VON PAPEN: What Hindenburg told Hitler can be read in all the books; that is a well-known matter of history.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No, no. What we want to know—if I may say so, with great respect to the Tribunal—is what you told Hitler on 4 January. What did you tell him, if you told him anything, about the position between President Von Hindenburg and himself?
VON PAPEN: If you had permitted me to make an explanation about the course of the conference, I would already have explained that.
In the course of this talk I did nothing but call Hitler’s attention to the fact of how necessary it was to reach an agreement with Herr Von Schleicher, how necessary it was to enter his Government. In other words, I continued those efforts which I had made in 1932 to induce the Nazi Party to co-operate.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Are you seriously telling the Tribunal that you told Hitler that he should go into a Schleicher Cabinet?
VON PAPEN: I told him he should enter a Schleicher Cabinet.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That is what I put to you. I am suggesting that is entirely wrong. What you suggested to Hitler was that it would be a sound thing for the conservatives and nationalists, whose political views coincided with yours, to join with Hitler in forming a government, that you put to him what actually happened on 30 January, you suggested it to him at this meeting. Do you say that is untrue?
VON PAPEN: Not one word is true; that is absolutely false. As proof of this, I state the following:
Immediately after the conversation I wrote a letter to Schleicher, on 4 January, in the afternoon. He probably received this letter on the morning of the 5th. However, even before Herr Von Schleicher received this letter of mine on the actual substance of the talk, the morning papers of 5 January started a tremendous campaign against me, asserting that this talk with Schröder showed disloyalty to Schleicher. Returning to Berlin, I went to see Herr Von Schleicher immediately, and I explained to him what the substance of our talk had actually been. Herr Von Schleicher then published a communiqué on this subject. This communiqué...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But he was not the only person, you know, that published a communiqué. You and Hitler published a communiqué.