Satan in Top Hat: The Biography of Franz von Papen

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Text originally published in 1941 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SATAN IN TOP HAT

THE BIOGRAPHY OF FRANZ VON PAPEN

BY

TIBOR KOEVES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 5

FOREWORD 6

ACT ONE—U.S.A. 7

1 7

2 10

3 13

4 16

5 18

6 23

7 27

8 33

9 36

10 38

11 40

12 43

13 44

14 45

15 46

ACT TWO—GERMANY 50

1 50

2 53

3 58

4 62

5 66

6 70

7 75

8 78

9 80

10 84

11 89

12 92

13 94

14 97

15 100

16 103

17 108

18 112

19 120

20 133

21 139

ACT THREE—AUSTRIA 146

1 146

2 150

3 158

4 162

5 167

6 175

ACT FOUR—THE NEAR EAST 177

1 177

2 183

3 189

4 200

5 209

6 213

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 214

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FRANZ VON PAPEN—Frontispiece

THE MILITARY ATTACHÉ—About to sail after his expulsion from the U.S.A.

THE CONSPIRATOR—With Dr. Otto Meissner

THE CATHOLIC

THE VICE CHANCELLOR—In a flight with boss Hitler

THE AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRIA—Von Papen, Frau von Papen, Frau von Tschirsky, Fritz Günther von Tschirsky

THE ADVERSARIES—Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt von Schuschnigg

THE JUNKER—With his daughter Isabel

FOREWORD

In this volume the reader will not find a single love letter, nor an abundance of intimate details about strictly personal incidents. The absence of private papers is fatal with almost every biography whose hero is among the living. Until death or its synonym, History takes over the command, memoirs repose locked away in drawers or safety vaults, confessions remain unsold, and correspondence scattered and unpublished. When, a few years ago, a noted biographer started working on a book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he said to him: The trouble is, Mr. President, that you are still living. Mr. Roosevelt grinned and said: I can’t help it.

Fortunately enough, in Franz von Papen’s case the lack of confidential gossip doesn’t obscure the understanding of the human figure. As it will be seen, he is the par excellence political man who has found a complete self-expression in the practice of diplomacy and politics. It would be vain to try to grasp the full nature of Julius Caesar without knowing what pleasure and vice, what the senses meant to him. Many smaller but important historic figures would never yield the secret of their personalities but for the information we possess about their greed for gold or women, about their appetites.

Ever since his early manhood, Franz von Papen has hungered for one exclusive object: power. The latter being the very essence of politics, this book is a political biography. It studies the awakening of an individual to the call of power, and the course of his strenuous and tortuous struggle for it on domestic as well as foreign forums. Also, since Franz von Papen’s career has transcended national barriers, the story of his life is indissolubly tied to that other, a collective manifestation of the will to power, whose aim is the domination of the world by a nation.

Simply to make his book more readable, the author has taken the liberty of slightly dramatizing parts of his material collected during his eighteen years as a foreign correspondent in Europe, and completed by the perusal of all available information and documents. The conversations within the volume fall into three categories. Recorded and authenticated ones; dialogues which are quotations, i.e., taken from the speeches, books and articles pronounced or written by the persons in question; and finally, a few conversations whose truthfulness and realism is borne out if not by documents or eye witnesses, by the characters themselves as well as by subsequent historic events.

T. K.

ACT ONE—U.S.A.

I called the devil and he came,

And then I saw with a wondering gaze,

He was not hideous he was not lame,

But a genial man with charming ways.

A man in the very flush of his prime,

Experienced, suave and in touch with his time.

As a diplomat his talent is great,

And he speaks wisely of Church and State.

HEINRICH HEINE

1

On the cold, damp evening of January 31, 1916, a clumsy black car stopped outside the heavy gates of old Brixton Prison in South London. Out of it stepped a well built, agile, clean-shaven man in his early thirties, followed by an Inspector of Scotland Yard.

The Governor of the prison was waiting for them. He accompanied the young man to one of the more spacious, comfortable cells, with a table at the center laden with writing materials, sheets of paper, a new pen, and a brand new inkstand. Prison lights went out at 9 o’clock; but a kerosene lamp had been placed on the desk, for the young man was expected to work well into the night.

Presently the Governor and the guard withdrew, and the prisoner, his hands folded at his back, began to pace the floor trying with strained nerves to concentrate and to remember. He had to give an account of his movements and activities in the United States during the Summer of 1914, and he knew that upon the accuracy and sincerity of his confession depended his life. He had been arrested in England eighteen months previously in possession of a false passport. If he wanted to avoid being shot as a spy, he had no choice but to admit that, though innocent of any crime against the English, he had been a saboteur on the other side of the Atlantic.

Finally, Horst von der Goltz, the captive German agent, sat down to make a clean breast of it. Under the compulsion of the moment it all came back clearly, with astonishing vividness.

He had been told the Fatherland needed him when Der Tag came, and he was sent to the United States with specific instructions by the German consul at Chihuahua. He crossed the border and traveled first to Washington then to New York. There Dr. Kraske, vice consul at the German General Consulate, put him in touch with the head of the Secret Service, Captain Franz von Papen, military attaché at Washington of His Imperial and Royal Majesty, Wilhelm II.

The prisoner sighed and paused, as if to recapture the details of his first encounter with the man he now hated more than any other; the man who, he was convinced, had caused his ruin and almost his death; then continued to write.

We talked a while about recent events in Mexico, he recorded in his dry style. Afterward I was asked to help with a scheme of invading Canada, which was to have been executed by armed forces recruited from among reservists in the United States, aided by German warships in the Pacific. Later, however, the plan proposed by Captain von Papen and Boy-Ed, was dropped following the objections of Count Bernstorff.

Von der Goltz stopped, remembering the attacks of impatience he had known, while the Attaché was continuously changing his plans. He smiled bitterly; how young he had been only a year and a half ago! He stared at the paper for a while, then continued his statement.

Captain von Papen asked me to see two Irishmen at my hotel, prominent members of Irish associations, who had fought during the Irish rebellion. The two of them proposed to blow up the locks of the Canals connecting the Great Lakes, as well as the main railway junctions and grain elevators. By these means, as well as the distribution of handbills intended to terrify the population, and rumors of invasion judiciously circulated in the press, a panic was to be created in Canada, to prevent the Dominion from giving any aid to England.

The prisoner lighted a cigarette, granted him as a special favor. He inhaled deeply, and the nicotine he had missed for so long seemed to stir his imagination. The cigarette, however, was a Player, a typical English brand, and its aroma brought only associations with fog, porridge and strong tea. If only he could get an American cigarette, Horst thought, he would remember every word, every gesture. It would be easy then to recapture the excitement of that hot August day in 1914, when German reservists were parading along the Battery, to the tune of Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles; when victory appeared certain within six months; when the bewildered United States was the happy hunting ground of adventurers; when it seemed child’s play to plot successfully against any possible help America might give the Allies. It had been hot beneath the lacy zigzagging shadows of the Elevated—but such thrills!

Von der Goltz drew a last puff and went on with his work.

He explained that, if he was to blow up the Canal, he required dynamite, and small arms to defend himself if fired upon by guards. He had had difficulties in obtaining them. Finally von Papen put him in touch with Captain Tauscher, Krupp’s agent, who then took steps to procure the necessary explosives from the Dupont Powder Co.

Writing at the prison desk, the captive recalled the perilous journey to the dynamite barges moored off the Statue of Liberty, where he had to collect the treacherous material, and the subsequent ride in a cab, expecting at every jolt to be blown to pieces.

Von Papen himself delivered the necessary generators and wires to him. Two of his men, Fritzen and Covani, had also been present, and the four of them, casually sitting in the Captain’s smartly furnished room, engaged in a running account of their experiences in the field of dynamiting and such. Papen had been almost friendly, but in the superior condescending way of a hard-working, omniscient chief.

Next, the prisoner checked the details of preparation, and proceeded to a description of the thwarted attempt.

After some days we started for Buffalo, he wrote; then, on September 15, 1914, I went to Niagara Falls with three agents. While still in Buffalo, I received a telegram from von Papen signed ‘Steffens’, informing me that John Ryan, a lawyer, had money and instructions. I went to see this man, but he denied knowing anything of the matter.

Von der Goltz shook his head as if still amazed at the inefficiency of the chief, while going on to record how he reconnoitered the terrain, and obtained information that the first Canadian Regiment had left Valcartier Camp. Then, he concluded, I received a telegram from Ryan, agreed upon in case I was recalled and, thinking it best to return to New York—all the more since my funds were insufficient—I discharged Busse and Fritzen, left the dynamite and other materials in the keeping of an aviator who was manager of the Fels restaurant at Niagara Falls, and left with Covani for New York, by way of Buffalo.

The description of the plot finished, the prisoner meditated a while, then carefully added a few lines with regard to the special treatment he hoped to enjoy for having made his statement. He sighed, thinking of the uncertain future, and reread the sheets. Finally, his eyes half shut with weariness, his fingers trembling from the long exertion, Horst von der Goltz signed the document.

The confession of the inmate of Brixton Prison was the first legal documentary evidence to throw a sharp and full light on Franz von Papen’s activities in the United States during the First World War. It is of particular interest not only with regard to the organization of German sabotage in 1914, but also as a psychological document, for it reveals the early training of a man who in due course was to become Chancellor of Germany and the leading diplomat of Europe. As a conspirator in New York, Papen surrounded himself with all the sinister perquisites of melodrama. There were furtive meetings, instructions sent under assumed names, forged passports, deadly weapons, packages of dynamite. He worked in an atmosphere heavy with danger and mystery, in which the average man would breathe with difficulty but which seemed pure ozone to the initiated.

Some eighteen years later, summoned to dizzy heights, Papen would still appear as a man of mystery, never quite renouncing the methods of a mastermind. His was to be the strange fate of a man who unites the qualities of history-making statesman and of spy, plotter and intriguer.

Franz von Papen was to judge one day whether it would benefit his career to deliver his country into the hands of Adolf Hitler. At that juncture he was to conspire and lie with the demoniac unscrupulousness he had developed in the course of his ruthless past. Thus he finally attained fame and historic importance, but every step of that twisted road was paved with his honor, his dreams, his soul, as though he had concluded a pact with Satan himself.

2

From July 1914 to December 1915, Franz von Papen was the busiest man in the United States. He had a large office on the 25th floor of 60 Wall Street, but he also kept in constant touch with the Embassy in Washington, and the numerous German agents strategically distributed about the city. To head the vast army of spies and saboteurs was a tough assignment, for the tasks were varied and manifold.

The Attaché had to collect data concerning American production of war implements, learn all about the depots where guns and ammunition destined for the Allies were delivered, and chart strategic roads, bridges, and waterways by which the material was shipped. With the particulars at hand, he could then proceed with his plans of destruction. The question of personnel offered a no less delicate problem. Some agents had been sent over from Germany. Others, like von der Goltz, came from countries of the Western Hemisphere, or were found among willing German-Americans. Every day Papen had to deal with scores of people. Adventurous youths wanted to enroll in the secret service, and cunning old timers offered to sell important tips. It behooved the Captain to weigh the value of contradictory information and to appraise the possibilities of every applicant.

From his office in Wall Street, Franz von Papen directed many a tortuous plot, one of them being the relatively innocent looking but in reality tragic case of the forged passports.

After the outbreak of the First World War, the only way to ship German reserve officers and other persons of importance home through the English blockade was to provide them with false passports of neutral countries. Consequently von Papen established an office at 11 Bridge Street for the purpose of procuring or forging the necessary papers. On the recommendation of Berlin, he placed a naturalized citizen and former lieutenant in the Prussian army, Hans von Wedell, in charge of the office, and commissioned him to buy up the passports of American, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish sailors for a few dollars apiece. Wedell would then obtain the photograph of a German whose description tallied with that of the sailor, moisten the picture, and apply it with a special vegetable gum to the photo on the passport. Next the paper was pressed with a piece of silk and the lettering of the seal traced out with a dull pointed needle.

Business prospered for a month or two and Papen paid von Wedell and his wife $2100. Very soon, however, American secret agents were on von Wedell’s trail. The man was a weakling; he lost his nerve, gave up his assignment and fled to Europe. By the irony of fate, the English officer who examined the passports on the Norwegian ship which carried the German in flight, discovered that his documents were forged. Wedell was taken off the boat to be interned in England, but he never reached port. The English destroyer struck a mine and went down with its entire crew and its only passenger.

Papen appointed as Wedell’s successor at the Bridge Street office a certain Carl Ruroede. Within a few weeks, however, he was arrested by the American authorities and sentenced to three years in Atlanta penitentiary. The same fate befell Peter Stegler, a former assistant of von Wedell.

The passport office had also provided documents for some of the spies sent to England. Among these, Karl Lody was shot in the Tower. Another, a man by the name of Kuepferle, hanged himself in Brixton Prison.

The crux of the question in that catastrophic enterprise had hinged on the character of the bureau’s chief, Hans von Wedell, and the utter failure of von Papen to recognize the man’s inability to fill his post. It was Wedell’s personality that doomed the undertaking from the outset—a fact which the Attaché, engrossed in his schemes, never discovered.

There is a letter, sent by von Wedell to Count Bernstorff before his escape, in which the unfortunate man defended himself against the charge of being a deserter. At the same time the letter shows us unmistakably that, rather than being an adventurer, von Wedell had been a nondescript, bungling little man—a helpless, frightened tool in von Papen’s hands.

Herr von Papen and Mr. Albert told my wife that I had elbowed my way into this job, Wedell wrote. That is not true. When I first heard of this commission in Berlin, I objected to going, and I represented to the gentleman in question that my very livelihood which I had built up by six years of labor in America was at stake. I have no other means; and though Mr. Albert told my wife that the less said about my practice the better, the fact is that it sufficed to support my wife and myself in decency, and perhaps to be the foundation of our future. In the effort to fulfil my assignment, and overcome the infinite difficulties in the way, I have destroyed everything that I built up here for myself and my wife. I may at times have been awkward, but I have never been lacking in good will.

Face to face with this document, it is impossible not to sense the puny tragedy of a man without flair or courage. The words security, my wife, decent future are a steady refrain, the chorus of a struggling, unsuccessful, inhibited, pathetic husband. His picture, showing him as a bespectacled, modest, gentle, middle-aged man confirms the impression. To choose men with sure judgment and an adequate degree of intuitive accuracy has always been the mark of born leaders. But Papen nonchalantly tolerated a poor, neurotic weakling at a post that, first and foremost, called for a man of bold, picaresque spirit.

A master spy could be described as an irresponsible being in a very responsible position. By temperament as well as through the effect of his early experiences, von Papen’s irresponsibility where the safety and well-being of others were concerned, was to yield even more fatal results in subsequent exploits.

In the United States the self-important Attaché acted with a superficial bravado revealing an immaturity of character not uncommon in the officers’ caste of Central Europe. Later, through frustration, bitterness, and the driving force of political ambition, his character was to evolve into a complicated pattern, far too subtle for his own and the world’s good. But although Franz von Papen’s activities between 1914-18 and his career after 1930 were to show all the difference between an action story and the study of a hero with an involved inner life and an intricate mental mechanism, his most spontaneous reactions, his cruelty, his instinct for double deals, his hypocrisy and his insatiable yearning for power were to prove eloquently the permanence of human disposition.

3

Two secret code messages were lying on Captain von Papen’s desk. Sent a few weeks apart, they had come from Berlin by wireless, both of them signed by the German Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Zimmermann.

The first, No. 357, read as follows.

Confidential.—The transportation of Japanese troops through Canada must be prevented at any cost—if necessary by blowing up Canadian railways. It would probably be advisable to employ Irishmen for the purpose, as it is almost impossible for Germans to enter Canada. Discuss the matter with the Military Attaché. The strictest secrecy is indispensable.

The second said:

"From Berlin to Washington. With reference to my telegram No. 357.

Confidential.—The General Staff is eager that vigorous action be taken to destroy the Canadian Pacific at several points, to tie up traffic for some time. Captain Boehm, who is well-known in America, and who will shortly return to that country, is an expert on the subject. Acquaint the Military Attaché with the above, and issue the sums required for the enterprise.

Captain von Papen looked out the window at the low hanging sky. Having scored several fiascos, he felt he had to make a good showing at the Canadian business, and so he proposed to execute a larger, more grandiose project than the local action demanded by the High Command.

Nevertheless, when Paul König, the agent the Attaché had chosen for the particular enterprise arrived, Franz von Papen took his time in broaching the subject. It had always been his way to soften up and chastise the fellow, before imposing his full authority upon him. König, superintendent of the private police of the Hamburg-American Line, was a man of uncommon strength and brutality, along with an ebullient vanity and stubbornness. But he had been a useful agent, because of his acquaintance with the tough characters of the waterfront, as well as with dive-keepers and wharf-rats. While still drawing his salary from the Line, he also received the sum of $1000 from Papen, for services rendered the preceding six months.

As usual, König brought along a fat expense account, thus giving the Attaché a golden opportunity to lecture him about his untrustworthiness. One after another Papen went over the items, eager to cut them if the agent’s explanation sounded unconvincing. König was clever, however, and this time it appeared impossible to find fault with his figures. Finally Papen’s eyes lighted on the price of a railway ticket to Passaic, New Jersey, and back. He happened to have made the same journey only a few days previously, and recalled that he had paid exactly fifty cents less than the agent had charged. With a large gesture he corrected the figure, shook his head, frowned, and returned the account to König with a disgusted gesture.

You’re incorrigible, he said, I don’t know if I ought to entrust you with a mission of great importance. It would mean money and advancement for you...

He stopped short as if debating with himself then went on.

Very well, I’m going to give you a last chance! Now listen!

König grinned and drew closer to his superior, who had taken maps and diagrams from his drawer to illustrate the details of his plan.

It’s comparatively simple, Papen summed up the scheme. If we blow up the locks of these Canals, the main railway line of Canada and the principal grain elevators will be crippled. So, at a single stroke we will destroy one of the chief sources of England’s food supply, as well as hold up the transportation of war materials. The High Command will get much more than they asked for.

Supplied with money, instructions and explosives, Paul König and two of his underlings, Richard Emil Leyendecker and Fred Metzler, left for Buffalo a few days later. From there they went to Niagara Falls, to prepare the attempt. Mrs. König accompanied them. Franz von Papen waited hopefully in his New York office, bought all editions of available newspapers, and expected daily to read sensational dispatches about a disastrous explosion in Canada.

On the fifth morning, a very humble Paul König walked into the Attaché’s room.

I don’t understand, he complained. There’s something wrong about the whole business. We couldn’t do a thing.

What! the Captain barked, didn’t you even try?

The six foot two, two hundred fifty pound man almost whined.

It wasn’t my fault, he protested. We carefully explored the terrain and discovered the most vulnerable points in the locks. We even made plans for the transportation and placing of the dynamite. But that was as far as we got. The day before yesterday I discovered that we were being shadowed...

By whom? How? Are you sure? Papen interrupted his foreman.

The latter sighed.

I know a cop when I see one. There were at least four or five. We’d have been arrested if we had so much as tried to cross the border..."

Nonplussed, the two men looked at each other. No one but the participants themselves had had the slightest inkling of the conspiracy. It was inexplicable how they had been spotted and followed at Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

What the Military Attaché and his agent did not know was that they had no secret from the British counter-espionage service, which had exact information that schemes were afoot to cripple Canada.

The truth of the matter was that every message between Berlin and Washington had been intercepted and promptly decoded in London. Papen had no idea of this astonishing fact, one of the outstanding accomplishments of intelligence work in the First World War

German diplomatic instructions were broadcast from a powerful wireless station in Brussels, in a code based on a dictionary whose pages and words corresponded to numbers and letters of the message. Thus 4 B meant the 2nd letter on the 4th page. The Intelligence Service lost no time in sending to Brussels its best agent, H. 523, who managed to establish contact with one of the coding clerks of the German High Command, a fellow by the name of Alexander Szek. After months of persuasion and painstaking negotiation Szek copied the dictionary and handed it over to H. 523, who escaped to Holland amid hot pursuit, involving police dogs, machine guns, barbed wire, and high voltage lines, in the best Hitchcock manner.

In London the code was delivered to Captain, afterward Sir Reginald Hall, head of the legendary O.B.40, or Old Building, Room 40, the office in which Captain Hall intercepted, read, and passed on to the armed services all items of instruction and information that went out from Germany to the diplomatic services and secret agents, as well as some sent to various units of the Kaiser’s fleet. Men in a position to know, in fact, attributed to Blinker Hall a much larger share of the credit for the victory of the Allies than any layman could have suspected. In a confidential letter to President Wilson, Walter Hines Page, American Ambassador in London wrote:

"Hall is one