Joachim Von Ribbentrop - Declining Influence

Declining Influence

As the war went on, Ribbentrop's influence waned. Because most of the world was at war with Germany, the Foreign Ministry's importance diminished. By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations with only a handful of countries: Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Salo Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime in China. Later that year, Argentina and Turkey severed ties with Germany while Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria all joined the Allies and declared war on the Reich.

Hitler, for his part, found Ribbentrop increasingly tiresome and sought to avoid him. The Foreign Minister's ever more desperate pleas for permission to seek peace with at least some of Germany's enemies – the Soviet Union in particular – certainly played a role in their estrangement. As his influence declined, Ribbentrop increasingly spent his time feuding with other Nazi leaders over control of anti-Semitic policies to curry Hitler's favour.

In March 1944, Hitler resolved to invade Hungary after learning of Hungary's attempts to make peace with the Allies. A Hungarian defection from the Axis threatened to undermine the entire German war effort because Romanian oil from the Ploieşti oil-fields passed through Hungary on the way to Germany. Ribbentrop — who was opposed to Hitler's plans lest Germany lose yet another ally — talked Hitler into giving the Hungarians an ultimatum. Admiral Miklós Horthy met with Hitler and Ribbentrop at Schloss Klessheim and was informed that he could either accept German occupation or see Hungary invaded and destroyed. Horthy chose the former course. After Operation Margarethe's success, Ribbentrop instructed the new Reich Plenipotentiary for Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer, to begin deporting Hungarian Jews to Nazi death camps.

Ribbentrop suffered a major blow when many old Foreign Office diplomats participated in the 20 July 1944 putsch and assassination attempt on Hitler. Ribbentrop hadn't known of the plot, but the involvement of so many current and former Foreign Ministry members reflected badly on him. Hitler felt with some justification that Ribbentrop's "bloated administration" prevented him from keeping proper tabs on his diplomats' activities. Ribbentrop worked closely with the SS, with which he had reconciled, to purge the Foreign Office of those involved in the putsch.

Ribbentrop also worked closely with the SS for what turned out to be his last significant foreign-policy move: Operation Panzerfaust, the coup that deposed Admiral Horthy on 15 October 1944. Horthy was overthrown because he had sought a separate peace with the Allies and had ordered a halt to the deportations. He was replaced by Ferenc Szálasi, and Hungary resumed deporting Jews.

On 20 April 1945, Ribbentrop attended Hitler's 56th birthday party in Berlin. Three days later, Ribbentrop attempted to meet with Hitler, only to be told to go away as Hitler had more important things to do. This was their last meeting.

The following month, Ribbentrop was arrested by Sergeant Jacques Goffinet, a French citizen who had joined the Belgian SAS and was working with British forces near Hamburg. Found with him was a rambling letter addressed to the British Prime Minister "Vincent Churchill" criticizing British foreign policy for anti-German bias, blaming the British for the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany, and thus for the advance of "Bolshevism" into central Europe. The fact that Ribbentrop did not recall Churchill's given name reflected either his general ignorance about the world beyond Germany, or his distracted mental state at war's end.