Knights of the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation - Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XII, Haile Selassie I, Nicholas II of Russia, (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 202. Chapters: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XII, Haile Selassie I, Nicholas II of Russia, Francisco Franco, Wilhelm II, German Emperor, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia, Napoleon III, George V, Edward VIII, Juan Carlos I of Spain, Hirohito, Hermann Goring, Miklos Horthy, Michael of Romania, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, Otto von Habsburg. Excerpt: Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (30 April 1893 - 16 October 1946) was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials. Joachim von Ribbentrop was born in Wesel, Rhenish Prussia, to Richard Ulrich Friedrich Joachim Ribbentrop, a career army officer, and his wife, Johanne Sophie Hertwig. Ribbentrop was educated irregularly at private schools in Germany and Switzerland. From 1904 to 1908, Ribbentrop took French courses in a school at Metz, the German Empire's most powerful fortress. A former teacher later recalled that Ribbentrop "was the most stupid in his class, full of vanity and very pushy." His father was cashiered from the Imperial German Army in 1908-after repeatedly disparaging Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged homosexuality-and the Ribbentrop family were often short of money. Fluent in both French and English, young Ribbentrop lived at various times in Grenoble, France, and London, before travelling to Canada in 1910. Initially, Ribbentrop planned to emigrate to German East Africa, where he hoped to become a planter. But during a summer holiday in Switzerland in 1909, Ribbentrop fell in love with a wealthy young socialite named Catherine Bell, from a Montreal banking family, which led him to substitute Canada for Tanganyika as his preferred destination. Until 1914, Ribbentrop hoped to marry Bell. He became friendly with fellow German Alfred Baumgarten and worked for the Molsons Bank on Stanley Street in Montreal and then for the engineering firm M. P. and J. T. Davis on the Quebec Bridge reconstruction. He was also employed by the National Transcontinental Railway, which constructed a line from Moncton to Winnipeg. He worked as a journalist in New York City and Boston and then rested to recover from tuberculosis in Germany. He returned to Canada and set up a small business in Ottawa importing German wine and champagne. In 1914, he competed for Ottawa's famous Minto ice-skating team