Joachim von Ribbentrop position held German Foreign Minister
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (German: [joˈʔaxɪm fɔn ˈʁɪbəntʁɔp]; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945.
Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's notice as a well-travelled businessman with more knowledge of the outside world than most senior Nazis and as a perceived authority on foreign affairs.  He offered his house [Schloss Fuschl] for the secret meetings in January 1933 that resulted in Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany.  He became a close confidant of Hitler, to the disgust of some party members, who thought him superficial and lacking in talent.  He was appointed ambassador to the Court of St James's, the royal court of the United Kingdom,  in 1936 and then Foreign Minister of Germany in February 1938.
Before World War II, he played a key role in brokering the Pact of Steel (an alliance with Fascist Italy) and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact). He favoured retaining good relations with the Soviets, and opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union. In late 1941, due to American aid to Britain and the increasingly frequent "incidents" in the North Atlantic between U-boats and American warships guarding convoys to Britain, Ribbentrop worked for the failure of the Japanese-American talks in Washington and for Japan to attack the United States. He did his utmost to support a declaration of war on the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor. From 1941 onwards, Ribbentrop's influence declined.
Arrested in June 1945, Ribbentrop was convicted and sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials for his role in starting World War II in Europe and enabling the Holocaust. On 16 October 1946, he became the first of the Nuremberg defendants to be executed by hanging.Foreign Minister of the Reich
In early 1938, Hitler asserted his control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, in part by sacking Neurath. On 4 February 1938, Ribbentrop succeeded Neurath as Foreign Minister. Ribbentrop's appointment has generally been seen as an indication that German foreign policy was moving in a more radical direction. In contrast to Neurath's cautious and less bellicose nature, Ribbentrop unequivocally supported war in 1938 and 1939.Ribbentrop's time as Foreign Minister can be divided into three periods. In the first, from 1938 to 1939, he tried to persuade other states to align themselves with Germany for the coming war. In the second, from 1939 to 1943, Ribbentrop attempted to persuade other states to enter the war on Germany's side or at least to maintain pro-German neutrality. He was also involved in Operation Willi, an attempt to convince the former King Edward VIII to lobby his brother, now the king, on behalf of Germany. Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate the Duke of Windsor as king in the hope of establishing a fascist Britain. If Edward would agree to work openly with Nazi Germany, he would be given financial assistance and would hopefully come to be a "compliant" king. Reportedly, 50 million Swiss francs were set aside for that purpose. The plan was never realised.In the final phase, from 1943 to 1945, he had the task of trying to keep Germany's allies from leaving her side. During the course of all three periods, Ribbentrop frequently met leaders and diplomats from Italy, Japan, Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, and Hungary. During all of that time, Ribbentrop feuded with various other Nazi leaders. As time went by, Ribbentrop started to oust the Foreign Office's old diplomats from their senior positions and replace them with men from the Dienststelle. As early as 1938, 32% of the offices in the Foreign Ministry were held by men who previously served in the Dienststelle.One of Ribbentrop's first acts as Foreign Minister was to achieve a total volte-face in Germany's Far Eastern policies. Ribbentrop was instrumental in February 1938 in persuading Hitler to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and to renounce German claims upon its former colonies in the Pacific, which were now held by Japan. By April 1938, Ribbentrop had ended all German arms shipments to China and had all of the German Army officers serving with the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek recalled, with the threat that the families of the officers in China would be sent to concentration camps if the officers did not return to Germany immediately. In return, the Germans received little thanks from the Japanese, who refused to allow any new German businesses to be set up in the part of China they had occupied and continued with their policy of attempting to exclude all existing German and all other Western businesses from Japanese-occupied China. At the same time, the end of the informal Sino-German alliance led Chiang to terminate all concessions and contracts held by German companies in Kuomintang China.
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