Joachim von Ribbentrop Biography

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World of Criminal Justice on Joachim von Ribbentrop

Joachim von Ribbentrop was a German diplomat who played an important role in the Nazi government of Adolph Hitler, serving as foreign minister from 1933 to 1945. Ribbentrop negotiated the treaty between Germany, Italy, and Japan that created the Axis Powers, and he negotiated a treaty with the Soviet Union that paved the way for the 1939 invasion of Poland. He was tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg.

Ribbentrop was born on April 30, 1893, in Wesel, Germany. He attended schools in Germany and several other European countries before immigrating to Canada in 1910. Ribbentrop spent four years in Canada but returned to Germany in 1914 to serve as a solider on the Russian front. After the war he became a champagne salesman. He obtained the use of the noble prefix "von" by paying a relative a lifetime annuity, the payment of which was made possible by his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy businessman.

Ribbentrop joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became Hitler's advisor on foreign affairs after Hitler was named chancellor in 1933. In 1936 Ribbentrop was appointed ambassador to Great Britain but was recalled in 1938 to assume the position of foreign minister. Previously he had negotiated the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan in 1936. In 1938 he signed a mutual defense pact with Italy. Then in August 1939 he negotiated the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the countries agreed to divide Poland after a German invasion. Within weeks Germany had conquered Poland, and World War II had begun. In 1941 Ribbentrop also negotiated the mutual defense treaty with Japan and Italy known as the Tripartite Pact.

With the onset of war, diplomacy no longer occupied Hitler's attention. As a consequence, Ribbentrop's influence declined rapidly. Though historians have noted that for much of his life he did not express anti-Semitic views; this changed in late 1942 when he realized how much importance Hitler had placed on exterminating the Jews. He began to exert his diplomatic influence in the occupied territories to make sure these policies were carried out. In 1943 he told the regent of Hungary that the Jews must either be exterminated or sent to concentration camps.

After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Ribbentrop went into hiding. He was captured in June and in August was indicted for war crimes by the IMT. The case against Ribbentrop was substantial. By furnishing diplomatic support to Hitler from the occupation of Czechoslovakia to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop had committed crimes against peace. Prosecutors also uncovered details of how Ribbentrop had brought pressure to bear on the governments of France and Italy to expedite the deportation of French and Italian Jews to Eastern Europe and the concentration camps. Ribbentrop was so tangled in lies and self-deceptions that prosecutors ruthlessly exposed him during cross-examination. The IMT convicted Ribbentrop on all charges, and he was sentenced to death. He was hanged on October 16, 1946 in Nuremberg.