Franz von Papen (29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was Chancellor of the Weimar Republic of Germany from 1 June to 17 November 1932, succeeding Heinrich Bruening and preceding Kurt von Schleicher.
Biography[]
Franz von Papen was born on 29 October 1879 in Werl, Westphalia to a family of Catholic German nobles. He joined the Imperial German Army general staff in March 1913 after serving as an attendant at the Kaiser's Palace, and he was sent to Mexico and the United States as a military attache, witnessing the Mexican Revolution. Von Papen was imprisoned in the USA as a possible saboteur until his 1917 release, and he returned to Germany. Papen joined the Center Party of Germany due to his monarchist beliefs, but he supported Paul von Hindenburg in the 1925 presidential elections. In 1932, he briefly served as Chancellor of Germany, and he advocated a nationalist society; his plans were put to an end by the Prussian Coup. Under pressure from his Defense Minister Kurt von Schleicher, he was forced to resign as Chancellor on 17 November 1932, and he was forced to sit on the sidelines as Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in 1933. In 1934, he gave a speech at Marburg University, calling for a "second revolution" and the cessation of the SA's acts of terror on the streets. Hitler was incensed, and Papen's office was ransacked during the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, while some of his secretaries were killed. From 1939 to 1944, he served as Nazi Germany's ambassador to Turkey, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Allied Powers for waging a war of aggression during the Nuremberg Trials of 1946, which followed World War II. In 1949, Papen was released on appeal, and he died in 1969.
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