THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Dr. Kubuschok.
DR. KUBUSCHOK: Witness, we stopped when you were talking about the formation of public opinion concerning you personally. Please continue telling us of your career.
VON PAPEN: I had spoken about the propaganda about myself which was carried on in the United States at the time of the first World War. No effort was in fact ever made to investigate whether this opinion was true or false. What I was able to accomplish in those years, that is, the fact that I opposed sabotage and fought against submarine warfare, never became known.
This propaganda was public defamation, and it reached its height in 1941 in a pamphlet published in New York, with the beautiful title “The Devil in Top Hat.” It repeats all these fairy stories without criticism, and adds new ones. Thus a so-called public opinion was formed about me which, I believe, gives a completely distorted picture of my character, my opinions, and above all my motives during the period from 1932 to 1945. I ask the Tribunal to keep in mind these psychological associations as I attempt to give now a true picture of my thoughts and my acts.
After returning to Germany in 1916 I did my duty as a soldier, as a battalion commander and as a General Staff officer in the war in France. In 1917 I became Chief of the Operational Section of Army Group Falkenhayn in Turkey. When Falkenhayn was recalled in 1918, I became Chief of the General Staff of the Fourth Turkish Army until the Armistice.
Perhaps I may recall briefly—after so many bad things have been said about me by the world—an episode which shows that I was able to do something useful for the history of humanity. On 8 December 1918, after a hard struggle with the German and Turkish headquarters, I succeeded in getting Falkenhayn to evacuate Jerusalem. Because of this decision the city was not shelled or destroyed by the British Army.
THE PRESIDENT: The translation came through to me, I thought, the 8th of December 1918. That must have been 1917.
DR. KUBUSCHOK: No, My Lord, 1918.
VON PAPEN: 8 December 1918.
When in November 1918 I was negotiating with Ataturk about the evacuation of the German troops, we received the news of the collapse of the German armies and the abdication of the German Kaiser. This fact meant for me not only the loss of the war, a whole world had collapsed for me. The German Reich had collapsed after a thousand years of development, and everything that we had believed in was shrouded in the mists of the future. At this juncture I decided to face the issue.