28 Nov. 45
the time being. However, such positions
are to be occupied only by personalities having the support and the
confidence of the movement. I have a willing collaborator in this
respect in Minister Glaise-Horstenau."
--Signature--"Papen."
To recapitulate, this report by Von Papen to Hitler discloses the
following plan:
(a) Obtaining a change in personnel in the Austrian Ministry of
Security in due course;
(b) Obtaining corporative representation of the Nazi movement in
the Fatherland Front;
(c) Not putting avowed National Socialists in important positions
yet, but using nationalist personalities;
(d) Using economic pressure and patient psychological treatment
with slowly intensified pressure directed at changing the regime.
My next subject is Germany's diplomatic preparations for the
conquest of Austria.
The program of the Nazi conspiracy with respect to Austria
consisted of weakening that country externally and internally by
removing its support from without, as well as by penetrating within.
This program was of the utmost significance, especially since, as the
Court will remember, the events of 25 July 1934 inside Austria were
overshadowed in the news of the day by the fact that Mussolini had
brought his troops to the Brenner Pass and posed there as a strong
protector of his northern neighbor, Austria.
Accordingly, interference in the affairs of Austria and steady
increase in the pressure needed to acquire control over that country,
required removal of the possibility that Italy or any other country
would come to its aid. But the foreign policy program of the
conspiracy for the weakening and isolation of Austria was integrated
with their foreign policy program in Europe generally.
I should like, therefore, at this juncture, to digress for a
moment from the presentation of evidence bearing on Austria alone and
to consider with the Tribunal the general foreign policy program of
the Nazis. It is not my intention to examine this subject in any
detail. Historians and scholars exhausting the archives will have
many years of probing all the details and ramifications of European
diplomacy during this fateful decade.
It is instead my purpose to mention very briefly the highlights
of the Nazis' diplomatic preparation for war.
In this connection I should like to offer to the Tribunal
Document Number 2385-PS, a second affidavit of George S. Messer-