He also left the direction of the morning sessions of executive meetings to his state secretary, which gave the latter a god-sent opportunity to influence the top men of the Amt, in this way recruiting them to oppose the Minister, as well as German policy. The direction of the Ministry was left to a state secretary who, behind the back of the government, adjured a potential opponent to ‘stick to his guns’ – in other words he was one who, unbeknownst to his own government, stealthily undermined negotiations being conducted by that government. It is easy to see that this bode no good for the Minister. To have turned a blind eye to such a state of affairs was, looking back, with no doubt a serious omission of Father’s. It also explains why he had no backing from his home base, and of course there was none at all after the war was lost. Hasso von Etzdorf, a professional diplomat and during the war a party to the conspiracy, once said to me on the subject: ‘Your father was badly treated.’467

Motivation of German diplomats in the sense of German policy could only be inspired directly by the Foreign Minister. Circular decrees sent to German diplomatic missions could have little effect if, behind the Minister’s back, they were repudiated by his state secretary, who had known the German diplomats for years. It seems Father exercised too little the capacity of his personality or persuasive powers to win people over to his side within the Auswärtiges Amt. As Herr von Etzdorf put it to the the English historian David Irving: ‘He [my father] could look at you so nicely, unfortunately he rarely did!’468 Father himself – if he were still in a position to do so – would have retorted: ‘I no longer had time for it.’ That is certainly a valid argument if one thinks back to the lightning speed with which world political dynamics evolved right after his taking office. Nevertheless, this deficiency of personal contact and the lack of motivation arising from it laid the groundwork for the defamation and slandering of the Minister in his own department. For the clique in the Amt who operated the campaign against him, however, as we have seen, the decisive factor rested on high politics and had nothing to do with the Minister’s personality.

Father had not grown grey in war in the internal trench warfare of everyday domestic politics, placing loyal staff whom he knew in key positions of the Auswärtiges Amt, which was common practice. The loyalty of employees in leading posts is an inescapable prerequisite for the man at the top to succeed. This is especially valid in times of crisis and risk. There is no doubt that Father gave this point of view too little consideration; he could have been reinforced by having recourse to his employees from the Ribbentrop Dienststelle.

Naturally, he was aware of the ‘conservative’ mentality of many echelons of the Auswärtiges Amt; they were in the majority no partisans of Hitler’s. Basically, he did not really care. Yet he proceeded on the assumption that especially in these circles, loyalty to one’s country superseded a liking or dislike of Hitler’s regime. He assumed that even in cases of a difference of opinion they would not counteract the policy of the government, which as things stood would have disastrous repercussions.

Every person is born with a particular physical and mental capacity, which he or she can make the best of with energy and a will of iron. To be able to wind down or have any distraction are essential aids in enduring stress over such a length of time as Hitler’s Foreign Minister had to undergo from 1938 to 1941. In this Father suffered from two serious built-in handicaps: he slept badly and had difficulty ‘switching off ’. Poor sleep was a problem for Father for as long as I can remember, long before he was involved with politics. He told me once that even as ‘a young fellow’ he slept badly. Now, under the burden of responsibilities, this inherent condition was naturally aggravated. It is said that Johanna von Bismarck once told a guest at breakfast: ‘We hated the whole night!’ It seems that under certain circumstances Bismarck had trouble sleeping; it is experienced by everybody who has weighty responsibility to bear. True, he had made the rather flippant remark to Friedrich-Wilhelm IV, when during the revolutionary days the queen had brought to Bismarck’s notice that the king had not slept for days: ‘A king must always be able to sleep.’ However, Herr von Bismarck himself was not the Minister who bore the responsibility. There is no doubt that a problem with sleep is most wearying.

Father’s willpower also dominated his ability to relax. This handicap may have had something to do with his sleep problems. Perhaps somewhere he also lacked a small dose of fatalism. It is certain that one can only make the best of life if one is completely committed to something and prepared to cope with the highs and lows that are always part of it. On the other hand, a little fatalism allows there to be enough distance from one’s own commitment so as not to stand or fall with it and to cultivate some serenity, so as to be able to monitor one’s strengths. But fatalism was not a word in Father’s vocabulary.

After he became Foreign Minister and the problems to be faced burdened him more intensively, he gradually became more withdrawn and monosyllabic towards us children. I never held it against him as I was aware of the load he had to bear. It did, however, begin to affect our parents’ active social life and contacts with their friends. Ever more rarely did we see the familiar faces of their friends who had frequented our home since our childhood. The absence of a year and a half in London contributed to this. The foreign policy dynamics that set in when Father was appointed Foreign Minister led to their formerly intensive private socializing with friends switching into almost complete abeyance. Father no longer had enough time for it. It is possible that some acquaintances and friends did not understand, or indeed took it as arrogance. It is understandable that from that angle their Jewish friends should have been particularly sensitive. They for their part kept away, which from my personal experience after the war, when circumstances were reversed, I can well comprehend. Additionally, some of the old friends had reservations about the regime or were hostile toward it, which to some degree hindered the earlier enjoyable and amusing social intercourse they had. Our parents were aware of this censorious attitude. They gave their assistance, or tried to, when they were asked for it. One of the few who remembered this after the war was the renowned artist Olaf Gulbransson. Before 1933 he had caricatured Hitler and his party in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus. When he was in trouble about this after Hitler came to power, Father spoke directly to Hitler about it, appealing to the ‘artist’ in him, whereupon the latter without hesitation saw to it that Gulbransson was left in peace. After the war Gulbransson made his gratitude to Father’s friendship known in diverse ways. Incidentally, our parents did not pay court to the official policy in regard to art with their ‘modern’ pictures: paintings by Nolde, Séraphine Louis, Vivin, Lhote, Chagall and others stayed hanging on the walls of our private quarters. Through her friendship with the painter Lenk, Mother came across pictures and portraits by Dix which – the portraits in particular – she found beautiful. She wanted him to paint our younger siblings. What came of this? To my amusement, in an Otto Dix exhibition at the Vence Maeght Foundation there was a large notice, saying: ‘During the war the German Foreign Minister wanted Dix to paint his portrait, but the latter refused.’ You can make of that whatever one wishes!

There was, however, an occasion – they were not as frequent as I would have liked – when Father was in a good mood and relaxed: that was the duck shoot on the River Oder, when in the summer of 1938 the two of us alone went from Sonnenburg near Bad Freienwalde and drove to Kienitz by the Oder so as to be in a hide on a deserted island of reeds in the evening. Father, who was an excellent shot, enjoyed the suspense of the ducks’ fly-over and the peace and quiet of the Oder landscape. He grew up with hunting and nature. His grandfather’s estate, Hertwig an der Mulde, must have been a hunter’s paradise. I know the feelings Father enjoyed in those hours spent by the Oder. A shoot of wild birds with a shotgun is hardly equalled as an occupation, to think of other things and momentarily forget about ‘business’. When the ducks fly over in the evening, as the day slowly fades, is an instant of extraordinary charm, especially on the banks of the Oder under the high arch of the evening sky. The interchange between the elegiac surroundings and the keenness excited by the flight of the flock is an unsurpassable experience for those who combine a love of nature and of hunting. Ducks – an elegant yet natural wild bird – are not an easy target, and shooting them requires accurate marksmanship and concentration. Father was delighted when, next to him, I bagged a few with a clean shot. He preoccupied himself with familiarization with weapons and introducing me to the shoot. I have never forgotten the rule I was inoculated with from the start: ‘There is no discussion about who shot what, all that matters is that every piece of game killed is found.’ Here the ‘Minister’ became my father again, a father who gave me friendly advice, a father who shared my happiness and taught me how to work a dog, which was very important among reeds higher than a man. For me these hours were wonderful; unfortunately there weren’t many of them.

In 1945 there was a Russian bridgehead at Kienitz by the Oder. Father, who visited the front with Colonel von Geldern from time to time – it was barely an hour away from Berlin by car – had joined in an attack that was to break through the bridgehead once more. Geldern will have accepted, suspecting that Father wished to be killed in action. He writes that at one point, while Father and he were in the car, they were made aware by an infantryman that they were right in front of a Russian anti-tank gun emplacement. Geldern said to Father that they were racing towards Russia at 80km an hour; he could not be responsible for Father falling into Russian hands. To this Father answered, laughing, that in that case Geldern might have to shoot him. Father went to have a look at the front-line troops on the Oder with Geldern on various occasions. In a note, Geldern explicitly contradicts the pronouncement made after the war – in addition to all the other negative characteristics attributed to my father – that the Foreign Minister was a coward. Geldern underlines the good impression made by Father’s excursions to the front, since at the time no other member of the government visited the troops or appeared before the population of the Oder.469 I am duty bound, in view of the flood of calumnies poured to this day over my father, to state such self-evident truths.

One of the staff of the Auswärtiges Amt whom Father had found already in place was the chief of the legal department, Friedrich Gaus. It was his job to draft the treaties between the Reich and other countries. Father briefed him in many strictly confidential matters. Gaus was not liked in the Amt because of his opportunism and unstable character. Father had obligatorily trusted in him, insofar as Gaus had to be informed of many aspects and considerations in order to draw up a treaty. In this way, in due course he became a close collaborator of Father’s. Gaus had a particular problem in the Third Reich because his wife was Jewish. Despite this fact, Father appointed him Undersecretary of State and later instigated Hitler to award him the Golden Party Badge and to give him an autographed photograph with a dedication – which was unquestionably unusual for those days.470

At the opening of the Nuremberg trials, Father counted on Gaus’s knowledge of a number of facts that could have exonerated him, and thus also German policies, in the sense of the indictment. He was to be bitterly disappointed. Gaus placed himself as principal witness at the disposition of the prosecution. It is now recognized as a fact that Robert M. Kempner, once a German government cadre, who emigrated to the United States in 1933 for racial reasons and was one of those representing the prosecution at Nuremberg, made Gaus available for support of the prosecution under threat of delivery into the hands of the Soviet Union.471 In a statutory declaration submitted by the prosecution authority, Gaus had stated:

‘The German political leadership saw in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 the first step in the realization of the idea of founding a Greater German Reich. For this Reich was not to rule over Europe alone, but was to be the absolute decisive factor for its control over world affairs.’472

In this instance, out of his hatred – understandable in an emigrant – Kempner had again been over-reacting when he forced Gaus to make this nonsensical declaration. However, once again the questionability of the Nuremberg proceedings in historical research is demonstrated when it is considered that in the winter of 1941/42 the situation of the German Wehrmacht was desperate, which had called forth from Hitler the exclamation already mentioned: ‘Germany is saved now!’

Much too late, Father had transferred State Secretary v. Weizsäcker as ambassador to the Vatican and replaced him in the post with an assistant from the ‘Dienststelle Ribbentrop’. Before his execution, Father had learned nothing further about Weizsäcker’s conspiracy with the British government or his activities in Spain which had deprived the Reich of the opportunity to take Gibraltar.

Thus the extraordinarily difficult situation Ribbentrop was in acquires an outline. He was head of a department he was not familiar with, which, for personal reasons as well as due to internal politics, had its reservations about him, not to say was actually spurning him. The government establishment of which he was a part was foreign to him, and regarded him – for whatever reasons – as an antagonist or even as an opponent. He was attached to a head of government who was not willing to pre-plan nor debate weighty political decisions with a government committee so as to have them systematically initiated, and who conducted discussions in private, whereby he split up his leading aides, namely his ministers, instead of coordinating them (there was finally a considerable number thereof whom Hitler directly subordinated to himself). Finally, Father had a state secretary at his back who in crucial phases undermined the Reich’s policies by collaborating with potential opponents, under the cloak of a systematic diffusion of false representations of the persona of his Minister and his judgements as to foreign policy.

This brings up the question of why under such circumstances Joachim von Ribbentrop did not resign. From today’s point of view it is a justified query. I have already told of the pronouncement expressed with the object of denigrating him, that he was dependent on my mother.473 I can only repeat once more that he was unfortunately not, in the sense of any greater influence Mother may have exerted upon his personal decisions. At the outbreak of the war with Russia, Mother had virtually urged him to resign, not only because he had advised against a pre-emptive strike on Russia but also, as she argued, for the sake of the credibility of German policy.

It will of course to some extent have played a role for Father in a deteriorating situation to be the captive of his honour and have to come through the problems. Somebody who at that time had a perception of Hitler and his policies as being the destiny of Germany, as well as of one’s self, perhaps felt it would be wrong to withdraw. There is a resonance of emotionalism which is not comprehensible to us as third parties used to consider politics as a cool business matter. There is no question that Hitler was in a position to present himself as a phenomenon of Fate, and as such was also regarded by broad portions of the nation. He did not reciprocate the personal loyalty of his Foreign Minister. Father considered it beneath his dignity to abandon his loyalty when he appeared before the tribunal of the victors in Nuremberg. I do not feel myself bound to this. Hitler waived Father’s conception of foreign policy, whose cornerstone was the relations with Russia, and plunged into staking all on a pre-emptive war with Russia. This is how it may validly be designated, even when taking into account that there were indications that Stalin too no longer felt himself bound by the pact of non-aggression. Irrespective of this, militarily the offensive remained a gamble and, since it was launched with almost no political groundwork, was a fiasco of foreign policy. It is my opinion that I have the right to condemn Hitler for this error.

An attitude we held in our family was expressed in our motto ‘Ni nalaten’ (‘Do not give up’). Father explained it to me when I was about 8 or 9 and he showed me our family tree, on which the motto appeared. This instruction to be tough in the pursuance of goals, to have endurance through difficulties and steadfastness in setbacks was an element of our upbringing by our parents in those years when one is marked for the rest of one’s life. I had occasion in my later life to gauge the significance of having these characteristics.

The fascination of high politics will of course up to certain time have contributed, which grips every active politician. No man undertakes a job that is trying and thankless in the upshot without being driven by a great passion, even more so somebody who does not need it, from their personal circumstances. This also goes for the alleged ambition, which is so often criticized. If there were no ambition as incentive for a driving force of the psyche, mankind would probably still be living in trees. Ambition signifies being prepared to perform just as well without equivalent material remuneration. An excessive or even morbid ambition may exist, which is counter-productive, but in general it is usually only losers who rail against ambition.

Just as Hitler acted with growing rigidity and inflexibility in military matters, in the same way did he operate – or rather, no longer operate – and deal with foreign affairs. Thus the strengths of the Minister for Foreign Affairs were also neutralized and blocked. Father was temperamentally a man of action. Once a concept had grown out of analysis of a situation, he proceeded to its realization, if necessary with dogged determination. The way Mother put it was: ‘He was a cavalry man, he charged obstacles.’ At the same time the merchant in him well knew that the necessity to compromise was always arising.

Father’s propensity to get to grips with problems and, in the absence of other possibilities, to take risks, as well as securing the activities of foreign policy by having alternative solutions available, his negotiating skills and his preparedness to come to a compromise if necessary, were all qualities that complemented Hitler’s personality structure, which was hardly ideal for the diplomatic ‘game’. This complementary relationship between the two men fell apart after the war with Russia broke out, as did also their personal relations. There was an unmistakeable resentment on the part of the ‘infallible’ visionary towards his Foreign Minister, who, resulting from the considerations of sober business politics, had warned him against initiating a pre-emptive war with Russia, advice which – there is no doubt that Hitler had to acknowledge as early as October 1941 – had been proved right.

Let it be made quite clear: Father did not remain in the Amt for fear of some sort of personal reprisals. He had no reason to expect any, or at any rate not as long as he was not implicated in the conspiracy, of whose activities he had no idea. Moreover, even if he should have expected personal repercussions if he were to resign, it would not have restrained him from leaving.

During convalescent leave following my fourth wound I was able to visit Father for two or three days in East Prussia. Albeit until then he had always been a slightly distant figure of respect for me, those days we had together were characterized by great intimacy and personal contact. I recall a noteworthy little episode that took place between us. After breakfast one morning when we were alone together, he was handed cuttings from the foreign press. Suddenly he pushed one across the table, saying: ‘Will you believe this is possible?’ It was an announcement the international press had borrowed from the Russians. It reported on the systematic murder of Jewish prisoners in a German internment camp in Poland that had been taken by the Russians. I just laughed, and answered almost reproachfully, without giving a moment’s thought to such a possibility: ‘But, Father, this is again the hacked-off hands of children in Belgium of the First World War.’ It was part of the basic training of the entire Wehrmacht to label inimical propaganda material such as pamphlets as ‘enemy propaganda’ and hand it in to a superior. A lesson had been learned from Allied defamatory propaganda diffused during the First World War One. In this sense the troops were completely clear as to its nature and hence in general little influenced by it. Father was visibly relieved to agree with my spontaneous reaction.

It sounds unbelievable nowadays when chief functionaries of the Hitler regime claim to have known nothing of serious issues such as extermination of Jews. It is hard, in our epoch where nothing stays confidential or secret, to comprehend the isolation of the separate government representatives in Hitler’s ‘system’. The complete disintegration – as willed by Hitler – of the work of governance had fostered this situation. The concentration camps and what went on in them was Himmler’s exclusive domain. They represented major economic complexes that were at his disposal only. For this reason alone he allowed no insight into the cards he held. No Cabinet sessions took place in which questions might have been asked. The total disintegration of the echelons of government was Hitler’s basic aim. One need but think of the internment of the Danish police force, which had been kept secret from Best, the Reich plenipotentiary, and his chief, the Foreign Minister.

The successful attempt to keep extermination of Jews strictly secret is proof of the concern taken by those responsible not to call up an adverse reaction from the population of Germany if what was happening became known; even within government, knowledge of the killings was a secret. An internal investigation conducted by SS Sturmbannführer and Judge Konrad Morgen during the war led to the initiation of a judicial inquiry against Adolf Eichmann, Rudolf Höß, Oswald Pohl and others, as well as to the outcome that the circle of those in the know was restricted to a few hundred persons.474 The existential persecution of Jews instituted in the war went against the ethical maxims of the German people. The extent to which it was undertaken was not known. However, the visible facts (wearing of the yellow Star of David, deportations, etc.) were sufficient to undermine confidence in the leadership and its moral legitimacy, and consequently had an adverse effect on the war effort. On the other hand, the population was aware that in view of the massive threat posed by Russia and of the ultimatum from Roosevelt and Churchill for ‘unconditional surrender’, they had to fight for survival. For many Germans – precisely those in posts of responsibility – a frightful dichotomy! Under these circumstances, to malign the entire German people as Hitler’s ‘willing helpers’, to apply, that is, Sippenhaft (kin liability) unto the third degree and farther, will perhaps also one day turn out to be a grave error. The declaration by former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker that ‘everyone could have known of it’ is incomprehensible,475 especially as at Nuremberg his defence of his father, who was State Secretary of the Auswärtiges Amt until 1943, was based on the argument that his father had known nothing of it. Deportations are today always identified with killings, but in those days that was not evident.

During Hitler’s governance Joachim von Ribbentrop was a stranger to the German Jewish policy. In the relevant Holocaust literature it is therefore attributed to him that he did not condone the persecution of Jews, nor that he was an initiator therein; neither is any collusion of his in their ensuing killings by the National Socialist regime insinuated. This is accurate. For reasons of his career and upbringing, as in many a case, on the whole he distanced himself from the ideological radicalness of those totalitarian days. In his memoirs he accurately records that although he did see that there were problems with the Jews in Germany, he had been openly outspoken against the anti-Jewish laws, were it only because of the repercussions on foreign policy. He urged Hitler – in his own words – for an ‘evolutionary development in the Jewish question’. In a time when because of the ongoing problems of life in a non-Jewish environment, Jews demanded the establishment of a Jewish state, this may not seem out of the ordinary. Nonetheless, at no time did Father’s opinions get through decisively to Hitler, in fact during the war they were progressively less successful. Hitler was always convinced that it was in effect British and American Jewry that had constituted the driving force behind the war on Germany.

Father was not of this opinion. To his mind, the hostile policy of the Third Reich directed against Jews added an additional major power as ally to the considerable list of opponents. He considered this a given fact; not a decisive one, but a factor among many. The power factor of Jewish organizations existed and had significance. These organizations were still to be reckoned with, both as opponents as well as allies, but their effects were manageable. It was also the pre-condition with which at the end of 1939 the British War Cabinet debated the earlier and present influence Jews had in America, as well as their possible usefulness for the British war effort.

As head of department of the Auswärtiges Amt during the war, Father knew about the concentration of Jews in camps. In certain single cases – such as Italy – he also demanded that allies concur with the proceeding. It corresponded to the impression there was that the Jews of Europe were consciously aiming at the defeat of Germany. In view of the overt fundamentals of National Social policies, such an enmity was understandable. However, Chaim Weizmann (later the first President of Israel) had offered the British government to bring European Jewry into the war against Germany,476 whereby admittedly he clearly overestimated his own influence and/or the potential of the World Zionist Organization. Basically, for the British government it was not a matter of reprisals for any anti-Semitic policy, actually not even to help save lives. There are many examples of this.

The persecutions of Jews from 1941 on have to be seen as the ideologist Hitler having run amok, having acknowledged that he would founder politically and militarily. His terrible declaration – twice quoted by Hewel in his diary for 1941 – ‘If Barbarossa fails, it is all over anyway’, shows that he had burned all his bridges, so he was indifferent to how his actions would turn out. His personality allowed him no feasible way out of the catastrophe. It was in this way that he ran amok during the war, including against his own people – there is no other way to describe the senseless struggle after the successful Allied invasion of France. The visionary had turned into an egocentric power maniac who, with open eyes, led his people to its doom.

When I visited Father in August 1944, the outcome of the reversal of fortune had long become reality. Upon my asking him about Hitler’s perceptions of the way to turn the situation around, Father pointed me in the direction of what Hitler had said to him concerning the employment of new weapons (‘wonder-weapons’), which were soon to be expected.477

He gave me a lengthy memorandum addressed to Hitler to read, which he was about to send him. It analyzed the current political and military situation the Reich found itself in, also taking into account the situation of supplies. He concluded that the war could no longer be won, and once again requested to be empowered to initiate peace talks. I, by reason of my painful experiences in the heavy fighting at the front, could only urge Father to express the crushing superiority of the Allies in the most emphatic terms. It was to my mind a cheering thought that he could corner the increasingly reluctant Hitler using Hitler’s own words. Father put the memorandum under the heading of a quotation from Hitler’s book Mein Kampf:

‘It is the business of diplomacy to see to it, not that a people falls heroically, but that it is preserved practically. Every road leading to this is, therefore, suitable, and its evasion must be marked as criminal neglect of duty.’478

At the time, the clear-headed, materialistic analysis of the state Germany was in that Father put to paper no longer greatly impressed me. The situation at the fronts from which I had come were even more desperate. When on the way back from East Prussia via Berlin to join my division in the West, I saw my mother once more and we talked about the paper. Naturally I wanted to know right away whether, as Father intended, the memorandum had elicited a positive reaction from Hitler. With profound resignation, Mother told me that according to Hewel, Hitler, enraged, had thrown it across the room, saying: ‘To want to investigate the preparedness of the Russians to negotiate is the same as touching a red-hot oven to see if it is burning!’ As has been said, Father had based his request on detailed justifications. Hitler was, however, no longer accessible to listen to an argument, as he no longer admitted to his own earlier rationale either. Anyway, for some time now he had eschewed relying on diplomacy, which might have averted – in the terrible way in which it finally came about – the fate of doom.

In the further course of the war Father had but two alternatives. He could force his resignation, thereby risking earning the image of a rat abandoning the sinking ship, or he could turn into a treacherous assassin and shoot Hitler. The death of the tyrant was the sole chance to get rid of Hitler and bring about a ceasefire. Father would on no account become a ‘rat’, and had not been born to be an assassin.

To sum up Father’s main maxims and convictions in foreign policy, the following points must be made:

1.To the full extent and out of conviction, he stood by Hitler’s ‘Western policy’, i.e. the objective of coming to an arrangement with Britain, a policy which had always also been Father’s. He complemented the concept with the inclusion of France as a condition for an agreement with Britain. The choice was overall decidedly of opting for the West.

2.Regarding the reluctance of the two ‘Western’ powers, Father had cautiously tried to break through the Reich’s isolation by the conclusion of the Anti-Comintern Pact without obstructing the arrangement desired with Britain.

3.He had ascertained Britain’s covert anti-German policy in 1937, and at the beginning of 1938 had clearly and unequivocally stated to Hitler that in the new order of Eastern Europe the antagonism of Britain ‘to the point of war’ had to be taken into account.

4.As it became manifest that no arrangement with Poland in the sense of setting up an anti-Communist bloc was to be reached, since Poland had opted for the opposing side, thus placing herself on the side of Britain and, indirectly, America, he had proposed a 180 degree turn-about of German policy to a pro-Russian line and pushed it through to Hitler. In that way he could achieve the strongest foreign policy grouping for the Reich since Bismarck.

5.Father saw his Russian policy as focused on the long term and was prepared for tough negotiation with Stalin. He wanted to accept the Russian concessions, so as to come to a lasting agreement. Father saw in a Continental bloc comprising good relations with the Soviet Union the sole possibility of ending the war and securing the Reich in the long run.

6.In this sense he attempted to restrain Hitler from a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union, to avoid a war on two fronts. His advising against a declaration of war on the USA was along the same line.

7.Finally, he had perceived and consistently represented to Hitler the necessity, in view of the military power balance, to try to initiate peace talks with Russia.

After 1940, Father’s concepts of foreign policy could no longer be realized, as Hitler no longer followed suit with them. To this extent the question or reproach is justified as to why he did not hand in his resignation. I have tried above to give a reply. Father’s concept failed with Hitler. For that reason he ascended the victors’ gibbet. He accepted it in the sense of a ‘higher justice’. In his last letter to our mother he wrote:

‘ [T]he Führer and his people have failed. Millions have fallen. The Reich is destroyed and our people are prostrated. Is it therefore – not because of the Nuremberg verdict pronounced by foreign judges – but in the sense of a higher justice that I too should fall? I … shall face all that is to come standing upright, as is due from me to the past of my family and my own as German Foreign Minister.’

He does not deserve to be maligned and vilified, to the present day, in a way that makes a mockery of historical facts. To Father, Hitler was Germany’s destiny personified, for better or worse. There is no doubt he was under the impression that he was at the mercy of this destiny and did not evade it, albeit after 1941 he basically knew that despite all the attempts he made there was no longer any possibility that he would influence the fateful course of doom that destiny would take. By 1932 he had, for a multitude of reasons, finally made a bond with Hitler, whose Realpolitik plans, at the outset of his becoming Chancellor, had been quite modestly directed to a consolidation of Germany’s position. What anyone wanted to do from now on in view of the looming disaster for Germany was something they would have to come to terms with in their conscience. Those who tried to stage a coup d’état were not the worst; nor were those who submitted to Hitler’s leadership and carried on with the fight against the Allies from their positions to the full. None of these courses led out of the destiny, whose name was ‘Hitler’, of the Germans, but that destiny was by no means solely homemade. Only whoever understands this will also be able to understand Joachim von Ribbentrop’s decision.

The so-called ‘legal process’ of the Allies’ conduct of the post-war trials can contribute nothing to finding the historical truth. I shall in consequence not occupy myself with the Nuremberg trials; among objective professionals of law and historians, the opinion has prevailed that they were not a proper procedure in the sense of the Western concept of legality. What is to be gleaned for history from the Nuremberg trials is largely insignificant if gauged by the yardstick of serious historical research. How unjust the procedure against my father was in the sense of any traditional legislation has to be clearly seen. I have outlined the major developments that led to the Second World War, and there cannot be any doubt – at least for an objective observer – that the blame for its outbreak cannot be attributed to Germany alone. Although the Allies were perfectly aware of this, from before its installation they accordingly manipulated the Nuremberg Statute so that any debate of this issue – that is, the core question – was excluded. Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1945, formerly United States Attorney General, at the time the ‘strong man’ at the Nuremberg trials, feared things could otherwise go wrong:

‘The Germans will certainly accuse all three of our European Allies of adopting policies which forced them to war. The reason I say that is that captured documents of the Foreign Office that I have examined all come down to the claim “We have no way out; we must fight; we are encircled; we are being strangled to death.” Now, if the question comes up, what is a judge to do about it? I would say, before one is judged guilty of being an aggressor … but say we will hear his case.’479

The German Foreign Minister was successfully prevented from declaring his motives at Nuremburg. The Allies gave themselves the right of the ‘law of nations’ to take the life of the Foreign Minister of their opponent, the basis for which was nothing other than the primitive right of the victor. A legal status awarded a posteriori, that definitively cut the rights of the accused, that accredited the identity of legislators, prosecutors and judges, and besides numerous minor offences against legal decency even offended against the tenet of the general validity of laws – it was applied uniquely to German foreign policy – cannot provide the basis for a correct process of justice. A law or, as it was called in Nuremberg, a ‘statute’ a priori retroactive mooted to be valid legal grounds for a condemnation, makes a mockery of any judicial concept of the West. To condemn Father for having conducted a war of aggression against Poland in the presence of Soviet judges, when the Soviet Union had also attacked Poland, blatantly proves the injustice of this so-called litigation.

Upon conclusion of presentation of the evidence, prior to the verdict, I was brought to Nuremberg for a few days and confined to a cell in the witness wing, to be able to talk to my father for about ten minutes every day through a netting, with guards on either side. Actually, we were both aware of what the verdict would be; not because Father was guilty in the court’s sense, but because the court had been so structured as to make unequivocally sure that the process taken was directed to capital punishment. After pronouncement of the verdict, which, as we both expected, was a death sentence, I was not given an opportunity to say goodbye to my father. After my visit to Nuremberg and the talks I had there, I made a note for myself of the names of the accused who, in view of the conduct of the trial, could expect a death sentence. My prediction was absolutely right.

If he was not ‘eliminated’, as he used to say about the probable death sentence, Father wanted to write his memoirs. I asked him if he did so expressly to bring out his divergences of view from Hitler’s. My main thought about this was of his efforts to avert the war with the Soviet Union. As I have already said, I was aware of these disputes from the start. However, during the trial, Father had consciously refused to expose his disparities with Hitler before the tribunal of the victors. In one of his last letters to Mother (dated 5 October 1946) he wrote:

‘I did not want at this trial to speak about my grave disputes with Adolf Hitler. The German people would then rightly say: “What sort of a man is that who was Adolf Hitler’s Foreign Minister and now turns against him for selfish reasons, before a foreign law court?” You must understand this, however hard it is for us both and the children. But without the respect of decent Germans and above all without self-respect I could not have gone on living nor wanted to live.’

Today I am grateful that in his defence Father did not take the ‘low road’ against Hitler. When we talked he regretted the generally spineless attitude that had been noticeable at Nuremberg. Father and I had brief chats with great warmth of feeling, which we both kept free of tension, conscious as we were of submitting to an ineluctable fate. I must not omit what Dr Werner Best stated in conclusion to Nuremberg: ‘At these last months of his life R. gave an impression of absolute dignity … He is also said to have stepped under the gallows keeping the same stance.’

I shall close the description of my father with a formulation by Theodor Fontane, the nineteenth-century German poet and novelist:

‘The dead can no longer defend themselves. They therefore all the more deserve justice.’