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.

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.

Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop ( 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946 ) was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945.

Joachim von Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Rhenish Prussia, to Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, a career army officer, and his wife, Johanne Sophie Hertwig.

Ribbentrop was educated irregularly at private schools in Germany and Switzerland.

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

His father was cashiered from the Imperial German Army in 1908 — after repeatedly disparaging Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged homosexuality — and the Ribbentrop family were often short of money.

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.

In 1918 1st Lieutenant Ribbentrop was stationed in Istanbul as a staff officer.

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 ".

But Ribbentrop was not popular with the Nazi Party's Alte Kämpfer ( Old Fighters ); they nearly all disliked him.

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

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.

And Ribbentrop was blowing up the whole day and I had to do nothing.

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.

Ribbentrop was tasked with ensuring that the world remained convinced that Germany sincerely wanted an arms-limitation treaty while also ensuring that no such treaty ever materialized.

In the first part of his assignment, Ribbentrop was partly successful, but in the second part he more than fulfilled Hitler's expectations.

For example, as Special Commissioner, Ribbentrop was allowed to see all diplomatic correspondence relating to disarmament, but he refused to share it with Neurath or von Bülow.

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.

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

When Hitler ordered Yugoslavia's invasion, Ribbentrop was opposed, though only because the Foreign Office was likely to be excluded from ruling the occupied Yugoslavia.

In addition, Ribbentrop hoped that recognizing Wang would be seen as a coup which might add to the prestige of the pro-German Japanese Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, who was opposed to opening American-Japanese talks.

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.

Ribbentrop — who was opposed to Hitler's plans lest Germany lose yet another ally — talked Hitler into giving the Hungarians an ultimatum.

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.

Baron Konstantin von Neurath, the German Foreign Minister was first opposed to this arrangement, but changed his mind when he decided that the British would never accept the 35: 100 ratio, and having Ribbentrop head the mission was the best way to discredit his rival.

On August 19, 1938, Weizsäcker wrote a memo to the Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop stating: " I again opposed the whole theory of ( an attack on Czechoslovakia ) and observed that we should have to wait political developments until the English lose interest in the Czech matter and would tolerate our action, before we could tackle the affair without risk ".

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

The French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, once asked Ribbentrop that very question.

Up to the time he became Germany's Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop aggressively competed with Neurath's Foreign Office and sought to undercut Neurath at every turn.

The Dienststelle Ribbentrop, which had its offices directly across from the Foreign Office's building on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin, had in its membership a collection of Hitlerjugend alumni, dissatisfied businessmen, former reporters, and ambitious Nazi Party members, all of whom tried to conduct a foreign policy independent of, and often contrary to, the Foreign Office.

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

To this end, Ribbentrop often worked closely with General Hiroshi Ōshima, who served first as the Japanese military attaché, and then as Ambassador in Berlin, to strengthen German-Japanese ties despite furious opposition from the Wehrmacht and the Foreign Office, which preferred closer Sino-German ties.

I had to console them with feeble excuses such as that His Excellency was not very well, or engaged in an urgent state call to Berlin ... For the rest of the morning he listened to reports from members of the Embassy staff, unless I had to accompany him to the Foreign Office ... When Ribbentrop strutted through the Office corridors like a peacock, his head thrown back, it was a miracle that he did not fall over.

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.

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.

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.

Immediately after turning down the Anglo-French offer on colonial restoration, Ribbentrop for reasons of pure malice ordered the Reichskolonialbund to increase the agitation for the former German colonies, a move which exasperated both the Foreign Office and Quai d ' Orsay.

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 ".

On 4 February 1938, Ribbentrop succeeded Neurath as Foreign Minister.

As Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop was highly concerned with counteracting the damage that he himself inflicted on the Foreign Office's influence.

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.

Dirksen was later to write that he at first hoped that now that Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister this would mean the end of the Dienststelle " for no man can intrigue against himself.

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.