PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE XXV
Franz von Papen
THE ARISTOCRAT
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk was born into a wealthy family of Westphalian Roman Catholic aristocrats on October 29, 1879. He was sent to a cadet school in Bensberg at the age of eleven in 1891. Four years later, he began training as Herrenreiter (“gentleman rider”) at the Prussian Main Military academy in Lichterfelde. Papen also served for a period as a military attendant in the Kaiser’s Palace and as a second lieutenant in his father’s old unit, the Westphalian Uhlan Regiment Number 5 in Düsseldorf. He later joined the German General Staff as a captain in March of 1913.
An excellent horseman and a man of much charm, Papen cut a dashing figure… and during this time, he befriended Kurt von Schleicher. In addition, Papen family’s had been granted hereditary rights since 1298 to mine brine salt at Werl.
Believing in the superiority of the aristocracy over commoners, Papen became fluent in both French and English and travelled widely all over Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Influenced by the books of General Friedrich von Bernhardi, Papen was a militarist and strong devotee to Kaiser Wilhelm II.
THE AGITATOR
The aristocratic Westphalian entered the diplomatic service in December 1913 as a military attaché to the German ambassador in the United States. In early 1914, he travelled to Mexico (to which he was also accredited) and observed the Mexican Revolution. At one time, when the anti-Huerta Zapatistas were advancing on Mexico City, Papen organized a group of European volunteers to fight for Mexican General Victoriano Huerta. In the spring of 1914, as German military attaché to Mexico, Papen was deeply involved in selling arms to the government of General Huerta, believing he could place Mexico in the German sphere of influence, though the collapse of Huerta’s regime in July 1914 ended such hopes .
Around the same time, Papen personally observed the United States occupation of Veracruz, despite orders from Berlin to stay in Mexico City. During his time in Mexico, Papen acquired the love of international intrigue and adventure that characterized his later diplomatic postings in the United States, Austria, and Turkey. On July 30, 1914, Papen arrived in Washington, D.C. to take up his post as German military attaché to the United States.
During the Great War, Papen tried to buy weapons in the U.S. for his country, but the British blockade made shipping arms to Germany almost impossible. On August 22, 1914, Papen hired American private detective Paul Koeing (based in New York City) to conduct a sabotage and bombing campaign against businesses owned by citizens from the Allied nations. Papen (who was given an unlimited cash fund by Berlin) attempted to block the British, French, and Russian governments from buying war supplies in the United States. He then set up a front company that tried to preclusively purchase every hydraulic press in the U.S. so as to limit artillery shell production by American firms contracted with the Allies. To enable German citizens living in the Americas to go back to the Fatherland, Papen set up an operation in New York to forge passports.
Starting in September 1914, Papen abused (1) his diplomatic immunity as German military attaché and (2) American neutrality by organizing plans for an invasion of Canada, as well as a campaign of sabotage against canals, bridges and railroads. In October 1914, he became involved in the Hindu–German Conspiracy,. Papen contacted anti-British Indian nationalists living in California and arranged for weapons to be handed over to them. In February 1915, Papen organized the Vanceboro international bridge bombing, while his diplomatic immunity protected him from arrest. At the same time, he was involved in plans to restore Huerta to power, arranging for the arming and financing of the planned invasion of Mexico.
Papen’s activities were known to British intelligence, which shared its information with the American government. As a result he was expelled from the United States for complicity in the planning of acts of sabotage. By the end of 1915, Papen was declared persona non grata after his exposure and was promptly recalled to Germany.
Unaffected, Papen continued his involvement with plots in the New World. In February 1916, he contacted the Mexican Colonel Gonzalo Enrile (living in Cuba) in an attempt to arrange German support for Félix Díaz, the would-be strongman of Mexico. Papen also served as an intermediary between the Irish Volunteers and the German government regarding the purchase and delivery of arms to be used against the British during the 1916 Easter Rising, as well as serving as an intermediary with Indian nationalists.
Around the same time, a U.S. federal grand jury issued an indictment against Papen for a plot to blow up Canada’s Welland Canal. Papen remained under indictment until he became Chancellor of Germany in 1932 (at which time the charges were dropped).
THE WARRIOR
As a Roman Catholic, Papen belonged to the Zentrum, the right of center party supported by nearly all German Catholics. However, during the course of the war, the nationalist conservative Papen became estranged from his party. He disapproved of Matthias Erzberger, whose efforts intended to pull the Zentrum to the left. He also opposes Erzberger’s Reichstag Peace Resolution of July 19, 1917 and regarded it as potential treason.
Later in the war, Papen returned to active military service, first on the Western Front. In 1916, he took command of the Second Reserve Battalion of the 93rd Regiment of the Fourth Guards Infantry Division fighting in Flanders. On August 22, 1916, Papen’s battalion took heavy losses while successfully resisting a British attack during the Battle of the Somme. Between November 1916 and February 1917, Papen’s battalion was engaged in almost continuous heavy fighting. He was soon awarded the Iron Cross, First Class.
On April 11, 1917, Papen fought at Vimy Ridge, where his battalion was defeated with heavy losses by the Canadian Corps. After that fight, Papen asked for a transfer to the Middle East (which was later approved).
In June 1917, Papen served as an officer on the General Staff in the Middle East, and later as an officer attached to the Ottoman army in Palestine. During his time in the Ottoman Empire, Papen was in “the know” about the Armenian genocide, which did not appear to have morally troubled him at all either at that time or later in his life. While in Constantinople, Papen became friends with the future Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Between October and December 1917, Papen (now a lieutenant-colonel) took part in the heavy fighting during the Sinai and Palestine campaigns. After the Turks signed an armistice with the Allies on October 30, 1918, the German Asia Corps was ordered home, and Papen was in the mountains at Karapunar when he heard that the fighting had ceased. The new German republic ordered soldier’s councils to be organized in the army, including the Asian corps, which General Otto Liman von Sanders attempted to obey, and which Papen refused to obey! Sanders ordered that Papen be arrested for insubordination, which caused the latter to leave his post without permission. Donned in civilian clothing, Papen fled home to Germany and personally met with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who had the charges dropped.
THE POLITICIAN
After leaving the German Army in the spring of 1919, Papen purchased a country estate (the Haus Merfeld) and lived the life of a “gentleman farmer” in Dülmen. In April 1920, during the Communist uprising in the Ruhr, Papen took command of a Freikorps unit to protect Roman Catholics from the “Red marauders”. Impressed with his leadership of the unit, Papen decided to pursue a career in politics.
In the fall of 1920, the president of the Westphalian Farmer’s Association, Baron Engelbert von Kerkerinck zur Borg, told Papen his association would campaign for him if he ran for the Prussian Landtag. He soon entered the political scene and joined the Centre Party, better known as the Zentrum. The monarchist Papen formed part of the conservative wing of the party that rejected democracy and the Weimar Coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). His politics were much closer to the German National People’s Party than to the Zentrum, but he remained with the latter on the account of his Roman Catholicism and a hope that he could shift his party to the right. Papen was a figure of influence in the Zentrum by the virtue of being the largest shareholder and chief of the editorial board in the party’s newspaper Germania, which was the most prestigious of the Catholic papers in Germany.
Papen was a member of the Prussian Landtag from 1921 to 1928 and from 1930 to 1932, representing a rural, Catholic constituency in Westphalia. He rarely attended the sessions of the Landtag and never spoke at the meetings during his time as a deputy. Papen tried to have his name entered into the Zentrum party list for the Reichstag elections of May 1924, but it was blocked by party leadership.
In February 1925, Papen was one of the six Zentrum deputies in the Landtag who voted with the German National People’s Party and the German People’s Party against the SPD-Zentrum government. He was nearly expelled from the Zentrum for breaking with party discipline in the Landtag. In the 1925 presidential elections, he surprised his party by supporting the right-wing candidate Paul von Hindenburg over Wilhelm Marx. Papen, along with two of his future cabinet ministers, was a member of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s exclusive Berlin Deutscher Herrenklub (German Gentlemen’s Club).
In March 1930, Papen welcomed the coming of presidential government. As the presidential government of chancellor Heinrich Brüning depended upon the Social Democrats in the Reichstag to “tolerate” it by not voting to cancel laws passed under Article 48, Papen grew more critical. In a speech before a group of farmers in October 1931, Papen called for Brüning to disallow the SPD and base his presidential government on “tolerance” from the NSDAP (Nazi Party) instead. He demanded that Brüning transform the “concealed dictatorship” of a presidential government into a dictatorship that would unite all of the German right under its banner. In the March–April 1932 German presidential election, Papen voted for Hindenburg on the grounds he was the best man to unite the right, while in the Prussian Landtag’s election of speaker, he voted for the Nazi Hans Kerrl.
Appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg in June 1932, Papen ruled by presidential decree. He negotiated the end of reparations at the Lausanne Conference and launched the Preußenschlag coup against the Social Democrats in the Free State of Prussia. But Papen failed to secure a base of support in the Reichstag, and it led to his dismissal by Hindenburg. He was replaced by General Kurt von Schleicher.
Determined to return to power, the Westphalian believed that Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler could be controlled once Papen himself was in the government. So, he persuaded Hindenburg into appointing the Austrian ex-corporal as Chancellor with the guarantee that Papen be named Vice-Chancellor. The cabinet itself was not to be ostensibly under Nazi Party domination.
With military dictatorship the only alternative to Nazi rule, Hindenburg consented. Very quickly, Papen and his allies were marginalized by Hitler, and he soon left the government after the Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934 (during which the Nazis killed some of Papen’s confidants). Subsequently, Papen served in the Nazi regime as German ambassador in Vienna from 1934 to 1938 and Ankara from 1939 to 1944.
THE OLD CATHOLIC
After the Second World War, Papen was indicted as a criminal in Nuremberg before the International Military Tribunal, but he was acquitted of all charges. In 1947, a West German “De-Nazification” court found Papen to have acted as a main culprit, and he was given an eight-year hard labor prison sentence (of which he served only two years).
Papen’s memoirs were published in 1952 and 1953 in Switzerland. Until 1954, he was forbidden to publish in West Germany; so he wrote a series of articles in newspapers in Spain, attacking the Federal Republic of Germany from a conservative Catholic position… in much the same manner that he had attacked the Weimar Republic.
Papen unsuccessfully tried to restart his political career in the 1950s; he lived at the Castle of Benzenhofen near Ravensburg in Upper Swabia. Pope John XXIII restored his title of Papal Chamberlain on July 24, 1959. Papen was also a Knight of Malta, and awarded the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX.
The old aristocratic from Westphalia eventually died in Obersasbach, West Germany, on May 2, 1969 at the age of eighty-nine.