Ribbentrop

I had supposed that so unpleasant and fatuous a creature as Joachim von Ribbentrop was unworthy of scholarly attention. But then I read Michael Bloch's biography Ribbentrop Of all the bizarre individuals projected into high office by Hitler's revolution, none was more improbable than Joachim von Ribbentrop. A successful middle-class businessman with Jewish friends, a romantic conservative who dreamt of restoring Germany's fallen monarchy and colonial empire, Ribbentrop joined the Nazis on the eve of their taking power. In spite of the hostility from both traditionalists and old guard Nazis, he began the spectacular rise which led to his becoming Hitler's Foreign Minister in 1938, a post he held until the end of the Third Reich. Ribbentrop was universally regarded as foolish, incompetent and intolerably arrogant. He owed his position largely to the fact that he was deeply in thrall to two people - an ambitious and dominating wife who pushed him forward; and the Fuehrer who saw him as a creature he might bend totally to his will. Though a yes-man, Ribbentrop nevertheless influenced his master's policy. His brief period as ambassador to London, where he became a laughing stock, made him violently anti-British, and led him actively to plot a war between Germany and England. His grandiose attempts at alliance-building led to a military coalition with Italy and Japan, and the famous pact with the Soviet Union. It was a career which would lead to the gallows at Nuremberg, where he headed the death procession. Other work by the author includes "The Duke of Windsor's War", "Operation Willi", "Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931-1937", "The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor" and "The Reign and Abdication of Edward VIII." Ulrich Friedrich Willy Joachim Ribbentrop, known by his last forename of Joachim, future Foreign Minister of the Third Reich, was born on 30 April 1893 at Wesel, a Prussian garrison town of some twenty thousand inhabitants on the Lower Rhine near the Dutch frontier, where his father, First Lieutenant Richard Ribbentrop, aged thirty-three, was then stationed with the 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment. A biography of Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister from 1938 to the end of the Third Reich. It traces his progression from a middle-class businessman with Jewish friends, to joining the Nazi Party on the eve of their taking power, to his execution at Nuremberg.