Memoirs of Franz von Papen

Franz von Papen, Brian Connell

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781786257406
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The memoirs of Franz von Papen offer a fascinating view of the German Hierarchy from the reign of the last Kaiser to the reign of terror of Adolf Hitler. Although there is an element of self-justification, Conservative von Papen lays bare the machinations of the German politicians that led to Hitler to supreme power in Germany.Born into a wealthy, but not aristocratic, family in 1879 von Papen he started his career in the Imperial German Army rising to the General Staff and a diplomatic posting in America by 1914. He was involved in some very murky dealings as an intriguer behind the scenes in America, Canada before he was sent back to Germany, setting a precedent for later backroom dealings.After the close of the First World War he entered politics, as a Conservative Monarchist member of the Centre party, in the political chaos of the period he advanced swiftly owing to shrewd interparty dealings. He was eventually appointed Chancellor in 1932 mainly due to political friendships rather than his own political acumen; beset by huge political problems he sought to appease the vocal right wing parties. Without serious support in the Reichstag, von Papen governed by decree undermining Democracy, starting a process mastered later by Hitler himself. Outmaneuvered by Hitler and the Nazis he was forced from power, and by his foolish machinations set Hitler set up as Chancellor. Cast out of power von Papen was a broken reed, but as a still high-ranking observer to the Second World his memoirs are of vital importance in understanding Hitler's war-mongering advances into Austria, Poland and France. He was captured by U.S. forces in 1945, he was put on trial for war crimes but was acquitted.

PART ONE—FROM MONARCHY TO REPUBLIC

CHAPTER I—EARLY YEARS

Difficulties of autobiography—The salters of Werl—Cadet, court page and officer—Steeplechasing—A visit to the Shires—Marriage—The General Staff—A surprise appointment—Interview with the Kaiser

MEMOIRS are something of a drug on the market these days. The apocalyptic period through which we have just passed has led to a spate of attempts by all kinds of people to trace some of its causes and effects, and to place their own activities against the background of recent history. I do not wish to be ranged with those who have sought only to defend their mistakes and failures.

Historical developments are the product of the most diverse forces, both good and evil, within the various nations. I have written this story of a life between two eras because Germany’s rôle in the events of these fifty years can only be understood in the context of historical continuity, a factor of which many of my compatriots are ignorant, and which a large number of contemporaries abroad do not recognize. I think I am entitled to ask that my own activities should be judged against this background.

My own life seems to a very large extent to have been written for me, and it may well take greater efforts than mine to put matters in a clear perspective. A number of biographies, and innumerable stories put out in the heat of the propaganda battles of two world wars, have pictured me in every conceivable guise. I have been represented as a master spy and mystery man, a political intriguer and plotter, and a two-faced diplomat. I have been called a stupid muddler and a naïve gentleman rider, incapable of grasping the true implications of a political situation. I am written off as a black-hearted reactionary who deliberately plotted Hitler’s rise to power and supported the Nazi régime with all the influence at his command. I have been arraigned as the architect of the rape of Austria, and the exponent of Hitler’s aggressive policy when I was German Ambassador in Turkey during the Second World War.

My personal vicissitudes have, indeed, been widely varied, and when I think of some of the paradoxes that have beset my life, I realize what a splendid subject I must have been for the propaganda machines. I have run the whole gamut, from being Chancellor of my country to appearing as a war criminal in the Nuremberg dock on a capital charge. I served my country for almost fifty years and have spent half the time since the Second World War in gaol. I stand accused as a supporter of Hitler, yet his Gestapo always had me on their liquidation list and assassinated several of my closest collaborators. I spent the better half of my life as a soldier, protected on many battlefields by some benevolent angel, only to escape death by a hair’s breadth at the hands of a hired assassin with a Russian bomb.

Paradox could be carried even further. As a convinced monarchist I was called upon to serve a republic. By tradition a man of conservative inclinations, I was branded as a lackey of Hitler and a sympathizer with his totalitarian ideas. By upbringing and experience a supporter of true social reform, I acquired the reputation of being an enemy of the working classes. By family connection and conviction an outspoken protagonist of Franco-German rapprochement, I have seen both countries beat each other to a standstill in two world wars. Seeking only a peaceful solution of the German-Austrian problem—and thereby incurring the bitter hatred of the Austrian Nazis—I stand accused of organizing Hitler’s Anschluss. After fighting all my life for a strong position for Germany in Central Europe, I have had to watch half my country engulfed by the despotism of the East. Although an ardent Catholic, I came to be regarded as the servant of one of the most godless governments in modern times. I am under no illusion as to the reputation I enjoy abroad.

Now that I have, for the first time in my life, enough leisure to give my own account of all these events, I find myself almost the sole survivor of my past associates. It would be hard to devise conditions more difficult and more discouraging for such work. The personal files and public archives to which a person in my position would normally have had access, have been denied to me. Most of my own papers have been seized by one or other of the Allied powers, or destroyed in the final stages of the war. The result is that I have often had to rely on memory, on newspaper cuttings or the kindness of friends to refresh my recollections and bring them into focus.

Let me emphasize that this book is not written in self-justification. I made many mistakes and errors of judgment. But I owe it to my family to see some of the more outrageous misrepresentations corrected. The facts, considered dispassionately, provide an entirely different picture. This, however, is not my main concern. In the twilight of a life that has spanned three generations, I am much more concerned with obtaining greater understanding of Germany’s rôle in the events of that period.

Not many people seem to realize the extent to which Hitler was a corollary of the punitive clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. It took decades even for historians to appreciate that the thesis of Germany’s exclusive guilt for the First World War simply did not bear objective scrutiny. Yet for years we laboured in a condition of moral repression amid the economic morass imposed on us by reparations. Better pens than mine have described the physical misery of mass unemployment, the proletarianization of our middle classes after the inflation and the collapse of moral and Christian values in the ‘twenties. Hitler and his movement were in essence a reaction against hopelessness, and for that sense of hopelessness the victorious powers must bear their full share of responsibility.

Hitler became Chancellor with the support of almost 40 per cent of the German electorate. It is not enough to pretend that his rise to power was the result of the intrigues of a few ‘industrialists, militarists and reactionaries’, as the Nuremberg indictment chose to put it. The German political parties of the Weimar period, from right to left, must, without exception, accept their share of responsibility. Instead of blaming others we should rather recognize our own mistakes in order to avoid a repetition of them.

We are all of us products of our environment. If I am to set my own activities against the background of the historical events in which I became increasingly involved, perhaps I may be allowed to give a short account of my early years. They probably differ little from the reminiscences of any other young man of my upbringing, but as I can at least claim to have been consistent in my conservative opinions throughout life, no harm can be done in tracing their beginnings in a world that has vanished.

My family came from Werl, near Soest, in the western German province of Westphalia. We belonged for centuries to a small group of hereditary salters, with a right to work the local brine wells. Salt was an important commodity in medieval times and these families of free salters appear in chronicles of the eighth century. We were first mentioned by name in a decree of Count Gottfried III of Arnsberg in 1262, and in 1298 a certain Albert Pape was confirmed in what must have been long-standing rights in the brine wells by the city of Werl. They were certainly being worked at the time of Charlemagne, and the field on our property in which we used to play as children formed part of what is called the Regedem—the regum domus, over which King Henry the Falconer used to hunt in the tenth century.

Although earlier records are fragmentary, we can trace our descent in a direct line from Wilhelm von Papen, who died in 1494 as mayor of Werl and owner of the nearby Koeningen estate. The manor house remained in our unbroken possession, and my elder brother was the last owner of the entail. The local parish church, built in 1163, at the time of Henry the Lion, gives eloquent testimony to the services of my family to the community through the ages. Our rights and duties were as jealously guarded as they were faithfully carried out, and in 1900 I myself, in a chapel of the little chinch, took a formal oath to uphold our statutes. They had become largely a matter of tradition by then, the brine wells having ceased to flow after the industrial revolution, when the underground mine shafts diverted their course.

These old tales and traditions formed the background of my upbringing. Members of my family had served the Holy Roman Empire and the Archbishopric of Cologne throughout the centuries. When the old empire broke up under the attacks of Napoleon, the family maintained its allegiance to the Emperor in Vienna, and when I was called, in my turn, to make some contribution to the history of the German race as Ambassador to Austria in 1934, I felt that I was maintaining an old tradition. Our connection with Prussia was of a much later date. My father, who was born in 1839, took part in the wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870, which led to the unification of the German States as part of Bismarck’s policy.

He was an officer in the Düsseldorf Uhlan regiment, but by the time I was born he had retired to the management of his modest estate. I was sent to the local village school, and spent several years in close contact with the countryside and its simple but splendid people. There was no hint of class consciousness. My first school friend was the son of a basket weaver. When I was asked at an early age what I wanted to do in life, I seem to have had no other thought than that of becoming a soldier; not, as I suppose many of my readers will hastily conclude, because I was brought up as a stiff-necked Prussian, but because I was passionately fond of horses and have remained so all my life. There was in fact little Prussian tradition in our family. My mother was a Rhinelander and many of our relations lived in Southern Germany. The estate, moreover, was entailed to my elder brother, and this meant I would have to become a civil servant, a soldier, or follow one of the professions in order to earn my living. My mother thought little of my choice, but I was insistent, and in April 1891 was accepted as a cadet.

I had little idea what a spartan profession I had chosen. We slept on camp beds, the great, vaulted rooms of the old castle of Bensberg were unheated even in the depths of winter, and the food consisted mostly of soup and bread. It was a harsh introduction to life for a boy of eleven, but it seemed to do me little harm. I grew up healthy and happy, and learned habits of hard work and personal discipline which I have kept all my life.

An elaborate misconception has grown up in the outside world of the imperialist and aggressive tendencies fostered in the German Army. I can only say I have no recollection of any such thing. Our training and education must have been much the same as that of similar establishments in other countries; our only concern was to protect the newly found unity of Germany from foreign attack. Aggressive militarism is one of those convenient generalizations that bear little relation to the true facts. When I was moved to Berlin for the last two years of my training, the cadet corps took part twice a year in the parade of the guard regiments before the Emperor. It was a thrilling experience to see the tattered standards of these famous regiments paraded before their Commander-in-Chief, but I do not believe these sentiments were any different from those of any other country with strong regimental traditions.

In the spring of 1897 I was among the ninety out of six hundred new ensigns to pass with sufficiently high marks to remain in the Selekta class. This involved submitting to the rigid discipline for a further year as an under-officer in the cadet corps, but it also provided an opportunity of entering the Imperial corps of pages, and meant that we would get our commissions six months earlier than our less successful colleagues. The pages were selected by court officials from photographs and my inclusion amongst the fortunate few brought me into intimate contact with the royal household. In our eighteenth-century uniforms we attended the Emperor on state occasions—the opening of the Reichstag or the Prussian Landtag,{2} royal levées and investitures. Here and at the court balls I obtained a lasting impression of the pomp and circumstance of monarchy. We came face to face with the great figures of the Kaiserreich—soldiers, politicians, such as Heydebrandt, the leader of the Conservatives and ‘uncrowned king of Prussia,’ Bennigsen, the head of the Liberals, and the chief of the powerful Zentrum party. Little did I think that one day I would be following in their footsteps.

When I look back on these youthful impressions I am thankful to have seen the German Empire in all its power and majesty. The House of Hohenzollern was forced to give way to a republic which at best had only uncertain roots, and whose processes were never fully understood. The German nation, brought up in monarchist traditions of authority, obedience and a sense of duty, was to learn how scandalously these characteristics could be misused by unscrupulous leaders. If we had been allowed to retain the institution of the crown there would never have been a Hitler. If President Wilson and his advisers had known Europe better and had had a greater appreciation of the historical processes that had formed it, we might have been given an opportunity to develop our own form of modem democracy, instead of having forced on us a parliamentary system which, by 1932, had reduced itself to absurdity.

In Berlin’s eastern sector the old royal palace has now been demolished, the site marked only by the red flag of Asiatic slavery.

I cannot believe that this is an irrevocable decision of history. Central Europe will have to rise again as a bulwark of Western thought against the advance of totalitarian ideas. But this can only occur if Germany’s political rebirth is based on the principle of authority under God. That was the principle I saw put into practice in the grand days of the monarchy at the turn of the century.

When I had completed my officers’ course, I reported as a second lieutenant in my father’s old Westphalian 5th Uhlan regiment. Düsseldorf was in those days a considerable cultural metropolis. The regiment’s reserve of officers included not only such names as Haniel, Poensgen, Carp, Heye and Trinkhaus—sons of the rich industrial families—but also representatives of the arts, such as Oeder, Eckenbrecher, Roeber and Matthes. The famous Malkasten, which the artists used as a sort of club, had seen the work of Peter Cornelius, Wilhelm von Schadow, Arnold Boecklin, and many others. Goethe had been there as a guest. It was one of the most important centres of the romantic tradition and I remember years later, when I was in Washington, I used to tease some of my American friends about an artist named Emanuel Leutze, one of the founders of the Malkasten. When they said they had never heard of him, it was easy to win a small bet by offering to prove that they knew one of his pictures well. He was, in fact, the man who painted the famous scene of Washington Crossing the Delaware, that hangs in the foyer of the White House and reproductions of which hang in countless American homes.

The easy, cultured existence of such people was something of a revelation to an unsophisticated eighteen-year-old lieutenant. One of my friends, Count Erich Hopffgarten, kept a small stable of hunters and racehorses, and it was not long before I was able to bring home my first steeplechase cup. I suppose our carefree existence would be frowned upon in these more austere days. Parties often went on all night and many times I found myself exercising horses at dawn, having had no sleep at all. Nevertheless, our regimental duties still had to be carried out, and the personal discipline involved in such endless activity was by no means a bad training for the more onerous duties of life.

I became a not unsuccessful gentleman rider, although my normal weight in those days was near eleven stone and I often had to bant to make the weight. I had very little money, and although I was able to buy and sell an occasional selling plater, I was dependent on friends for my good mounts. When I became Chancellor thirty years later, my critics were quick to pounce on my years as a gentleman rider as proof that I was totally unsuited to occupy such a post of state. I can only say that there are few better ways of developing character. Steeplechasing requires considerable self-discipline, endurance and powers of decision, as well as a fine contempt for broken bones—by no means a bad training for a politician.

I spent the years 1902-4 in the cavalry school at Hanover. It was there that I first came across Whyte-Melville’s wonderful books on riding in England, particularly his Market Harborough, and I made up my mind to see something of hunting in the Shires. One of my Düsseldorf friends was August Neven du Mont, a reserve officer of the regiment, who had gone to five in Bexhill-on-Sea. He was a great friend of Whistler’s and was himself quite well known as an English landscape painter. Another friend, named Campbell, who lived at Windsor, was an enthusiastic horseman, and had taken part, as a volunteer officer in the 7th Regiment of Cuirassiers, in the cavalry charge at Mars-la-Tour in the campaign of 1870. I obtained leave from the regiment and set off for England with a fellow officer named Klenze. In those days no passports were necessary: one simply bought one’s ticket and went wherever one wanted to go.

The British Empire at the turn of the century was then at the height of its glory, and I shall never forget the first impact of London. Armed with a letter of introduction from Campbell, we both went to see Mr. Hames, a gentleman horse-dealer in Leicester. I remember him as a man of few words. Giving us a searching look, he asked: ‘Are you good horsemen?’ We replied somewhat diffidently, ‘We hope so’, and he agreed to send us two horses for the Belvoir meet the next day. We expected to be palmed off with a couple of hacks in order to see how we shaped, and our surprise can be imagined when our mounts turned out to be two superb thoroughbreds. We must have performed well enough to gain his confidence, because never in my life have I ridden better horses than during these weeks with the Shire packs—the Queen’s, Quorn, Belvoir, Pytchley and Mr. Fernie’s. And all for four guineas a day!

After some weeks in Market Harborough we went to stay with Neven du Mont, who had taken over Lord De La Warr’s manor house and was Master of the East Sussex Foxhounds. Things were indeed different in those days, when such a position could be held by a German. The riding bore no comparison with that in the Shires, but the social life was much more pleasant, and I had many dinners in London at the Junior United Services Club and the Cavalry Club.

I paid another short visit to England in November, 1913, just before I left Germany for Washington. This time I had been asked by the Kaiser’s Master of the Horse, Count Westphalen, to accompany him in search of some stud horses. We were invited to ride with Lord Annaly’s pack and I remember being impressed by a wonderful grey. When we asked its owner whethe...