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Franz von PapenGerman politician and diplomat.
Date of Birth: 29.12.1879
Country:  Germany |
Content:
Biography of Franz von Papen
Franz von Papen was a German politician and diplomat who was born on December 29, 1879, in Verl, Westphalia, into a wealthy landowning family with a long history of German nobility. He was raised as a Catholic. Before the outbreak of World War I, he served as an officer in the General Staff. From 1913 to 1915, he was a military attaché in the United States but was expelled for espionage and subversive activities.
During the war, Papen initially served on the Western Front. In 1916, he acted as a mediator between the German government and Irish Republican rebels, facilitating the delivery of weapons used against the British army. From 1917, he served as an officer in the General Staff in the Middle East and as a major in the Turkish army in Palestine. In 1918, he returned to Germany and resigned from the army as a lieutenant colonel.
From 1921 to 1932, Papen was a member of the Prussian Landtag (parliament) representing the Catholic Center Party, aligning himself with its far-right wing. In the 1925 presidential elections, he surprised his party by supporting the candidacy of Paul von Hindenburg from the Center Party against Wilhelm Marx. From June 1 to December 2, 1932, he served as the Chancellor of Germany, objectively contributing to the strengthening of the Nazi Party's position in the country. He actively participated in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in January 1933 and entered Hitler's first cabinet as Vice-Chancellor.
However, on June 17, 1934, Papen delivered a speech at the University of Marburg in support of the conservative forces of the Reichswehr, the financial and business elites of Germany, who were dissatisfied with the Nazi regime's socialist rhetoric and extremism (known as the "Marburg Speech"). This criticism enraged the top leaders of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler, leading to the Night of the Long Knives, the purging of the leadership of the Sturmabteilung (SA). Papen's closest associates were also killed, but he himself escaped harm thanks to von Hindenburg's support. From July 1934 to March 1938, Papen served as Ambassador to Austria and facilitated the annexation of Austria (Anschluss). Later, from 1939 to 1944, as Ambassador to Turkey, he sought to bring Turkey into Germany's alliance. As a result, he became a target of an assassination attempt by Soviet intelligence agents, which, however, was unsuccessful. During the war, the German government attempted to appoint Papen as Ambassador to the Holy See, but Pope Pius XII rejected the proposal.
In April 1945, Papen was arrested by the U.S. military administration of the 9th Army in the Ruhr. In 1946, he appeared before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg but was acquitted. However, in February 1947, he faced a denazification tribunal and was sentenced to eight years in prison as a major war criminal. In the 1950s, Papen unsuccessfully attempted to reenter politics. In his later years, he lived in Schloss Benzenhofen in Upper Swabia and published numerous books and memoirs in which he tried to justify his policies of the 1930s, drawing parallels between that period and the beginning of the Cold War.
