Page "Joachim von Ribbentrop" Paragraph 46

When Ribbentrop travelled to Rome in November 1937 to oversee Italy's adhesion to the Anti-Comintern Pact, he made clear to his hosts that the pact was really directed against Britain.

As Count Ciano noted in his diary, the Anti-Comintern Pact was " anti-Communist in theory, but in fact unmistakably anti-British ".

Believing himself to be in a state of disgrace with Hitler over his failure to achieve the British alliance, Ribbentrop spent December 1937 in a state of depression, and together with his wife, wrote two lengthy documents for Hitler denouncing Britain.

In the first of his two reports to Hitler, which was presented on 2 January 1938, Ribbentrop stated that " England is our most dangerous enemy ".

In the same report, Ribbentrop advised Hitler to abandon the idea of a British alliance, and instead embrace the idea of an alliance of Germany, Japan, and Italy, to destroy the British Empire.