Joachim Von Ribbentrop - Trial and Execution

Trial and Execution

Ribbentrop was a defendant at the Nuremberg Trials. He was charged with crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Prosecutors presented evidence that Ribbentrop actively planned German aggression and to deport Jews to death camps. He also advocated executing American and British airmen shot down over Germany. The latter two charges carried the penalty of death by hanging.

The Allies' International Military Tribunal found him guilty on all counts. But even in prison, Ribbentrop remained loyal to Hitler: "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'Do this!', I would still do it."

During trial, Ribbentrop unsuccessfully sought to deny his role in the war. For example, during his cross-examination, British Prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe brought up claims that Ribbentrop had threatened Czechoslovak President Emil Hácha with "aggressive action":

Maxwell-Fyfe: What further pressure could you put on the head of a country beyond threatening him that your Army would march in, in overwhelming strength, and your air force would bomb his capital?

Ribbentrop: War, for instance.

Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who stood trial. Among other tests, he administered a German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test. Joachim von Ribbentrop scored 129, the 10th highest among the Nazi leaders tested. Yet at one point during trial, a U.S. Army interpreter asked Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker how Hitler could have made him a high official. Weizsäcker responded "Hitler never noticed Ribbentrop's babbling because Hitler always did all the talking."

Ribbentrop was the first politician to be hanged on 16 October 1946 (Göring having committed suicide before his own hanging). He was escorted up the 13 steps to the waiting noose and asked if he had any final words. He calmly said: "God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world." Nuremberg Prison Commandant Burton C. Andrus later recalled that immediately before the hood was placed over his head, Ribbentrop, who had experienced a late conversion to Christianity while imprisoned at Nuremberg, turned to the prison's Lutheran chaplain and whispered, "I'll see you again." After a slight pause the executioner pulled the lever, releasing the trap door. Ribbentrop's neck did not snap immediately. Most accounts of the hanging indicate that it took ten to twenty minutes for Ribbentrop to die. Commandant Andrus wrote in his memoirs that doctors declared Ribbentrop dead nineteen minutes after the hanging. In a later interview, Joseph Malta, one of the Nuremberg hangmen, recalled: "I noticed that his neckbone did not break. That's why he was alive. So I jump on the rope with him--I put my weight with him. With my right hand on his left ear, I give it a jerk, and you hear the bones go BEEK, and he's dead." Members of the U.S. Army cremated Ribbentrop’s remains and scattered his ashes in an unmarked location.

In 1953, Ribbentrop's widow published and edited his memoirs that he penned while incarcerated at Nuremberg. She entitled the unfinished volume, Zwischen London und Moskau (Between London and Moscow).