VON PAPEN: I should like to remind you, Sir David, that I had resigned from office more than 6 months before and no longer had anything whatsoever to do with these matters. Naturally the details of the incident were in the highest degree regrettable and, indeed, amounted to criminal attacks; but the details did not appear in the German press, so that I am probably seeing them for the first time in this form here. But let me add...
THE PRESIDENT: But, Defendant, you haven’t answered the question. The question was: What complaint did you make about it?
VON PAPEN: I made no protest, for I was no longer in an official position at the time. I was a private citizen, and all I learned officially about these things was what the German papers were allowed to publish.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Oh, Defendant, surely you have told us that you were one of the leading Catholic laymen in Germany. You are not going to tell the Tribunal that in the Catholic Church it wasn’t known to every bishop in Germany and probably to every parish priest that this abominable and sacrilegious insult had been offered to a prince of the Church in his own house in Vienna. Surely it would permeate through the Church in a few days.
VON PAPEN: That is quite possible, Sir David; but would you expect me, a private citizen, to do anything? What could I do? The Tribunal did not take notice of the discussion which I brought about between Cardinal Innitzer and Hitler. You mentioned that for the first time here today.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That is exactly why I am putting this incident to you, that you were responsible for bringing about the meeting between Cardinal Innitzer and Hitler in March of 1938. When His Eminence is attacked in October, I should have thought—it is not for me to express my thoughts—that you might have taken the trouble to protest to Hitler, and all that you do is to take another job under Hitler within 6 months, in April 1936.
What I am asking you is why you didn’t make a protest. You could have written to Hitler. The Defendant Göring has expressed his great religious interests. A number of the other defendants have said that they had great religious sympathies. Why couldn’t you have got in touch with them?
VON PAPEN: Because in autumn 1938 I retired from political life; I was living in the country and was no longer taking any active interest in politics. But perhaps I may say just why I was responsible for promoting a meeting with Cardinal Innitzer.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No, that is not the point that I am interested in at the moment, the meeting on 15 March. I am interested in the fact that this took place, that you knew of it, and made no protest.
Now I am going to come to another point. Dr. Kubuschok can raise it later on, if he wants.