Extract from an interrogation, on Ribbentrop's actions in mid-August 1939 regarding German-English relations

Extract from Testimony of Joachim von Ribbentrop, taken at Nürnberg, Germany, on 20 September 1945, 1430-1615, by Col. Howard A. Brundage, JAGD, OUSCC, and Mr. D. C.
Pool, Special Representative of the Secretary of State. Also present: Siegfried Ramler, Interpreter, and Pvt Clair Van Vleck,
Court Reporter
Q. Put your mind, please, on August '39, as the crisis approached. Do you recall when Durksen came back from London to Berlin?
A. No, I don't remember, but I suppose I was probably at the front at the moment with the Fuehrer, I suppose. I don't know whether he came back from Switzerland or what. I don't remember now.
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Q. You don't know?
A. No; I don't recall it, no.
Q. He came back, I believe, the 18th of August, directly to Berlin.
A. The 18th of August?
Q. Yes, or approximately. I may be a day or two off. He was not in London?
A. Oh, he was not in London.
Q. He was not in London when war was declared?
A. Let me see. That is quite possible.
Q. He returned to Berlin?
A. It may be also that I don't recall his reports, that this is the reason I don't recall his reports at that time, you see.
Q. I am speaking of his reports over a period of sixteen months.
A. Oh, yes.
Q. He was in England for sixteen months altogether?
A. Yes, but I mean probably that explains why I don't recall his reports in this important period, you see.
Q. What explains it?
A. This important period in August.
Q. No; I am asking about his reports over a period of sixteen months, during his own embassy in London. He came back to Berlin on the 18th of August, or about that time, and he asked for an interview with Hitler and, naturally, for an interview with you, since you were the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
A. Yes.
Q. According to my information, you did not receive him?
A. I don't remember now.
Q. What situation could be more dramatic ? Here is a Foreign Minister, who has chosen a particular man to be Ambassador in a country with which war threatens, and war actually broke out very soon. He returns from his post approximately two weeks before the outbreak of war; asks to see the Foreign Minister, and the Foreign Minister is too busy to see him.
A. I don't remember that.
Q. You don't remember that?
A. No. I didn't see him.
Q. Yes.
A. I don't remember, no. Wasn't he ill?
Q. No; he was in perfectly good health.
A. I don't remember that exactly.
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Q. Surely, you recognize that to be a very extraordinary situation. You appreciate the drama of it?
A. I assure you—this was the situation you are talking about, was it?
Q. Yes. I will put it to you another way, Herr von Ribben-trop. If you had received him, surely you could not have forgotten an interview under those circumstances ?
A. Well, I wonder—let me see, on the 18th—it is very difficult now to recollect the exact dates. He came back on the 18th, you say, of August?
Q. Yes. I may be one or two days off, but war broke out on the 1st of September, as I recall, so let us say a fortnight before that, a little less than a fortnight. Surely you must remember those days with great clarity?
A. If I hadn't seen him, I don't remember why. You are quite sure that I didn't see him ? I don't know.
Q. Your question is in turn astounding. How could a Foreign Minister fail to remember whether he had seen an Ambassador under those circumstances; his own Ambassador returning from the capitol ?
A. What was the circumstances on the 18th?
Q. Surely, you remember them, Herr von Ribbentrop. This was within two weeks of the outbreak of war.
A. Yes, but there was no tense situation. There was, of course, with Poland. The situation had been tense and perhaps was still, but there was no such tense situation with England.
Q. It was not tense within two weeks of the outbreak of war?
A. I don't remember whether I saw him. I must think about that. I don't know. The 18th of August, you say that was? That surprises me.
Q. If the 18th of August troubles you, say the last two weeks of August. It is all the same whether it was one day or the other.
A. I wonder whether these circumstances weren't different. Wasn't he there on an illness or something? Hadn't he been away from London for quite a time already?
Q. He came to Berlin and asked to see the Fuehrer and he asked to see you. He was not received even by you, although he repeatedly sent word to your secretaries, that he sat in Berlin, in perfectly good health, in the hope of seeing you and finding it utterly incredible that you should not receive him.
A. He surely saw the Secretary of State, didn't he?
Q. That is not the question. I want to know whether he saw
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you. My information is that he did not and you cannot remember. The mere fact that you cannot remember must be very striking to you, isn't it?
A. I don't remember that, no. I must think about it. I must think about it. The Fuehrer didn't think much of Durksen, so far as I remember.
Q. He didn't think much of him?
A. Not very much, no, but I say I don't remember now. I can't tell you at the moment.
Q. You recognize how strange it is that you can't tell me?
A. I am certain if he had been there, and I couldn't have seen him, if the situation was that way, he had just come over from London, wanting to see me, I mean if I couldn't see him, perhaps I wasn't in Berlin. I don't remember now. '
Q. That would interpose no barrier. Germany is not a large country.
A. It is sometimes difficult, you see. I don't know where I was. Possibly I told him to see the Secretary of State and make a report about that. That is possible, but I don't remember at the moment.
Q. The matter interests me very much because of your insistence in other interrogations that you and the Feuhrer endeavoured until the very last moment to come to some understanding with England.
A. We certainly did.
Q. Then I speak to you quite frankly, because this is an important matter. I just cannot believe that when you did not take the opportunity to talk with your own ambassador, whom you had selected, when he returned from the capitol, again, Herr von Ribbentrop, I come to the unpleasant and inescapable conclusion that you are hot being frank with me.
A. Oh, yes, absolutely frank. No, that is not right, but you can only understand it by this way: that I can assure you that in the whole discussion with England, in all those events, the name Durksen, and the attitude of Durksen, never has played any role. This again comes very much out of the attitude of the Fuehrer towards diplomats, old diplomats, and embassies and so on. The Fuehrer was so much against most of these ambassadors, and so on, that he hardly ever saw them at all. I couldn't even induce him to see any of them. So it is perhaps understandable in that way. I don't remember at the moment one instance where the reports of Durksen in the sixteen months, where the name of Durksen or his opinions or his views played a role, I
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must say, in all the Fuehrer's decisions which he made during all that time.
Q. I am not interested in the Fuehrer at this moment.
A. Also myself. '
Q. I am interested in your views.
A. Also of myself.
Q. You were the man who selected him to go to London and had kept him there. At a moment when you were endeavouring, according to your statement, in every way to avoid war, you failed to talk to the man who was presumably best informed?
A. I must say quite frankly, in my perception, so far as I remember, we never considered Durksen as a man who had, let us say,'my particular confidence or the Fuehrer's particular confidence, never as such. Everybody can tell you that he was a quiet, routine diplomat we had sent there, but he was not a man, I don't think, during the sixteen months, who was ever called to give his views on anything of that sort. These things were generally done.
Q. As a matter of fact, he was recalled during that time on two or three occasions, but in any case, if you sent such a man to London at that time, it does not support your contention that you were seriously interested in working out an arrangement with Great Britain.
A. We certainly did.
Q. Again, either way you put it, it destroys your contention that you wished, at almost any cost, to make an adjustment with England.
A. During the last fortnight we still did, I mean during the last fortnight, up until the war broke out, we did in the last week very much. This was also done, not through Durksen, for instance, this was done then through Henderson. For instance, Henderson then went to London, But Durksen played no role in these questions.
Q. You made a very poor choice of Ambassador in a critical situation. Either way you were guilty of dereliction.
A. When we sent Durksen there, I remember we considered for a long time who to send. Then we came to Durksen as a quiet and routine ambassador, who would look after matters as well as he could. That was because we had nobody else. That was more or less the idea then.
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