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Why He Lost. Papen had played his political game with great skill and complete unscrupulousness. Why did he lose the last trick? Says Author Koeves: "He was slated to lose, for he had misjudged his century. He based his scheme on the assumption that democracy was dead and the way open for the return of an old-fashioned oligarchy." But "democracy, the 'rule of the people,' had taken a devious, paradoxical form, expressed in National Socialism and Communism. The masses had been lured into believing that nobody was taking their freedom away, but that they were renouncing it of their own will, for their own good; thus, even despotism could emerge only as a mass movement, a popular revolt." Papen had not misjudged Hitler: he had misjudged the masses, the dominant political force of his time.
But Papen was to have two more great triumphs:
> After having secretly ordered him to be murdered when the Nazis seized Austria, Hitler changed his mind, made Papen a Nazi party member for his part in the Anschluss. (As a reminder. Hitler had Papen's close friend, young Baron von Ketteler, murdered and horribly mutilated instead.)
> Through his decisive part in negotiating the Russian-German pact, Papen could enjoy the thrill of bringing on World War II.
Author Koeves is constantly torn between his desire to prove that Papen is a fool and his demonstration that he is satanically clever. To Author Koeves Franz von Papen may sometimes seem stupid. But to himself Franz von Papen must seem quite a success—at least as successful as the Abbe Sieyes, who, when asked: "What did you do in the French Revolution?," replied: "I survived."