Many sources suggest that Hitler wanted to prolong the war because he believed that the Allies would fall out, specifically the Americans and the Soviets, and that open conflict between the two was likely.

This was certainly his thinking in April 1945 as the Third Reich faced oblivion.

A rump Nazi state might still survive if the Allied coalition against him fell to pieces.

On the 15th of April 1945, Hitler had been given a copy of the postwar Allied division of a defeated Germany plan which had been captured from the British.

Over the next couple of weeks, Hitler noted that, for example, the United States had entered into the postwar Soviet zone by reaching the Ela demarcation line and then crossing over, pushing on, and also moving into parts of Czechoslovakia.

He thought some kind of clash between the two was inevitable.

Indeed, German military intelligence had intercepted Soviet communications, showing that the US advances were making them nervous and that they were preparing a military contingency if the United States failed to move back from these areas once peace was declared.

German intelligence also reported that the British were preparing to fight the Soviets.

These rumors kept Hitler going in his bunker.

He also believed that the remaining forces of Nazi Germany fighting hard against the on-rushing Soviets were capable with Western Allied help of stemming the so-called Bolevik horde.

The sudden death of US President Franklin D.

Roosevelt on the 12th of April 1945 had genuinely lifted the mood in Hitler’s bunker.

Dr.

Ysef Gobles, the propaganda minister, was convinced that it was an omen breakup of the Allied coalition.

It wasn’t.

For German foreign minister Yuimon Ribentrop, the war had been a personal disaster for him.

Diplomacy was sidelined and he with it.

Hitler had grown tired of him and actively avoided meeting him as the war dragged on.

In the fallout from the 20th of July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler at the Wolf’s lair in East Prussia, it was shown that many foreign office diplomats had been involved in the coup attempt and Ribbonrop’s star fell yet further.

Hours after the bomb, Ribbonrop had joined a shaken Hitler for tea with Italian dictator Bonito Mussolini, Grand Admiral Khal Dernets, the head of the navy, and the head of the Luftwafer, Reichs Marshall Herman Guring.

Dernets had begun to rail against the failures of the Luftwaffer, and in his embarrassment, Guring had turned the conversation onto Ribbentrop and the failures of German foreign policy and of the treacherous diplomats that had been found in his department.

Guring had railed at Ribbonrop during this confrontation, shouting at him in response when he tried to defend himself, “Ribbentrop, you dirty little champagne salesman.

Shut your mouth.

” Guring had then threatened to hit Ribbonrop with his Reichkes marshall’s batton.

Ribbentrop, outraged, had argued back, “I am still the foreign minister, and my name is Fon Ribbentrop.

” The truth was Ribbentrop was being phased out of the inner circle around Hitler and he was by early April 1945 desperate to still be relevant and most importantly back in the Furer’s favor.

With the final showdown with the Soviets rapidly approaching, it was important to keep up the morale of the troops.

Hitler never went near the front lines after about 1940, so it was left to his acolytes to visit the troops in an attempt to raise morale.

Propaganda Minister Gerbles had made a highly publicized visit to Laan on the 6th of March 1945 following a local German victory there where he decorated troops and also watched German artillery pounding Soviet positions.

Ribentrop decided to do the same.

He made a visit to the order front on the 3rd of April 1945.

One of the very last made by a German leader.

Ribbentrop was a former World War I cavalry officer who had earned the Iron Cross first class in the trenches.

So he was familiar with combat.

He was photographed studying Soviet positions through fuel glasses from a trench.

Unbeknown to Hitler, since Roosevelt’s death, Ribentrop had been circulating a 14-page memorandum via German diplomatic channels designed for Allied consumption.

It was based on what would turn out to be a fairly accurate proposition, an account of what Stalin was planning for Europe postwar.

It asks whether Britain could allow the Soviets to menace her traditional roots to her empire in the Middle East and India, particularly once the United States withdrew most of its forces from Western Europe, which Ribbonrop believed they would do at some point.

On the 16th of April 1945, the Soviet offensive against Berlin opened and for three bloody days, the Red Army fought its way through the last German defense line east of Berlin.

the Zo Heights.

The Germans managed to inflict a lot of damage before falling back on Berlin.

The end was now approaching as the massive Soviet spearheads approached Berlin, planning eventually to encircle it and capture it street by street, house by house.

On the 20th of April, Hitler emerged from his bunker to attend a formal reception in the battered Reich Chancellery held to celebrate his 56th birthday.

Ribbentrop was in attendance along with most of the other senior Nazi leaders.

Later that day, Berlin came under direct Soviet artillery fire for the first time.

Ribbonrop returned to his headquarters in the city.

Since the 13th of April, Ribbonrop had ordered almost all of his staff evacuated south, primarily to his huge country estate, Schllo Fu, over the border in Austria, not far from Hitler’s residence at Oralsburg.

and located next to the lake of the same name.

However, Ribbentrop and a skeleton staff remain based in the foreign ministry bunkers in Berlin.

Ribbentrop unwilling to give up his close physical proximity to the Fura.

It was on the 22nd of April that Hitler, his latest military idea for the relief of Berlin, frustrated, flew into a terrible rage at his staff and generals and announced that he would die in Berlin.

Soon after this, Hitler received a message from ribbonrop to the effect that a diplomatic breakthrough was imminent in the west.

This changed the mood in the bunker immediately.

Inquiries were made and the Luftvafer reported that US air attacks had seemingly been suspended.

However, it all turned out to be an illusion.

On the evening of the 23rd of April, Ribbentrop came to the Furbunker hoping to meet with Hitler.

Hitler, however, was in a meeting with Albert, his armament’s minister.

When Hitler was reminded that Ribbonrop was waiting to see him, he wasn’t happy, reiterating that he didn’t want to meet him at all.

Martin Borman, Hitler’s powerful private secretary, persisted, telling Hitler, “Ribbentrop says he won’t move from the threshold, and he’ll wait like a faithful dog until you call him.

” Hitler eventually relented.

What we know of Ribbonrop’s last meeting with Hitler comes entirely from Ribbentrop’s account made to Allied interrogators and members of his own staff, and therefore, Ribbentrop is the only source.

Hitler allegedly told Ribbonrop that the war was lost.

But Hitler still had a job for Ribbentrop, which considering that he had been actively resisting meeting with him, sounds a little bit fishy.

According to Ribbentrop, the Furer ordered him to leave Berlin at once and go to northwestern Germany and make contact with the British.

He was to tell them that Hitler had always desired close relations with the British and to propose an Anglo-German block to confront the Soviets.

Ribbonrop was also to write a letter to this effect to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and deliver it into British hands.

For Hitler, apparently Ribentrop was the man.

After all, he had been German ambassador to London before the war and spoke fluent English.

Some historians suggest that if the exchange between Hitler and Ribbentrop was genuine, it was just a ruse on Hitler’s part to get Ribbonrop away from Berlin and stop bothering the furer.

It could also be a ruse on the part of Ribbon to save himself from the approaching cataclysm in Berlin.

Though other evidence I’ll present shortly tends to go against that particular thesis.

Perhaps Ribbentrop imagined the plaudits if he was successful with the British to split the enemy alliance using diplomacy.

Later that night, Ribbonrop reported all of this to the state secretary at the foreign office and his top aid, Gustaf Stengar vonant.

The two men had a bit of an argument over the mission before Ribbentrop said, “I must write this letter to Churchill.

At my conference with the Furer, he was quite lucid.

He said he had never had anything against England.

His goal had always been a great reconciliation with the Germanic English.

” This was very familiar territory for Ribbon Trop because he had been intimately involved with Hitler’s 1939 to40 peace offers to Britain, multiple offers.

But Winston Churchill, once he became prime minister in May 1940, refused all such in treaties.

Soon afterwards, vonmoand departed for Schllo Fushul in the south, but would later appear in Schlesvik Holstein, where the Duritz rump government had been created in northern Germany following Hitler’s death.

Grand Admiral Dernets had already set up his military headquarters at Plone on the 22nd of April, assuming command of all German forces in Schlesvik Holstein, the Western Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway per Hitler’s order of the 20th of April.

Ribbentrop prepared to depart north to plone as well, leaving Valter Huvel, another state secretary in the foreign office and a career diplomat, his personal representative at Fura headquarters.

Huvel wouldn’t survive the battle for Berlin.

At some point on the 24th of April, Ribbentrop managed to leave Berlin by car just before the Soviets completed the encirclement of the city.

In one or two cars, Ribbentrop’s party, consisting of Ribbonrop, a driver, and a bodyguard, a secretary, a doctor, his agitant, his valet, and his dog, left the burning city.

The distance from Berlin to Plone is less than 200 m.

Yet, it took Ribentrop a week to arrive.

It appears that Ribbonrop found it very difficult to give up his close proximity to the Fura.

It also appears that at one point Ribbentrop tried to go back to Berlin being halted at Nan some miles west of the capital.

From there he telegraphed Valter Huvel and told him that he and his party wish to share the Fura’s fate in the capital and asked for an aircraft to come and pick them up.

Huvel relayed a message from Hitler.

The Furer appreciates your intentions but has turned you down.

Had Ribbon Trop realized that he had been sent on a fool’s errand by his beloved Furer, perhaps.

Did he not fancy surrendering himself to the British in order to deliver his letter again? Perhaps.

A little while later, Ribbonrop’s party turned up at the headquarters of Ginahar Litand Rudolph Holster, commanding the 56th Panza on the lower Ela.

Holster’s headquarters was at Friezac, 40 mi northwest of Naan.

Ribbonrop wanted information on the local military situation.

At some point thereafter, Ribbentrop managed to get his hands on an aircraft for he and his party were flown to Vichtock airfield near Keel, arriving on the night of the 30th of April, some hours after Hitler had died in the bunker.

Martin Borman had telegraphed Grand Admiral Dernets at Plun, informing Dernets that he was now Reich President, but didn’t tell him that Hitler was dead until the 1st of May.

Dernets determined to continue the war for the time being for his own reasons.

He could appoint his own cabinet and wanted Constantine von Noirat, a Korea diplomat and former foreign minister until 1938, to be the new foreign minister, but he couldn’t be found.

Ribbonrop arrived at Plone soon afterwards and established a small headquarters nearby.

Dernit’s agitant actually phoned Ribbonrop’s agitant to ask if anyone knew of the whereabouts of Vonoat.

Ribbentrop was shocked.

He was the foreign minister and should be under Dernets as well.

He demanded an interview with the new Reich president.

The meeting took place late on the 1st of May.

Rivendrop arguing that he had the legal right to be the foreign minister and that he knew the British and they had always been pleased to deal with him.

The area of Schlesvik Holstein was in the part of Germany to fall under British occupation post war.

Dernets, however, stuck to his guns.

He would not appoint him foreign minister, but he would be happy to hear any suggestions Ribbonrop might have for the post.

But when he phoned back on the 2nd of May, his only suggestion was himself.

Ribbonrop also drafted a memorandum for Dernets that argued that his government must obtain allied recognition and serve as the nucleus for a new Nazi government of Germany.

Disit would eventually appoint Counterhin Vonroek as foreign minister.

On the 2nd of May, due to the advance of British forces, Dernets moved his seat of government to the naval academy at Flynnsburg Murvik on the Danish border.

Ribbentrop did not go with him.

For some reason, Ribbentrop headed south to Hamburg, the last major German city on the Western Front to be captured, which was an active battle zone at the time.

It would fall to the British on the 3rd of May, 1945.

Why did he do this? If Ribbentrop’s intention was to contact the British as per Hitler’s alleged instructions, he did the opposite by going into hiding soon after arriving in the city.

He visited the home of a vintner that he knew from his pre-war life as a champagne salesman.

The Vintner didn’t want Ribbonrop at his own home, so he arranged for him to stay in the apartment of an attractive brunette in the suburbs.

Here Ribbentrop remained for the next six weeks working on his letter to Churchill while the British search for him.

The DIT’s government itself was dissolved on the 23rd of May 1945 by the order of the British and its members hauled off to prison.

From Allied headquarters aboard the Patria at Plainsburg, North Germany, orders go out for the arrest of the last top Nazis.

German sailors, marines, and soldiers who had guarded the [music] so-called Plainsburg government of Admiral Dennits are made captive, and the high commanders of this curious organization, which had served as the surrendering authority for defeated Germany, are put under arrest.

[music] Colonel General Alfred Yodel, chief of staff, leaves the enemy’s Plainsburg headquarters for internment.

Yodel signed the German surrender to Eisenhower in rans.

[music] Plansberg’s gun placements never saw action.

Now the furer of the beaten Third Reich, Grand Admiral Dunit himself, comes out under allied arrest.

With Yodel, he walks through a tunnel in the Flamesburg compound to imprisonment.

A fanatical Nazi, Dunit was the commander of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare.

[music] With the arrest of Yodel and Dits, the Third Reich is ended forever.

But Ribbonrop worked on on his letter.

all 5,000 words of it.

But by now the war in Europe was over, and the letter was quite superfluous to the Nazi cause, which had ceased to exist.

The manhunt for Ribbonrop, however, was intensifying.

His photo was circulated widely, and his relatives were brought in for questioning, but Ribbentrop, living under the false name of Hisa, was not found.

He was only located accidentally when the Vintor friend of his was overheard by a woman remarking that he knew ribboners in Hamburg and this woman attempted to blackmail him with this information.

But the Ventner’s son went to the British field security headquarters in Hamburg and told them everything.

Late on the evening of the 14th of June 1945, the British sprung into action.

The officer on duty, Lieutenant Jimmy Adam, gathered three NCOs, one of them a Frenchman serving in the Belgian SAS, and drove to Ribbon Trops hideout.

Adam knocked on the door, which was opened by the aforementioned attractive brunette wearing a dressing gown.

The British soldiers marched inside and began searching.

In the fifth room, they found Ribbon Trop dressed in pajamas, asleep in bed.

He was woken up and looked exhausted and disheveled, but spoke English to his capttors.

At the British field security headquarters at Alterfer, Hamburg, Ribbonrop was examined by a doctor.

He was found to have a small cyanide capsule in a case taped to one of his legs.

The next morning, 15th of June, he was interviewed by Major Morris Hawkliffe and Captain Harold Harris.

Ribbonrop was chatty and jovial and discussed his efforts to make peace with Britain.

He also outlined his secret peace mission given to him by Hitler, producing the long letter he had written as evidence.

Hawkliffe sent the letter up the chain of command to Field Marshall Montgomery, who sent it on to Winston Churchill, who sent it on to Stalin for his information.

Hawkliffe also asked Ribbonrop why he had not contacted the British authorities instead of hiding for 6 weeks.

Ribbentrop’s explanation was that he had been alarmed by the hatred and bitterness of the British towards the Germans based probably on what he was seeing in occupied Hamburg at the time and had decided to lie low for a while to allow passions to cool.

Whether this man was even Ribbentrop was brought into question by Hawkliff’s superior, Colonel Neil McDermott, who had been told by the Americans that they had just captured Ribbon Trop in Brmond.

A proper identification was required.

The British obtained Ribbonrop’s sister, Ingaber Yanka, and she confirmed that the prisoner was indeed her brother.

Following this, Ribbonrop was flown to Luxembourg to Bad Mondorf and a converted hotel known as Camp Ashkan where he was housed with other war crime suspects until the Nerburgg trials opened later in 1945.

Whether Ribbentrop’s peace mission ever existed is debatable.

Perhaps it was simply invented by Ribbonrop to give his position some meaning towards the end of the war or was simply some kind of opportunistic tactic that he had lost interest in carrying through once he knew that Hitler was dead.

Yurimon Ribbentrop was found guilty of crimes against peace deliberately planning a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He was the first to be executed, hanged on the 16th of October, 1946 in a botched execution.

He took 14 minutes to die.

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