Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairf, Berlin Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin (Fond 1357)

The Auswärtiges Amt was the name of the Foreign Office established in 1870 by the North German Confederation, which then became the German Empire's Foreign Office in 1871. It is still the name of the German foreign ministry today. From 1871 to 1919, the Foreign Office was led by a Foreign Secretary, and since 1919, it has been led by the Foreign Minister of Germany. Since March 2018, Heiko Maas has served as Foreign Minister, succeeding Sigmar Gabriel. The primary seat of the ministry is at the Werderscher Markt (de) square in the Mitte district, the historic centre of Berlin. The Federal Foreign Office, abbreviated AA, is the foreign ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany, a federal agency responsible for both the country's foreign policy and its relationship with the European Union. It is a cabinet-level ministry. Third Reich: In 1933, the vast majority of the diplomats serving in the Auswärtiges Amt came from upper-class families with a disproportionate number coming from the aristocracy. The requirement that one had to have a university degree to enter the Auswärtiges Amt effectively guaranteed upper-class dominance of the Auswärtiges Amt. Officially, the men of the Auswärtiges Amt were supposed to be non-political, but in practice the diplomats formed a "quite exclusive group" with extremely conservative views and values. Most diplomats were not believers in National Socialism, but during the Third Reich, many diplomats such as Neurath himself joined the NSDAP and/or the SS as an opportunistic way of improving their career prospects; such self-interested careerism was rampant amongst the German civil service in the Nazi period. Website of the Office Ministry of Foreign : www.auswaertiges-amt.de

Rossiĭskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ voennyĭ arkhiv

Forms part of the Claims Conference International Holocaust Documentation Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This archive consists of documentation whose reproduction and/or acquisition was made possible with funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Source of acquisition is the Russian State Military Archive (Rossiĭskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ voennyĭ arkhiv), Osobyi Archive, Fond 1357. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the filmed collection via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum International Archival Programs Division in 1993.