International Military Tribunal - The Nuremberg Trials - Complete Tribunal Proceedings (V. 6)

“The Deputy of the Reich Chancellor and Reich Commissioner for Prussia stated that it is of decisive importance to coordinate into the new state the masses standing behind the parties. The question of the incorporation of political Catholicism into the new state is of particular importance.”

That was a statement made by Von Papen at the meeting at which the Enabling Act was discussed prior to Hitler’s speech on the Enabling Act in which he gave his assurance to the Church.

On the 20th of July 1933 Papen signed the Reich Concordat negotiated by him with the Vatican. The Tribunal has already taken judicial notice of this as Document 3280(a)-PS. The signing of the Concordat, like Hitler’s Papen-inspired speech on the Enabling Act, was only an interlude in the church policy of the Nazi conspirators. Their policy of assurances was followed by a long series of violations which eventually resulted in Papal denunciation in the Encyclical “Mit brennender Sorge,” which is 3476-PS, Exhibit USA-567.

Papen maintains that his actions regarding the Church were sincere, and he has asserted during interrogations that it was Hitler who sabotaged the Concordat. If Von Papen really believed in the very solemn undertakings given by him on behalf of the Reich to the Vatican, I submit it is strange that he, himself a Catholic, should have continued to serve Hitler after all those violations and even after the Papal Encyclical itself. I will go further. I will say that Papen was himself involved in what was virtually, if not technically, a violation of the Concordat. The Tribunal will recollect the allocution of the Pope, dated the 2d of June 1945, which is Document 3268-PS, Exhibit USA-356, from which on Page 1647 (Volume IV, Page 64) of the transcript Colonel Storey read the Pope’s own summary of the Nazis’ bitter struggle against the Church. The very first item the Pope mentioned is the dissolution of Catholic organizations and if the Tribunal will look at Document 3376-PS on Page 56 of the English document book, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-244 and which is an extract from Das Archiv, they will see that in September 1934 Von Papen ordered—and I say “ordered” advisedly—the dissolution of the Union of Catholic Germans, of which he was at the time the leader. The text of Das Archiv reads as follows:

“The Reich Directorate of the Party announced the self-dissolution of the Union of Catholic Germans.

“Since the Reich Directorate of the Party, through its Department for Cultural Peace, administers directly and to an increasing extent all cultural problems including those concerning the relations of State and churches, the tasks at first delegated to the Union of Catholic Germans are now included in those of the Reich Directorate of the Party in the interest of a still closer co-ordination.

“Former Vice Chancellor Von Papen, up to now the leader of the Union of Catholic Germans, declared about the dissolution of this organization that it was done upon his suggestion, since the attitude of the National Socialist State toward the Christian and Catholic Church had been explained often and unequivocally by the Führer and Chancellor himself.”

I said that Von Papen “ordered” the dissolutions, although the announcement said it was self-dissolution on his suggestion; but I submit that such a suggestion from one in Papen’s position was equivalent to an order, since by that date it was common knowledge that the Nazis were dropping all pretense that rival organizations might be permitted to exist.

After 9 months’ service under Hitler, spent in consolidating the Nazi control, Von Papen was evidently well content with his choice. I refer to Document 3375-PS, Page 54 of the English document book, which I put in as Exhibit GB-245. On the 2d of November 1933, speaking at Essen from the same platform as Hitler and Gauleiter Terboven, in the course of the campaign for the Reichstag election and the referendum concerning Germany’s leaving the League of Nations, Von Papen declared:

“Ever since Providence called upon me to become the pioneer of national resurrection and the rebirth of our homeland, I have tried to support with all my strength the work of the National Socialist movement and its Führer; and just as I at the time of taking over the Chancellorship”—that was in 1932—“advocated paving the way to power for the young fighting liberation movement, just as I on January 30 was destined by a gracious fate to put the hands of our Chancellor and Führer into the hand of our beloved Field Marshal, so do I today again feel the obligation to say to the German people and all those who have kept confidence in me:

“The good Lord has blessed Germany by giving her in times of deep distress a leader who will lead her through all distresses and weaknesses, through all crises and moments of danger, with the sure instinct of the statesman into a happy future.”

And then the last sentence of the whole text on Page 55:

“Let us, in this hour, say to the Führer of the new Germany that we believe in him and his work.”

By this time the Cabinet, of which Von Papen was a member and to which he had given all his strength, had abolished the civil liberties, had sanctioned political murder committed in aid of Nazism’s seizure of power, had destroyed all rival political parties, had enacted the basic laws for abolition of the political influence of the federal states, had provided the legislative basis for purging the civil service and judiciary of anti-Nazi elements, and had embarked upon a State policy of persecution of the Jews.

Papen’s words are words of hollow mockery: “The good Lord has blessed Germany . . . .”

The third allegation against the Defendant Papen is that he promoted preparations for war. Knowing as he did the basic program of the Nazi Party, it is inconceivable that as Vice Chancellor for a year and a half he could have been dissociated from the conspirators’ warlike preparations; he, of whom Hitler wrote to Hindenburg on the 10th of April 1933 that, “His collaboration in the Reich Cabinet, to which he is now lending all his energy, is infinitely valuable.”

The fourth allegation against Papen is that he participated in the political planning and preparations for wars of aggression and wars in violation of international treaties. In Papen’s case this allegation is really the story of the Anschluss. His part in that was a preparation for wars of aggression in two senses: First, that the Anschluss was the necessary preliminary step to all the subsequent armed aggressions; second, that, even if it can be contended that the Anschluss was in fact achieved without aggression, it was planned in such a way that it would have been achieved by aggression if that had been necessary.

I need do no more than summarize Papen’s Austrian activities since the whole story of the Anschluss has been described to the Tribunal already, though with the Tribunal’s permission I would like to read again two short passages of a particularly personal nature regarding Papen. But before I deal with Papen’s activities in Austria there is one matter that I feel I ought not to omit to mention to the Tribunal.

On the 18th of June 1934 Papen made his remarkable speech at Marburg University. I do not propose to put it in evidence, nor is it in the document book, because it is a matter of history and in what I say I do not intend to commit myself in regard to the motives and consequences of his speech which are not free from mystery; but I will say this: That as far as concerns the subject matter of Papen’s Marburg speech, it was an outspoken criticism of the Nazis. One must imagine that the Nazis were furiously angry; and although he escaped death in the Blood Purge 12 days later, he was put under arrest for 3 days. Whether this arrest was originally intended to end in execution or whether it was to protect him from the purge as one too valuable to be lost, I do not now inquire. After his release from arrest he not unnaturally resigned the Vice Chancellorship. Now the question that arises—and this is why I mention the matter at this point—is why, after these barbaric events, did he ever go back into the service of the Nazis again? What an opportunity missed! If he had stopped then he might have saved the world much suffering. Suppose that Hitler’s own Vice Chancellor, just released from arrest, had defied the Nazis and told the world the truth. There might never have been a reoccupation of the Rhineland; there might never have been a war. But I must not speculate. The lamentable fact is that he slipped back, he succumbed again to the fascination of Hitler.