Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk (German: [ˈfʁants fɔn ˈpaːpn̩] ; 29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German politician, diplomat, army officer, and Prussian nobleman. A national conservative, he served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932, and then as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934. A committed monarchist, Papen is largely remembered for his role in bringing Hitler to power.
Born into a wealthy and powerful family of Westphalian Catholic aristocrats, Papen served in the Prussian Army from 1898 onward and was trained as an officer of the German General Staff. He served as a military attaché in Mexico and the United States from 1913 to 1915, while also covertly organising acts of sabotage in the United States and quietly backing and financing Mexican forces in the Mexican Revolution on behalf of German military intelligence. After being expelled as persona non grata by the United States State Department in 1915, he served as a battalion commander on the Western Front of World War I and finished his war service in the Middle Eastern theatre as a lieutenant colonel.
Asked to become chancellor of the Weimar Republic by President Paul von Hindenburg in 1932, Papen ruled by presidential decree. He launched the Preußenschlag coup against the Social Democratic Party-led Government in the Free State of Prussia, and dissolved the Reichstag twice under his short tenure. His failure to secure a base of support in the Reichstag led to his removal by Hindenburg and replacement by his former ally, General Kurt von Schleicher.
Determined to return to power at all costs, Papen, naively believing that Adolf Hitler could be reined-in once he was in government, and catastrophically underestimating Hitler's political skill and ruthlessness, pressured Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor and himself as vice-chancellor in 1933, in a cabinet ostensibly not under Nazi Party domination. Viewing military dictatorship as the sole alternative to a Nazi Party chancellor, Hindenburg consented. Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, during which the Nazis placed him under house arrest, ransacked his office and murdered some of his close associates.
Subsequently, Papen served the German Foreign Office as the ambassador in Vienna from 1934 to 1938 and in Ankara from 1939 to 1944. He joined the Nazi Party in 1938. During his tenure as the Austrian ambassador, he assisted in the handover of Austria to Germany (Anschluss) by convincing Kurt von Schuschnigg, the then-Austrian Chancellor, to sign Austria's sovereignty away to Nazi Germany, on Feb. 12, 1938.
After World War II, Papen was indicted for Nazi war crimes in the Nuremberg trials before the International Military Tribunal but was acquitted of all charges. In 1947, a West German denazification court found Papen to have acted as the main culprit in crimes relating to the Nazi government. Papen was given a sentence of eight years' imprisonment and hard labor, but was released on appeal in 1949. In his memoirs, such as the Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Giving Truth a Chance), published in 1952, he insistently downplayed his involvement and portrayed himself as a tragic patriot; he died in 1969. Modern historians generally view Franz von Papen to be an unscrupulous figure.
Papen was born into a wealthy and noble Catholic family in Werl, Westphalia, the third child of Friedrich von Papen-Köningen (1839–1906) and his wife Anna Laura von Steffens (1852–1939). His father, a cavalry officer in the Prussian Army, had served in the Second Schleswig War, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War, taking part in the battles of Dybbøl, Königgrätz, and Sedan, and in the Siege of Paris. He was also a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he had met as a student in Bonn, where both men had been members of the Corps Borussia Bonn; after his military career, he held several posts in local politics, including that of honorary deputy mayor (Bürgermeister) of Werl. Members of the Papen family, which held erbsälzer status, had enjoyed the hereditary right to mine brine salt at Werl since 1298(?), a fact of which Franz was very proud; he always believed in the superiority of the aristocracy over commoners.
Papen was sent to a cadet school in Bensberg of his own volition at the age of 11 in 1891. His four years there were followed by three years of training at the Preußische Hauptkadettenanstalt in Lichterfelde. He was trained as a Herrenreiter ("gentleman rider"). He 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 No. 5 in Düsseldorf. Papen joined the German General Staff as a captain in March 1913.
On 3 May 1905, he married Martha von Boch-Galhau (1880–1961), the daughter of René von Boch-Galhau, a wealthy Saarland industrialist and member of the Villeroy & Boch dynasty of ceramics manufacturers; her dowry made him a very rich man. An excellent horseman and a man of much charm, Papen cut a dashing figure and during this time, befriended Kurt von Schleicher. Fluent in both French and English, he travelled widely all over Europe, the Middle East and North America. He was devoted to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Influenced by the books of General Friedrich von Bernhardi, Papen was a militarist throughout his life.
Military attaché and spymaster in Washington, D.C.
He 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 organised 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 that hope.
In April 1914, 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 characterised his later diplomatic postings in the United States, Austria and Turkey. On 30 July 1914, Papen arrived in Washington, D.C., from Mexico to take up his post as German military attaché to the United States.
During World War I, Papen tried to buy weapons for Germany in the United States, but the British Blockade made shipping arms to Germany almost impossible. On 22 August 1914, Papen hired US private detective Paul Koenig, based in New York City, to conduct a sabotage and bombing campaign against businesses in New York owned by citizens from the Allied nations. Papen, who was given an unlimited fund of cash to draw on by Berlin, attempted to block the British, French and Russian governments from buying war supplies in the United States. Papen set up a front company that tried to preclusively purchase every hydraulic press in the United States for the next two years to limit artillery shell production by United States firms with contracts with the Allies. To enable German citizens living in the Americas to return to Germany, Papen set up an operation in New York to forge United States passports.
Starting in September 1914, Papen abused his diplomatic immunity as German military attaché, violating US laws to start organising plans for incursions into Canada for a campaign of sabotage against canals, bridges and railroads. In October 1914, Papen became involved with what was later dubbed "the Hindu–German Conspiracy", by covertly arranging with Indian nationalists based in California for arms trafficking to the latter for a planned uprising against the British Raj. In February 1915, Papen also covertly organised the Vanceboro international bridge bombing, in which his diplomatic immunity protected him from arrest. At the same time, he remained involved in plans to restore Huerta to power and arranged for the arming and financing of a planned invasion of Mexico.