VON RIBBENTROP: I have already said that on 4 February 1938 I was in Berlin. The Führer called me and informed me that, because of a shift in various higher positions, he was going to appoint a new Foreign Minister, also that he had appointed the then Foreign Minister Von Neurath, President of the Secret Cabinet Council. I replied to the Führer that I, of course, would be glad to accept this appointment.
DR. HORN: On this occasion you also received a high rank in the SS? The Prosecution have asserted that this rank was not purely honorary. Is that true?
VON RIBBENTROP: I must correct this point, I believe. I had received a rank in the SS prior to this time and I do not recall whether it was on the occasion of this appointment or later on that I became SS Gruppenführer. The Führer bestowed on me the rank and the uniform of an SS Gruppenführer. That was a position, which formerly in the Army used to be known as a rank à la suite. It happened that I agreed definitely with the SS idea at that time. My relations with Himmler were also quite good at the time. I considered the SS idea at that time the possible basis for producing and creating an idealistic class of leaders, somewhat like that existing in England, and such as emerged symbolically through the heroism of our Waffen-SS during the war. Later on, it is true, my attitude towards Himmler changed. But the Führer bestowed this rank on me because he wished that within the Party and at the Party meetings, I should wear the Party uniform and have a Party rank.
May I at this time state briefly my attitude toward the Party. Yesterday or the day before yesterday, I believe, the question was raised as to whether I was a true National Socialist. I do not claim to be competent to judge this question. It is a fact that it was only in later years that I joined Adolf Hitler. I did not pay very much attention to the National Socialist doctrines and program nor to the racial theories, with which I was not very familiar. I was not anti-Semitic, nor did I fully understand the church question, although I had left the church a long time ago. I had my own inner reasons for doing so, reasons connected with the early 20’s and the development of the church in Germany in those years. However, I believe that I have always been a good Christian. What drew me to the Party, as I recognized at the time, was the fact that the Party wanted a strong, flourishing, and socialistic Germany. That was what I wanted too. For that reason, in the year 1932, I did, after thorough deliberation, become a member of the NSDAP.
DR. HORN: Had you put your services at the disposal of the Party before that date, as the Prosecution assert, namely, from 1930 on?
VON RIBBENTROP: It was in 1930 when in the large Reichstag election National Socialism obtained more than 100 seats in the German Reichstag. I set forth yesterday, and perhaps do not need to go into detail any more, what conditions in Germany were at that time. However, during the years 1930, 1931 and 1932 I gradually came nearer to the Party. Then from 1932 on—I believe I entered the Party in August 1932—from that moment on until the end of this war I devoted my entire strength to National Socialist Germany and exhausted my strength in so doing. I wish to profess frankly before this Tribunal and before the world that I have always endeavored to be a good National Socialist and that I was proud of the fact that I belonged to a little group of men, idealists, who did not want anything else but to re-establish Germany’s prestige in the world.
DR. HORN: What foreign political problems did Hitler describe to you as requiring solution, when you took office? What directives did he give you for the conduct of foreign policy?
VON RIBBENTROP: When I took office, the Führer said relatively little to me. He said only that Germany had now assumed a new position, that Germany had once more joined the circle of nations having equal rights and that it was clear that in the future certain problems would also still have to be solved. In particular, I recall that he pointed out four problems which, sooner or later, would have to be solved. He emphasized that such problems could be solved only with a strong Wehrmacht, not by using it, but through its mere existence, because a country which was not strongly armed could practice no foreign policy whatsoever, but rather such a country operated, so to speak, in a vacuum as we had experienced during the past years. He said we would have to achieve clear-cut relations with our neighbors. The four problems he enumerated were, first of all, Austria; then he mentioned a solution of the Sudeten questions, of the question of the tiny Memel district and of the Danzig and the Corridor question, all problems which would have to be solved in one way or another. It would be my duty, he said, to assist him diplomatically in this task. From this moment on I did my best to assist the Führer in the preparation of some solution of these problems in a way agreeable to Germany.
DR. HORN: Shortly after your appointment you...
THE PRESIDENT: I believe this would be a good time to break off.