Franz von Papen



Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen (29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German nobleman, Catholic politician, General Staff officer, and diplomat, who served as Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler) in 1932. The central role that Papen played in Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 was reflected by Papen's indictment at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, though he was acquitted on formal reasons, the tribunal deciding that his "political immoralities" were not under its jurisdiction.

1930s

 * You are mistaken. We've hired him.
 * Response to a conservative who told Papen that he was placing himself in Hitler's hands by supporting him being appointed Chancellor (late January 1933), quoted in Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (2001), p. 421


 * We must no longer have a pacific conception of peace. In the Middle Ages it was otherwise. The existence of the individual had no exaggerated importance. Pacifist literature depicts death on the field of battle as an unnatural death because it does not understand the ancient Germanic horror of death on a bed, and arteriosclerosis appears to it more virile than a bullet. Pacifists dwell on the horrors of the war dead as if a peace corpse were more aesthetic. The representatives of the national revolution are men and soldiers who are physically and morally warriors.
 * Speech to the Stalhelm in Münster (13 May 1933), quoted in Frederick Schuman, Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship (London: Hale, 1936), pp. 345-346


 * The events of the past one and one-half years have gripped the whole German people and affected them deeply. It seems almost like a dream that out of the valley of misery, hopelessness, hate, and fragmentation we have found our way back to a German national community. The horrendous tensions in which we have lived since the August days of 1914 have dissolved, and out of this discord, the German soul has emerged once again, before which the glorious and yet so painful history of our people pass in review, from the sagas of the German heroes to the trenches of Verdun, and even to the street fights of our time.
 * Speech in Marburg (17 June 1934), as quoted in The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts. p. 170. Editors Roderick Stackelberg, Sally A. Winkle. Editor Routledge, 2013 ISBN 1134596936.


 * Allow me to say how manly and humanly great of you I think this is. Your courageous and firm intervention have met with nothing but recognition throughout the entire world. I congratulate you for all you have given anew to the German nation by crushing the intended second revolution.
 * Letter sent to Adolf Hitler praising his firm action against the Sturm Abteilung on the Night of the Long Knives (12 July 1934). Quoted in "Nazi conspiracy and aggression" - Page 940 - 1946.

1940s

 * But Hitler didn't strive for the annihilation of the Jews - he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning that Jewish influence was too great, that of all the lawyers in Berlin, eighty percent were Jewish. Hitler thought that a small percentage of the people, the Jews, should not be allowed to control the theater, cinema, radio, et cetera.
 * To Leon Goldensohn (30 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.


 * Himmler hated the church. He and Bormann were the two people who influenced Hitler most. When I spoke to Hitler in the beginning he agreed with me and said that no state could be governed without religion. In Mein Kampf he said that a man was a fool if he destroyed the religion of the people. Hitler also made the statement that the political reform should not be a religious reform.
 * To Leon Goldensohn (30 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

Undated

 * In the interest of the entire nation we decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves, as a party or a movement, over and above the whole nation.
 * Quoted in "Nazi conspiracy and aggression, Vol. 6" - Page 3 - 1946


 * The hope in the hearts of millions of national socialists can be fulfilled only by an authoritarian government.
 * Quoted in "Nazi conspiracy and aggression, Vol. 2" - Page 919 - 1946.


 * Names and individuals are unimportant when Germany's final fate is at stake.
 * Quoted in "Nazi conspiracy and aggression, Vol. 2" - Page 919 - 1946.


 * It is to be hoped that the leaders of this movement will place the nation above the party.
 * Quoted in "Nazi conspiracy and aggression, Vol. 2" - Page 918 - 1946.

Quotes about Papen

 * Heinrich Bruning of the Catholic Centre Party offered government by presidential decree and dreamt vaguely of restoring the monarchy. But his deflationary policies only served to deepen the slump. Franz von Papen, another Catholic, betrayed his party for the sake of becoming Chancellor, in the vain belief that he could do better than Bruning. But neither he nor his successor General Kurt von Schleicher - whom Papen had picked as his own Defence Minister - had anything resembling popular support and, while the Reichstag had been temporarily sidelined by Bruning, it proved impossible to rule indefinitely without some kind of parliamentary majority. Elections in July 1932 saw the Nazi vote soar above 37 per cent. True, it fell back to 33 per cent when new elections were held in November, not least because signs of economic recovery were at last manifesting themselves, but the party's entitlement to form a government was by now hard to dispute since it was still easily the biggest grouping in the Reichstag. Ever the schemer, Papen now persuaded Hindenburg to dump Schleicher and, against the President's better judgement, to appoint Hitler to lead a coalition with the conservative German Nationalist Party - the only party except for the Communists to gain significant numbers of new votes in the November election. Hitler duly became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Thus did German democracy wreak its own destruction. Given the paralysing enmity between the Social Democrats and the Communists, the only way to avoid the Third Reich would have been if Hindenburg himself had shut down the Reichstag and banned the Nazis, an option he does not seem to have contemplated.
 * Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 237-238


 * He has the distinction of not being taken at all seriously either by his friends or his enemies. His face bears the mark of an ineradicable frivolity of which he has never been able to rid himself. As for the rest, he is not a personality of the first rank. ... He is regarded as superficial, mischief-making, deceitful, ambitious, vain, crafty, given to intrigue. One quality he clearly possesses: cheek, audacity, an amiable audacity of which he seems unaware. He is one of those persons who shouldn't be dared to undertake a dangerous enterprise because they accept all dares, take all bets. If he succeeds, he bursts with pleasure; if he fails, he exits with a pirouette.
 * André François-Poncet, Souvenirs d'une ambassade à Berlin (1946), pp. 42f, quoted in Henry Ashby Turner, Jr, Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (1996), p. 40


 * Von Papen, pious agent of an infidel regime, held the stirrup while Hitler vaulted into the saddle, lubricated the Austrian annexation and devoted his diplomatic cunning to the service of Nazi objectives abroad.
 * Robert H. Jackson


 * Franz von Papen – from a Westphalian aristocratic family, married to the daughter of a Saarland industrialist, well connected to industrial leaders, landowners, and Reichswehr officers – a somewhat lightweight, dilettante politician, but one who epitomized the ingrained conservatism, reactionary tendencies, and desire for a return to ‘traditional’ authoritarianism of the German upper class.
 * Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (2001), p. 359