Hitler, Ribbentrop and Britain by Nick Shepley

Author:Nick Shepley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rearmament, Treaty of Versailles, Hitler, Ribbentrop, Anglo-German Naval Agreement
ISBN: 9781783331130
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Part Three: Ribbentrop’s Failure

Ribbentrop’s audacious bullying of Sir John Simon was not to be forgotten by the British diplomatic and mandarin classes, but unfortunately for the Nazi plenipotentiary, soon to be made ambassador to Britain, he interpreted his bluff as an unqualified success.

Ribbentrop’s status as a favourite was further cemented with Hitler when he began to negotiate the Anti Comintern Pact with Japan, with initial negotiations beginning in October 1935. The pact was designed to put pressure on the Soviet Union from her two main strategic enemies, Germany and Japan, forcing a wary Stalin to consider a range of threats that later included Finland, China and Hungary, all Soviet neighbours.

Ribbentrop and Hitler’s next move to bring Britain into an alliance with Germany on the Nazis terms seems all the more curious because of Hitler’s supposed critiques of the Kaiser’s foreign policy meddling prior to World War One.

The Kaiser, in a bid to draw Britain into an alliance as the junior partner with both Germany and Austria, deliberately provoked British public opinion over South Africa, naval arms races and control of the Mediterranean, in order to frighten the British into accepting his terms. In all, a poor strategy that backfired dangerously, the British public in the run up to World War One felt incensed and intimidated and more predisposed to go to war with Germany. It was a strategy that Hitler was now content to repeat by agitating for the return of German colonies confiscated in 1919. Hitler had little if any interest in unprosperous parts of Africa and the Pacific, their only value was in their use in pressurising Britain. The British, French, Belgians and Japanese had divided up Germany’s colonies and Ribbentrop formed the various disparate German colonial societies together into the Reichskolonialbund, a vociferous and noisy organ of official protest, demanding their return.

It is hard to see how this strategy could possibly have helped Ribbentrop and Hitler’s long term goal, it seems to have been based on a series of flawed assumptions about Britain possibly fed from Ribbentrop to the Führer. In turn, Hitler’s blind faith in his favourite would have led him to trust in the opinion he gave him of the British unquestioningly, he once claimed that Ribbentrop was the only man who really knew what was happening in the world.

Throughout 1936 Ribbentrop made repeated informal visits to Britain, until his appointment as Ambassador in August of that year. His mission brief was simple, to get Britain to join the Anti Comintern Pact. Ribbentrop’s delusions about Britain were blinding him to the realities of how difficult this would be, however.

He had invited various figures from British political, intellectual and aristocratic life to visit Germany; Labour minister George Lansbury, publishing magnate Lord Rothermere, Oswald Mosley and David Lloyd George all dutifully flew in to express their admiration for the new Germany.

In his haste and ignorance (and once again demonstrating why Hitler should have entrusted a professional diplomat) Ribbentrop failed to understand that none of the dignitaries who visited Germany had any ability to influence policy at all.

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