A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 303, 19 September 1941, Page 6

A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

A Nazi Ambassador YEARS OF INTRIGUE Hitler’s Ambassador to Turkey is Herr Franz von Papen, whose comings and goings between Ankara, and Berlin have been much in the news in recent months. His has been an extraordinary career. Oswald Dutch has written a book about him. It deals mainly with his machinations in Austria and Turkey, and its title, “The Errant Diplomat,” aptly describes the man, whose subversive activities iu the United States early in the last war are a matter of history. In a racy article in the “Fortnightly,” entitled “Franz von Papen—Nazi,” Mr. Norman Ebbutt, formerly Berlin correspondent of “The Times,” refers to him as “one-time Chancellor of Germany, aristocrat, amateur diplomat—amateur but not always wrong—intriguer to his finger-tips.”

Activities In U.S.A. Von Papen is rich, but not as the Nazi leaders are rich. 'He is rich by inheritance. ' He is in fact the heir of big estates in Westphalia, where his family have been aristocrats for more than a thousand years. , Erbsalzen they are called, the hereditary owners of salt mines—the title denoting wealth without duties. In the normal course the Papens were officers of the 4th Uhlans, Franz among them.' The service was not hard, especially ; in peace-time. But already a taste for intrigue glimmered in his mind. As a captain on the General Staff he was appointed German Military Attache to the United States. That was in the autumn of 1913. When the Great War came his aptitudes found ibeir appropriate outlet. The military attache assumed the functions of a secret saboteur, organizing explosions, strikes, the wrecking of munition works, among the friendly people to whom he was accredited. But he was so careless over these cynical breaches of international law that by the end of 1915 the United States had had enough of him. A certain dispatch case, heavy with compromising documents, fell into the wrong hands while its custodian, Dr. Albert, of van Papen’s staff, slept on the elevated train. In a letter to his wife sent in the care of an American journalist who was travelling to Germany, von Papen wrote of “these idiotic Yankees” and how “they unluckily stole from the good Albert a whole thick portfolio.” When the British Naval Control at Falmouth searched the. journalist’s baggage, the letter was found, Its contents were cabled back to Washington. The portfolio and the letter caused the American Secretary of State to demand the withdrawal of von Papen. When he left for Germany he wrongly assumed that his diplomatic safe conduct covered his baggage as well as his person. A search by British officials revealed much interesting information. In particular, the stubs of his cheque book proved the identity of some of his agents and the sums paid them for sabotage and other undiplomatic services. America took note of the names and most of them were rounded up. Reich Chancellor

After his return to Germanj von Papen resumed his soldiering. He was given command of a reserve battalion of infantry, but at Vimy Ridge his efforts cost so many of his men’s lives that the Western Front saw no more of him. He reappeared on the staff of a Turkish division in Palestine and in the summer of 1918 when the Turkish and German troops were routed by Allenby, he lost his belongings, which included documents involving another squad of his assistants in the American intrigues. No bad judge of the public memory, he lived quietly for the next 12 years, mainly on his wife’s estate on the Wallerfangen, in the Saar. About 1930 he shyly emerged in public again, but merely as a minor Centre Party member of the Prussian Diet. Suddenly in 1932 he made a spectacular leap to the very front of the stage. The veteran President, Marshal von Hindenburg, had sacked Bruning, the Chancellor of the German Reich aud given von Papen the job. His first stroke of policy on the Home Front was to dissolve the Reich-stag-hostile to himself—before it had a single meeting. This pleased the Nazis, who liked anything that would turn the parliamentary system to disrepute and give them as well the chance of exploiting the fact at the polls. They approved too, the unconstitutional pressure he put upon Prussia, because it broke the Centre block and signed the death warrant of the Weimar Republic. Two months later under Nazi pressure von Papen reprieved five Storm Troopers who had murdered a peasant. Six months later they were free. Another sop he threw to the. Nazis — the revival of the Brown Army, that standing menace to internal peace which Bruning had suppressed. But Hindenburg could stomach no more. Von Papen went out of office and von Schleicher took his place. In three months the new Chancellorship was dead.

More Betrayals Von Papen was now out for revenge and he put his talent for intrigue to work. In turn von Schleicher went aud Hitler was made Chancellor in his place Von Papen had it all planned. He himself was Vice-Chancellor. There were to be only two Nazi Ministers besides Hitler; Nationalists held all the other great offices. Now, von Papen thought he had Hitler under his thumb. But the Nazis thought otherwise—and the Nazis were right. In little more than two months von Papen was out of Prussia and Goeriug reigned as Prussian Premier in his stead. Three weeks after the “Blood Bath’ of June 30, 1934, Hitler notified Von Papen of his appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary for the “restoration of normal and friendly relations with Austria.” A few days later Hindenburg sent a deathbed message to Von Papen, fruit of his still unshaken confidence in the intriguer he had always mistaken for au upright and honest man.

His work over the Austrian anschluss was just what Hitler wanted, if It was just a reverse of what Hindenburg had commissioned. The Catholics were bamboozled; they thought they were Papen’s particular friends and they paid for their truthfulness by being marched off to a concentration camp. It was von Papen who accomplished the betrayal of Dr. Schuussnigg; the lies were his lies; von Papen it was who persuaded tiie fly into the spider’s web at Berchtesgaden. Then his work iu Austria was done. He cleared out of Vienna before the Nazi march in and left his dupes to it. Three days after the Reichswehr entered Austria the Nazi Party took vou Papen to its official heart. “The"Fuehrer and Chancellor,” it was announced, “has elected the Ambassador Herr von Papen a member of the N.S.D.A.P. (the Nazi Party) and bestowed upon him the special party_decoration.',i