Joachim von Ribbentrop

Ulrich Friedrich-Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was a well-travelled businessman who caught Hitler's attention as someone who knew the world beyond Germany's borders. He offered his house, Schloss Fuschl, for the secret meetings in January 1933 that resulted in Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. Appointed ambassador to Britain in 1936, he became Foreign Minister in February 1938, despite party members who found him unintelligent and superficial. Before the war he brokered the Pact of Steel with Italy and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union, and later worked to ensure Japan would attack the United States and that Germany would declare war in return. His influence faded from 1941 onward. Arrested in June 1945, he was convicted at Nuremberg for his role in starting the war and enabling the Holocaust, and on 16 October 1946 became the first defendant executed by hanging.