Early Life
Joachim Ribbentrop was born in 1893 in Germany to a military family. His early life was peripatetic, attending schools in West Europe and then moving to Canada to work in business, however he returned to Germany for World War 1, where he enlisted and fought as a hussar, before being sent to Turkey.
After the war Ribbentrop began a career selling wine, but in 1920 was able to marry a rich wine heiress, and talked a relative into fudging things so he could add the von into his name to better impress those in his new social circle.
Peacetime Nazi Career
Ribbentrop became a Nazi after meeting Hitler in 1932, joining the party and rising to become the latter’s chief advisor for foreign affairs. He owed his position entirely to Hitler’s fondness for him, indeed, Hitler thought Ribbentrop was a negotiator of world class skill. Other Nazis found him sycophantic in the extreme. He took on a string of roles, from Reich commissioner for disarmament in 1934, key player in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement which legalised an expanded German navy, and ambassador to Britain in 1936, a role he held to 1938 and in which he felt so snubbed by Britain’s upper classes than he insisted the nation was Germany’s most dangerous enemy, and concluded Britain would not be able to militarily save Poland.
He was a key player in the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. In 1938 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs and negotiated the Pact of Steel alliance with Italy. He then worked on the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, which allowed Hitler to attack Poland and then focus on the western front, with no fear of Stalin to the east. However, Ribbentrop had told Hitler Britain would not oppose the attack.
War and After
Ribbentrop’s negotiating skills had less call once Hitler begun his great war, and although there was still a deal to unite Germany with Italy and Japan against the US in 1940 he found himself sidelined as Hitler tried to negotiate only with his armies. He tried to get back into favour by assisting the transport of persecuted groups to death camps, and only just survived an attack on Hitler by his staff. When the war ended he was arrested by the allies, tried at Nuremberg, considered a poor defendant by his fellow accused, and executed. In the meantime he wrote his memoirs.