Joachim von Ribbentrop – Biography of Joachim von Ribbentrop

Born April 30, 1893 in Wesel, Joachim von Ribbentrop He was a German diplomat, foreign minister of the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and chief negotiator of the treaties with which Germany entered the Second World War.

Ribbentrop He was the son of an army officer in a middle-class family. After attending schools in Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, he went to Canada (1910), but returned to Germany at the outbreak of World War I, in which he served as a hussar on the Eastern Front. He was later assigned to the German military mission in Turkey. Upon his return to Germany at the end of the war, Ribbentrop He worked as a Sekt (a sparkling wine) salesman until his marriage in 1920 to the daughter of a wealthy Sekt producer, which made him financially independent. Thereafter, he persuaded a distant ennobled relative to adopt him so that he could put “von” in his name.

Ribbentrop he met Adolf Hitler in 1932 and joined the National Socialist Party that same year, becoming the Führer’s main adviser on foreign affairs after the Nazis came to power (January 30, 1933). After his appointment in 1934 as Reich Commissioner for Disarmament in Geneva, in June 1935 he negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which authorized German naval rearmament. In 1936 Ribbentrop became ambassador to Great Britain; By 1938, when he left his post, he had become a complete Anglophobe. His advice to Hitler that Britain could not help Poland effectively proved correct in the short term.

In the meantime, Ribbentrop He had also negotiated the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan (1936) and, after his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 1938, signed the “Pact of Steel” with Italy (May 22, 1939), linking the two fascist dictatorships. most aggressive in Europe in an alliance in case of war. The biggest diplomatic coup of RibbentropHowever, it was the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939, that paved the way for Hitler’s attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, thus starting World War II.

With the outbreak of war, the importance of Ribbentrop decreased rapidly. He signed the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy (September 27, 1940), which provided for mutual aid against the United States, but from then on diplomacy became a secondary concern. Ribbentrop it stood only thanks to Hitler’s backing. Even this support waned after some members of the Foreign Ministry staff were implicated in the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.

Ribbentrop he was captured in Hamburg on June 14, 1945, tried before the International Military Tribunal in Nürnberg, convicted of four major charges, and hanged. While in prison, he wrote Zwischen London und Moskau (1953; “Between London and Moscow“).