Background
He was born in Wesel on the Rhine on the 30 th of April in 1893, to Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, a career army officer, and his wife Johanne Sophie Hertwig.
( In the year immediately preceding the outbreak of the S...)
In the year immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, the German foreign office launched an unprecedented campaign in Britain to explain the inner workings of Nazi Germany. The highpoint of this campaign was this book, a four part set of 21 essays by leading party and state officials, each explaining in detail the practical implementation and rationale of their policies. Contributors include Otto Dietrich, Fritz Todt, Robert Ley, R. Walther Darré, Wilhelm Frick, Ritter Von Epp, and many others. The first part deals with the foremost political issues: the state structure, population growth, race, Jews, the judicial system, womens rights, the educational system, and the role of propaganda. This section includes a detailed account of the eugenic measures adopted by the state to prevent the spread of heritable diseases and to boost marriage and childbirth rates. The second part explains the Reichs economic system, its agrarian, social, labor, and welfare policies. The third part details the organization of day-to-day life in the Third Reich: sport, culture, entertainment, and a fascinating exposition of the motoring industry and autobahn construction program. The final part discusses Germanys foreign policy, and includes world economics, colonies, trade, the world press, and politics, and finally, a plea for lasting peace between Germany and Britain in particular. Some extracts: "The Chancellor wants peace not only for his own country's sake, but also because a European war would be the end of the white races and of white civilisation. Not only Central Europe, but France, Italy and Great Britain also, would perish, whilst Bolshevism would be the real victor." "Most open to misinterpretation are National Socialist views on the relations between the various races of the world. It has been questioned whether the fundamental racial principles of the new world theory must not breed condescension, even contempt of people of different race. Quite the contrary; these very principles offer the very best guarantee for mutual tolerance and for the peaceful cooperation of all." "We appreciate the fact that those of another race are different from us. Whether that other race is better or worse is not possible for us to judge. For this reason, we have nothing in common with chauvinism and imperialism because we would extend to other races peopling the earth the same privileges we claim for ourselves: the right to fashion our lives and our own particular world according to the requirements of our own nature." "We do not wish our people to intermarry with those of alien race since through such mingling of the blood the best and characteristic qualities of both races are lost. But we will always have a ready welcome for any guests who wish to visit us whether of kindred or foreign civilisation, and our racial views only lead us to a fuller appreciation of their essential peculiarities in the same way as we would want our own peculiarities respected."
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He was born in Wesel on the Rhine on the 30 th of April in 1893, to Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, a career army officer, and his wife Johanne Sophie Hertwig.
Ribbentrop was educated irregularly at private schools in Germany and Switzerland. From 1904 to 1908, Ribbentrop took French courses in a school at Metz, the German Empire's most powerful fortress.
Ribbentrop met Adolf Hitler in 1932 and joined the National Socialist Party the same year, becoming the führer’s chief adviser on foreign affairs after the Nazi accession to power (January 30, 1933). After his appointment in 1934 as Reich commissioner for disarmament at Geneva, he negotiated in June 1935 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 thorough Anglophobe. His advice to Hitler, that Britain could not aid Poland effectively, proved correct in the short run.
In the meantime, Ribbentrop had also negotiated the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan (1936) and, after his appointment as minister of foreign affairs in February 1938, he signed the “Pact of Steel” with Italy (May 22, 1939), linking Europe’s two most aggressive fascist dictatorships in an alliance in case of war. Ribbentrop’s greatest diplomatic coup, however, was the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of Aug. 23, 1939, which cleared the way for Hitler’s attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, thus beginning World War II.
He flew to Moscow to conclude the Soviet-German pact of August 1939, and during World War II he was closely involved in the whole German policy of expansion and the invasions of Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union. After the war, at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, Ribbentrop appeared a broken man, although in prison he found spirit enough to write his memoirs.
Ribbentrop was hanged in Nuremberg on October 16, 1946.
( In the year immediately preceding the outbreak of the S...)
Although he joined the Nazi Party as late as 1932, he was useful to Hitler because of his social position and cosmopolitanism. After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Ribbentrop was allowed to set up his own "Ribbentrop Bureau" and to work on foreign affairs independently of the foreign office.
He was a member of National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Quotes from others about the person
A former teacher recalled that Ribbentrop "was the most stupid in his class, full of vanity and very pushy".
In 1919, Ribbentrop met Anna Elisabeth Henkell, the daughter of a wealthy Wiesbaden wine-producer. They married on 5 July 1920, and Ribbentrop travelled throughout Europe as a wine salesman. He and Annelies had five children together. In 1925 his aunt, Gertrud von Ribbentrop, adopted him, which allowed him to add the nobiliary particle von to his name.