HIS OWN APOLOGIST
MEMOIRS, by Franz von Papen; Andre Deutsch. Enflish price, 25/-. \FTER giving the assurance in the very first paragraph of his memoirs that he does "not wish to be ranged with those who have sought only to defend their mistakes and failures," von Papen proceeds to devote nearly 600 pages to defending his own mistakes and failures. Professing the strictest loyalty to President von Hindenburg, he became German Chancellor at the end of May, 1932, and at once lifted the ban that had previously been imposed ‘on. Hitler’s Brownshirts. Six months later, still making the same professions, he made way for General Schleicher, and after Schleicher’s short-lived government fell he accepted the post of deputyChancellor in Hitler’s first Cabinet. On the "night of the long knives," June 30, 1934, two of his officials were murdered and he himself was treated with the greatest ignominy, but this did not prevent him from continuing to serve the Nazis as German Minister in Vienna until] Hitler marched into "Austria in 1938. That event, of course, rendered his post superfluous, but even though another of his colleagues had meanwhile been murdered by the Gestapo he continued to serve Hitler as Ambassador at Ankara until shortly before the end of the war. After being tried and acquitted at Nuremberg he was re-arrested and sentenced to a term of imprisonment by a German court. Von Papen certainly has an interesting story to tell, though he is obviously less concerned with entertaining the reader than with proving his own good intentions. In ‘my opinion he achieves the former object more successfully than the latter. Amidst al] his protestations of how he merely accepted office after office in ordet either to-save his friends or serve his country one cannot help recalling a legendary figure, famed in song, who must surely be regarded as his prototype. I refer to the Vicar of Bray.
R. M.
Burdon
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530327.2.32.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 14
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320HIS OWN APOLOGIST New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 14
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