"DIRECTOR OF SABOTAGE"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23601, 9 March 1940, Page 12 (Supplement)

"DIRECTOR OF SABOTAGE"

Franz von papen is unique among the Nazi leaders: he has a religious conscience. But it . must be a gymnastically elastic one, for this once-devout German Catholic has had to reconcile the Cross with the Swastika, the Swastika with the Hammer and Sickle. As Military Attache at Washington in the last war he directed a scheme of diabolical sabotage involving the wholesale sacrifice of innocent lives. In arranging the 1933 Concordat between the Reich and Rome he virtually sold the German Catholics politically to Hitlerism. As Hitler's envoy to Vienna he worked consistently for the overthrow of Austria as an independent—mainly Catholic —State, and nis secret mission to Moscow> yith plans for a

Russo-German alliance and commercial treaty, paved the way for the Ribbentrop share-the-booty pact. Mr. H. W. Blood-Ryan's book, "Franz von Papen," (RichandCowan), is accordingly a complicated study of Eersonality and political movement. iarly in i 933 Mr. Blood-Ryan thought that this son of a rich industrial family of the Saar, further enriched by marriage, "stood above the ruck of common things—in appearance he was so elegant, suave and never ruffled." But— I could not fail to admire —although it shook my confidence and my belief in his strength of character the magnificent and almost unbelievable skill with which he would, practically imperceptibly, shift his cards. . . Perhaps it was this ability which helped to save him in the Roehm purge of June 30, 1934. in which hundreds were killed, thousands arrested, in Berlin and Munich. Von Papen escaped the- shooting, Mr. states, through the intervention of a Reichswehr soldier; but his immediate associates were less fortunate. Von Bose fell before S.S. bullets; Edgar Jung, the philosopher friend who influenced his speeches, Klausener and Probst—both Catholic leaders—were reported to have "committed suicide"; General von Schleicher and his wife to have been "shot while evading arrest." Network of Spies It was indeed " a bloody episode in the making of a Holy Empire of the German people." The only crime of von Papen's Catholic friends was that they wanted to see less religions persecution less "dictating" by the Hitler regime, fulfilment of the Concordat by the Nazis as well as the churchmen. A disillusioned von Papen resigned from the Government, went off to Neudeck to toll President "Papa" Hindenburg details of the fate of his many Junker friends who had fallen to S.S. bullets; and less than a month latter, was appointed envoy to Austria, Hitler's very special nominee 1 But then, he had heen well schooled in adaptation in 1914 when he was sent to America to foment a revolution in Mexico and keep the Americans occupied while the Kaiser launched his war in Europe. After the outbreak of war his next job was to spread a network of spies over, the whole of the

Did Von Papen Help to Bring About The Present War?

United States and organise sabotage in munition plants and transport services which were serving the Allies. One associate in this work was the notorious Trebitsch Lincoln. Following the purchase of explosives with money drawn on von Papen by certain gentlemen, there were _ explosions in key positions and munition wharves and factories. In the Black Tom disaster and Kingsland incident thousands of lives were lost and towns laid in ruins; these catastrophes, apparently, were not reported in the Press at the time for fear of reprisals on the German-speaking population, so angered was public feeling. The "Cigar" Bomb In April. 1915. Captain von Rintelen arrived in New York from Germany on a false passport to take part in the destructive work. He brought to von Papen and Captain Boy-Ed, his Naval colleague, a new secret code which somehow came into British hands and enabled Admiral Hall in London, to read von Papen's radio reports to Berlin and got on the track of tho leading saboteurs. Dr. Scheele devised a delayed-action "cigar" bomb which could be smuggled aboard munition ships, and many were lost at sea. By December things had become so hot that the U.S. Secretary of State demanded the recall of von Papen and Boy-Ed. Von Papen had to pack and hand over to a new arrival, Lieutenant von Ribbentrop, 110 less. . . . A "safe conduct" back to Germany did not necessarily include luggage as well as person; at least British Intelligence officers thought so when they boarded von Papen's ship at Falmouth and deftly extracted from his bag documents, cheque counterfoils, and paid cheques which completely exposed the sabotage "works." ... Von Ribbentrop in Palestine Von Papen, an Uhlan before the war, then became a soldier again on the Western Front, and presumably a resourceful one. He was sent to Palestine to try to help Falkenhayn to stem the Allenby advance, and again met von Ribbentrop. It was the latter, in fact, who rushed into von Papen's billet in Jerusalem when Allenby was pressing at the gates and said: "Do you really want to be made prisoner? For God's sak« hurry come with

me as you are." Von Papen went as lie was—in night attire —in a waiting G.S. waggon, leaving behind his clothes and papers. From these documents we learned of his plot to blow up the Suez Canal, his revolutionary schemes in British Colonies and Dependencies, his share in sending munitions to Sinn Feiners in Ireland and correspondence with the renegade rebel Sir Roger Casement. Von Papen has often been unlucky with his documents; others have suffered for these lapses more than he. . . . Mr. Blood-Ryan concludes that "the scheming and intrigue of Franz von Papen has done as much to bring about. . . the war which is now upon us, as the lies and chicanery of Adolf Hitler. Without the pact with Russia, conceived by von Papen, Hitler would not have been emboldened to, throw down the gage. Franz von Papen has remained, through all these intervening vears, what he was in 1914." It is an enlightening story of twenty-five years' Teutonic power-politics and the long price we pawns in the game have to pay for the master-moves of one leading exponent. —Trovor Allen, in John O'London'a Weekly.