Ribbentrop persuaded his aunt Gertrud von Ribbentrop to adopt him in May 1925, which allowed him to add the aristocratic von to his name.

Ribbentrop was found to have had culpability in the Holocaust on the grounds that he persuaded the leaders of satellite countries of the Third Reich to deport Jews to the Nazi extermination camps.

Consequently on October 27, in Rome, Italian Foreign Minister Ciano persuaded Ribbentrop — who meanwhile had changed his mind and now supported a four-power conference — that German-Italian arbitration was a good idea as it would be a major move against Franco-British influence.

After long hesitation, Ribbentrop was also persuaded that the award should go beyond the ethnic principle, and should above all give Hungary the important towns of Košice ( Kassa ), Uzhhorod ( Ungvár ) and Mukachevo ( Munkács ).

Ribbentrop took this as an encouraging sign, and cabled the German embassy in Madrid to try to prevent the Duke from going to the Bahamas by being brought back to Spain — preferably by his Spanish friends — and be persuaded, even compelled to remain in Spanish territory.

In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: ( 1 ) a mutual assistance / aid pact and ( 2 ) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact.

When World War I began, Ribbentrop left Canada ( which, as part of the British Empire, was at war with Germany ) for the neutral United States.

British historian Laurence Rees described Ribbentrop as "... the Nazi almost all the other leading Nazis hated ".

Ribbentrop made frequent trips to Britain, and upon his return he always reported to Hitler that most British people longed for an alliance with Germany.

On the basis of Lord Lothian's praise for the natural friendship between Germany and Britain, Ribbentrop informed Hitler that all elements of British society wished for closer ties with Germany.

was signed in London on 18 June 1935 by Ribbentrop and Sir Samuel Hoare, the new British Foreign Secretary.

Hitler and Ribbentrop believed that demanding colonial restoration would pressure the British into making an alliance with the Reich on German terms.

But there was a certain difference of opinion between Ribbentrop and Hitler: Ribbentrop sincerely wished to recover the former German colonies, whereas for Hitler, colonial demands were just a negotiating tactic: Germany would renounce its demands in exchange for a British alliance.

As for the contradiction between German rearmament and his message of peace, Ribbentrop argued to whoever would listen that the German people had been “ humiliated ” by the Versailles treaty, that Germany wanted peace above all, and German violations of Versailles were part of an effort to restore Germany's " self-respect " By the 1930s, much of British opinion had been convinced that the treaty was monstrously unfair and unjust to Germany, so as a result, many in Britain like Thomas Jones were very open to Ribbentrop ’ s message that if only Versailles could be done away with, then European peace would be secured.

Ribbentrop was able to persuade an impressive array of British high society to visit Hitler in Germany.

Ribbentrop did not understand the King's limited role in government ; he thought King Edward VIII could dictate British foreign policy.

Ribbentrop often woefully misunderstood both British politics and society.

In addition, the fact that Ribbentrop chose to spend as little time as possible in London in order to stay close to Hitler irritated the British Foreign Office immensely, as Ribbentrop's frequent absences prevented the handling of many routine diplomatic matters.

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 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.

Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister 1938 – 39. But Ribbentrop emerged as one of the Nazi Party's leading hardliners.

From early 1939 onwards, Ribbentrop had become the leading advocate within the German government of reaching an understanding with the Soviet Union as the best way of pursuing both the short-term anti-Polish, and long-term anti-British foreign policy goals.

During the summer of 1939, Ribbentrop sabotaged all efforts at a peaceful solution to the Danzig dispute, leading the American historian Gerhard Weinberg to comment that " perhaps Chamberlain's haggard appearance did him more credit than Ribbentrop's beaming smile " as the countdown to a war that would kill millions inexorably gathered pace.

Though Henderson was a leading supporter of appeasement, his relations with Ribbentrop were extremely poor throughout his ambassadorship.

Neither group had an avowed mission to Nazify Britain and instead the two groups would unite to host grand dinners at which leading German figures noted for their Anglophilia or their familial links to the UK such as Rudolf Hess, von Ribbentrop, General Werner von Blomberg, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick and Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha would be guests of honour.

In Berlin he attended numerous functions, including a grand dinner for the British contingent hosted by Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to Britain and later Foreign Minister, where he was introduced to Hitler and other leading members of the National Socialist government.

In 1935, Ribbentrop arranged for a series of much-publicized visits of World War I veterans to Britain, France, and Germany.

At the same time, Ribbentrop arranged for members of the Frontkämpferbund, the official German World War I veterans ' group, to visit Britain and France to meet veterans there.

A German diplomat, Truetzschler von Falkenstein, complained after the war that " Ribbentrop, having had contact with only a small group in England – representatives of the so-called two hundred families – did not know the great mass of the English people.

Suspicions intensified when, during the summer of 1939, after conducting negotiations with both a British-French group and Germany regarding potential military and political agreements, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a Commercial Agreement providing for the trade of certain German military and civilian equipment in exchange for Soviet raw materials and the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact, commonly named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries ( Molotov – Ribbentrop ), which included a secret agreement to split Poland and Eastern Europe between the two states.

After a failed attempt to sign an anti-German military alliance with France and Britain and talks with Germany regarding a potential political deal, on 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, negotiated by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Though the Dienststelle Ribbentrop concerned itself with German foreign relations with every part of the world, a special emphasis was put on Anglo-German relations, as Ribbentrop knew that Hitler favoured an alliance with Britain.

In November 1934, Ribbentrop visited Britain where he met with George Bernard Shaw, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Lord Cecil, and Lord Lothian.

That Ribbentrop possessed the power to set up meetings with Hitler and represented himself as Hitler's personal envoy made him for a time a much-courted figure in Britain.

In August 1936, Hitler appointed Ribbentrop Ambassador to Britain with orders to negotiate the Anglo-German alliance: ... et Britain to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, that is what I want most of all.

Ribbentrop spent two months trying to get Hitler to reconsider before reluctantly leaving for Britain.

During the abdication crisis of December 1936, Ribbentrop reported to Berlin that the reason the crisis had occurred was an anti-German Jewish-Masonic-reactionary conspiracy to depose Edward ( whom Ribbentrop represented as a staunch friend of Germany ), and that civil war would soon break out in Britain between the King's supporters and those of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's.

) As Ribbentrop alienated more and more people in Britain, Göring warned Hitler that Ribbentrop was a " stupid ass ".

In February 1937, before a meeting with the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop suggested to Hitler that Germany, Italy, and Japan begin a worldwide propaganda campaign with the aim of forcing Britain to return the former German colonies in Africa.

Hitler turned down this idea of Ribbentrop's, but nonetheless during his meeting with Lord Halifax, Ribbentrop spent much of the meeting demanding that Britain sign an alliance with Germany and return the former German colonies.

As the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, noted in his diary in late 1937, Ribbentrop had come to hate Britain with all the " fury of a woman scorned ".

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.

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.

Besides appointing Weizsäcker State Secretary, Ribbentrop fired Ulrich von Hassell as Ambassador to Italy and replaced him with Mackensen, appointed Herbert von Dirksen to London to serve as his successor as Ambassador to Britain and prompted the military attaché in Tokyo General Eugen Ott to Ambassador to replace Dirksen.