In contrast to Neurath's less bellicose and cautious nature, Ribbentrop unequivocally supported war in 1938 – 39.

In this, Ribbentrop was particularly supported by the German Ambassador in London, Herbert von Dirksen, who reported that Chamberlain knew " the social structure of Britain, even the conception of the British Empire, would not survive the chaos of even a victorious war ", and so would back down over Poland.

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.

In November 1937, Ribbentrop was placed in a highly embarrassing situation when his forceful advocacy of the return of the former German colonies led to the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos offering to open talks on returning the former German colonies, in return for which the Germans would make binding commitments to respect their borders in Central and Eastern Europe.

In the face of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact and the following Soviet aggressions against Poland and the Baltic countries, Finland's situation seemed increasingly dangerous.

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.

After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin traded letters with Ribbentrop, with Stalin writing about entering an agreement regarding a " permanent basis " for their " mutual interests.

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 became Hitler's favourite foreign-policy adviser, partly by dint of his familiarity with the world outside Germany, but also by shameless flattery and sycophancy.

Ribbentrop wanted to buy time to complete German rearmament by removing preventive war as a French policy option.

Hitler rewarded Ribbentrop by appointing him Reich Minister Ambassador-Plenipotentiary at Large.

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

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.

London's tailors retaliated for this abuse by telling all their well-off clients that Ribbentrop was impossible to deal with.

In February 1937, Ribbentrop committed a notable social gaffe by unexpectedly greeting King George VI with a stiff-armed Nazi salute: the gesture nearly knocked over the King, who was walking forward to shake Ribbentrop's hand.

Ribbentrop further compounded the damage to his image and caused a minor crisis in Anglo-German relations by insisting that henceforward all German diplomats were to greet heads of state with the " German greeting ", who were in turn to return the fascist salute.

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.

Following the lead of Andreas Hillgruber, who argued that Hitler had a Stufenplan ( stage by stage plan ) for world conquest, Hildebrand argued that Ribbentrop may not have fully understood what Hitler's Stufenplan was, or alternatively in pressing so hard for colonial restoration was trying to score a personal success that might improve his standing with Hitler.

In March 1937, Ribbentrop attracted much adverse comment in the British press when he gave a speech at the Leipzig Trade Fair in Leipzig, where he declared that German economic prosperity would be satisfied either " through the restoration of the former German colonial possessions, or by means of the German people's own strength ".

Ribbentrop wrote in his " Memorandum for the Führer " that " a change in the status quo in the East to Germany's advantage can only be accomplished by force ", and that the best way to achieve this change was to build a global anti-British alliance system.

And as time went by, Ribbentrop started to oust the Foreign Office's old diplomats from their senior positions and replace them with men from the Dienststelle.

Ribbentrop was widely disliked by the old diplomats.

Though Ribbentrop had competed with the Foreign Office in the past, his appointment as Foreign Minister was welcomed by the career diplomats who saw Ribbentrop as a Nazi champion who would improve the agency's standing with Hitler.

As time went by, Ribbentrop took to restructuring the Foreign Office by creating new offices like the Agency for News Analysis which fought with the Propaganda Ministry for control of German propaganda abroad, and by creating an inner circle of loyalists, many of whom had come from the Dienststelle.

Ribbentrop was instrumental in February 1938 in persuading Hitler to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and to renounce German claims upon her former colonies in the Pacific, which were now held by Japan.

His report delighted Hitler, causing him to remark that Ribbentrop was the only person who told him " the truth about the world abroad ".

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.

A former aide recalled that Ribbentrop threw the German Embassy into chaos due to his erratic personality: He rose, muttering bad-temperedly ... Dressed in his pyjamas, he received the junior secretaries and press attachés in his bathroom ... He scolded, threatened, gesticulated with his razor and shouted at his valet ... As he took his bath, he ordered people to be summoned from Berlin, accepted and cancelled, appointed and dismissed, and dictated through the door to a nervous stenographer ... He cursed people in their absence, calling them saboteurs and communists ... It was my task to put his calls through ; his valet stood within splashing distance holding a white telephone ... Ribbentrop believed only ministers ranked above him: everyone else, including his ambassadorial colleagues, had to kept waiting on the line.

The American historian Gordon A. Craig once observed that of all the voluminous memoir literature of the diplomatic scene of 1930s Europe, there are only two positive references to Ribbentrop.

In both cases the praise was limited, with Cerruti going on to write that only in the Third Reich was it possible for someone as superficial as Ribbentrop to rise to be a minister of foreign affairs, while Geyr von Schweppenburg called Ribbentrop an absolute disaster as Ambassador in London.

That Ribbentrop was able to perform even this miracle only came home to me much later ".

By allowing the Hungarians to destroy Europe's only Ukrainian state, Ribbentrop had signified that Germany was not interested ( at least for the moment ) in sponsoring Ukrainian nationalism.

On 26 March, in an extremely stormy meeting with the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski, Ribbentrop accused the Poles of attempting to bully Germany by their partial mobilization and violently attacked them for only offering consideration of the German demand about the " extra-territorial " roads.

Even Ribbentrop ’ s standard line that Germany was only reacting to an unjust Versailles treaty, and really only wanted peace with everyone, which had worked so well in the past, failed to carry weight.

The German Embassy in Ankara had been vacant ever since the retirement of the previous ambassador Friedrich von Keller in November 1938, and Ribbentrop was only able to get the Turks to accept Papen as Ambassador when the Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu complained to Kroll in April 1939 about when the Germans were ever going to sent a new ambassador.

Ribbentrop believed that Turks were so stupid that only by shouting at them could one make them understand.

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.

Ribbentrop informed Hitler that any war with Poland would last for only 24 hours, and that the British would be so stunned with this display of German power that they would not honour their commitments.

The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the newspapers that Ribbentrop used to provide his press summaries for Hitler, such as the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, were out of touch not only with British public opinion, but also with British government policy in regard to Poland.

In the spring and summer of 1939, Ribbentrop used Bonnet's alleged statement to convince Hitler that France would not go to war in the defence of Poland, despite the frequent denials by Bonnet that he ever made such a statement ( which would not have been legally binding even had Bonnet had made the alleged statement ; only a formal renunciation of the Franco-Polish treaty by the French National Assembly would end the French commitment to Poland ).

Ribbentrop expressed his firmly-held belief that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland, but if that should occur, he fully expected the Italians to honour the terms of the Pact of Steel ( which was both an offensive and defensive treaty ), and declare war not only on Poland, but on the Western powers if necessary.

Ciano complained furiously that Ribbentrop had violated his promise given only that spring, when Italy signed the Pact of Steel, that there would be no war for the next three years.