Karl Ritter

Karl Ritter (5 June 1883, Dörflas, Marktredwitz – 31 July 1968, Murnau am Staffelsee) was a German diplomat during the Third Reich and was convicted as a war criminal in the Ministries Trial. A member of the Nazi Party, he was ambassador to Brazil for two years, Special Envoy to the Munich Agreement, and a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II.

Ritter graduated with a degree in law in 1905. In 1907 he was appointed to the Bavarian Civil Service. In 1911 he transferred to the colonial office, and in 1918 to the economics office before settling in 1922 in the Foreign Office, where he headed the sections for economics and reparations and finally the section for trading politics, where he played a significant role in the 1930–31 project to establish a German-Austrian Customs Union, which however came to nothing because of French opposition.

After the Nazis came to power, in 1937–38, he was first envoy and then ambassador to Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, he was declared persona non grata for demanding the Brazilian government ban anti-Nazi propaganda. He stated at his trial that he was forced to join the Nazi Party at this time. In 1938, he became chairman of Committee B of the International Commission for Cession of the Sudeten German Territory, during the preparations that led to the Munich Agreement.

When World War II began, Ritter was responsible for overseeing the economic war, with the rank of Ambassador, Special Duty. Until 1945, he was the liaison between the Ribbentrop Foreign Office and the OKW. Through Karl Schnurre, he worked on the 1939 negotiations with the Soviet Union that led to the economics part of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. One of his assistants in the Foreign Office was Fritz Kolbe, who beginning in 1943 smuggled classified documents from the Foreign Ministry-OKW correspondence to the American Legation in Bern, Switzerland, headed by Allen Dulles.

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