Johannes von Welczeck

Johannes Bernhard Graf von Welczeck (2 September 1878 – 11 October 1972) was a Nazi German diplomat who served as the last German ambassador to France before World War II. Aristocrat Welczeck was born into an aristocratic family in Laband (modern Łabędy, Poland) in the Upper Silesia province of the Kingdom of Prussia, his parents being Count Bernhard von Welczeck (1844–1917) and Countess Louise von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (1852–1909). Welczeck studied at the University of Bonn in Bonn and in 1897 joined the exclusive Corps Borussia Bonn student club, which was reserved for royalty and nobility at the time. Diplomat In 1904, he joined the highly elitist Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), one of the most prestigious branches of the state under the German Empire. Welczeck began his career as the German consul-general in New Delhi. In 1908, he became the first secretary to Hans von und zu Bodman, the German ambassador to Chile. On 20 November 1910, he married Luisa Balmaceda y Fontecilla (1886–1973) in Santiago, by whom he had four children. Welczeck's wife was a member of the powerful Balmaceda family, one of the richest and most influential families in Chile. Most of his duties in Chile concerned lobbying for arms contracts for German firms, most notably the firm of Krupp AG, the largest corporation in Europe and one of the world's biggest manufacturers of weapons. The Chilean Army had been trained by a German military mission, and German influence was strong in Chile. In 1915, he became the Prussian charge d'affairs in Dresden, Saxony. In January 1917, upon the death of his father, he inherited the title of count, and was henceforward known as Count von Welczeck. From 1923 to 1925, he was the German minister in Budapest. From 1925 to 1936, he was the German ambassador in Madrid. In January 1926 he was involved in efforts to circumvent the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles by having the Deutsches Bank make a five million Reichsmark loan via the Banco Aleman Transatlantico (which it owned) to the Spanish industrialist Horacio Echevarrieta, in exchange for which Echevarrieta opened up a torpedo factory for the Reichsmarine in Bilbao.