Word: papen
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Step No. 1 was easiest. "Papen had the advantage of speaking the same language as the President. They also shared the same Junker ideal of life. They discussed their estates, they went shooting together, and spoke of the Kaiser as His Imperial Majesty. It was a well-known fact that nobody could make the Field Marshal laugh as heartily and as often as Fraenzchen." To Hindenburg, he was soon "a mixture of aide-de-camp, foster son and confidential adviser...
...Papen found other allies. There was Hindenburg's "notoriously lazy" son, Oscar, who "enjoyed parties in a slow way." And there was Dr. Otto Meissner who "was to have the unique distinction of having served Socialist Ebert, Field Marshal Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler in the same confidential capacity, giving the same satisfaction to all three...
...Lost. Papen had played his political game with great skill and complete unscrupulousness. Why did he lose the last trick? Says Author Koeves: "He was slated to lose, for he had misjudged his century. He based his scheme on the assumption that democracy was dead and the way open for the return of an old-fashioned oligarchy." But "democracy, the 'rule of the people,' had taken a devious, paradoxical form, expressed in National Socialism and Communism. The masses had been lured into believing that nobody was taking their freedom away, but that they were renouncing it of their...
...Papen was to have two more great triumphs...
...After having secretly ordered him to be murdered when the Nazis seized Austria, Hitler changed his mind, made Papen a Nazi party member for his part in the Anschluss. (As a reminder. Hitler had Papen's close friend, young Baron von Ketteler, murdered and horribly mutilated instead...