User talk:A.S. Brown/Joachim von Ribbentrop
Issues
[edit]Problems that need to be addressed:
1) The Danzig crisis. This is without doubt Ribbentrop's most important moment, indeed that trashy biography of him by Michael Bloch has more chapters devoted to Ribbentrop's role in the Danzig crisis than it does for the rest of his life. There is nothing here about the "peace front" negotiations, which were going along in public alongside the secret German-Soviet talks. The focus here should be on Ribbentrop, but maybe something about the "peace front" talks as well? However, that is a contentious topic, which may be too big here. There are broadly two schools about this: 1) Stalin always wanted an alliance with Germany and the "peace talks" were a cynical sham to improve his bargaining power with the Reich and 2) That Stalin wanted an alliance with Britain and France, but the way that the rather peculiar way the British went about the talks drove Stalin into the non-aggression pact. The fact that the Narkomindel would reply to British offers within hours while the Foreign Office took weeks to reply to Soviet offers, if at all says volumes.
Getting to the main issue, not answering the requests for an alliance or taking weeks to answer was a really bad way to go back forming an alliance because it makes one think the other side is not serious. The British sent a military mission to Moscow under Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax in August 1939 on the famous "slow boat to Russia". The ship that took Sir Reginald and his party to Murmansk was the City of Exeter which went only 9 knots a hour, which is exceedingly slow. By contrast, the Germans said that Ribbentrop would be on the first plane to Moscow and he would be there within 24 hours. I think this gives one who was the more serious one here. Not trying to excuse or justify Stalin's actions here. The best interpretation is that Stalin was being an opportunist, seeing who could make him the best offer, and it was the Germans who won out here. However, about 90% of the Narkomindel's documents from the spring and summer of 1939 were about reaching an alliance with Britain and France, and only 10% were concerned with reaching an alliance with Germany.
2) The French factor. Anyone familiar with the Minoan civilization that existed on ancient Crete will know that the artwork of the Minoans always depicted the women as wearing dresses cut away to reveal the breasts. Most people assume that this was a sexual gesture, and it might very well have been. But nobody knows that for certain because nobody can read the Minoan Liner A script. My point is that people are projecting the values of today onto the Minoans, which may or may not be a valid assumption. The same is true with most writings on France before the war. Everybody knows that France was defeated in 1940, but the people who write that France was a declining power in the interwar period are projecting their knowledge of what happened in 1940 onto earlier years. That was not the image of France at the time. Case in point; the Wehrmacht's original plan in 1939 for Fall Gelb (Case Yellow-the codename for the invasion of France) envisioned the defeat of France as occurring in the summer of 1942. The Manstein plan variant for Fell Gelb for a victory in the spring of 1940 was only adopted in February 1940. France was considered a major power at the time, and Ribbentrop devoted much of his time to Franco-German relations, which this article does not cover well.
3) This article is too apologetic about the elite professional diplomats of the Auswärtiges Amt. Pretty all of them were right-wing nationalists who wanted to see Germany became the world's greatest power and were quite willing to serve the Nazi regime. The story of the Auswärtiges Amt under the Nazi regime is a story of co-operation, not resistance.
4) This is wrong. When Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact in March 1941, there were no transit rights granted for the invasion of Greece. Prince Paul was married to a Greek princess, and though it appears that he was gay (note his long-standing torrid romance with the British Conservative MP Chips Channon), he would not bear to grant the Wehrmacht transit rights to invade his wife's homeland. Arguably, the officers who staged the coup d'etat that overthrow Prince Paul did Greece a real disservice. King Boris III of Bulgaria had granted Germany transit rights to invade Greece, but along the Greek-Bulgarian border was the Metaxas Line, which would have been a tough nut to crack. However, Yugoslavia and Greece were allies, and the Metaxas Line along the Yugoslav-Greek border. After coup in Belgrade, Hitler changed the plans to invade Yugoslavia as well, which allowed the Wehrmacht to by-pass the Metaxas line and go straight down the Vadar river valley into Greece.