“The Reich Directorate of the Party announced the self-dissolution of the Union of Catholic Germans.
“Since the Reich Directorate of the Party, through its Department for Cultural Peace, administers directly and to an increasing extent all cultural problems including those concerning the relations of State and churches, the tasks at first delegated to the Union of Catholic Germans are now included in those of the Reich Directorate of the Party in the interest of a still closer co-ordination.
“Former Vice Chancellor Von Papen, up to now the leader of the Union of Catholic Germans, declared about the dissolution of this organization that it was done upon his suggestion, since the attitude of the National Socialist State toward the Christian and Catholic Church had been explained often and unequivocally by the Führer and Chancellor himself.”
I said that Von Papen “ordered” the dissolutions, although the announcement said it was self-dissolution on his suggestion; but I submit that such a suggestion from one in Papen’s position was equivalent to an order, since by that date it was common knowledge that the Nazis were dropping all pretense that rival organizations might be permitted to exist.
After 9 months’ service under Hitler, spent in consolidating the Nazi control, Von Papen was evidently well content with his choice. I refer to Document 3375-PS, Page 54 of the English document book, which I put in as Exhibit GB-245. On the 2d of November 1933, speaking at Essen from the same platform as Hitler and Gauleiter Terboven, in the course of the campaign for the Reichstag election and the referendum concerning Germany’s leaving the League of Nations, Von Papen declared:
“Ever since Providence called upon me to become the pioneer of national resurrection and the rebirth of our homeland, I have tried to support with all my strength the work of the National Socialist movement and its Führer; and just as I at the time of taking over the Chancellorship”—that was in 1932—“advocated paving the way to power for the young fighting liberation movement, just as I on January 30 was destined by a gracious fate to put the hands of our Chancellor and Führer into the hand of our beloved Field Marshal, so do I today again feel the obligation to say to the German people and all those who have kept confidence in me: