Before the War

The son of an army officer, Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Germany, on April 30, 1893. After attending schools in Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, he moved to Canada in 1910 and worked in business. Four years later, at the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Germany to serve on the Eastern Front.  He was wounded in 1917. When he recovered,  he was then assigned to the German military mission in Turkey. Von Ribbentrop joined the War Ministry and was a part of the German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Fearing the growth of Communism, von Ribbentrop joined the Nazi Party and became Hitler's foreign affair advisor. In 1935, he negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which authorized German naval rearmament. From 1936 to 1938 he served as ambassador to Great Britain, where he alienated both British government officials and the public with his behavior. His advice to Hitler, that Britain could not aid Poland effectively, proved correct in the short term. In the meantime, Ribbentrop had negotiated the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936, which formed an alliance between Germany and Japan against the Soviet Union. 

In 1938, Ribbentrop become Germany's foreign minister. In that position, he was intimately involved in almost all of the actions to expand Germany. 

First, von Ribbentrop was present in the negotiations between Hitler and Austrian Chancellor von Schuschnigg which led to the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria.

Secondly, von Ribbentrop helped Germany annex Czechoslovakia peacefully through a series of negotiations with the Sudenten Germans and the Slovakians.  

Lastly, Ribbentrop was the key German diplomat in the secret negotiations with the Soviet Union in 1938.  These discussions led to the infamous Non-Aggression Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which resulted in the joint plan to conquer and divide Poland amongst each other.  It was Ribbentrop's negotiations that would directly lead to the beginning of the Second World War and the destruction of Poland.

Wartime Role

After the German invasion of Poland in Sep 1939, Ribbentrop's work shifted to the persuasion of other European nations to join the Axis alliance. Nations such as Romania and Hungary, to name some examples, joined the Axis under his directorship. He was not able to convince the careful Francisco Franco of Spain, but the Spanish dictator remained friendly to the German cause. He signed the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy (Sept. 27, 1940), which provided for mutual assistance against the United States. As for the Holocaust, Ribbentrop was responsible for arranging the deportation of Jews in allied or conquered territories to concentration and extermination camps. As the war progressed, however, especially with Germany losing ground, Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry began to lose their usefulness and influence.

Ribbentrop was captured by British troops in Hamburg on June 14, 1945.