World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseUlrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Niederrhein, to an army officer. Before WW1, he worked in Canada for an importer of German wines, and returned to Germany during WW1 with fluency in the English language. He served in the German Army during WW1, achieving the rank of first lieutenant and was awarded the Iron Cross. He later convinced his aunt, whose husband had been knighted, to adopt him, hence the addition of the aristocratic "von" in his name hence.

ww2dbaseRibbentrop joined the Nazi Party in May 1932 after his foreign knowledge was noticed by Adolf Hitler. He further befriended Hitler by providing his home as a secret meeting location between Hitler and Franz von Papen during Hitler's bid to become the German Chancellor. It was also around this time he began to exhibit anti-Semitic behavior, something that he had not shown before. While some argued that his experiences abroad gave him a more international mindset than most of his colleagues, even more argued that he only knew how to tell his superiors what they wanted to hear at the right times; whatever the reason was, he was given the rank of SS-Standartenführer in 1933 and began acting in the capacity of a diplomat. As an instrument of Hitler's lies, he traveled to various European capitals preaching the ideals of disarmament, while back in Germany the war production capacity grew on a daily basis. In 1935, he was named Minister Plenipotentiary at Large and was credited for the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the Anti-Comintern Pact. On 21 May 1937, he met with Winston Churchill in the German embassy in London and offered Churchill Germany's protection for Britain if Britain was to give Germany a "free hand" in eastern Europe; Churchill rejected such a notion, and Ribbentrop responded "[i]n that case, war is inevitable." On 4 Feb 1938, he succeeded Konstantin von Neurath as Foreign Minister and began replacing veteran diplomats with Nazi Party members. Like the exchange with Churchill in May 1937 suggested, Ribbentrop was an advocate of war; even though Germany was able to annex Austria and Czechoslovakia successfully through diplomacy, he regarded them as failures because he was not able to provide Germany an opportunity to deploy her military. In 1939, he was a key figure in the negotiation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which alarmed nations of Western Europe with a German-Russian friendship as well as, in secret, a plan of aggression against Poland by the two powers.

ww2dbaseAfter the German invasion of Poland in Sep 1939, Ribbentrop's work shifted to the persuasion of other European nations to join the Axis alliance. Nations such as Romania and Hungary, to name some examples, joined the Axis under his directorship. He was not able to convince the careful Francisco Franco of Spain, but the Spanish dictator remained friendly to the German cause. As for the Holocaust, Ribbentrop was responsible for arranging the deportation of Jews in allied or conquered territories to concentration and extermination camps. As the war progressed, however, especially with Germany losing ground, Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry began to lose their usefulness and influence. As Hitler committed suicide in Apr 1945, he left instructions for German High Commission of the Netherlands Arthur Seyß-Inquart to take over as the new German Foreign Minister. Ribbentrop attempted to go into hiding, but was eventually arrested by British troops in Hamburg on 14 Jun. He was tried at the Nuremberg Trials and was sentenced to death by hanging. He was the first German politician to be executed as the result of the Nuremberg Trials. His last words were "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."

Famous Quote(s)

• "We no longer demand anything, we want war."
      » 11 Aug 1939
• "Gott schützt Deutschland!"
      » Last words ("God protect Germany"), 16 Oct 1946

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