VON PAPEN: To that I can say only that the coalition which I formed on behalf of the Reich President was a forced solution. There was no question of whether it was better or worse. We had to accept it.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, now, just let us see. I think you said that you were not certain that Hitler would eliminate opposition before he came into power. How long did it take you, after Hitler became Chancellor, to find out that his desire was to eliminate all opposition?
VON PAPEN: I realized that finally when I made the last attempt in my Marburg speech to hold him to the joint program, and when this attempt failed...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That was 18 months later, on 17 June 1934. Are you telling the Tribunal that it took you 17 months to realize that Hitler wanted to break down the opposition?
VON PAPEN: No, I told the Court...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Just let me remind you of one or two things. Do you remember Herr Ernst Heilmann, who had been the leader of the Social Democrats in the Prussian Diet?
VON PAPEN: Yes.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: He was, I think, for 10 years a member of the Prussian Diet with you. He went into a concentration camp at once and was treated with the most terrible cruelty, was he not?
VON PAPEN: I learned of that later, here, for the first time. I did not know it at that time.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Are you telling the Tribunal that you did not know in 1933 that Ernst Heilmann went into a concentration camp?