page_title: Franz von Papen
section_title: Post-war years
hierarchical_section_title: Franz von Papen / Post-war years
context_page_description: Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk, was a German conservative politician, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934.
  Born into a wealthy family of Westphalian Roman Catholic aristocrats, Papen served in the Imperial German Army from 1898 onward and was trained as a German General Staff officer. He served as military attaché in Mexico and the United States from 1913 to 1915, organising acts of sabotage in the United States and financing Mexican forces in the Mexican Revolution. After being expelled from the United States in 1915, he served as a battalion commander on the Western Front of World War I and finished his war service in the Middle Eastern theatre as a lieutenant colonel.
  Appointed Chancellor in 1932 by President Paul von Hindenburg, Papen ruled by presidential decree. He negotiated the end of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. He launched the Preußenschlag coup against the Social Democratic government of the Free State of Prussia.
context_section_description: Papen was captured along with his son Franz Jr. at his own home by First Lieutenant Thomas McKinley and members of the US 194th Glider Infantry Regiment, on 14 April 1945. Also present during the capture was a small band from the 550th Airborne glider Infantry. Papen was forced by the US to visit a concentration camp to see firsthand the nature of the regime he had served from start to finish and had fostered.
  Papen was one of the defendants at the main Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. The investigating tribunal found no solid evidence to support claims that Papen had been involved in the annexation of Austria. The court acquitted him, stating that while he had committed a number of "political immoralities," these actions were not punishable under the "conspiracy to commit crimes against peace" written in Papen's indictment.
  Papen was subsequently sentenced to eight years' hard labour by a West German denazification court, but he was released on appeal in 1949. Until 1954, Papen was forbidden to publish in West Germany, and so he wrote a series of articles in newspapers in Spain, attacking the Federal Republic from a conservative Catholic position in much the same terms that he had attacked the Weimar Republic. 
  Papen unsuccessfully tried to restart his political career in the 1950s; he lived at the Castle of Benzenhofen near Ravensburg in Upper Swabia. Pope John XXIII restored his title of Papal Chamberlain on 24 July 1959. Papen was also a Knight of Malta, and he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX.
  Papen published a number of books and memoirs, in which he defended his policies and dealt with the years 1930 to 1933 as well as early Western Cold War politics. Papen praised the Schuman Plan as "wise and statesmanlike" and believed in the economic and military unification and integration of Western Europe. In 1952 and 1953, Papen published his memoirs in two volumes in Switzerland. Right up until his death in 1969, Papen gave speeches and wrote articles in the newspapers, defending himself against the charge that he had played a crucial role in having Hitler appointed Chancellor and that he had served a criminal regime; these led to vitriolic exchanges with West German historians, journalists and political scientists. Franz von Papen died in Obersasbach, West Germany, on 2 May 1969 at the age of 89.
caption: Papen at the Nuremberg Trials.
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