Word: papen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Oberaudorf, West Germany. The descendant of Prussian nobility whose genealogy reaches back to the 13th century, the baron served as press spokesman for both Kaiser Wilhelm II and the revolving-door governments of the early Weimar Republic. In 1932 he was appointed Minister of Agriculture by Chancellor Franz von Papen but retired from public life the following year when Hitler came to power...
...Thomas Mann proclaimed that he was unpolitical and proud of it. He changed his mind later. The pit of politics was left to ambitious drones or dregs. In the end it was a couple of wellborn smart-alecks, General Kurt von Schleicher and ex-Lieut. Colonel Franz von Papen, both conservatives, both of good regiments, who delivered Weimar over to the Nazis. They were also both favorites of the republic's beloved 85-year-old President Paul von Hindenburg (who at least had the excuse of senility), and cronies of his incompetent, corruptible son Oskar. Confidently they...
First the two got Hindenburg to fire the incumbent Chancellor and replace him with Von Papen. The delighted Hindenburg beamed: "Now I can have a Cabinet of my friends." Then, in a double-cross, Schleicher had Von Papen ousted and became Chancellor himself, planning to rule Germany by splitting the Nazi Party and taking over a third of Hitler's Reichstag deputies. The plan had some merit; large numbers of Nazis, including at one time Berlin Party Chief Joseph Goebbels, thought Hitler had sold out to the capitalists...
...Papen contrived Schleicher's fall and convinced Hindenburg that the way to neutralize Nazi power was to give Hitler the chancellorship and then surround him with conservative ministers. Within a year Schleicher had been killed and Germany belonged to the Führer...