page_title: Joachim von Ribbentrop
section_title: Arrest
hierarchical_section_title: Joachim von Ribbentrop / Foreign Minister of the Reich / Arrest
caption_attribution_description: English: Foreign Minister of Germany Joachim von Ribbentrop photographed in his cell at the Nuremberg Trials, Nuremberg, Germany. Gelatin silver process on paper. 28 cm x 35.3 cm. Image courtesy of the Harvard Law School Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
context_page_description: Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop, better known as simply Joachim von Ribbentrop, was Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 1945.
  Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's notice as a well-travelled businessman with more knowledge of the outside world than most senior national socialists 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 and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. He favoured retaining good relations with the Soviets, and opposed the invasion of the Soviet Union.
context_section_description: After Hitler's suicide Ribbentrop attempted to find a role under the new Fuhrer, Dönitz, but was rebuffed.  He went into hiding under an assumed name (Herr Reiser) in port city of Hamburg.  On 14 June, after Germany's surrender, Ribbentrop was arrested by Sergeant Jacques Goffinet, a French citizen who had joined the 5th Special Air Service, the Belgian SAS, and was working with British forces near Hamburg. He was found with a rambling letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill criticizing British foreign policy for anti-German sentiments, and blaming Britain's failure to ally with Germany before the war for the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and the advancement of Bolshevism into central Europe.
caption: Ribbentrop in his cell at Nuremberg
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