PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE 166
Joachim von Ribbentrop
THE NAZI DIPLOMAT
To most people, the name Joachim von Ribbentrop is linked with Nazi Germany. He was named Reich Commissioner for Disarmament in 1934, Nazi German Ambassador to Great Britain in 1936, as well as Nazi German Foreign Minister in 1938. Ribbentrop negotiated many pacts and treaties, including the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, the 1938 Munich Agreement, the 1939 the “Pact of Steel” with Italy and the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact… which cleared the way for an attack on Poland that brought on the Second World War. His final agreement was the 1940 Tripartite Pact with Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan.
Joachim von Ribbentrop was a man whose sycophantic and constant currying favor to Adolf Hitler put the former champagne salesman at odds with the “old brigade” of the Nazi Party. Men like Hermann Goering and Josef Goebbels viewed Ribbentrop as a crawler and a deceitful fraud.
But whatever the modus operandi, the methods employed by Ribbentrop to get the attention of the Fuehrer worked! Within a year of joining the party in 1932, Ribbentrop had become an SS colonel, a member of the Reichstag, and Hitler’s chief advisor on foreign policy. The wine peddler had mastered the art of telling Hitler precisely what he wanted to hear!
But even with success, there was failure! Ribbentrop could not seal the deal on an Anglo-German alliance… in part due to his arrogance and clumsiness. He once gave an energetic Nazi salute that almost knocked over King George VI!
Ribbentrop stayed on as Foreign Minister during World War II, but his influence was all but gone by the end of 1944. After Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies in May 1945, Ribbentrop was branded a war criminal and put on trial at Nuremberg. Having been found guilty on all counts, fifty-three-year-old Joachim von Ribbentrop was sentenced to death by hanging. On October 16, 1946, he was the first of ten to face the hangman…
But the life of Joachim von Ribbentrop unknown to most people is that of a multi-lingual bon vivant who served his country in a great war that shaped the 20th century. From then on, he went from poor ex-soldier to wealthy opportunist…
SEEKER OF FORTUNE
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim Ribbentrop was born in the little town of Wesel (on the Rhine-Dutch frontier) on April 30, 1893. He was the son of Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, (a career army officer) and Johanne Sophie Hertwig. Joachim came from a middle-class family: solid functionaries, landowners, and soldiers. One of his ancestors was an officer on General Gebhard Blücher’s staff at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo.
Beginning in 1904, Ribbentrop took French courses at Lycée Fabert in Metz (Imperial Germany’s most powerful fortress) for four years. At the Nuremberg Trials in March 1946, Ribbentrop spoke of his early education:
“I went to school at Kassel and Metz in Alsace-Lorraine. There, in Alsace-Lorraine, I had my first contact with the domain of French culture; and at that time we learned to love that country dearly.”
His father was cashiered from the Prussian Army in 1908 for repeatedly disparaging Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged homosexuality. Despite these claims, young Joachim was unmoved:
“My father already had a strong interest in foreign politics and also social interests, and I had a great veneration for him.”
For the next eighteen months, the family moved to Arosa, Switzerland. There, the children continued to be taught by French and English private tutors. Ribbentrop went to boarding school and spent his free time skiing and mountaineering.
Following the stay in Arosa, Ribbentrop was sent to Britain for one year to improve his knowledge of English. Now fluent in both French and English, he lived at various times in Grenoble and London. But it was in the latter where young Joachim got his “first impression of London and of the greatness of the British Empire”.
In 1910, Ribbentrop travelled across the Atlantic to Canada. He worked for the Molsons Bank on Stanley Street in Montreal. Later, he was a draughtsman and bridge builder for the engineering firm M. P. and J. T. Davis. Ribbentrop took part in the Quebec Bridge reconstruction over the St. Lawrence Seaway. He was also employed as a plate layer and car-checker with the National Transcontinental Railway, which constructed a line from Moncton to Winnipeg. Young Joachim even tried logging in British Columbia!
Originally wanting to visit the German colonies, Ribbentrop travelled across the southern border into the United States. There, he worked as a journalist in New York City and Boston. However, he contracted tuberculosis and temporarily returned home to Germany.
After his recovery in 1913, Ribbentrop went back to Canada. He set up a small business in Ottawa (which involved importing German wine and champagne), mingling and dining with the city’s social class. Ribbentrop was an accomplished violinist, actor, and athlete. In 1914, he competed for Ottawa’s famous Minto ice-skating team. That February, he travelled with the team for the Ellis Memorial Trophy tournament in Boston, but did not compete.
SOLDIER OF FAMINE
When the First World War began in early August 1914, Ribbentrop fled Canada, which was part of the British Empire; now at war with Imperial Germany! He found temporary sanctuary in the neutral United States.
The story of Ribbentrop’s escape to America is a questionable one. He was reportedly playing mixed doubles at a tennis club in Ottawa upon hearing news of the war declaration. Ribbentrop then went home to pack, dined at the Château Laurier, and headed for New York City. As an enemy alien, he evaded Canadian police by donning the overalls of a house painter. Somehow, Ribbentrop managed to walk past the police among a group of workmen carrying paint pots and brushes!
As war was spreading across Europe, Ribbentrop was in New York with the attitude shared by most eager young Germans:
“Every man is needed at home and how can we help the homeland?”
On August 15th, Ribbentrop sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey on the Dutch-American ship Potsdam bound for Rotterdam. Another story emerged when the boat stopped in the first British port. Ribbentrop managed to elude the attention of port authorities by concealing himself (along with another young German of military age) in the coal bunkers.
Finally in September 1914, Ribbentrop returned to Germany and promptly enlisted in the Prussian 12th Torgau Hussar Regiment, the same unit to which his grandfather belonged. There, the new soldier wrote letters indicating his hope to return to Ottawa following the war. Ribbentrop claimed that he was “indescribably happy” during his time in Canada:
“I left behind my property, my brother [Lothar] who was seriously ill, the business prospects which had just opened up, many friends, and a young girl I had wanted to marry.”
Ribbentrop first served on the Eastern Front (where he picked up a bit of the Russian language), then was transferred to the Western Front. He was a competent junior officer, earning the Iron Cross, First Class for service to the Fatherland. However, critics later claimed that it was Ribbentrop himself who partitioned the military for the award!
In 1917, Ribbentrop was seriously wounded, which effectively rendered him unfit for frontline service. But for this, he was awarded the Wound Badge in Black.
Upon his recovery, Oberleutnant (first lieutenant) Ribbentrop was transferred to a staff appointment. He served as a military attaché at the Kaiser’s embassy to the Sublime Porte at Constantinople. This was his first step towards a diplomatic career that eventually propelled him to Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany nearly twenty years later.
During his time in Ottoman Turkey, Ribbentrop became a friend of another staff officer, future German chancellor Franz von Papen. However in 1918, the atmosphere was that of gloom. The Ottoman Empire was disintegrating, and the mood among the Germans was growing dark.
The November armistice found Ribbentrop engaged on a military mission in Constantinople. At Nuremberg in March 1946, he reminisced:
“I was sent to Constantinople, to Turkey, where I witnessed the collapse of Germany in the First World War. Then I had my first impression of the dreadful consequences of a lost war. The Ambassador at that time, Count Bernstorff, and the later Ambassador, Dr. Dieckhoff, were the representatives of the Reich in Turkey. They were summoned to Berlin in order to take advantage of Count Bernstorff’s connections with President Wilson and to see — it was the hope of all of us — that on the strength of these [Fourteen] Points perhaps a peace could be achieved and with it reconciliations.”
In March 1919, Ribbentrop was transferred to military HQ in Berlin to serve on the staff of General Hans von Seeckt. Again speaking in Nuremberg in 1946:
“I became adjutant of the then General von Seeckt for the peace delegation at Versailles. Subsequently, when the Treaty of Versailles came, I read that document in one night and it was my impression that no government in the world could possibly sign such a document. That was my first impression of foreign policy at home.”
THE SALESMAN
Later that year, Ribbentrop was one of a legion of brilliant young German officers who suddenly found themselves unemployed and without a future. Military careers were interrupted as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and its ruthless amputation of the German Army.
Just twenty-six years old, Ribbentrop was handsome and intelligent; liberal and even republican in his sympathies. He had little trace of the professional soldier, neither wearing a monocle nor bowed stiffly from the hips like the traditional Prussian officer. In the immediate aftermath of the Great War, the penniless Joachim Ribbentrop soon became a symbol of elegance.
After leaving the German Army in 1919, Ribbentrop worked as a salesman for the French champagne firm of Pommerey in the Rhineland. He later became a partner in a Berlin sales agency.
It was in that same year that Ribbentrop met Anna Elisabeth Henkell. Known as “Annelies” to her friends, she was the daughter of a wealthy Wiesbaden wine producer. On July 5, 1920, Joachim and Annalies were married. The couple would have five children.
Sekt was Germany’s largest sparkling wine producer. With his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Sekt producer, Ribbentrop became financially independent.
But he had not been born with the prefix “von”. Allegedly, that attribute of nobility was via adoption at an early age by an uncle whose outstanding military services had led to earning the title. For years, Ribbentrop fraudulently added the aristocratic “von” to his surname. Then in 1925, he convinced his aunt, Gertrud von Ribbentrop, to adopt him. Whether it was money or the power of persuasion, the adoption allowed Ribbentrop to add the nobiliary particle “von” to the surname. From that point on, he was Joachim von Ribbentrop.
In 1928, Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff (who also served in the 12th Torgau Hussars) arranged for Ribbentrop the introduction of an ex-corporal turned politician named Adolf Hitler.
The rest is history!