Eduard Willy Kurt Herbert von Dirksen (2 April 1882 – 19 December 1955) was a German writer, lawyer, landowner, art collector, and career diplomat who occupied several key roles during the interwar period, serving as the German ambassador to the Soviet Union (1928–1933), ambassador to Japan (1933–1938), and most notably as the last German ambassador to Britain prior to the outbreak of World War II.
Hailing from a well-off Prussian Junker family, Dirksen studied law and worked as an assistant judge before going on a world tour and choosing to become a diplomat. During World War I he was an administrator in German-occupied Belgium before being transferred to the Foreign Office in 1917. Over of the course of the Polish–Soviet War, Dirksen was the de facto ambassador to Poland, but his open hostility towards the new Polish state led him to leave the position. He played a major role in shaping Germany's eastern policy for much of the Weimar period, pushing for a revision of the country's borders while trying to avoid war with Britain and France.
A pragmatist, Herbert von Dirksen frequently clashed with the Hitler government over issues of foreign affairs, with the Foreign Office gradually being marginalized by other agencies. The Nazi ascension to power in 1933 led to an immediate initial breakdown in German–Soviet relations, much to Dirksen's chagrin. He later served as the ambassador to Japan where he pushed for closer relations, but was sidelined during the actual Anti-Comintern Pact negotiations by the Hitler loyalist Joachim von Ribbentrop. When Ribbentrop was made Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1938, Dirksen filled in his role as Germany's chief representative in London where he tried unsuccessfully to maintain British neutrality over Poland. The United Kingdom's newfound resolve to contain German expansion and Hitler's dismissiveness ultimately led Dirksen to resign and retire at the outbreak of war in 1939.
Parvenu nobleman Dirksen was born on 2 April 1882 in Berlin to and Marie Helene Elisabeth von Dirksen (née von Schnitzler), a family whose members had served as Prussian civil servants for generations.Snyder, Louis, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976, page 68. His father was ennobled by Emperor Wilhelm I in 1887, which allowed them both to add the nobiliary particle von to their surnames. In the same degree that ennobled him, Willibald von Dirksen was granted a large estate together with Gröditzberg Castle in Silesia as a reward for his services to the House of Hohenzollern.Schorske, Carl "Two German Ambassadors: Dirksen and Schulenburg" pages 477–511 from The Diplomats 1919–1939 edited by Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1953, page 478. Willibald was a conservative nationalist who, after his retirement, held a seat in the Reichstag for the Free Conservative Party and was described as a "fanatical admirer" of Wilhelm II, whom he visited regularly while in exile in the Netherlands. Dirksen's stepmother, Viktoria, came from a wealthy banking family and was once helpful to Adolf Hitler, which benefited Dirksen's career during Nazi Germany. In his 1952 memoirs, Dirksen boasted that he was "proud of my purely Germanic blood", as the Dirksen family had been ennobled in 1887 "before a whole batch of more or less Jew-tainted families were ennobled by the liberalistic Emperor Frederick III" in 1888.Wistrich, Robert Who's Who In Nazi Germany, London: Routledge, 2013, page 43
As the Dirksens were parvenu nobility unlike the ancient Junker families, they were insecure about their social standing, and from the age of five onward, Herbert was forced to undergo a strict training regime to produce an "exemplary bearing" meant to allow him to be accepted by the Junkers.Schorske, Carl "Two German Ambassadors: Dirksen and Schulenburg" pages 477-511 from The Diplomats 1919–1939 edited by Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, pages 478–479. Dirksen had wanted to enter the exclusive Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), but his father forced him to enter the Prussian civil service instead to prepare him for eventually managing the family estate in Silesia. As a university student at Heidelberg, the snobbish Dirksen joined Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg, an exclusive fraternity with a largely aristocratic membership, which was a source of considerable pride to him.Schorske, Carl "Two German Ambassadors: Dirksen and Schulenburg", pages 477-511, from The Diplomats 1919–1939, edited by Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1953, page 479. In 1905, he graduated with a legal degree as a Referendar, and in 1907, he went on a tour around the world. After graduation from university, Dirksen become a reserve officer with the 3rd Guards Uhlan regiment, based in Potsdam, which he always noted accepted only men from the aristocracy as officers. After working as an assistant judge, in 1910, Dirksen went on a four-month trip to Rhodesia, South Africa and German East Africa (modern Tanzania), where he was thinking about settling.
During World War I, Dirksen served in the Imperial German Army as a lieutenant and won the Iron Cross, Second Class. The American historian Carl Schorske described Dirksen as a "correct and proper aristocrat with the right connections" but also a man who was slavishly loyal to those who held power. Entering the Auswärtiges Amt in 1917, Dirksen served in the Hague (1917), Kiev (1918–1919), and in Warsaw (1920–1921).
The Enemy of Poland In April 1920, von Dirksen arrived in Warsaw to take up the post of chargé d'Affaires. As the Chargé d'Affaires of the German embassy in Warsaw, von Dirksen's relations with the Poles were extremely difficult. As Germany then had no ambassador stationed at its embassy in Warsaw, von Dirksen as the Chargé d'Affaires was in effect the ambassador to Poland; a measure of his antipathy to Poles can be seen in that the chapter of his 1950 Memoirs dealing with his time in Warsaw, virtually all of von Dirksen's comments about Poland and Poles are negative.Schechtman, Joseph Review of Moscow, London, Tokyo pages 662–664 from The Western Political Quarterly Volume 5, No. 4, December 1952 page 662. In his memoirs, von Dirksen wrote that he "shared the deep-seated feeling of superiority over the Pole inherent in the German". In May 1921, a plebiscite to decide the status of Upper Silesia led to fighting between the Germans and Poles in Upper Silesia - the latter having instigated an armed insurrection assisted by Haller's army in Poland proper - who were supported by their respective national governments, causing strained relations between Berlin and Warsaw. Allied troops had to be sent to restore order. As someone who had grown in Silesia, von Dirksen's sympathies were completely with the German side, which led him to insist that all of Silesia belonged to Germany and none of the parts of Upper Silesia that voted to join Poland should be allowed to leave the Reich. In October 1921, von Dirksen left Warsaw to head up the Polish desk at the Auswärtiges Amt.
From May 1923 to February 1925, Dirksen served as German Consul in the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland). Under Point 14 of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, it had been announced that Poland should have its independence restored with secure access to the Baltic Sea. Taking up Point 14, the Poles had pressed at the Paris Peace Conference to annex Danzig, a city that was 95% German, but instead, the Allies compromised by creating the Free City of Danzig, an independent city-state that was under the protection of the League of Nations, to which Poland was granted certain special rights. Most people in Danzig wished to rejoin Germany while the Poles were unwilling to see any change in Danzig's status. As German consul in Danzig, Dirksen often clashed with the Poles. As consul in Danzig, Dirksen played a prominent role in the "postbox war"—a lengthy struggle over whether the postboxes in Danzig should be painted red and white (the colors of Poland) or red, white and black (the colors of the right in Germany; red, black and yellow are the colors of the left in Germany)—the latter selection of colors was a sign of the right-wing inclinations of the senate that governed the Free City of Danzig.
As the head of the Polish sub-desk within the Eastern Desk at the Auswärtiges Amt, Dirksen played a key role as an aide to foreign minister Gustav Stresemann in formulating German policy towards Poland, and in 1925 Dirksen was one of the leading advocates of using economic pressure to force Poland to return the Polish Corridor, Danzig and Upper Silesia to Germany.Post, Gaines The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 pages 33 & 72–73. At the beginning of 1925, Dirksen wrote that Poland would only return the Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia if Poland was "weak", which led him to suggest that Germany together with the "Anglo-Saxon powers" should follow a strategy of weakening the Polish economy to make Poland as militarily as weak as possible.Post, Gaines The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 page 33. Although the Auswärtiges Amt knew in fact that there was no evidence that Poland was seeking war with Germany, the Wilhelmstrasse seized upon any rumors of Polish military movements towards the German frontier to portray Poland as an aggressive and expansionist state that was a menace to the peace of Europe, which was part of a broader public relations campaign waged in Europe and the United States that emphasized the theme of "Polish chauvinism and racial hatred".Post, Gaines The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 page 32 Dirksen had successfully argued that Germany's chances of regaining the Polish Corridor, Danzig, and Upper Silesia would be better if world opinion was turned against Poland.
In a debate within Auswärtiges Amt, Carl Schubert, the State Secretary of the Auswärtiges Amt, argued against making loans to Poland conditional on the return of the lost territories, writing that "only force" would force the Poles to return the Corridor and Upper Silesia.Post, Gaines The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 page 34. Schubert argued that since war with Poland was not practical at the moment, Germany should make loans to Poland under onerous conditions with high-interest rates to weaken Poland economically and thereby reduce the Polish military budget until such a time when Germany was rearmed, at which point Germany would take back the lost lands via war. Dirksen by contrast also agreed that taking back the lands lost to Poland was "inconceivable without force", but he argued that any sort of German loans to Poland would strengthen Poland, and successfully maintained to Stresemann that Germany should not make any loans to Poland and should also try to persuade other nations not to makes loans to Poland. Following Dirksen's recommendation, Stresemann ordered Friedrich Sthamer, the German ambassador to the Court of St. James's, to lobby Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, to ask him to pressure British banks into not making any loans to Poland. In this, Sthamer was successful, reporting to Berlin that Norman felt that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh on Germany and he was willing to support German efforts to revise Versailles by denying Poland loans.