Socialite, luxury-loving Franz von Papen is no Nazi. In the Hitler Cabinet he keeps his Vice Chancellorship (a decorative sinecure) chiefly because he is a Papal Chamberlain and because Germany's new Nazi masters suppose him to be an ''intimate friend" of His Holiness Pope Pius XI. All last week Herr von Papen was enjoying himself in Rome. He loves nothing quite so much as supping in state at a Cardinal's Palace with twinkling candles on the table and viands of the best. Every day Vegetarian Hitler called up to ask how the negotiations were going with Papal Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli. They were going splendidly. Papal Chamberlain von Papen cheerfully reported, and, sure enough, by the end of the week he initialed a concordat with the Holy See.
Before the initialing took place German Catholics were forced to bow the political knee to Adolf Hitler, hoping all the while that the concordat would safeguard their religious rights. As a peace offering to the Nazis, they dissolved their Catholic Centre Party, the Party which fought Prince Bismarck so stoutly three generations ago. the Party which gave to the German Republic one of its greatest Chancellors, pale, ascetic, tremendously hard-working Bachelor Heinrich Brüning (TIME, April 7, 1930 et seq.). Seventy-three Catholic Centre Deputies of the German Reichstag and 68 in the Prussian Diet were refused permission to join the Nazis last week and became ''men without a party." Most of them were expected to resign their seats. The decree of the Catholic Centre executives dissolving the party was piteously abject. They begged that Catholic dignitaries be "protected from slander" in the Nazi Press and that physical property belonging to Catholic Centrist Party headquarters be not confiscated. "A political revolution." they declared, "has placed German state life on a completely new basis which leaves no room for party activity. The German Centre Party, therefore, dissolves itself in agreement with Chancellor Hitler—the dissolution to take effect immediately."
Thus the last non-Nazi party in Germany folded up and Chancellor Hitler completely achieved his political objective, the "Totalitarian (One Party) State."
Not Abandoned. From his office at the Vatican, slim, sensitive-fingered Papal Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli kept assuring German Catholics through statements to the Roman Press that their enforced political sacrifices were not in vain.
"On account of the exclusion of Catholics as a political party from the public life of Germany," read one of these statements, "it is all the more necessary that the Catholics . . . find in the diplomatic pacts between the Holy See and the Nazi Government guarantees which can assure them at least the maintenance of their position in the life of the nation. German Catholics . . . cannot reprove the Vatican for having abandoned them in a moment of crisis."