Extract from "Voelkischer Beobachter"
Edition A, Munich Edition,
No. 7/8 Vol. 46th
Saturday/Sunday 7th/8th January 1933.
On Adolf Hitler's meeting with Papen
The Berlin press has made sensational news of Herr von Pa-pen's meeting with Adolf Hitler.
The "Tägliche Rundschau" already feels able to relate that the purpose of the discussion was "to try once more to make Hitler
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Chancellor." If one is supposed to deduce from this that the overtures for the meeting came from Hitler, we can affirm, on the information at our disposal, that this was not so.
The other papers which are spreading this assertion, some in a very definite form, are likewise making completely false deductions.
It is much more probable that, on the contrary, Herr von Papen felt the need of informing the leader of the biggest German party of certain interesting details about the events which led up to the fall of his government in the November of last year.
If one thinks, in this connection, of the peculiar events which, after the formal resignation of the Papen government directly preceded Herr von Schleicher's being entrusted with the formation of a government, one can understand that the former Reich Chancellor thinks it valuable to throw some light on things, and on the methods by which one can become Chancellor nowadays.
The "Tagliche Rundschau" has no reason at all to be surprised that "Hitler could have any common dealings whatever with Herr von Papen." That the contrary is true, if overstresses the "com. mon dealings." Hitler demonstrated on the 13th August 1932, which would, as is well known, have been the best opportunity for it. The leader of the German Liberation movement certainly has no intention of having "common dealings" with the representatives of a policy which he has recognised to be false in its contents. But the Fuehrer also has not the slightest reason for accounting to the Berlin Press for his choice of persons from whom to find out personally how rotten that system is, internally too, with which he does not wish to have "common dealings."
Against deductions
Adolph Hitler and Herr von Papen publish the following combined declaration:
"Against false deductions which are in many cases being circulated in the press regarding Adolph Hitler's meeting with the former Reich Chancellor von Papen, the undersigned declare that the conversation dealt exclusively with the possibility of creating a great national political United Front, and that in particular the opinions of both parties on the Reich Cabinet at present in power were not touched on at all within the framework of this general discussion" [the signatures follow].
Newspaper article on various misinterpretations of a Hitler-von Papen meeting, and their joint statement that the meeting concerned the possibility of creating "a great national political United Front"
Authors
Date: 07 January 1933
Literal Title: Extract from "Volkischer Beobachter" . . . On Adolf Hitler's meeting with Papen
Defendant: Franz Papen, von
Total Pages: 1
Language of Text: English
Source of Text: Nazi conspiracy and aggression (Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.)
Evidence Code: D-637
Citation: IMT (page 11873)
HLSL Item No.: 453550