World War I
Papen was expelled from the United States during World War I for alleged complicity in the planning of sabotage such as blowing up U.S. rail lines. On 28 December 1915, he was declared persona non grata after his exposure and recalled to Germany. En route, his luggage was confiscated, and 126 cheque stubs were found showing payments to his agents. Papen went on to report on American attitudes, to both General Erich von Falkenhayn and Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
In April 1916, a United States federal grand jury issued an indictment against Papen for a plot to blow up Canada's Welland Canal, which connects Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, but Papen was then safely home; he remained under indictment until he became Chancellor of Germany, at which time the charges were dropped. Later in World War I, Papen served as an officer first on the Western Front, from 1917 as an officer on the General Staff in the Middle East, and as a major in the Ottoman army in Palestine.
Papen also served as intermediary between the Irish Volunteers and the German government regarding the purchase and delivery of arms to be used against the British during the Easter Rising of 1916, as well as serving as an intermediary with the Indian nationalists in the Hindu German Conspiracy. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, he returned to Germany and left the army at the war's end in 1918.
Read more about this topic: Papen
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“Bernstein: “Girls delightful in Cuba stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery but don’t feel right spending your money stop. There is no war in Cuba. Signed Wheeler.” Any answer?
Charles Foster Kane: Yes—Dear Wheeler, You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)