Papen “on a matter of extreme state urgency.” Failing to grasp
the very real danger he was in, Papen dawdled at his office, and
at : .. Göring had to phone him himself, telling him to
come to the villa at once.
In his room [related Papen to a British officer in
] I meet him and Himmler. “Something very
grave is happening in Munich,” he says. “A revolution
has broken out. The Führer has left me in complete
charge here in Berlin.”
“Herr Göring I want to know what’s going on
what countermeasures we’re taking.”
“I can’t go into detail. Fighting has broken out.”
“Then mobilize the army!”
“That has been done.”Papen snapped to Göring that he was Hitler’s deputy, and not
Göring.
“You’ll have to leave me alone now,” said Göring indicating
that their interview was at an end. “My head’s bursting. We’ve
got to see how we can crush this thing.”
He whispered something to Himmler, who got up and left.
As a Landespolizei officer came in to escort Papen home, Papen
heard Himmler’s voice shouting over a phone somewhere
nearby, “You can go in now!”
All over Prussia, Göring’s men were “going in.” He himself
led the party that raided Berlin’s SA headquarters in Wilhelm
Strasse.
“I asked,” he would relate, “whether they had got arms.
Their commander denied it, but then I glanced out of the win-
dow and saw with my own eyes our trucks being loaded with
machine guns.”
He never tired of relating this episode, although the details
varied: