Page "Joachim von Ribbentrop" Paragraph 41

Most of Ribbentrop's time was spent either demanding that Britain sign the Anti-Comintern Pact or that London return the former German colonies in Africa.

But he also devoted considerable time to courting what he called the " men of influence " as the best way to achieve an Anglo-German alliance.

Ribbentrop believed the British aristocracy comprised some sort of secret society that ruled from behind the scenes, and if he could befriend enough members of Britain's " secret government ", he could bring about the alliance.

Almost all of the initially favourable reports Ribbentrop provided to Berlin about the alliance's prospects were based on friendly remarks about the " New Germany " from various British aristocrats like Lord Londonderry and Lord Lothian ; the rather cool reception that Ribbentrop received from British Cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats did not make much of an impression on him at first.

In 1935, Sir Eric Phipps, the British Ambassador to Germany, complained to London about Ribbentrop's British associates in the Anglo-German Fellowship, that they created " false German hopes as in regards to British friendship and caused a reaction against it in England, where public opinion is very naturally hostile to the Nazi regime and its methods ".

In September 1937, the British Consul in Munich, writing about the group Ribbentrop had brought to the Nuremberg Party Rally, reported that there were some " serious persons of standing among them " and that an equal number of Ribbentrop's British contingent were " eccentrics and few, if any, could be called representatives of serious English thought, either political or social, while they most certainly lacked any political or social influence in England ".

In June 1937, when Lord Mount Temple, the Chairman of the Anglo-German Fellowship, asked to see the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after meeting Hitler in a visit arranged by Ribbentrop, Robert Vansittart, the British Foreign Office's Undersecretary wrote a memo stating that :" The P. M. Minister should certainly not see Lord Mount Temple – nor should the S of S. We really must put a stop to this eternal butting in of amateurs – and Lord Mount Temple is a particularly silly one.

These activities – which are practically confined to Germany – render impossible the task of diplomacy.

After Vansittart's memo, members of the Anglo-German Fellowship ceased to see Cabinet ministers after going on Ribbentrop-arranged trips to Germany.