SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I just asked you if it is true. I may come back to it again.
“Just as I, when I took over the Chancellorship”—that refers to you, your taking over the Chancellorship—“advocated paving the way to power for the young fighting liberation movement.”
Was your work in paving the way to power for the young fighting liberation movement to legalize the SA and to turn out the moderate Government in Prussia and centralize the control of the police?
VON PAPEN: No, that would have been a very bad comparison.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Just pause there and tell me if that was not what you had done. Tell the Tribunal how you had paved the way to power for the young fighting liberation movement, if it was not by doing that.
VON PAPEN: Yes, I will say that very exactly. The program of the National Socialist Party provided for the liberation of Germany from the discrimination to which we were subjected by the Versailles Treaty. I have spoken here in detail about this. I have explained what efforts I made to obtain the co-operation of the big powers in this connection. We wanted to become a big power again, after being a second-rate nation. That was the meaning of it.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Defendant, I do not want to stop you, and the Tribunal will give you every opportunity of repeating what you said on that point, but I do want you to answer my question. If I am wrong in what I have put to you as the two things you have done to pave the way, just tell us quite shortly: What else had you done to pave the way for this fighting liberation movement? That is the question. What had you done?
VON PAPEN: I had asked Hitler twice to join my own Government, and, when at the end of January 1933 there was no other way out, I formed a coalition at Hindenburg’s request with the National Socialist Party.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, did you believe at that time that Hitler was absolutely necessary for Germany?
VON PAPEN: I was of the opinion that a man who in March 1932, before I was in the Government, had 36.8 percent of all German votes in the presidential election, that that man and his party had to be included in responsible government work.