were spent opposing German bid for "world power status", he always feared the possibility of a colonial conflict between Germany and Britain. On 7 June 1935, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's ambassador-at-large, had a lunch with Rothermere in London and complained about a speech he had given in the House of Lords calling for more spending on the RAF. Brooks who was present at the meeting as part of his duties as Rothermere's biographer wrote in his diary: "To this, Lord Rothermere replied that the speech was not directed against Germany. It's one and only purpose had been to awaken the people of Great Britain to the dangers of air warfare. No real friendship, said Lord Rothermere, was possible between a heavily armed nation and a nation relatively unarmed. To this, von Ribbentrop replied by saying that nothing would give Germany greater satisfaction than a heavily armed Britain. For Britain he declared Germany had nothing, but friendliness".. Amateur diplomat The break with the BUF did not change Rothermere's views of Nazi Germany. The Rothermere newspapers were the only mainstream British newspapers to advocate an alliance with Germany against the Soviet Union. The British historian Franklin Reid Gannon wrote that Rothermere was "was very near to being unbalanced" in his thinking with regards to the Soviet Union. Rothermere managed to convince himself that there was a real possibility of the Soviet Union invading and subjecting Britain. Despite having sharply differing views of the Third Reich, Rothermere allowed Churchill to write articles in the Daily Mail criticising the National Government for insufficient spending on the Royal Air Force with a special focus on the need to build more bombers. Both Rothermere and Churchill had an unlimited faith in the power of strategical bombing to win wars, which led both to argue that Bomber Command have the pride of place in regard to rearmament spending. Through Churchill was paid well for his articles, in a letter to his wife in August 1934, he wrote he was "disgusted" by the pro-Nazi tone of the Daily Mail, writing Rothermere wanted the Unitd Kingdom to "be strongly armed and frightfully obsequious at the same...it was a more practical attitude than our socialist politicians. They wish us to remain disarmed and exceedingly abusive". In December 1934, Rothermere visited Berlin as the guest of his friend Joachim von Ribbentrop. During his visit, Rothermere was publicly thanked in a speech