Johannes von Welczeck

Welczeck was born into an aristocratic family in Laband (modern Łabędy, Poland) in the Upper Silesia province of the Kingdom of Prussia, his parents being Louise von Hatzfeld-Trachenberg and Count Bernhard von Welczeck. Welczeck studied at the University of Bonn in Bonn and in 1897 joined the exclusive Corps Borussia Bonn student club, which was reserved for royalty and nobility at the time.

In 1904, he joined the highly elitist Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), one of the most prestigious branches of the state under the German Empire. In 1908, he became the first secretary to Hans von und zu Bodman, the German ambassador to Chile. On 20 November 1910, he married Luisa Balmaceda y Fontecilla in Santiago, by whom he had four children. Welczeck's wife was a member of the powerful Balmaceda family, one of the richest and most influential families in Chile.[1] Most of his duties in Chile concerned lobbying for arms contracts for German firms, most notably the firm of Krupp AG, the largest corporation in Europe and one of the world's biggest manufacturers of weapons.[1] The Chilean Army had been trained by a German mlitary mission, and German influence was strong in Chile.[1] In 1915, he became the Prussian charge d'affairs in Dresden, Saxony. In January 1917, upon the death of his father, he inherited the title of count, and was henceforward known as Count von Welczeck.

From 1923 to 1925, he was the German minister in Budapest. From 1925 to 1936, he was the German ambassador in Madrid. In January 1926 he was involved in efforts to circumvent the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles by having the Deutsches Bank make a five million Reichsmark loan via the Banco Aleman Transatlantico (which it owned) to the Spanish industrialist Horacio Echevarrieta, in exchange for which Echevarrieta opened up a torpedo factory for the Reichsmarine in Bilbao.

From 9 May 1932 to 15 July 1932, he headed the German delegation at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva. As someone from Upper Silesia, which had been partitioned between Germany and Poland in 1921, Welczeck was well known for his ferocious hatred of Poles, and spent much of his time in Geneva clashing with the Polish foreign minister, August Zaleski, who headed the Polish delegation.[2] The American historian Carole Fink described Welczeck as a "notorious Polonophobe" whose constant Polish-bashing did much to annoy the other delegates at the League of Nations.[2] When the Sanation regime introduced a land reform law in the Polish Corridor to seize the land holdings of the Junker estates, Welczeck represented Germany at the League of Nations Human Rights Committee, where he argued that the land reform in the Polish Corridor was targeting farms owned by Germans to "Polonise" the Corridor, thereby violating the Minorities Treaty, leading to a notable clash with Zaleski.[2] Fink noted that through Welczeck had a strong case in that the land reform had largely exempted the estates owned by the szlachta, he weakened it by his strident and shill manner while Zaleski made a better impression by being calm and conciliatory.[2]

In August 1933, Welczeck returned to Germany for his first meeting with Adolf Hitler, where he spoke at much length about the "Bolshevik danger" in Spain.[3] Welczeck portrayed Spain on the brink of a Communist revolution, describing as a nation hard hit by the Great Depression where many of the unemployed were joining the Spanish Communist Party.[3] Welczeck wanted German intelligence to play a greater role in Spain.[3] Welczeck stated that Hitler met his plan "only half-way", agreeing to send Abwehr agents disguised as businessmen to Spain to monitor Spanish Communists and anarchists, but vetoed his plans for intelligence-sharing with the Spanish police.[3] On 1 October 1934, Welczeck joined the National Socialist German Workers Party. In 1934-35, Welczeck was highly alarmed by social unrest in Spain and favored having General Francisco Franco appointed minister of war.[4] Welczeck was obsessive in his fears of Communism in Spain, constantly warning Berlin that a revolution could take place at any moment and that all of the property and assets owned by German businesses in Spain would be lost.[5]

In April 1936, Welczeck arrived in Paris as the new German ambassador. The French historian Lucas Delattre described Welczeck as a "diplomat of the old school", being well known in Paris for his courtly, suave manners (albeit with an irascible streak) and his fluent French.[6] Shortly after he arrived in Paris, the Front populaire won the French National Assembly election of 3 May 1936, leading to a coalition government headed by the Socialist leader Leon Blum coming to power. Through Blum was a Socialist and a Jew, Welczeck's relations with him were cordial enough. Blum found Welczeck together with the Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht to be the more reasonable sort of Nazis, stating he considered both Welczeck and Schacht to be "rational, civilized Europeans" whom it possible for him to negotiate with.[7] Notably, Hitler refused to meet Blum under any conditions, and as such Welczeck became Blum's main conduit with the German government.[7]

As the former ambassador to Spain, Welczeck played a major role as an adviser on Spanish affairs following the appeal for aid from the Spanish Nationalists in July 1936.[8] Right from the start, Welczeck favored aid to Franco over General Emilio Mola, the other leader of the junta that had launched the botched coup d'etat of 17 July 1936 that caused the civil war.[8] He was opposed to two messengers from Mola in Paris going on to Berlin in order to favor Franco, successfully arguing for the Reich to deny permission for Mola's representatives to enter Berlin.[8] Welczeck initially advocated caution in Spain, believing that the junta of rebellious generals who just failed to overthrow the Second Spanish Republic would lose the civil war.[8] More importantly, the new Popular Front government in Paris led by Premier Leon Blum had decided to aid the Spanish Republicans with military aid, which led him to fear that the civil war in Spain could cause a Franco-German war "prematurely" before German rearmament was completed.[8] The news that Hitler had decided on 24 July 1936 to intervene in Spain caused him much worry.[8] The fact that the Blum government under strong pressure from Britain agreed to a policy of non-intervention in Spain was a source of much relief for Welczeck, who became more supportive of German intervention in Spain once it was clear that there was no danger of French intervention.[8] However, even after the intervention occurred he cabled Berlin urging the government to limit the scale of the intervention and warning that the German Condor Legion air raids on Spain were causing the French Left to become more supportive of further intervention on behalf of the Republicans.[9]

In October 1936 in a meeting at the Reich Chancellery, Hitler told the French ambassador in Berlin, André François-Poncet, that France was on the brink of civil war and : "If Communism triumphed in France, it would be impossible for him, Hitler, to consider this event an internal French affair".[10] The next day, the French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos handed Welczeck a note formally protesting against Hitler's statement, stating it was unacceptable for Hitler to make statements implying a right to intervene in French domestic affairs.[10] Welczeck defended Hitler, claiming despite what he had said to François-Poncet that Hitler was only engaging in "defensive measures" such as building the Siegfried Line in the newly remilitized Rhineland as he blamed problems in Franco-German relations entirely on the French.[10] The meeting ended on an unfriendly tone with Welczeck and Delbos arguing what Hitler had said.

In December 1936, Delbos contracted Welczeck with an offer to mediate an end to the Spanish Civil War.[11] Provided that the civil war in Spain could be ended via Franco-German mediation, Delbos was willing to discuss the return of the former German colonies in Africa held by France as League of Nations mandates, an end to the arms race, and an economic agreement to lower tariffs in order to end the trade wars in Europe.[11] The introduction of the Four Year Plan in Germany in September 1936 had caused much alarm in France.[11] This was especially the case as the Four Year Plan envisioned Germany becoming self-sufficient by developing substitutes for commonalties such as oil, even through it was likely to cost hundreds of millions of Reichsmark. In the 1930s, 80% of the oil Germany used was imported from the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico and Hitler's claim that Germany needed to be self-sufficient in artificial oil because of the alleged danger of the Soviet Navy seizing control of the North Atlantic was not widely believed in Paris. Within the French government, the implications of the Four Year Plan with its call for Germany to have a wartime economy by 1940 were well understood.[11]

To underscore the importance of the offer, on 18 December 1936, Blum met with Welczeck to tell him that the entire French cabinet had approved of this offer, saying that provided that the Spanish civil war was ended, Germany would certainly have its former colonies in Africa returned.[12] Blum further pointed out that because the German economy was three times larger than the French economy (which would ensure that in an economic union that the Reich would be the senior partner), that this was a major French concession and he expected Germany to do likewise by ending the Four Year Plan.[12] Welczeck was in favor of taking up the French offer, but the Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath was opposed, advising Adolf Hitler to reject it.[11] In March 1937, Welczeck wrote bitterly that Germany had "missed the boat" by refusing to respond to Delbos' offer, just like it had in March 1918 when it launched Operation Michael, the offensive intended to win the First World War instead of negotiating peace.[11]

As the former ambassador to Spain, Welczeck was regarded as the Spanish expert within the Auswärtiges Amt and warned Neurath against efforts to "reform" the Spanish Nationalists whom the Reich was backing in the civil war, stating that the Spanish generally disliked foreigners and would not accept the German advice to "reform".[13] During the Sudetenland crisis of 1938, Welczeck did not see the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, between 30 April-27 May 1938, but met the Premier Daladier several times.[14] On 2 September 1938, Bonnet told Welczeck that "France was definitely going to stand by its commitments".[15] In September 1938, Welczeck reported that if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, then France would almost certainly declare war on the Reich.[16]

On 7 November 1938, when going out for his morning walk on the streets of Paris, Welczeck by-passed Herschel Grynszpan on his way into the German embassy at 78 rue de Lille.[17] Grynszpan, speaking to Welczeck in German said he needed to talk to "his excellency, the ambassador" about an urgent matter.[17] Grynszpan had decided to assassinate the German ambassador to France, a task somewhat complicated by the fact that he did not know the name of the ambassador or what he looked like. Welczeck wore a swastika label pin on his coat, showing that he was a NSDAP party member and Grynszpan, who had grown up Jewish in the Third Reich, recognized that he must be someone connected with the embassy. The distance between the worlds of Welczeck, an aristocrat dressed in an expensive suit with a silver handle walking cane who spoke his German with an upper-class accent vs. Grynszpan, a stateless illegal immigrant living on the margins of French society dressed in cheap second-hand clothes who spoke his German with a working class accent could not have been greater.[18] The fact that Grynszpan did not know the name of the ambassador or recognize that he was speaking to the ambassador, instead speaking only of "his excellency, the ambassador" led Welczeck to conclude that he was someone unimportant. Furthermore, spies do not normally tell strangers on the street that they are spies, which led Welczeck to doubt Grynszpan's claims to be a spy with a "most important document" he could only show to the ambassador.

Unwilling to end his walk to talk to a teenager dressed in shabby clothes and an unlikely story about being a spy, Welczeck pointed to the embassy and said the ambassador was there; unknown to him, Grynszpan had a gun and was planning to assassinate him to protest the Reich's anti-Semitic policies.[17] Welczeck later snobbishly told the French police that he felt that Grynszpan was someone who was beneath him to speak to and he lied about not being the ambassador just to end the conversation.[18] Grynszpan went into the embassy to ask to see the ambassador (whom he was unaware that he had just spoken to), claiming to be some sort of spy who had a secret document he could only show to the ambassador.[19] Growing increasingly agitated when he learned that Welczeck was out for a walk, Grynszpan was ushered into the office of the third secretary Ernst vom Rath to show him his "most important document"; Rath would then decide whatever the document was important for him to show to Welczeck when he returned. Grynszpan, who had no documents instead pulled out his handgun and assassinated Rath, shooting him in his office. Grynszpan later told the French police that had he known that the elegant, dapper man with the swastika label pin whom he spoke with in front of the embassy was the ambassador, he would had killed him instead of Rath.[20]

In June 1939, the French expelled Otto Abetz for bribing two French newspaper editors into printing pro-National Socialist stories. The Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was furious with Welczeck when he was unable to persuade the French to take Abetz back.[21] During the Danzig crisis of 1939, an Anglo-French effort was launched to construct a "peace front" intended to deter the Reich from war. On 28 July 1939, Welczeck in a dispatch to Berlin stated he had learned from "an unusually well-informed source" that the French together with the British were sending military missions to Moscow to discuss having the Soviet Union join the "peace front".[22] Welczeck stated that the French military mission was to be headed by General Doumenc, whom he described as "a particularly capable officer" and a former deputy chief of staff under the illustrious Marshal Maxime Weygand.[22] On 30 July 1939, Welczeck reported that the current talks in Moscow were stalled owning to Anglo-Soviet differences of opinion, and the decision to send the military missions was a French initiative intended to break the impasse.[22] Welczeck added that he had the impression that the French were far more keen on having the Soviet Union join the "peace front" than the British. On 9 August 1939, Ribbentrop forbade Welczeck together with Hans-Adolf von Moltke and Herbert von Dirksen from returning from arriving to take their summer vacations in Germany.[23] Ribbentrop wanted to block any peaceful effort to resolve the Danzig crisis, and believed that keeping the ambassadors out of Paris, Warsaw and London would hinder efforts at a peaceful resolution.

In August 1940, Welczeck returned to France to handle relations with the new Vichy regime established after the fall of the Third Republic, but was overshadowed by Abetz who replaced him as ambassador in November 1940. At the show trial planned for Grynszpan, Welczeck was to serve as one of the star witnesses.[24] Welczeck was to testify that Grynszpan was the "Jewish Gavrilo Princip" and that the assassination of Rath was to the origins of World War Two the same as the popular image of the impact of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the origins of World War One.[24] In 1943, he retired from the Auswärtiges Amt. He died in his retirement in Marbella.

• Adamthwaite, Anthony (1977). France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936-1939. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000352788.
• Colton, Joel (1987). Léon Blum Humanist in Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822307624.
• Crozier, Andrew J. (1988). Appeasement And Germany's Last Bid For Colonies. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9781349192557.
• Fink, Carole (Spring 1996). "The Weimar Republic and its "Minderheitenpolitik: Challenge to a Democracy?". German Politics & Society. 31 (1): 80–95.
• Delattre, Lucas (2007). A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich The Extraordinary Story of Fritz Kolbe, America's Most Important Spy in World War II. New York: Grove Atlantic. ISBN 9780802196491.
• Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste (1979). France and the Nazi Threat The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939. New York: Enigma Books. ISBN 9781929631155.
• Jordan, Nicole (2002). The Popular Front and Central Europe The Dilemmas of French Impotence 1918-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521522427.
• Kirsch, Jonathan (2013). The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Schwab, Gerald S (1990). The Day the Holocaust Began The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan. Westport: Praeger. ISBN 9780275935764.
• Shirer, William (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Sater, William F.; Herwig, Holger H. (1999). The Grand Illusion The Prussianization of the Chilean Army. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803223936.
• Watt, D.C. (1989). How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939. London: Heinemann.
• Weinberg, Gerhard (1980). The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Starting World War II 1937-1939. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Whealey, Robert H. (2004). Hitler and Spain: The Nazi Role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813191394.