[72] Duke Carl Alexander of Württemberg had told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Wallis Simpson, Edward's lover and a suspected Nazi sympathizer, had slept with Ribbentrop in London in 1936; had remained in constant contact with him; and had continued to leak secrets.

[75] 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 by giving and receiving the stiff-arm fascist salute.

[112] Before the Anglo-German summit at Berchtesgaden on 15 September 1938, the British Ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, and Weizsäcker worked out a private arrangement for Hitler and Chamberlain to meet with no advisers present as a way of excluding the ultrahawkish Ribbentrop from attending the talks.

[122][123] Ribbentrop played an important role in setting in motion the crisis that was to result in the end of Czecho-Slovakia by ordering German diplomats in Bratislava to contact Father Jozef Tiso, the premier of the Slovak regional government, and pressure him to declare independence from Prague.

When Tiso proved reluctant to do so on the grounds that the autonomy that had existed since October 1938 was sufficient for him and that to completely sever links with the Czechs would leave Slovakia open to being annexed by Hungary, Ribbentrop had the German embassy in Budapest contact the regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy.

As a result, Tiso had the Slovak regional government issue a declaration of independence on 14 March 1939; the ensuing crisis in Czech-Slovak relations was used as a pretext to summon Czecho-Slovak President Emil Hácha to Berlin over his "failure" to keep order in his country.

The same day, on 21 March 1939, Ribbentrop presented a set of demands to the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski about Poland allowing the Free City of Danzig to return to Germany in such violent and extreme language that it led the Poles to fear their country was on the verge of an immediate German attack.

[130] Ribbentrop had used such extreme language, particularly his remark that if Germany had a different policy towards the Soviet Union then Poland would cease to exist, that it led to the Poles ordering partial mobilisation and placing their armed forces on the highest state of alert on 23 March 1939.

[132] 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 mobilisation and violently attacked them for offering consideration only of the German demand about the "extra-territorial" roads.

[133] When the news of Ribbentrop's remarks was leaked to the Polish press, despite Beck's order to the censors on 27 March, it caused anti-German riots in Poland with the local Nazi Party headquarters in the mixed town of Lininco destroyed by a mob.

Shortly afterwards, false reports spread in mid-March 1939 by the Romanian minister in London, Virgil Tilea, that his country was on the verge of an immediate German attack, led to a dramatic U-turn in the British policy of resisting commitments in Eastern Europe.

[147] In April 1939, when Ribbentrop announced at a secret meeting of the senior staff of the Foreign Office that Germany was ending talks with Poland and was instead going to destroy it in an operation late that year, the news was greeted joyfully by those present.

In that, 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.

[174] The German refusal either to deliver the artillery pieces or refund the 125 million Reichsmarks that the Turks had paid for them was to be a major strain on German-Turkish relations in 1939 and had the effect of causing Turkey's politically powerful army to resist Ribbentrop's entreaties to join the Axis.

[196] As a result of the message from Rome and the ratification of the Anglo-Polish treaty, Hitler cancelled the invasion of Poland planned for 26 August but ordered it held back until 1 September to give Germany some time to break up the unfavourable international alignment.

It would be a dangerous illusion to think that, if war once starts, it will come to an early end even if a success on any one of the several fronts on which it will be engaged should have been secured[199]Ribbentrop told Hitler that Chamberlain's letter was just a bluff and urged his master to call it.

[205] On 31 August, Ribbentrop met with Ambassador Attolico to tell him that Poland's "rejection" of the "generous" German 16-point peace plan meant that Germany had no interest in Mussolini's offer to call a conference about the status of Danzig.

[230] Another German diplomatic historian, Wolfgang Michalka argued that there was a fourth alternative to the Nazi foreign policy programme, and that was Ribbentrop's concept of a Eurasian bloc comprising the four totalitarian states of Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Japan.

[233] In October 1940, Gauleiters Josef Bürckel and Robert Wagner oversaw the near total expulsion of the Jews into the unoccupied zone libre of Vichy France; they deported them not only from the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed to the Reich, but also from their Gaue as well.

Ribbentrop tried to convince Matsuoka to urge the government in Tokyo to attack the great British naval base at Singapore, claiming the Royal Navy was too weak to retaliate due to its involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic.

[240] In late 1940 and early 1941, Ribbentrop strongly pressured the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, despite advice from the German Legation in Belgrade that such an action would probably lead to the overthrow of Crown Prince Paul, the Yugoslav Regent.

[246]As part of his efforts to bring Japan into Barbarossa, on 1 July 1941, Ribbentrop had Germany break off diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek and recognized the Japanese-puppet government of Wang Jingwei as China's legitimate rulers.

[251] In April 1942, as part of a diplomatic counterpart to Case Blue, a military operation in southern Russia, Ribbentrop assembled a collection of anti-Soviet émigrés from the Caucasus in the Hotel Adlon in Berlin with the intention to have them declared leaders of governments-in-exile.

[257] In December 1942, he met the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, who carried Mussolini's request urging the Germans to go on the defensive in the Soviet Union in order to focus on attacking North Africa.

By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations only with Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Italian Social Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime in China.

On 14 June, after Germany's surrender, Ribbentrop was arrested by Sergeant Jacques Goffinet,[273] a French citizen who had joined the 5th Special Air Service, the Belgian SAS, and was working with the British Army near Hamburg.

In Philip Roth's alternative history The Plot Against America, Charles Lindbergh wins the presidential election of 1940 and allies the United States with Nazi Germany; Ribbentrop visits the White House as part of the two countries' new friendship.

In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar: Striking the Balance (1996) imagining an alien invasion of Earth during World War II, Ribbentrop represents Nazi Germany in negotiation of an armistice between the Allied and Axis powers.

Shortly after, a captain in the Division, Howard Goldsmith, entered the Hotel Krone intending to stay the night, something he and his men were greatly looking forward to after months of sleeping rough in the winter of the Alpine region.

The proprietor of the hotel refused them entry, but they forced their way in, and on reaching the second floor they uncovered trunks filled with clothing and personal items, confidential government documents and looted art from across occupied Europe.