahmer, start negotiations with the Japanese foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, for an anti-American alliance. Ribbentrop became Hitler's favourite foreign-policy adviser, partly by dint of his familiarity with the world outside Germany but also by flattery and sycophancy. The Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and the signing of the German-Soviet pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy. Now he has to destroy it "because that is the Führer's wish". [166] 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. 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. [83] 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. [18] Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, with whom Ribbentrop had served in the 12th Torgau Hussars in the First World War, arranged the introduction. [26] Several Berlin Jewish businessmen who did business with Ribbentrop in the 1920s and knew him well later expressed astonishment at the vicious anti-Semitism Ribbentrop later displayed in the Third Reich, saying that they did not see any indications that he had held such views when they knew him. Despite his opposition to Operation Barbarossa and a preference to concentrate against Britain, on 28 June 1941, Ribbentrop began a sustained effort, without consulting Hitler, to have Japan attack the Soviet Union. [175] 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.[177]. It will enhance any encyclopedic page you visit with the magic of the WIKI 2 technology. [99], Before the Anglo-German summit at Berchtesgaden on 15 September 1938, Henderson and Weizsäcker worked out a private arrangement that Hitler and Chamberlain were to meet with no advisers present as a way of excluding the ultra-hawkish Ribbentrop from attending the talks. Joachim von Ribbentrop has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theatre productions: Congratulations on this excellent venture… what a great idea! Hillgruber, Andreas (1974). [83] 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. [94] 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. [110] In a moment of pique at his exclusion from the Chamberlain-Hitler meeting, Ribbentrop refused to hand over Schmidt's notes of the summit to Chamberlain, a move that caused much annoyance on the British side. [14], In 1919 Ribbentrop met Anna Elisabeth Henkell ("Annelies" to her friends),[15] the daughter of a wealthy Wiesbaden wine-producer. [50] Simon was angry with that demand, and walked out of the talks. He had Edmund Veesenmayer successfully conclude talks in April 1941 with General Slavko Kvaternik of the Ustaša on having his party rule Croatia after the German invasion. "Poland in British and French Policy in 1939", from Finney, Patrick (ed. In the final phase, from 1943 to 1945, he had the task of trying to keep Germany's allies from leaving her side. [87] 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". 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: It is just before four on the morning of Sunday, 22 June 1941 in the office of the Foreign Minister. [159] 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. [48] Once the talks began, Ribbentrop issued an ultimatum to Sir John Simon,[49] informing him that if Germany's terms were not accepted in their entirety, the German delegation would go home. As World War II continued, Ribbentrop's once-friendly relations with the SS became increasingly strained. [177], 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". [36] In October 1933, German Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath presented a note at the World Disarmament Conference announcing that it was unfair that Germany should remain disarmed by Part V of the Versailles treaty and demanded for the other powers to disarm to Germany's level or to Part V and allow Germany Gleichberechtigung ("equality of armaments").