The rest of the document I need not read. It concerns his appointments to Vienna and Ankara, which are matters of history. He was appointed Minister to Vienna on the 26th of July 1934, and recalled on the 4th of February 1938, and he was Ambassador in Ankara from April 1939 until August 1944.
The first allegation against the Defendant Von Papen is that he used his personal influence to promote the accession of the Nazi conspirators to power. From the outset Von Papen was well aware of the Nazi program and Nazi methods. There can be no question of his having encouraged the Nazis through ignorance of these facts. The official NSDAP program was open and notorious; it had been published in Mein Kampf for many years; it had been published and republished in the Yearbook of the NSDAP and elsewhere. The Nazis made no secret of their intention to make it a fundamental law of the State. This has been dealt with in full at an earlier stage of the Trial.
During 1932 Von Papen as Reich Chancellor was in a particularly good position to understand the Nazi purpose and methods; and in fact, he publicly acknowledged the Nazi menace. Take, for instance, his Münster speech on the 28th of August 1932. This is Document 3314-PS, on Page 49 of the English document book, and I now put it in as Exhibit GB-234, and I quote two extracts at the top of the page:
“The licentiousness emanating from the appeal of the leader of the National Socialist movement does not comply very well with his claims to governmental power. . . . I do not concede him the right to regard only the minority following his banner as the German nation and to treat all other fellow countrymen as free game.”
Take also his Munich speech of the 13th of October 1932. That is on Page 50 of the English document book, Document Number 3317-PS, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-235, and I will simply read the last extract on the page:
“In the interest of the entire nation, we decline the claim to power by parties which want to bind their followers body and soul and which want to identify their party or movement with the German nation.”
I do not rely on these random extracts to show anything more than that he had, in 1932, clearly addressed his mind to the inherent lawlessness of the Nazi philosophy. Nevertheless, in his letter to Hitler of the 13 of November 1932, which I shall quote more fully later, he wrote of the Nazi movement as, I quote:
“. . . so great a national movement, the merits of which for people and country I have always recognized in spite of necessary criticisms . . . .”
So variable and so seemingly contradictory were Von Papen’s acts and utterances regarding the Nazis that it is not possible to present the picture of Papen’s part in this infamous enterprise unless one first reviews the steps by which he entered upon it. It then becomes clear that he threw himself, if not wholeheartedly, yet with cool and deliberate calculation, into the Nazi conspiracy.
I shall enumerate some of the principal steps by which Papen fell in with the Nazi conspiracy.
As a result of his first personal contact with Hitler, Von Papen as Chancellor rescinded, on the 14th of June 1932, the decree passed on the 13th of April 1932 for the dissolution of the Nazi para-military organizations, the SA and the SS. He thereby rendered the greatest possible service to the Nazi Party, inasmuch as it relied upon its para-military organizations to beat the German people into submission. The decree rescinding the dissolution of the SA and the SS is shown in Document D-631, on Page 64 of the document book; and I now put it in as Exhibit GB-236. It is an extract from the Reichsgesetzblatt, which was an omnibus decree. The relevant passage is in Paragraph 20:
“This order comes into operation from the day of announcement. It takes the place of the Decree of the Reich President for the Safeguarding of the State Authority of . . . .”—the date should be the 13th of April 1932.
THE PRESIDENT: Which page of the document book is it?
MAJOR BARRINGTON: I am sorry, My Lord; it is Page 64. And the date shown there should not be the 3rd of May 1932, it should be the 13th of April 1932. That was the decree which had previously dissolved the Nazi para-military organizations under the Government of Chancellor Brüning. At the bottom of the page the Tribunal will see the relevant parts of the decree of the 13th of April reproduced. At the beginning of Paragraph 1 of that decree it said:
“All organizations of a military nature of the German National Socialist Labor Party will be dissolved with immediate effect, particularly the SA and the SS.”
This rescission by Von Papen was done in pursuance of a bargain made with Hitler which is mentioned in a book called Dates from the History of the NSDAP by Dr. Hans Volz, a book published with the authority of the NSDAP. It is already an exhibit, Exhibit USA-592. The extract I want to quote is on Page 59 of the document book, and it is Document Number 3463-PS. I quote an extract from Page 41 of this little book:
“28th of May”—that was in 1932, of course—“In view of the imminent fall of Brüning, at a meeting between the former Deputy of the Prussian Center Party, Franz Von Papen, and the Führer in Berlin (first personal contact in spring 1932); the Führer agrees that a Papen cabinet should be tolerated by the NSDAP, provided that the prohibitions imposed on the SA, uniforms, and demonstrations be lifted and the Reichstag dissolved.”
It is difficult to imagine a less astute opening gambit for a man who was about to become Chancellor than to reinstate this sinister organization which had been suppressed by his predecessor. This action emphasizes the characteristic duplicity and insincerity of his public condemnations of the Nazis which I quoted a few minutes ago.
Eighteen months later he publicly boasted that at the time of taking over the chancellorship he had advocated paving the way to power for what he called the “young fighting liberation movement.” That will be shown in Document 3375-PS, which I shall introduce in a few minutes.
Another important step was when, on the 20th of July 1932, he accomplished his famous coup d’état in Prussia which removed the Braun-Severing Prussian Government and united the ruling power of the Reich and Prussia in his own hands as Reichskommissar for Prussia. This is now a matter of history. It is mentioned in Document D-632, which I now introduce as Exhibit GB-237. It is on Page 65 of the document book. This document is, I think, a semi-official biography in a series of public men.
Papen regarded this step, his coup d’état in Prussia, as a first step in the policy later pursued by Hitler of coordinating the states with the Reich, which will be shown in Document 3357-PS, which I shall come to later.
The next step, if the Tribunal will look at Document D-632, on Page 65 of the document book, the last four or five lines at the bottom of the page:
“The Reichstag elections of the 31st of July, which were the result of Von Papen’s disbandment of the Reichstag on the 4th of June”—which was made in pursuance of the bargain that I mentioned a few minutes ago—“strengthened enormously the NSDAP, so that Von Papen offered to the leader of the now strongest party his participation in the government as Vice Chancellor. Adolf Hitler rejected this offer on the 13th of August.
“The new Reichstag, which assembled on the 30th of August, was disbanded by the 12th of September. The new elections brought about a considerable loss to the NSDAP, but did not strengthen the Government parties, so that Papen’s Government retired on the 17th of November 1932 after unsuccessful negotiations with the Party leaders.”
My Lord, I shall wish to quote a few more extracts from that biography, but as it is a mere catalogue of events, perhaps Your Lordship would allow me to return to it at the appropriate time.
So far as those negotiations mentioned just now in the biography concern Hitler, they involved an exchange of letters in which Von Papen wrote to Hitler on the 13th of November 1932. That letter is Document D-633, on Page 68 of the English document book, and I now put it in as Exhibit GB-238. I propose to read a part of this letter, because it shows the positive efforts made by Papen to ally himself with the Nazis, even in face of further rebuffs from Hitler. I read the third