of the war. As the Ottoman empire today would be considered a third world country with almost no modern industry, the Ottoman government was entirely dependent upon weapons from Germany to fight World War I, giving the Reich a powerful form of leverage to apply against the Ottomans on behalf of the Armenians if only the political will in Berlin had been present. In a 2015 speech, the German president Joachim Gauck apologized for his country's inaction, stating that those diplomats who protested against the Armenian genocide were "ignored" by the leadership of , who valued good relations with the Ottoman empire more than they did the lives of the Armenians. Post-imperial period In 1919, the Foreign Office was reorganised as the and a modern structure was established. It was now under the authority of a foreign minister, though still called Amt for traditional reasons. In 1922, the Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was assassinated because he was a Jew. The most notable head of the Foreign Office during the Weimar Republic was Gustav Stresemann, foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, who strived for a reconciliation with the French Third Republic, which earned him—together with Aristide Briand—the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize. In an important sign of changed emphasis within the , in July 1930 , the State Secretary (the number #2 man in the ) and Stresemann's right-hand man was fired and replaced with the "crudely nationalist" Prince (who is not to be confused with his uncle, Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow). The replacement of Schubert with Bülow marked the ascendency of the more nationalistic fraction within the who favored a more confrontational foreign policy with regards to France. In May 1932 Baron Konstantin von Neurath was appointed foreign minister in the "Cabinet of the President's Friends" headed by Franz von Papen. Neurath continued on as Foreign Minister under the governments of General Kurt von Schleicher and Adolf Hitler. During the Nazi period, Neurath found himself exposed to increasing competition from Nazi politicians like Alfred Rosenberg and Joachim von Ribbentrop. In February 1938, Hitler fired Neurath and replaced him with Ribbentrop. Nazi Germany In 1933, the vast majority of the diplomats serving in the came from upper-class families with a disproportionate number coming from the aristocracy. The overrepresentation of aristocrats together with its overwhelming upper-class character gave the an elitist cachet, and made the into one of the most prestigious institutions in