Interrogation of Franz von Papen

WWII Nurnberg Interrogation Records



Franz von Papen (1879-1969) was a German nobleman, General Staff officer and right-wing politician. He served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler in 1933–1934. He belonged to the group of close advisers to President Paul von Hindenburg in the late Weimar Republic. It was largely Papen, believing that Hitler could be controlled once he was in the government, who persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in a cabinet not under Nazi Party domination. However, Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives, during which some of his confidants were killed by the Nazis.

He persuaded Adolf Hitler, to not give Thessaloniki to Bulgarians. He was the saviour of Thessaloniki from Bulgarian occupation and terror in WW II.

Quotes from his interrogation, 19 September 1949 at Nurnberg:

"...and it was a very bad thing, because we had been very good with Greece all the time, and there certainly was no German who had any bad feelings about the Greek people. This war, I suppose, was made very much against the heart of most people who took part in it; but when it was done, it came to the negotiations about the distribution of Yugoslavia and Greece. It happened that I was in the headquarters of Hitler, after the ending of that campaign, when King Boris of Bulgaria was present to talk with him about the matter that Bulgaria should have the Yugoslav territory from Macedonia, and so on. So it came that I could say I could have avoided the matter, and Hitler asked my opinion about it, and I did two things; I strongly advised against Hitler to give the Saloniki area to Bulgaria, as the Bulgarians wanted. I said to him that Greece could never live without Saloniki, and it shouldn't be taken from her; and the second was that I pleaded that so-called Greek Corridor, that separated Bulgaria from Turkey--"

Source: US National Archive