Word: papen
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...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...
Died. Franz von Papen, 89, German diplomat and politician who loomed large in Hitler's rise to power; of a virus infection; in Oberasbach, West Germany. Germans called him "the sly old fox of politics." He was actually a chronic blunderer who had the aristocratic connections and great good luck to survive his gaffes. As a World War I military attaché in the U.S., his fumbling attempts at espionage and sabotage led to his expulsion. As a postwar politician, his machinations finally gained him the chancellorship in 1932, whereupon he brought Hitler into the government-and swiftly found...
...silly-sickening newsreel of Reichs-kanzler Hitler at his first Cabinet meeting, bowing obsequiously to Von Papen, making cheesy smiles and cute little wriggles of politeness, playing Alphonse to Göring's Gaston over who sits in what chair and, in general, looking like a whey-faced, flabby postal clerk ill at ease in the company of his betters...
Under Hitler Hoppegarten enjoyed a kind of ghostly glory: Goebbels and the bemedaled Göring strutted about the grounds, and Franz von Papen brought the top-hatted diplomatic corps to the betting booths. There were still some good horses. But World War II ended everything. "When the Russians found a good horse," said a sad West Berlin trainer last week, "they either ate it, shipped it to Russia, or tied it to a plow...