DR. KUBUSCHOK: In this connection may I refer to Document 37, Pages 119 and 120, containing an extract from several speeches delivered by the witness, and to Volume I, Document 38, further down on Page 119, which is a speech made at Dortmund in February 1933. In it the Defendant Von Papen said...
THE PRESIDENT: We have that document before us.
DR. KUBUSCHOK: Document 37, Page 119.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have got that, yes. All I was suggesting was that it was sufficient to refer us to the document. As a matter of fact, you have already got to the time when he resigned his post as Prime Minister of Prussia in 1934, and now you are going back to 1933.
DR. KUBUSCHOK: He resigned in Prussia in 1933. May I draw the Tribunal’s attention, then, to this speech on Page 120.
THE PRESIDENT: Did he resign in 1933 or 1934?
DR. KUBUSCHOK: 1933.
I draw the Court’s attention to this speech, and to Page 120, a proclamation of the Reich Government of 1 February 1933.
[Turning to the defendant.] What were the events leading up to the Concordat?
VON PAPEN: I reiterate that I wanted to secure a Christian basis for the Reich at all costs. For that reason, I suggested to Hitler in April 1933 that the rights of the Church should be firmly laid down in a Concordat, and that this Concordat should be followed by an agreement with the Evangelical Church. Hitler agreed, although there was strong opposition in the Party; and thus the Concordat was concluded. The Prosecution has adopted the view that this Concordat was a maneuver intended to deceive. Perhaps I may in this connection point to the facts that the gentlemen with whom I signed this Concordat were Secretary of State Pacelli, the present Pope, who had known Germany personally for 13 years, and Monsignor Kaas, who for years had been the Chairman of the Center Party, and that if these two men were willing to conclude a Concordat, then one can surely not maintain that this was a maneuver intended to deceive.