DR. KUBUSCHOK: Did you try to inform the Reich President?
VON PAPEN: I finally succeeded, on the third day of my arrest, in contacting Göring by telephone. I demanded to be set free at once. Herr Göring apologized and said that it was only a mistake that I had been kept under arrest for this long period of time. I then went immediately to the Reich Chancellery. There I met Hitler, who was about to start a Cabinet session. I asked him to step into the next room so that I could speak to him and I refused to comply with his request that I should attend the Cabinet meeting. I said to him: “What has happened here to a member of your government is so incredible and fantastic that there is only one answer for me to give: A repetition of my request to resign—and at once.”
Herr Hitler tried to persuade me to remain. He said: “I will explain to you in the Cabinet and later in the Reichstag how everything happened, and why it happened.”
I said to him: “Herr Hitler, there is no explanation and no excuse for this incident; I demand that the fate of these members of my staff be made the subject of immediate investigation and the facts be cleared up.” I demanded that he publish my resignation immediately.
When he saw that I could not be persuaded to remain, Herr Hitler told me that he could not make my resignation public because the agitation among the German people was too great. He said that he could not make my resignation public for some 3 or 4 weeks.
When I left Hitler, I tried personally and through one of my secretaries to get in touch with Hindenburg, but that attempt failed. My secretary found out—I must add that Herr Von Hindenburg was then in Neudeck in East Prussia—my secretary, who had gone to East Prussia, found that it was impossible to reach Hindenburg. He was completely cut off. My own telephone calls did not get through.
I went to my friend General Von Fritsch, the Chief of the Armed Forces, and said to him: “Why don’t the Armed Forces intervene? The Armed Forces are the only means for maintaining order that we still have in the country. When General Von Schleicher and his wife were murdered, as well as other officers, it would in my opinion have been quite proper for the Wehrmacht itself to try to restore order in this situation.”
Herr Von Fritsch said to me: “I can take action only when I have Field Marshal Von Hindenburg’s order in my hands.”
But Hindenburg was not accessible to us. He had obviously been informed by the other side of the complete legality of the events which had taken place, and which Hitler declared in the Reichstag to be in conformity with the law. I did not attend that session of the Reichstag, either, as the witness Gisevius testified; and during the time that elapsed between 30 June and my appointment to Austria, I did not participate in a single act carried out by the Government.
I should like to add that at the same time I asked the Reich Chancellor to hand over to me the body of my friend Bose. We knew that the Gestapo had cremated the bodies of the others. I succeeded