Will you, Witness, make a brief statement concerning your efforts, and the course of the Lausanne Conference in June 1932 which had such a great influence on the growth of the NSDAP?
VON PAPEN: I ask for permission to go somewhat more into detail about this conference, because the result was closely connected with the enormous increase of the NSDAP immediately thereafter. This conference had been prepared long beforehand, as is known. It was to abolish reparations.
But I went to Lausanne with many other aims and hopes. The abolition of reparations was, so to speak, a cause jugée. But what was necessary was to remove Germany’s moral discomfort, if Europe was to return peacefully to normalcy. This moral dissatisfaction had many causes. Germany had become a “second-rate nation.” It had been deprived of important attributes of its sovereignty: No military sovereignty; the Rhineland unprotected; the Corridor, the Saar, and others. I have already described the economic conditions. These economic and political difficulties helped advance political radicalism, and the extremists increased in every election.
If therefore help was to be forthcoming, then not merely the reparations question had to be solved—that was a negative help—but positive, moral aid was required. My program was the restoration of the sovereignty of the Reich. In the first place, the famous Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty was to be struck out. That was the article which stated Germany’s sole responsibility for the war. Historians of all countries had long established that we were not the only ones responsible. In the second place, relations with France based on confidence were to be established.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kubuschok, the Tribunal do not think that this really is very important for them.
VON PAPEN: I shall briefly...
DR. KUBUSCHOK: May I explain quite generally that the events of 1932, the internal and foreign political events, formed the key for judging the growth of the NSDAP which, after all, led to the 30th of January 1933. If we discuss certain questions here, we will be able to refer to them when we discuss the events of 1933. I believe we will thus save time. Therefore, I ask that a discussion of this period be permitted in somewhat greater detail.
VON PAPEN: I will make it as brief as possible, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: I think we had better go on, as you suggest, from 1933. Is that not what you were suggesting, that you should go on to 1933, and then possibly comeback to 1932, if it is necessary?
DR. KUBUSCHOK: No, that is not what I suggested. I said that the discussion of conditions in 1932 provides the key for the growth of the NSDAP and the formation of the Hitler Government.