German Foreign Office Research Articles

Unterstaatssekretaer Martin Luther and the Ribbentrop Foreign Office

In the struggle of Nazi internal politics, the chieftains of the Third Reich were in perpetual competition to out-perform each other. Like a feudal monarch, Hitler stood as arbiter over his squabbling vassals. The able use of power to accomplish the tasks most appreciated by the Fiihrer led to further grants of power to enhance the private fiefs of the most successful lieutenants. To perpetrate this struggle for power, each Nazi chieftain needed his own 'private army' led by a sub-vassal, directly loyal to him, who constantly guarded the domain from encroachment by others and expanded it when possible.l This system of government provided fertile soil for many spectacular careers. Each chieftain recruited sub-vassals to strengthen his own position, but these men could also exploit their roles to build up domains of their own. The conflict between the two could remain latent as long as they mutually profited from the partnership at others' expense, as was the case with Himmler and Heydrich. Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign Minister and one of the less successful competitors in this internal struggle for power, was particularly in need of an able subvassal, an effective political infighter, and found him in Martin Luther. At first the arrangement was mutually beneficial, but Ribbentrop's weakness finally endangered Luther's position as well. The latent conflict came into the open, and revolt broke out in the German Foreign Office.

History as Propaganda: the German Foreign Office and the “Enlightenment” of American Historians on the War Guilt Question, 1930-1933

History as Propaganda: the German Foreign Office and the “Enlightenment” of American Historians on the War Guilt Question, 1930-1933

The Career of Sir Eyre Crowe: A Reassessment

Among the myths of the origins of World War I is that of the ability of obscure bureaucrats to influence the foreign policy of their country through intrigue and deceit. The foremost example in the volumious literature involved the unlimited capacity for evil attributed to Friedrich von Holstein of the German Foreign Office. One of his contemporaries left the. following portrait: “His life was devoted to poisoning human and international relationships. Holstein's diplomacy by intrigue, his vicious disloyalties, and the way he placed his own revengeful purposes before his country's good contributed largely towards the outbreak of the First World War.” Labeled the Grey Eminence of the Wilhelmstrasse in the aftermath of defeat, Holstein became the scapegoat for the disasters of German diplomacy in 1914.Other bureaucrats of the pre-war era whose careers followed a similar pattern have received like treatment. On the British side, it was asserted, there operated a civil servant whose anti-German animus steered Britain into conflict with Germany. Allegedly possessing a fatal fascination for Sir Edward Grey, Sir Eyre Crowe was credited by historians with enormous surreptitious influence. The hostility toward Germany manifested by Great Britain in the decade prior to 1914, the argument runs, reflected Crowe's personal hatred and suspicion of German power. “The vast influence exercised by Sir Eyre Crowe upon British policy between 1908 and 1914,” wrote the distinguished Austrian historian A. F. Pribram in 1951, “only became generally known outside the Foreign Office, and especially abroad, in recent years.” Apologists for Germany cited Crowe as the prime mover of British policy, and one German historian termed him the ‘böse Geist’ [evil spirit] of the British Foreign Office.

Hajo Holborn: A Memoir

I MET Hajo Holborn for the first time in the fall of 1923 in the archives of the German Foreign Office. Holborn then was finishing his dissertation and editing the Radowitz papers. This first encounter was followed by many brief and hurried talks amid the files of the German Foreign Office: Holborn showed me an exciting note by Bismarck which he had just discovered, or we talked about German politics. I remember vividly a gloomy morning after the election of Hindenburg as President, which gave a severe shock to those who had set their hopes on the development of a democratic Germany. On walks in Heidelberg where Holborn became a Privatdozent in 1926 I could observe how the southern softness of this corner of Germany enchanted this quiet and deliberate North German and I felt happily confirmed in my pride in my native Baden. Perhaps because of the striking difference my next clear recollections of meetings with Holborn are again those of walks, this time in Hyde Park in London on summer afternoons of 1934. The Londoners' joyful surrender to the rare pleasures of sunny weather stood in sharp contrast to the disquieting news from the Continent on which conversation inevitably turned and which confirmed—more convincingly than anyone could have wished—the correctness and necessity of the decision to leave Germany. But I remember that I admired Holborn's ability to shake off the worry about the events in Germany and to study attentively the English life which surrounded him.

Constantin von Neurath and German Policy at the London Economic Conference of 1933: Backgrounds to the Resignation of Alfred Hugenberg

Within five months after taking office, Hitler's government was confronted with three important developments in foreign policy: the Mussolini Pact (which, hopefully, might lead to the speedy conclusion of a disarmament agreement and an increased tempo in the campaign for the revision of the Versailles Treaty); the Vatican Concordat; and the World Economic Conference of June 1933. Both the Mussolini Pact and the Vatican Concordat have recently been studied in some detail. The World Economic Conference, on the other hand, has been largely ignored. Yet, analysis of German participation in the conference illuminates several puzzling questions concerning the early foreign policy of the Third Reich. Clashes within the German government over policy-making for this conference, both before and during the London meetings, contributed materially to Hitler's subsequent triumph over the conservative cabinet ministers, who, ideally, should have been able to restrain the National Socialists. A study of German participation in the conference provides the opportunity to examine two important questions: To what extent did the German Foreign Office, during Hitler's first months in office, shape and control Germany's foreign policy? And second, by what means did Hitler succeed in overcoming the conservative cabinet majority?

Germany's attitude to the national disintegration of Cisleithania

In spring I9I8, Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany stood, to all outward appearances, at the height of its power, although its economic and human reserves were already considerably exhausted. Russia, as a result of the revolution and the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, could not for the moment be counted a great power. In Berlin, the political fate of the Ukraine and of the entire Baltic region was being decided. In May I918, Rumania was forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty. On the Western front the German armies occupied almost the whole of Belgium and a tenth of the territory of France, containing important coal and iron deposits. The long-planned German spring offensive resulted in further territorial gains in both March and May I918. The Supreme Army Command succeeded in getting its demands met to their full extent, despite resistance from leading officials in the German Foreign Office and from the parliamentary majority. The preservation of the integrity of Germany and of AustriaHungary was still of paramount importance to both monarchies, and each stipulated the recognition of this claim as a prerequisite to any peace negotiations.1 April I9I8, however, marked an important turning point; news of the Sixtus Affair2 and of Czernin's resignation had substantially increased the suspicion of the officials in Berlin regarding the Habsburg monarchy's loyalty

Piotr Khristianovich von Schwanebach and the Dissolution of the First Two Dumas

bach. Schwanebach had occupied a number of important positions in the bureaucratic hierarchy in the 1890s and the first years of the twentieth century. He was, successively, Assistant Director of the Credit Chancellery, Deputy Director of the State Bank, member of the Council of the Ministry of Finance, Deputy Minister, and Minister of Agriculture.1 In all of these posts he violently opposed the financial policies of S. lu. Witte.2 When Witte returned to power as Russia's first premier, in the aftermath of a lost war and of revolution, Schwanebach and his good friend Baron Alois von Aehrenthal, the Austrian ambassador to Russia, mounted a fervent campaign in Russia, and especially abroad, to assist in the destruction of Witte's position.3 Schwanebach never hid his disdain for representative or parliamentary institutions. As Minister of Agriculture, he had participated in the deliberations on the Bulygin draft and in these sessions gave vent to his fears that concessions might be made to dangerous elements of the population. Once he realized that some sort of assembly was inevitable, he advocated a franchise law which would result in the largest possible representation of peasant elements in it. Such a peasant preponderance, he hoped, would constitute a valuable ballast. It would give the duma *The Central University Research Fund of the University of New Hampshire and the Social Science Research Council have given financial support to this study. All unpublished German Foreign Office documents cited below are on microfilm. Their citation is followed by their microfilm classification. Unpublished Austrian documents stem from the files of the Haus, Hofund Staatsarchiv in Vienna. 1 / Entsiklopedicheskii Slovaf (St. Petersburg, 1903), Lxxvn, p. 242; P. Kh. von Schwanebach, Zapiski sanovnika; politika P. A. Stolypina i vtoraia gosudarstvennaia duma, Golos Minuvshego, i-m (vi), (1918), 115, n. 1. 2 / V. I. Gurko, Features and Figures of the Past; Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II (Stanford/ London, 1939), pp. 169, 232. o i nans nenoronner, An Annwine uipiomatic conspiracy, iyU5-iyut>: ine Schwanebach Memorandum, Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, XIV, 3 (Sept. 1966), 347-61.

Three Crises, 1938–39

The participants in the recent controversy over The Origins of the Second World War damaged but did not refute all the theses of Mr A. J. P. Taylor, and he has admitted to nothing more than a few 'second thoughts'. Furthermore, differences of interpretation abound in other major works on the subject and these were not even acknowledged during the discussion. Thus we still need definitive interpretations of Hitler's intentions towards Czechoslovakia and the role of Hungary in them before Munich, of his planning for the occupation of Prague in March I939, of his ambitions and deadlines in Poland and the part assigned to the Soviet Union.' Many of the differences between Taylor and his critics, as well as among the critics themselves on these issues, derive from disagreements over the credibility of the evidence, particularly the German memoirs. The leading men of the nazi regime have been so discredited that their memoirs are now cited very erratically, none more so than the memoirs of Ernst von Weizsacker, State Secretary in the German Foreign Office from 1938 to I943. Scathingly reviewed by Namier, treated flippantly by Taylor, assigned marginal importance by most historians, Weizsacker's memoirs seemed full of falsehoods and deceptions deliberately calculated to conceal his true role. His memoirs nevertheless have buttressed important points in one scholarly volume which are simply ignored in another.2 Yet it is now certain that Weizsacker first wrote his

African Studies and Training in West Germany

During the spring of 1962, the Africa Liaison Committee of the American Council on Education authorized me to secure information on the status of African studies and training in Germany. Toward this end, I visited on two occasions in the late summer and early fall of 1962 a number of German organizations, institutes, and universities. My work in Germany was facilitated by the cooperation of the German Foreign Office, which arranged for my itinerary while in the Bonn area, and by the encouragement of President Heinrich Luebke of the German Federal Republic. In this brief report, I list and describe the work of the most important agencies and organizations which were engaged in 1962 in research on Africa, particularly south of the Sahara, and in the training of Africans. Special consideration will be given to some of the developments and problems in the universities.

German Foreign Office Documents on Financial Support to the Bolsheviks in 1917

D OCUMENT No. I reproduced on page I89 in an English translation will contribute to the elucidation of one of the most controversial questions of recent history: that of the relations of the Imperial German Government with the Russian Bolshevik Party in the period between the fall of the Russian Monarchy and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in I9I7. The document has been found in one of the files of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, now in the custody of the British authorities. It is a typescript of five pages dated 3 December I9I7 with a number of corrections and marginal notes. The caption 'Tel. Hughes' provides for transmission by the Hughes direct line telecommunication system. The message was addressed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron R. von Kiihlmann, to an official who was to communicate its content orally to the Kaiser. Document No. II shows that the message was duly dispatched and received; and that the Kaiser expressed agreement with its contents. Document No. ii is the deciphered text of the reply to Document No. i, dated 4 December I9I7, from the German General Headquarters and signed 'Gruenau', an official of the German Foreign Office attached to the person of the Emperor. The urgency and frankness of the message are due to the circumstances in which it was written. The German Government was at the time about to dispatch a special mission to Petrograd to start negotiations on the return of German prisoners of war and the resumption of trade relations with the newly formed Bolshevik Government. The mission was to be headed by the representative of the Foreign Office, Count Mirbach, and a representative of the GHQ, Admiral Count Keyserling. Besides, the Armistice negotiations in Brest-Litovsk were about to begin. The outcome of the war might well depend to a large extent on the success of these negotiations. The outline of German policy towards Russia had been discussed between the Kaiser and his Foreign Minister at some length on a previous occasion. The Minister had now to draw up the necessary instructions for these various actions. He wished to have the Kaiser's approval of their general tenor, and as the Kaiser was then at GHQ the State Secretary had recourse to telegraphic communication. The text was then filed with other top secret documents concerning, for the most part, affairs involving the Kaiser personally. The Minister felt it necessary to remind the Monarch of certain i8i

The Final Solution

W HEN I VISITED GERMANYin i948, for the first time since leaving v v the country in 1933, I discussed the general liquidation of the Jews-the Final Solution-with Assistant Secretary Friedrich Gauss, formerly the highest legal officer in the German Foreign Office. He offered many reasons for the acquiescence of the Germans to the mass murder of Jews; some feared to lose their position, others to be arrested and brought to a concentration camp-and we did not act. We had lost our courage and every concept of morality. During the years 1943 tO I945, the problems implicit in mass murder were never analyzed, because we faced the immediate task of rescuing Jews without ability or time to examine the causes of their immolation. Books on the subject, such as Eugen Kogon's study The SS State, Benedikt Kautsky's Buchenwald, Zdenek Lederer's Ghetto Theresienstadt, Odd Nansen's From Day to Day, and hundreds more have relayed to us a lively, truthful description of events, in which the writers as individuals played unhappy part. Yet these books did not analyze the Final Solution, the extermination of more than a third of European Jews, as an irrevocable event in history. Without such a basic volume, interpretation of this maelstrom of madness seemed in any case impossible. We have come nearer to tackling some of the most burning aspects of the question since Gerald Reitlinger published The Final Solution, the Attempt To Exterminate the Jews of Europe, I939-I945 (first published by Vallentine, Mitchell & Co., Ltd., London, and in 1953 by

Ribbentrop and the German Foreign Office

Ribbentrop and the German Foreign Office

Light on Nazi Foreign Policy

THIS is not history, but some of the raw material of history. It is the story of Nazi foreign relations as recounted by Germans who had direct parts, frequently principal parts, in the events related. These Germans were inter regated during August to November 1945 by a small group of American officials sent to Germany for the purpose. The present writer, who headed the mission, had served in Germany previously and knew personally in the pre-Nazi days some of those who could now tell parts of the Nazi story. Among the 50 or more interrogated some had been at the very top ? Goering, Ribbentrop, von Papen, Schacht. A second and larger category were former officials of the Ger man Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service. Thirdly, a number of military leaders ? Keitel, Jodl and others ? were questioned on the political and diplomatic aspects of their experiences. The general disposition among them was to talk freely. Most had been prisoners for some time. Of course, each was making his own case in his own way, but if truth be relative to the individual and the circumstances, there was a rather surprising measure, one felt in the end, of truthful disclosure. When the stories were put together, a coherent tale emerged.

Diplomatic Immunities (German Foreign Office) Case.

322Immunity from Jurisdiction — Binding Force of Declaration of Minister for Foreign Affairs — Position of Head of Legation and Member of Legation Contrasted — Termination of Exterritoriality.

IV. Baron von Holstein, The “Mystery Man” of the German Foreign Office 1890–1906

Though historians are still waiting for Holstein's papers, enough material has accumulated since his death in 1909 to attempt a sketch of the man who had the largest share in the control of German foreign policy from the fall of Bismarck in 1890 till his own retirement in 1906. During his lifetime his name was scarcely known even to his countrymen; but the Memoirs of his colleagues Otto Hammann and Baron von Eckardstein, to mention only the two principal witnesses, have thrown a flood of light on the Éminence Grise of modern Germany, who, like Père Joseph, loved to work in the dark and preferred the reality to the pomp of power.