Franz von Papen

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The hope in the hearts of millions of national socialists can be fulfilled only by an authoritarian government."

"Names and individuals are unimportant when Germany's final fate is at stake."

"It is to be hoped that the leaders of this movement will place the nation above the party."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"You are mistaken. We've hired him."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"In zwei Monaten haben wir Hitler in die Ecke gedrückt, daß er quietscht!"

"Stets aber war es in der Geschichte so, daß der Erfolg des Bösen eine unheimliche Faszinationskraft ausübte."

"Radikalismus und Terrorismus begannen die alte Ordnung zu zersetzen. Der durch den Marxismus hochgezüchtete Materialismus fraß an der moralischen Widerstandskraft weiter Kreise. Gerade die junge Generation, durch diesen Prozeß dem Christentum mehr und mehr entfremdet, suchte und fand in Hitler und seinem Programm ein Substitut."

"Heute, nach der großen Katastrophe, beginnen die alliierten Staatsmänner die europäische Lösung zu verwirklichen, von der ich an jenem Tage auf der Iburg sprach. Sie haben begriffen, daß Europa nicht überleben wird, wenn es sich nicht zu einer überstaatlichen Organisation zusammenschließt und wenn nicht ein jeder bereit ist, Teile der Souveränität dem Wohle des Ganzen zu opfern."

"Der konservative Mensch hat immer fortschrittlich zu sein."

"Wer deshalb von Preußentum spricht, soll zunächst an stillen und unpersönlichen Dienst, aber erst zuletzt, am besten gar nicht, an Lohn und Anerkennung denken."

"Nicht alles im Leben kann organisiert werden, weil man es sonst mechanisiert."

"Die Entfesselung des Elementaren war notwendig, um einen lähmenden und hemmenden Mechanismus zu sprengen. [...] Der Ungeist der Demokratie, der jeden wahren Wert zu vernichten drohte, mußte wohl mit seinen eigenen Waffen geschlagen werden."