20th-century Chancellors of Germany

Gustav Ernst Stresemann (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈʃtʁeːzəˌman] ; 10 May 1878 – 3 October 1929) was a German statesman who served as chancellor of Germany from August to November 1923, and as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929. His most notable achievement was the reconciliation between Germany and France, for which he and French Prime Minister Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926. During a period of political instability and fragile, short-lived governments, Stresemann was the most influential politician in most of the Weimar Republic's existence.
Stresemann attended the University of Berlin and Leipzig University, where he studied political economy, history and international law and developed his vision of liberalism and nationalism, a combination of views that would define his political career. After obtaining his doctorate, Stresemann worked in trade associations before entering politics. In 1907, he was elected to the Reichstag as a deputy for the National Liberal Party. He lost his seat in 1912 but was reelected two years later. During the First World War, he was a vocal advocate for German militarism and expansionism. Exempted from war service due to poor health, he gradually became the National Liberals' de facto leader, before formally taking over the party in 1917. Germany's defeat and the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy came as a significant shock to Stresemann, forcing him to gradually reassess his previous positions. He founded the German People's Party (DVP) and, despite his own monarchist beliefs, came to grudgingly accept Weimar democracy and became open to working with the centre and the left.
In August 1923, Stresemann was named chancellor and foreign minister of a grand coalition government. During his brief chancellorship, he abandoned the policy of passive resistance against the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, and introduced the Rentenmark in a (relatively successful) attempt to tame hyperinflation in the country. In November, Stresemann's reshuffled government collapsed after the Social Democratics withdrew from the coalition. He resigned as chancellor following a vote of no confidence, but remained as foreign minister in the new government led by Wilhelm Marx. His first major diplomatic success was the 1924 Dawes Plan, which reduced Germany's overall reparations commitment. It was followed by the Locarno Treaties in 1925, which confirmed Germany's postwar western borders, guaranteed peace with France, and provided for Germany's admission to the League of Nations a year later. Stresemann also moved to improve relations with the Soviet Union through the 1926 Treaty of Berlin. In 1928, he oversaw Germany's participation in the Kellogg–Briand Pact, in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve international conflicts.
Amid failing health, Stresemann successfully negotiated the Young Plan which sought to further reduce German reparations payments. He died in October 1929 after a series of strokes at the age of 51.

Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk (German: [ˈfʁants fɔn ˈpaːpn̩] ; 29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German conservative politician, reactionary, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as the chancellor of Germany in 1932, and then as the vice-chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934.
Born into a wealthy family of Westphalian Catholic aristocrats, Papen served in the Prussian Army from 1898 onward and was trained as a German General Staff officer. He served as military attaché in Mexico and the United States from 1913 to 1915, while also covertly organising acts of sabotage in the United States and quietly backing and financing Mexican forces in the Mexican Revolution on behalf of German military intelligence.
After being expelled as persona non grata by the United States State Department in 1915, he served as a battalion commander on the Western Front of World War I and finished his war service in the Middle Eastern theatre as a lieutenant colonel.
Asked to become chancellor of the Weimar Republic by President Paul von Hindenburg in 1932, Papen ruled by presidential decree. He launched the Preußenschlag coup against the Social Democratic Party-led Government in the Free State of Prussia. His failure to secure a base of support in the Reichstag led to his removal by Hindenburg and replacement by General Kurt von Schleicher.
Determined to return to power, Papen, believing that Adolf Hitler could be controlled once he was in the government, pressured Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor and Papen as vice-chancellor in 1933 in a cabinet ostensibly not under Nazi Party domination. Seeing military dictatorship as the only alternative to a Nazi Party chancellor, Hindenburg consented. Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, during which the Nazis killed some of his allies and confidants. Subsequently, Papen served the German Foreign Office as the ambassador in Vienna from 1934 to 1938 and in Ankara from 1939 to 1944. He joined the Nazi Party in 1938.After the Second World War, Papen was indicted for Nazi war crimes in the Nuremberg trials before the International Military Tribunal but was acquitted of all charges. In 1947, a West German denazification court found Papen to have acted as the main culprit in crimes relating to the Nazi government. Papen was given a sentence of eight years' imprisonment at hard labour, but was released on appeal in 1949. Franz von Papen's memoirs were published in 1952 and 1953; he died in 1969.