Reich Foreign Office

Under the Weimar Republic and Nazi Party, the Reich Foreign Office was the cabinet ministry concerned with the conduct of diplomacy. It was headed by Foreign Ministers Constantin von Neurath (1932-1938) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1938-1945).

The Foreign Office is generally accepted to have had a role in German expansion by means other than war, but the conventional wisdom had been that it was much less important after the 1939 outbreak of war, and the diminishing power of Ribbentrop. A recent report released by the current German Foreign Ministry, however, reveals that it was significantly involved in planning and directing The Holocaust.

Jewish policy

According to Eckart Conze, professor of modern history at the Philipps University of Marburg and one of the authors of the report,"The sheer scale of the participation of Germany's Foreign Ministry in the Holocaust is bewildering. It wasn't just one department; it was the whole institution. The ministry collaborated with the Nazis' violent policies and took part in all aspects of the discrimination, deportation, persecution and genocide of the Jews."

In 1940, Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Desk, sent a memorandum to State Secretary Martin Luther, asking him to define Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's basic policy toward Jews, trying to shift the role of his desk from settling individual cases to establishing policy.

It was the only agency that had an authority and duty to advise that a proposed government action would violate international law. The Ministries Case (NMT) ruling on the Foreign Office has been argued to have set precedent for criminal prosecution of lawyers who give illegal advice, an issue that has been raised with respect to intelligence interrogation, U.S., George W. Bush Administration.