What was Italian Premier Benito Mussolini’s cutting appraisal of Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop?

Answer: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister, was an ambitious champagne, actually German sect, salesman.

He inherited or purchased his aristocratic ‘von’ from a deceased aunt and then set about relentlessly advancing his career.

He was loathed by the other Nazi leaders who said that he bought his name, married his money and swindled his way into his rarified positions. Ribbentrop reached the summit of his power when he became foreign minister in 1938 and in the following year arranged the Nazi-Soviet pact which brought about the invasion of Poland.

After World War Two he was put on trial at Nuremberg in 1946 and was the first of the Nazi leaders to be hanged.

Italian Premier Benito Mussolini, who was no shrinking flower when it came to flamboyance and self-esteem, said of von Ribbentrop, ‘You only have to look at his head to see that he has a little brain’.

Source: Ribbentrop by Michael Bloch

More at: History

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