Karl Ritter (5 June 1883, Dörflas,

Marktredwitz Marktredwitz () is a town in the district of Wunsiedel, in Bavaria, Germany, close to the Czech border. It is situated 22 km west of Cheb, 50 km east of Bayreuth and 50 km south of Hof/Saale. Marktredwitz station is at the juncti ...

– 31 July 1968,

Murnau am Staffelsee Murnau am Staffelsee is a market town in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region of Bavaria, Germany. The market originated in the 12th century around Murnau Castle. Murnau is on the edge of the Bavarian Alps, about sou ...

) was a German diplomat during the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

and was convicted as a war criminal in the

Ministries Trial __NOTOC__ The Ministries Trial (or, officially, the ''United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsäcker, et al.'') was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg af ...

. A member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

, he was ambassador to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

for two years, Special Envoy to the

Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany ...

, and a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II.

Career

Ritter graduated with a degree in law in 1905. In 1907 he was appointed to the Bavarian Civil Service. In 1911 he transferred to the colonial office, and in 1918 to the economics office before settling in 1922 in the Foreign Office, where he headed the sections for economics and reparations and finally the section for trading politics, where he played a significant role in the 1930–31 project to establish a German-Austrian Customs Union, which however came to nothing because of French opposition. After the Nazis came to power, in 1937–38, he was first envoy and then ambassador to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

. In Rio de Janeiro, he was declared '' persona non grata'' for demanding the Brazilian government ban anti-Nazi propaganda. He stated at his trial that he was forced to join the Nazi Party at this time. In 1938, he became chairman of Committee B of the International Commission for Cession of the Sudeten German Territory, during the preparations that led to the

. When

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

began, Ritter was responsible for overseeing the economic war, with the rank of ''Ambassador, Special Duty''. Until 1945, he was the liaison between the

Ribbentrop Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945. Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's not ...

Foreign Office and the OKW. Through Karl Schnurre, he worked on the 1939 negotiations with the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

that led to the economics part of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. One of his assistants in the Foreign Office was

Fritz Kolbe Fritz Kolbe (25 September 1900 – 16 February 1971) was a German diplomat who became a spy against the Nazis in World War II. Early life Kolbe was born on 25 September 1900 in Berlin to middle-class parents. His father was a saddle maker. Th ...

, who beginning in 1943 smuggled classified documents from the Foreign Ministry-OKW correspondence to the American Legation in Bern, Switzerland, headed by Allen Dulles.

Ministries Trial

At the war's end Ritter was arrested. At the

in 1947, he was arraigned on five counts. He was found innocent on the first, promotion of aggressive war. On the third count, crimes against humanity, specifically Jews, Catholics and other minorities, the judgement of the court was that Ritter was implicated in the deportation of Jews from Denmark, France, and Hungary, but that while he was under no illusions concerning the fate of Jews deported to the East, he "most likely had no immediate knowledge of the extent, methods, and associated circumstances of the measures to exterminate the Jews" and that "knowledge of the commission or existence of a crime suffices for a conviction only in those cases where a legal obligation exists to prevent or oppose an action." On the remaining counts he was found Not Guilty in the sense of the indictment, except for the second count, war crimes, specifically killing and mistreating participants in the war and prisoners of war, on which he was found guilty in two instances, firstly of Foreign Office complicity in an order not to prosecute cases of lynching of Allied flyers, regarding which the judgement of the court was that while Ritter was not the originator of this policy of murder, he was guilty of carrying it out; and secondly of the killing of escaped prisoners of war, because in his function within the Foreign Office he was obligated to inform the OKW that under the Geneva Convention of 1929 and Article 14 of the

Hague Convention of 1907 The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amo ...

, the Swiss Embassy extends its protection to British prisoners of war, and he had instead been complicit in the sending of an untrue and misleading memorandum to the Swiss Embassy. One of the three judges, Leon W. Powers, dissented on both counts. Ritter was sentenced to four years in prison, including time served beginning in 1945; he was released a month after sentencing, on May 15, 1949.Deutscher Presse-Dienst
"Die Urteilssprüche"
''

Hamburger Abendblatt The ''Hamburger Abendblatt'' (English: ''Hamburg Evening Newspaper'') is a German daily newspaper in Hamburg. The paper focuses on news in Hamburg and area, and produces regional supplements with news from Norderstedt, Ahrensburg, Harburg, and P ...

'', 16 April 1949 He was represented by the defense lawyer Horst Pelckmann, who was replaced by Erich Schmidt-Leichner.

Later life and family

Nothing is known of Ritter's life after his release except for attendance at the home of

Winifred Wagner Winifred Marjorie Wagner ( Williams; 23 June 1897 – 5 March 1980) was the English-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner, and ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husband's death in 1930 until the end of World War II in 1 ...

along with

Edda Göring Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring (2 June 1938 – 21 December 2018) was the only child of German politician, military leader, and leading member of the Nazi Party Hermann Göring, by his second marriage to the German actress Emmy Sonnemann. Born ...

Adolf von Thadden Adolf von Thadden (7 July 1921 – 16 July 1996) was a German far-right politician. Born into a leading Pomeranian landowning family, he was the half-brother of Elisabeth von Thadden, a prominent critic of the Nazis who was executed by the Nazi g ...

Hans Severus Ziegler Hans Severus Ziegler (13 October 1893 – 1 May 1978) was a German publicist, theater manager, teacher and Nazi Party official. A leading cultural director under the Nazis, he was closely associated with the censorship and cultural co-ordinatio ...

and others. Ritter's illegitimate son

Karl-Heinz Gerstner Karl-Heinz Gerstner (15 November 1912 – 14 December 2005) trained as a lawyer and then worked during the war for the German diplomatic service in Paris. Following the war he was released from internment as a Soviet prisoner of war after producing ...

worked as a diplomat in Paris: it was subsequently demonstrated that he had on numerous occasions clandestinely assisted the

French resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

; he became a communist and a journalist in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

Publications

* ''Neu-Kamerun: Das von Frankreich an Deutschland im Abkommen vom 4. Nov. 1911 abgetretene Gebiet; Beschrieben auf Grund der bisher vorliegenden Mitteilungen''. Veröffentlichungen des Reichskolonialamts 4. Jena: Fischer, 1912. .
Online
at Archive.org.

References

Sources