Through the Japanese, Hitler learned about the results of the invasion of the Soviet Union and sent Joachim von Ribbentrop to negotiate peace between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

" After a conference in Berlin between Hitler, Molotov and Ribbentrop, Germany presented Molotov with a proposed written agreement for Axis entry.

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.

He ranked along with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Göring, Himmler, and Martin Bormann as the senior Nazi with the most access to Hitler, which in an autocratic regime meant access to power.

Following the Allied invasion of Italy and the fall of Benito Mussolini in September, he and Joachim von Ribbentrop raised with Hitler the possibility of secretly approaching Joseph Stalin and negotiating a separate peace behind the backs of the western Allies.

" In his diaries, he expressed the belief that German diplomacy should find a way to exploit the emerging tensions between Stalin and the West, but he proclaimed foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, whom Hitler would not abandon, incapable of such a feat.

In 1928, Ribbentrop was introduced to Adolf Hitler as a businessman with foreign connections who " gets the same price for German champagne as others get for French champagne ".

Ribbentrop began his political career that summer by offering to be a secret emissary between Chancellor Franz von Papen, his old wartime friend, and Hitler.

Ribbentrop, in turn, greatly admired Hitler.

But Ribbentrop told Hitler what he wanted Hitler to hear.

In particular, Ribbentrop acquired the habit of listening carefully to what Hitler was saying, memorizing the Führer's pet ideas, and then later presenting Hitler's ideas as his own – a practice that much impressed Hitler as proving Ribbentrop was an ideal National Socialist diplomat.

I listened to what Hitler said one day when Ribbentrop wasn't present: ' With Ribbentrop it is so easy, he is always so radical.

Despite this, Hitler never quite trusted the Foreign Office and was always on the lookout for someone like Ribbentrop to carry out his foreign-policy goals.

But in November, Ribbentrop arranged a meeting between de Brinon, who wrote for the Le Matin newspaper, and Hitler, during which Hitler stressed what he claimed to be his love of peace and his friendship towards France.

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.

In public, Ribbentrop expressed great fury at the Polish refusal to allow for Danzig's return to the Reich, or to grant Polish permission for the " extra-territorial " highways, but since these matters were only intended after March 1939 to be a pretext for German aggression, Ribbentrop always refused in private to allow for any talks between German and Polish diplomats about these matters.

This was especially damaging to Ribbentrop, as he always assured Hitler that " Italy's attitude is determined by the Rome-Berlin Axis ".

Later, when on trial for his life at Nuremberg, Ribbentrop claimed to have always been opposed to the " Final Solution " and to have done everything in his power to stop it.

Bonnet's alleged statement ( Bonnet always denied making the remark ) to Ribbentrop was to be a major factor in German policy in 1939.

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.

Ribbentrop was opposed to the Foreign Office's pro-China orientation and instead favoured an alliance with Japan.

Like most German conservatives, Goerdeler favoured Germany's traditional informal alliance with China, and was strongly opposed to the volte-face in Germany's Far Eastern policies effected in early 1938 by the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, who abandoned the alliance with China for an alignment with Japan.

Goebbels was one of the most enthusiastic proponents of aggressively pursuing Germany's territorial claims sooner rather than later, along with Himmler and Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop.

From 1904 to 1908, Ribbentrop took French courses in a school at Metz, the German Empire's most powerful fortress.

A former teacher later recalled that Ribbentrop " was the most stupid in his class, full of vanity and very pushy ".

During most of the Weimar Republic era, Ribbentrop was apolitical and displayed no anti-Semitic prejudices.

The most notable guest Ribbentrop brought to Hitler was former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

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.

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 ".

Of the two references, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, the German military attaché in London, commented that Ribbentrop had been a brave soldier in World War I, while the wife of the Italian Ambassador to Germany, Elisabetta Cerruti, called Ribbentrop " one of the most diverting of the Nazis ".

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 ".

Ribbentrop had only expected to see the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, and was most surprised to be holding talks with Joseph Stalin.

Henderson stated that the terms of the German " final offer " were very reasonable, but argued that Ribbentrop's time limit for Polish acceptance of the " final offer " was most unreasonable, and furthermore, demanded to know why Ribbentrop insisted upon seeing a special Polish plenipotentiary and could not present the " final offer " to Józef Lipski or provide a written copy of the " final offer ".

After the outbreak of World War II, Ribbentrop spent most of the Polish campaign travelling with Hitler.

On 27 September 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow, where at meetings with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin, he was forced to agree to revising the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact in the Soviet Union's favour, most notably agreeing to Stalin's demand that Lithuania go to the Soviet Union.

To this end, Ribbentrop appointed a colleague, Otto Abetz, from the Dienststelle Ambassador to France with instructions to promote the political career of Pierre Laval, who Ribbentrop had decided was the French politician most favourable to Germany.

The decision to award so much of Romania to the Hungarians was Hitler's, as Ribbentrop himself spent most of the Vienna conference loudly attacking the Hungarian delegation for their coolness towards attacking Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then demanding more than their fair share of the spoils.

Ribbentrop treated the ensuring complaints by the Vichy French government over the expulsions in a " most dilatory fashion ".

In September 1942, after a meeting with Hitler, who was most unhappy with his Foreign Minister's actions, Ribbentrop promptly changed course and ordered that the deportations be resumed immediately.

The most damaging allege that in 1936, during her affair with King Edward, she was simultaneously having an affair with Ambassador Ribbentrop.

The Foreign Office took Weizsäcker's appointment as a sign that Ribbentrop was a man, who, though personally disagreeable and unpleasant, was one they could work under: no radical changes were in the offing.