Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich

The Federal Foreign Office on Wilhelmstraße in 1937. (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-C11812)

With the seizure of power by Hitler and the NSDAP, according to the overall view until 2010, the personnel policy of the Federal Foreign Office was subjected to the conformist policy of the Reich government, as were all others. Nevertheless, resistance fighters also emerged from the Foreign Service, including Rudolf von Scheliha, Ilse Stöbe, Adam von Trott zu Solz and Ulrich von Hassell.

The Independent Commission of Historians – Federal Foreign Office concluded in its 2010 book that employees of the Office during the Nazi dictatorship were fewer victims, but rather actors under National Socialism; summarizing Ernst Piper:

The Federal Foreign Office was [...] no haven of resistance. It was also not a refuge of veteran ministerial bureaucrats who did not want to abandon their country under a bad government and simply continued to serve. There was also no targeted infiltration by National Socialists, which was not necessary. Characteristic of the AA was rather the 'self-equal circuit'. Between the officials in Wilhelmstrasse and the Hitler government, there was an anti-democratic and anti-Semitic consensus, whereby the mostly noble diplomats represented anti-Semitism to the traditional upper classes, which was less radical than the genocidal redemption anti-Semitism of the National Socialists. But both wanted to overcome the 'shame peace' of Versailles and make Germany a great power again. Only there were differences in the assessment of the risk of war.

In 1933, the office established a "Deutschlandreferat", responsible for internal German affairs, which included stateless persons and expatriation and emigrant matters as a result of the anti-Jewish Nazi legislation. As a liaison point to the NSDAP, there was a "Special Department Party" in the AA from 1938 onwards. Both units were combined into Department D (Germany) in 1940. Franz Rademacher, the author of the Madagascar Plan, worked in the "Referat D III" (Jewish question, racial politics).

On 31st In March 1933, the foreign policy office of the NSDAP (APA), headed by Alfred Rosenberg, was officially founded in competition with the Federal Foreign Office in order to replace the existing “traditional conservative instruments” of foreign policy with a “revolutionary” one. With a view to the AA, the APA was primarily used to circumvent the official diplomatic authorities. According to Rosenberg's wish, the AA should be brought up and reorganized from the APA. Since the AA was considered a center of conservative resistance against the new rulers, it was spied accordingly. On the 15th century. In May 1934, Rosenberg wrote in his diary that Adolf Hitler had told him that he (Hitler) regarded the AA as “a congregation company” that could only be brought under his control after the death of Paul von Hindenburg.

In the following years, a “STP's Foreign Office” was formed in the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP. From about the autumn of 1935, the task of this local group was to Ernennungen “take influence on appointments” and “to exercise secret control over the relatives of embassies and consulates.”

In 1939, the office issued a formal relief on The Jewish Question as a factor of foreign policy. It said, among other things:

The realization that Judaism in the world will always be the irreconcilable opponent of the Third Reich forces the decision to prevent any strengthening of the Jewish position. A Jewish state [meaning: in Palestine], however, would bring the world Jewish an increase in power law in international law.

The research results published in October 2010 by the Independent Commission of Historians convened in 2005 by the then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer show that “after the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Federal Foreign Office took the initiative to solve the “Jewish question” at the European level.” In 2010, Eckart Conze (Historian and Spokesman of the Commission) said in an interview: “The Federal Foreign Office was actively involved in all measures of persecution, disenfranchisement, expulsion and extermination of the Jews from the outset. [...] The target mark – the final solution – was recognizable very early.”

The Federal Foreign Office was initially under the control of State Bülow. After his death in June 1936, Hans Georg of Mackensen took over the office; after the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in early 1938, he was followed on 3. April 1938 Ernst von Weizsäcker.

Important employees during the National Socialist era included: Eberhard von Thadden, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld, Franz Rademacher, Fritz Kolbe, Hilger van Scherpenberg, Paul Karl Schmidt, Horst Wagner, Karl Klingenfuß, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Otto Bräutigam and Friedrich Stieve. After the end of the Second World War, a number of leading members of the office were charged and convicted in the so-called Wilhelmstrasse trial.

Persons Killed in the Foreign Service

In the building of the Federal Foreign Office on Werderscher Markt, there is a memorial wall to commemorate the resistance fighters against National Socialism from the ranks of the Foreign Service and to the colleagues who lost their lives in the exercise of their service after 1945.

Bibliography

Corner species Conze: The Federal Foreign Office. From the Empire to the present ( C.H.Beck Knowledge, Beck’sche Reihe. No. 2744). Beck, Munich 2013.

Federal Foreign Office (ed.): The foreign policy of the German states in the Empire. History, actors and archival tradition. Contributions of the scientific colloquium on the 90th anniversary of the scientific colloquium. Founding day of the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office on the 3rd August 2010. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2012.

Daniel Bigalke: The Foreign Office in the German Reich. German Diplomacy between Republicanization and a lack of willingness to reform in the Republic of Weimar. Publisher VDM, Saarbrücken 2008.

Christopher R. Browning: The “Final Solution” and the Federal Foreign Office. Department D III of Department Germany 1940–1943. Translated by Claudia Kotte. Scientific Book Company, Darmstadt 2010 (first as The final solution and the German Foreign Office. A study of referent D III of Department Germany 1940–43. Holmes & Meier, New York/London, 1978).

Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Verlag Karl Blessing, Munich 2010.

Peter Grupp: Anti-Semitism and Jewish issues at the Federal Foreign Office during the Empire and the Weimar Republic. A first approach. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (ZfG) 46, 1998, pp. 237–248.

Jens Ruppenthal: The Colonial Department at the Federal Foreign Office of the Weimar Republic. Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (Ed.): “... power and share in world domination”. Berlin and the German colonialism. Unsast, Münster 2005.

Heinz Günther Sasse, Ekkehard Eickhoff : 100 Years of Foreign Office, 1870–1970. Bonn 1970.

Jan Erik Schulte, Michael Wala (Eds.): Opposition and Foreign Office. Diplomats against Hitler. Siedler, Munich 2013.

 

Konstantin von Neurath (1873-1956), minister of foreign relations, 1 June 1932-4 February 1938. (Bundesarchiv N 1310 Bild-014)

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946) (pictured here during the Nuremberg Trials), minister of foreign relations, 4 February 1938-30 April 1945. (US NARA)

Arthur Seyß-Inquart (1892-1946) (pictured in 1940), minister of foreign relations, 30 April 1945-2 May 1945.

Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (1887-1977) (pictured as a defendant of the Ministries Trial, Nuremberg), minister of foreign relations, 2 May 1945-23 May 1945. (US NARA)

The Foreign Ministry in Berlin, pictured on 21 August 1945.