This is John Batchel, continuing my conversation with the author Charles Spicer,

his book, Coffee with Hitler, the untold story of the amateur spies who tried to civilize the Nazis.

Yacom von Ribbentrop was the ambassador to Great Britain for Hitler during the latter part of the 30s.

Van Ribbentrop had extremely prominent position early in the rise of national socialism,

and he continued to represent himself as the best person to liaise, to negotiate, to bring under the wing, the British Empire,

London, the English gentleman, whom he admired. He imitated English gentlemen. And then at some point

he snaps. And I asked Charles Spicer about what happened. Why? Where did this go? Why did

Van Ribbentrop move from being an anglophile to an anglophope? That drove a lot of the decisions

that were going to be made late in the 1930s prior to the war start in 1939.

Here's Charles Bicer to explain.

Coffee with Hitler, the untold story of the amateur spies who tried to civilize the Nazis,

and von Ribbentrop, a man whom I've always sought the line that Churchill used after the war,

when asked about von Ribbentrop, who had entertained Churchill in all of the leading lights of

Britain at the embassy during the 1930s, big parties, smashing parties to impress people

before he turned against them. Churchill said, after the war, that was the last time

I saw von Ribbentrop before he was hanged. Here's Charles Spicer. Can you read Ribbentrop?

Was he having, what you'd have to say, a nervous breakdown at this point, threatening to murder

children and women if he doesn't get his way?

I think that's reasonably accurate. I think he's becoming very irrational. He's so in full

to Hitler, and he's done this very painful 180 degrees on Great Britain, having been a passionate

anglophile, relatively sophisticated, an internationalist,

very fluent English speaker. His English was so good that they said his German had an English

...