Reception for Soviet's Foreign Minister at Hotel Kaiserhof

Image size: 2048 x 1492 pixel. 302 KB
Date: Wednesday, 13 November 1940
Place: Hotel Kaiserhof, Berlin, Germany
Photographer: Unknown

At the Hotel Kaiserhof, left to right: Head of the personal staff of German Foreign Ministry Walther Hewel (2 January 1904 – 2 May 1945), German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop (30 April 1893 - 16 October 1946); Head of the Defense and Economic Office of the Wehrmacht General der Infanterie Georg Thomas (29 February 1890 - 29 December 1946), State Minister of the Rank of a Federal Minister and Chief of the Presidential Chancellery of the Führer and Reich Chancellor Doctor Otto Meissner (13 March 1880 - 27 May 1953); and Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (9 March 1890 - 8 November 1986). Ribeentrop threw a lavish reception for the Soviet delegation at the Hotel Kaiserhof, just down Wilhelmstrasse from the German Foreign Ministry. Molotov was in Berlin to discuss joining the Axis Powers. the day before, Reichkanzler Adolf Hitler could not convince Molotov to give up Soviet interests in the Balkans. Hitler did not even attend the Kaiserhof reception or the Soviet reception at their embassy the next day. Molotov left Berlin without the Soviet Union joining the Axis. General Thomas, in charge of economic cooperation with the Soviet Union, wrote after the war, "The Russians executed their deliveries up to the eve of the attack, and in the last days the transport of rubber from the Far East was expedited by express trains." After being implicated in the July 20 plot, Thomas survived a concentration camp. He died in American captivity in 1946. Ribbentrop was hung as a war criminal. Meissner survived the war and wrote his memoirs. The Hotel Kaiserhof was leveled by British bombs in 1943; the North Korean Embassy stands there today.

Source :
https://worldwar2database.com/gallery/wwii0244

Award Ceremony of Romanian Medal for Carl Gustaf Mannerheim

Image size: 1600 x 1113 pixel. 685 KB
Date: Saturday, 20 December 1941
Place: Helsinki, Finland
Photographer: K. Sjöblom

Romanian Ambassador Constintinides (second from left) handed the commander-in-chief of Finland's defence forces, Carl Gustaf Emil Freiherr Mannerheim, the Ordinul Mihai Viteazul (Order of Michael the Brave), December 1941. It is is Romania's highest military decoration, instituted by King Ferdinand I during the early stages of the Romanian Campaign of the First World War, and was again awarded in the Second World War. The Order, which may be bestowed either on an individual or on a whole unit, was named in honor of Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), a late 16th-century Prince of Wallachia, Transylvania, and Moldavia. The award for Mannerheim dated as 1 November 1941, and it contained three medals at once: Ordinul Mihai Viteazul Clasa 3, 2 and 1 (Royal Decree no. 3026). Mannerheim is also a Ritterkreuzträger (recipient of German Knight's Cross of the Iron Crosses), which he received on 18 August 1941, and Eichenlaubträger (recipient of German Knight's Cross of the Iron Crosses with Oak Leaves), which he received on 8 August 1944.

Source :
https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/52357/16681a180a83d321351d3a71c29af66e/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_Emil_Mannerheim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Michael_the_Brave
https://www.sotasampo.fi/fi/photographs/page/sakuva_102062
https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/34700/Mannerheim-Carl-Gustav-Emil-Freiherr.htm?c=aw

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor Visited Adolf Hitler at the Berghof

Image size: 1600 x 1237 pixel. 354 KB
Date: Friday, 22 October 1937
Place: Berghof, Obersalzberg, Berchtesgaden, Bayern, Germany
Photographer: Unknown

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (ex- King Edward VIII and his wife the former Wallis Simpson) visited Adolf Hitler at the Berghof on 22 October 1937. They met Hitler, dined with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, spend the night at Berchtesgadener Hof hotel, and even visited a concentration camp! The camp's guard towers were explained away as meat stores for the inmates. In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated to marry the woman he loved, a divorcee Mrs Wallis Simpson.However, the Guardian claimed that the king’s decision was due to Mrs. Simpson being a Nazi sympathizer and this was totally unacceptable to the prime minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin. The former Austrian ambassador, Count Albert von Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein, who was also a second cousin once removed and friend of George V, believed that Edward himself favoured German fascism as a bulwark against communism. In 1941, while they were holidaying in Florida, the exiled former king and his consort, now the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor, were spied upon by the FBI on the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. These FBI files, written in the 1940s and now released under America’s Freedom of Information Act, detailed that the Duchess might have been passing secrets to a leading Nazi with whom she was thought to have had an affair and that His Majesty’s Government had known for the fact for some time. Following Edward’s accession, the German embassy in London sent a cable for the personal attention of Hitler himself. It read: “An alliance between Germany and Britain is for him (the King) an urgent necessity.” In October 1937, the Windsors visited Nazi Germany, met Hitler at his Obersalzberg retreat (above), dined with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and even visited a concentration camp. The camp’s guard towers were explained away as meat stores for the inmates. The visit was against the advice of the British government and during the visit the Duke gave full Nazi salutes. At the outbreak of war, the duke served as a military liaison officer in Paris. Hitler made an abortive attempt to bring Edward and his wife to Nazi-sympathetic Spain, and greatly alarmed, the British establishment finally packing the duke off to the Bahamas from 1940-45. Deeply disenchanted by the society that had spun him, the Duke made his Nazi sympathies explicit, once telling a journalist that “it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown”. In another break from his usual unassuming boyish behavior, he remarked, “After the war is over and Hitler will crush the Americans. We’ll take over. They (the British) don’t want me as their King, but I’ll be back as their leader.” After the war, the duke and duchess returned to France. He died there in 1972, while the Duchess lived on until 1986.

Source:

BBC (possibly copyright of the German Government)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duke_and_Duchess_of_Windsor_meet_Adolf_Hitler_1937.jpg