Tale of a Bomb

One sunny morning in Ankara last week German Ambassador Franz von Papen's son, Franz Jr., recently wounded on the Russian front, was riding horseback with his blonde sister Stefanie and friends. They heard a faraway explosion. "It must be artillery practice," said Franz Jr. But it was not. It was Franz von Papen Sr. being bombed.

In his long and devious career foxy old Franz von Papen has been frequently hunted. In 1932, when he was Germany's Chancellor, a suspicious-looking Mrs. Paul Budde was arrested in the Chancellery with a twelve-inch dagger concealed on her person. In 1934 Papen was on Adolf Hitler's purge list, but was saved by German Army guards sent to his home by the late General Werner von Fritsch. By 1935 Papen had proved his usefulness to Adolf Hitler as Minister to Austria, but Austrian Nazis tried several times to obliterate the Minister. In 1937 Papen's murder was ordered by Rudolf Hess and prevented by Papen's own agents.

On this fine forenoon the Ambassador and his lean, genteel, partly French wife had started on their morning constitutional from their stucco house down through the orchards of Cankaya Hill to the Embassy. They had surveyed the distant snowcapped mountains and had just passed the pale green apartment house occupied by British Counselor Geoffrey Thompson. Then, 50 feet away, the bomb went off.

It knocked the Ambassador and Frau von Papen flat on the asphalt pavement. It blew the trousers off the Ambassador. It blew another man entirely to pieces--probably the man who had carried the bomb--and spattered his blood as far as the Papens.

Berlin propagandists immediately began saying that the attempt on the Ambassador's life was British-Russian intrigue. But on the scattered remains of the supposed bomber were found German Embassy letterheads. Police who painstakingly pieced the victim's remnants together reported he was no Moslem or Jew. Perhaps the foxy Ambassador had himself planned the appearance of an attempt on his life which had turned out badly for the man blown to smithereens. Or perhaps the Ambassador was again being hunted by his own countrymen.

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