Ribbentrop’s Watch: The True Story of a Nazi Artefact by Cyril Marlen is a haunting investigation into how a single object can reflect the shadows of an entire regime. Part biography, part historical mystery, and part moral reckoning, this gripping narrative follows the journey of a seemingly ordinary wristwatch once worn by Joachim von Ribbentrop—Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister and one of the most loyal figures in Hitler’s inner circle.

What makes this object extraordinary is not its design or rarity, but the role it played as a silent witness to some of the darkest decisions of the 20th century. Meticulously researched and powerfully written, the book begins with Ribbentrop’s unlikely rise—from wine merchant to architect of diplomatic pacts that fuelled Hitler’s war machine. Along the way, the listener encounters the chilling symbolism of status objects worn by members of the Third Reich, where a watch could signify both personal ambition and complicity in global catastrophe.

The story then moves beyond the war—into the chaos of defeat and the disbanding of Hitler’s regime. As Allied soldiers looted, documented, and repatriated stolen goods, the watch disappeared. Decades later, it resurfaced in the hands of a collector, sparking fierce debate among historians, survivors, and moral philosophers. Was it a mere souvenir, a war trophy, a historical artefact—or something more dangerous?

Cyril Marlen traces the watch’s path through time with forensic precision, interviewing everyone from Holocaust educators and museum curators to auction house specialists and descendants of World War II veterans. Each chapter uncovers a new layer of meaning: the ethics of collecting items linked to atrocities, the uneasy market for Nazi memorabilia, and the moral weight that physical objects can carry long after their owners are gone.