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The Reichstag Fire and Its Political Consequences

  • Chapter
Aspects of the Third Reich

Abstract

Their [Hitler’s and Göring’s] surprise was genuine. When Hanfstaengl phoned him the news, Goebbels thought it was a bad joke.1 Göring seems to have been utterly thunderstruck; he went at once to the burning building. His first thought was to save the tapestries and the library.2 He arrived at about 9.30 p.m., shortly after the main hall had gone up in flames and the fire had reached ten-alarm proportions. It cannot be inferred from Göring’s behaviour that he welcomed the fire.3 He gave the necessary instructions, spoke chiefly with Fire Chief Gempp, and inquired after Councillor Galle, the president of the Reichstag. Assistant Secretary Grauert, who was with him, inquired at once into the origin of the fire, learned of the grounds for suspecting Ernst Torgler and Wilhelm Koenen [Ernst Torgler, chairman of the parliamentary party of the KPD, Koenen a KPD deputy Ed.], and was convinced from that moment on that the Communists were behind the fire.4

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Notes and References

  1. Ernst Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness (Philadelphia, 1957). pp. 210f.; corroborated by Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei (Munich, 1934), pp. 269f; cf. H. Fraenkel, below, p. 14, who supports Hanfstaengl’s version.

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  2. Göring’s reaction was later attested by F. W. Jacoby, who was then his aide-de-camp (F. W. Jacoby, ‘Mitteilung vom 16.2.1961’, Archiv Tobias): ‘On the day of the Reichstag fire, I who was then his only aide-de-camp, reported the incident to Göring. I was then convinced and still am convinced that his surprise was authentic’ Similarly the statement of Undersecretary [Staatssekretär] Grauert of 3 October 1957 (Archiv Tobias): he was in conference with Göring when an official (Grauert had Daluege in mind, but it was Jacoby) rushed in and announced that the Reichstag was on fire. ‘Göring’s reaction was so unmistakable and convincing that Grauert did not have the slightest doubt either then or later that Göring was truly surprised.’ Cf. Fritz Tobias, Der Reichstagsbrand, Legende und Wirklichkeit (Rastatt, 1962), p. 108.

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  3. Martin Sommerfeldt, Ich war dabei (Darmstadt, 1949), p.25; ‘Aussage Gempp’, Tobias, Der Reichstagsbrand, p. 668. See also n. 8 below.

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  4. ‘Aussage Grauert’, corroborated by Göring’s statement before the Reich Court, see Stenographischer Bericht der Reichsgerichtsverhandlung gegen van der Lubbe u.a., 2 Sitzungstag (henceforth referred to as ST), 31, pp. 104f.

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  5. Ibid., p. 94: ‘When (after being stopped by the police guard) I heard the word “arson”... it was as if the curtain had risen at one stroke and I saw the play clearly before me. The moment the word “arson” fell, I knew that the Communist Party was guilty and had set the Reichstag on fire.’ If this was true, it provides one more indication that ‘Reichstag fire myths’ beclouded men’s minds from the start.

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  6. Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante portars (Stuttgart, 1950), p. 192, who mistakenly places the hearing in the Reichstag building (guardroom at Brandenburg Gate) but characteristically cites Lateit’s impression that van der Lubbe was a madman (cf. Tobias, Der Reichstagsbrand, pp. 66f).

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  7. Ibid., p. 111. In 1960 Weber expressly confirmed to Tobias the statement he then made.

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  8. Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 170.

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  9. Sommerfeldt, Ich wer dabei, p. 25.

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  10. Tobias, Der Reichstagsbrand, App. 14, p. 635.

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  11. Sefton Delmer, Die Deutschen und ich (Hamburg, 1962), p. 188. English original, Trial Sinister (London, 1961).

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  12. Franz von Papen, Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Munich, 1952), p. 303.

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  13. DBFP, No. 245; Rumbold managed to enter the cordoned-off Reichstag on the night of the fire.

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  14. Delmer, Die Deutschen und ich, pp. 191f.; Letter to Der Spiegel, No. 52, 1959; earlier in Daily Express, 21 July 1939.

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  15. Delmer, Die Deutschen und ich, p. 190.

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  16. Diels, Lucifer, p. 193.

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  17. Ibid., pp. 140–1.

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  18. We are aware that Diels’s statements must be treated critically. However, in matters connected with the Reichstag fire, they are largely corroborated by Sommerfeldt and by the testimony of the witnesses. Above all, Schnitzler corroborates his crucial account of the events in the burning Reichstag building. Diels had no cognisance of Schnitzler’s article until it was in proof (Diels, Lucifer, p. 200), and Diels’s account, as a comparison of their texts shows, was not influenced by Schnitzler; from 1934 on, the relations between the two men were strained. Schnitzler checked his information chiefly by consulting Heisig, who had no reason for taking an apologetic attitude (cf. Schnitzler’s letter to Heisig, Archiv Tobias, and correspondence with Tobias), and also questioned Zirpins. Cf. also Schnitzler’s letter in IfZ Zeugenschrifttum, which Wolff rather surprisingly failed to take into consideration. The parallel accounts of Diels and Schnitzler preclude our original supposition that the arrests were first decided upon in the session at the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (Goebbels speaks of a cabinet meeting).

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  19. Heinrich Schnitzler, anonymous article, ‘Der Reichstagsbrand in anderer Sicht’, in Neue Politik, Organ für Freiheit und Recht (Zürich, 1949), Vol. 10, No. 2 (quoted from photocopy in IfZ-Zeugenschrifttum A-7), p. 2.

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  20. Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 270.

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  21. Diels, Lucifer, p. 194; Schnitzler, ‘Der Reichstagsbrand in anderer Sicht’, p. 2; before the Reich Court Helldorf denied having been at Göring’s on the night of the fire, whereas Göring — truthfully in all likelihood — declared expressly that Helldorf had come in response to his summons (31 ST, p. 105). One of these two witnesses was guilty of perjury. Sahm’s presence is indirectly confirmed; [former German Nationalist Party leader Gottfried] Treviranus, who had been invited to Sahm’s that evening, has stated verbally that Sahm came home at about 11.15. Cf. Tobias, Der Reichstagsbrand, p. 112.

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  22. Delmer, Die Deutschen und ich, p. 192; Delmer’s interpretation of the conversation reported to him between Hitler and Papen is dubious, particularly because Papen was present at the later conference at the Prussian Ministry of the Interior.

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  23. Völkischer Beobachter, 1 March 1933, ‘Der Fanal des Bolschewismus’.

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  24. Diels, Lucifer, pp. 194f. When one has read Diels’s account of these events, it seems impossible to dispose of Hitler’s speech as ‘play-acting’, even if one takes account of Henderson’s remark (in Alan Bullock, Hitler. Ein Studie über Tyrannei (Düsseldorf, 1961), p. 375) that Hitler’s capacity for deluding himself was a part of his technique.

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  25. Schnitzler, ‘Die Reichstagsbrand in anderer Sicht’, p. 11.

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  26. Even earlier, by order of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, a police radio call (No. 171) had gone out to ‘all police headquarters and top police officers of the West sectors’, invoking the Reichstag fire and ‘increased activity of the KPD’ and ordering confiscation of all leaflets and periodicals of the KPD and SPD, alerting the local riot police, calling up the auxiliary police, and ordering ‘a thorough surprise search action at the homes of all Communist functionaries’ (St. A. Oldenburg. Best. 205, Staatspolizei [Schutz-Ordnunspolizei, Aktenband Geheim und ‘Persönliches’ vom 1.1.29.3.1933]; I owe this and other documents to the careful researches of State Archivist Doctor Schieckel).

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  27. 2 ST, pp. 71ff.

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  28. Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, p. 254.

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  29. Ibid., p. 270.

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  30. WTB, 2nd early ed., 28 February 1933, in Tobias, App. 14, p. 633. When van der Lubbe was questioned by Heisig, it was not clear at first whether he was a Communist or a Social Democrat. Cf. ‘Aussage Heisig’, 2 ST, p. 61. That night it was inferred from van der Lubbe’s working-class contacts that he was connected with the KPD, and it was mistakenly concluded that he had confessed to Social Democratic connections (cf. ‘Aussage Goering’, 31 ST, p. 104). Denials in Völkischer Beobachter, 23 March 1933, and elsewhere. Cf. Tobias, p. 112. The suspicion cast on the SPD was immediately doubted by the non-National Socialist press. Cf. Frankfurter Zeitung, 1 March 1933, leading editorial: ‘It is only too understandable that in view of an election campaign which consists essentially in upholding the fiction of a common “Marxist front”, which in the National Socialist formulation brands the Social Democrats and the Communists indiscriminately as “Communist rabble”, defensive alliances may spring up spontaneously in the working class.’ But, the article concludes, it is absurd to accuse the Social Democrats of originating the fire. (WTB, Wolffs Telegraphen Bureau.)

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  31. Reichsgesetzblatt (RGB1) 1, 1933, p. 86. Cf. also Tobias, p. 113.

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  32. Cf. Braunschweigische Landeszeitung, 28 February, telegram.

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  33. 31 ST, p. 106.

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  34. 46 ST, pp. 60ff.; as the order for the arrest of Torgier (Archiv Tobias) indicates, the arrest orders were mimeographed in the first hours of 28 February. They invoked Sec. 22 of the emergency decree of 4 February.

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  35. ‘Aussage Grauert vom 3.10.51’, Archiv Tobias. According to this statement, Hitler himself took no part in drafting the law.

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  36. IfZ-Zeugenschrifttum ED 1 — Liebmann, p. 44. General Liebmann’s manuscript notes.

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  37. There is no other evidence of Hitler’s initiative. The records of the Reich Chancellory (BA Koblenz) contain none, those of the Reich Ministry of the Interior are missing; hence it is not possible for the present to go beyond hypotheses in respect to the genesis of the Reichstag fire decree. Papen, who might have been expected to know what happened, obviously confuses this decree with the Decree to Combat Treason Against the German Nation, of 28 February (Der Wahrheit eine Gasse, p. 304).

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  38. Goebbels, Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, pp. 270f.; Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, 1941–1942, ed. P. E. Schramm (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 325; the account of Wilfried von Oven (Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende (Buenos Aires, 1949–50), pp. 115ff.) is not credible.

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  39. Joseph Goebbels, Wetterleuchten (Berlin, 1943), pp. 373ff.; cf. Diels, Lucifer, p. 195.

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  40. In Tobias, App. 14, p. 633.

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  41. Cf. ibid., pp. 262ff.

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  42. VB, 1 March 1933. The lists of persons to be assassinated were alleged to include names from every section of the bourgeoisie. On 2 March the paper reported that van der Lubbe had regularly attended meetings of the Communist action committee, which he had persuaded to enlist his services for the incendiary action. Most of the other news stories about the fire consisted of false reports issued by the police, for example, the rumour that the Communist leaders had given advance notice of the Reichstag fire (VB, 4/5 March 1933). Dertinger’s report (Sammlung Brammer, BA Koblenz) of 2 March 1933, speaks of a ‘news muddle’. The countless conflicting rumours bear witness to the agitation of the public.

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  43. VB, 1 and 2 March 1933.

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  44. Sommerfeldt, Ich war dabei, p. 26.

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  45. Cf., for example, Delmer, Die Deutschen und ich, p. 190.

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  46. Cf. Siegfried Bahne, ‘Die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands’, in Das Ende der Parteien, E. Mattias and R. Morsey (eds) (Düsseldorf, 1960), pp. 685ff., 71 Off. However, there is no reliable material on the basis of which to appraise Communist activity after the seizure of power (cf. Schulz, in Bracher, Sauer and Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, 2nd edn (Cologne, Opladen, 1962), p. 527, n. 48). In her memoirs Maria Reese (BA Koblenz, Kl Erw. 379–4) criticises the KPD severely for putting out irresponsible propaganda while remaining passive in practice. Some informative material, though for the most part confined to Communist propaganda, is to be found in the records of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (R 58) in BA Koblenz. The latent civil war situation with numerous bloody clashes continued (cf. Diels, Lucifer, pp. 186ff., 402ff.); also the account of the atmosphere in Hamburg in Jan Valtin, Tagebuch der Hölle, German edn (Berlin, 1957).

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  47. Cf. the intention of the National Socialists, described by Bracher, to change the order of the agenda if necessary in order to obtain a majority for the Enabling Act (Karl Dietrich Bracher,’ stufen der nationalsocialistischen Machtergreifung’, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, No. 4 (1956), pp. 158f).

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  48. As late as the cabinet meeting of 24 March 1933, Hitler doubted the expediency of suppressing the Communist Party. Such a measure, he held, would serve a purpose only ‘if it were possible to deport the Communists’; there was no point in sending them to concentration camps. Tobias, p. 628.

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  49. Cf. the material presented at the trial (45 and 46 ST), and the memoirs of Maria Reese (n. 46, above).

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  50. For example on 24 January 1933, the news bureau of the Reich Ministry of the Interior distributed to the news bureaux of the Lander an educational pamphlet (RFB-Schulungsmaterial) entitled ‘Der bewaffnete Aufstand in Reval’ (R 58/1, 672). This material is used tendentiously in Martin H. Sommerfeldt, Die Kommune (Berlin, 1934).

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  51. Diels, Lucifer, pp. 189f. Adolf Ehrt’s propagandist work Bewaffneter Aufstand (Berlin/Leipzig, 1933), is based on this material. Göring took up most of the 2 March cabinet meeting with it.

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  52. St. A. Oldenburg, cf. n. 26, above.

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  53. Sent out by the news bureau on 19 April 1933 (BA R 58/1-78).

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  54. 46 ST, p. 61, ‘Aussage Heller’; ‘The evidence presented leaves no room for doubt that the KPD intended very seriously... to stage a general strike, followed by an armed uprising.’ But on p. 64 he declared that the KPD had organised the Reichstag fire in order to put the blame on the National Socialists and so ‘create an unbridgeable gulf between them and the supporters of the SPD, the members of the unions and the members of the Reichsbanner. This was the true and intended significance of the Reichstag fire. Thus it was intended less as a signal for action, as it was partly taken to be in the provinces, than as the central action that would draw the hesitant masses over to the Communists.’ To which Torgler replied: T can only say with Herr Goebbels: that is completely absurd.’ Typical for the state of the evidence is a communciation of 7 April 1933, from Nuremberg police headquarters to the effect that there had indeed been prospects of a violent seizure of power by the KPD, ‘but that positive evidence pointing to a direct connection between the Reichstag fire and such revolutionary intentions is not available’ (‘Handakten Sack’, Tobias, vol. 1, pp. 343ff.).

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  55. Cf. Diels, Lucifer, pp. 170ff.

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  56. 31 ST, pp. 34–40, 43ff., 52.

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  57. Cf. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, pp. 430ff., 438ff., also Sauer, ibid., pp. 866ff.; Schnitzler, ‘Die Reichstagsbrand in andorer Sicht’, p. 5.

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  58. 31 ST, pp. 81f.; IMT ix, pp. 481f.; Diels, Lucifer, pp. 194f.; and Grauert’s statement of 3 October 1957 (Archiv Tobias).

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  59. DBFP Second Series, Vol. iv, No. 253, p. 438.

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  60. Cf. Bahne, ’Die KPD’, p. 692.

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  61. 31 XXX ST, pp. 86ff.

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  62. Cf. Bracher, cited in n. 47 above, pp. 158ff. The change in the agenda seems to have been a mere stopgap, for in fact the mandates of the Communist Reichstag members were not annulled formally as originally intended, but rendered inoperative by their arrest.

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  63. 31 ST, p. 84.

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  64. Cf. above; on it is based the interpretation of M. Broszat (‘Zum Streit um den Reichstagbrand’, Der Spiegel, 8 (1960), pp. 176f.) among others. Broszat says the National Socialists ‘quickly and shrewdly exploited a political revolution; they did not bring it about’.

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  65. 31 ST, pp. 72f.

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  66. DBFP Second Series, Vol. iv, No. 246, p. 431; cf. Tobias, p. 133.

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  67. Reprinted in Tobias, App. 11, p. 623; also numerous press reports to the effect that the elections would take place ‘in any case’ (cf. Generalanzeiger [Wuppertal], 28 February 1933, Braunschweiger Neueste Nachrichten, 2 March 1933, Nazionalzeitung [Berlin], 28 February 1933, etc.).

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  68. Tobias, App. 11, p. 623.

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  69. In any case it was unclear whether Communist Reichstag members were to be included in the arrest action (cf. 47 ST, p. 94).

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  70. Drafted on 28 February, proclaimed on 1 March 1933 (RGBl 1, 1933, pp. 84ff.); Bracher (Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, p. 87) speaks somewhat misleadingly of ‘Reichstag fire decrees’.

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  71. Helmut Krausnick,’ stationen der Gleichschaltung’, in Der Weg in die Diktatur 1918 bis 1933 (Munich, 1962), p. 183.

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  72. Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreitung, p. 83.

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  73. ‘Reichskabinettsitzung vom 28.2 vormittags’, in Tobias, App. 8, p. 619.

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  74. RGBl 1, 1933, pp. 35ff.

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  75. Tobias, p. 617.

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  76. ‘Reichskabinettsitzung vom 27.2’ (ibid., p. 617).

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  77. Cf. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergriefung, p. 434.

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  78. Cf. Gotthard Jasper, ‘Der Schutz der Republik’, Studien zur staatlichen Sicherung der Demokratie in der Weimarer Republik, 1922–1930 (Tübingen, 1963), p. 162, the example of the suppression of the Red War Veterans’ Association; Hans Buchheim, ‘Die organisatorische Entwicklung der Politischen Polizei in Deutschland in den Jahren 1933 und 1934’, in Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte (Munich, 1958), pp. 197ff.

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  79. Cf. Telegr. pol. Funkdienst Leitstelle Braunschweig (Records of the Braunschweig Staatsministerium, copy in Archiv Tobias). In Hamburg the arrests seem to have begun only after the appointment of the police senator (testimony of Kriminalkommissar Will, 47 ST, pp. 94ff.; testimony of Kriminalsekretär Staeglich, ibid., pp. 110ff.). Braunschweig, Oldenburg and Mecklenburg applied the police measures immediately (cf. Völkischer Beobachter, 3 March 1933, and the Oldenburg State Police records mentioned in n. 24 above). It would be worthwhile to investigate the behaviour of the South German Länder. Neither Besson nor Schwend (cf. n. 80 below) mentions a corresponding request on the part of the Reich Ministry of the Interior. With the exception of the Rhine Province and Westphalia, where according to the Völkischer Beobachter of 3 March 1933, respectively 1200 and 850 persons had been arrested the previous day, the arrests were slow in getting under way in the Prussian provinces, as can be seen from the statements of the police officials before the Reich Court.

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  80. Cf. Waldemar Besson, Württemberg und die deutsche Staatskrise 1928–1933 (Stuttgart, 1959), pp. 336f.; Karl Schwend, Bayern zwischen Monarchie und Diktatur (Munich, 1954), p. 510.

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  81. Besson, Württemberg, p. 338.

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  82. They were concerned with the question of jurisdiction, which, their authors claimed, was not with the Reich Ministry of the Interior but with the Reich government as a whole. They also introduced a substantive restriction by adding the words ‘insofar as’. Cf. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, p. 432, n. 225. The commentary of Ministerialdirektor Kurt Häntzschel of the Reich Ministry of the Interior (Die Politischen Notverordnungen..., 4th ed. (Berlin, 1933), Stilkes Rechtsvibliothek, No. 115) has the following to say on Article 2: ‘By Reich government is here meant the competent minister, i.e., the Reich Minister of the Interior!’

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  83. Besson, Württemberg, p. 538.

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  84. Unfortunately it has not been possible to establish who was entrusted with the drafting of the decree. Possibilities are Doctor Werner Hoche, Ministerialrat at the Reich Ministry of the Interior and author of the emergency decree of 4 February (cf. Juristische Wochenschrift 8 [1933], p. 506), Dammers, or Doctor Kaisenberg.

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  85. Frankfurter Zeitung, 1 March 1933, 1st ed., telegraphic dispatch of 28 March.

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  86. Bracher,’ stufender nationalsocialistischen Machtergreifung’, p. 86; he rightly Stresses that even before this time the police authorities had for all practical purposes been free to act as they saw fit.

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  87. ‘Reichskabinettsitzung vom 28.2 nachmittags’ (Tobias, p. 619). Broszat correctly points out that the cabinet approved the decree in ‘all essential points’ (‘Zum streit um den Reichstagbrand’, p. 276). Thus his contention that Göring, Hitler, and Frick had played ‘adroitly, each taking his allotted role’ (p. 275) is groundless, especially as at this time Papen neither could nor wished to raise any further objection, and Gürtner obviously supported the decree.

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  88. Cf. Völkischer Beobachter, 28 February 1933: Report on the suppression of numerous publications (Die Rote Fahne until 15 April) including newspapers of the Centre Party in Bavaria.

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  89. Tobias, App. 10, p. 622.

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  90. DZA Potsdam, Rep. 77 (Microfilm IfZ MA 198/2).

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  91. Frankfurter Zeitung, 1 March 1933, 1st ed., leading editorial.

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  92. Cf. DAZ, 28 February 1933; Niedersächsische Zeitung, 1 March 1933; Frankfurter Zeitung, 1 March 1933; Nazionalzeitung, 28 February 1933.

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  93. IfZ Zeugenschrifttum ED 1 — Liebmann, p. 40.

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  94. Letter from Liebmann, 8 August 1955 (ibid., pp. 361f), who dates the meeting of the High Command (which earlier writers assumed to have taken place before the Reichstag fire) on 1 March. This is confirmed by the transparent allusion to the ‘emergency decree’ in Liebmann’s notes. Liebmann rejects Ott’s contention (IfZ Zeugenschrifttum 279/I — Ott, p. 9) that not Blomberg but Reichenau presided over the conference. Blomberg was present at the Reich cabinet meeting on 28 February. The content of his speech presupposes previous negotiations with the National Socialist leadership and shows that the Reichstag fire must have played a role of considerable importance in regularising the relations between the Reichswehr and the National Socialist movement, chiefly by paralysing the opposition within the Reichswehr.

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  95. Liebmann’s notes on the questions raised by Blomberg’s speech (ibid., p. 43).

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  96. Ibid., pp. 46f.

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  97. Tobias, p. 623.

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  98. The Reichswehr should ‘not be involved in this question of domestic politics’ (telegraphic report of 28 February in 1st ed. of 1 March 1933); cf. the remarks of Sauer, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, pp. 720ff.

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  99. BA Koblenz, Sammlung Brammer, Zsg. 101/26, pp. 167, 175; Cf. the report of 11 March, p. 181, which reiterates that Papen and Blomberg had demanded martial law, but that the president had urged a compromise with Hitler.

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  100. Liebmann-Notizen, cited n. 93 above, pp. 40ff. The tactical arguments suggest Hitler’s influence, although there is no proof that he made any such statements, and these matters were not mentioned at the cabinet meeting of 28 February; on Blomberg’s attitude, cf. H. Krausnick, ‘Vorgeschichte und Beginn des militärischen Widerstandes gegen Hitler’, in Vollmacht des Gewissens (Munich, 1956), pp. 210f.; on the other hand the version of the High Command meeting now available shows that on 1 March Blomberg deviated from the suprapartisan attitude of the Reichswehr: ’One party on the march. In such a situation “suprapartisanship” loses its meaning and there remains only one answer: unreserved support.’

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  101. DBFP Second Series, Vol. iv, No. 253, p. 438. Göring denied this in his radio speech and spoke of forged SA and Stahlhelm orders (in Tobias, p. 640).

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  102. DBFP Second Series, Vol. iv, No. 255, 3 March 1933, p. 439, according to which Neurath spoke up at the cabinet meeting and in a conversation with Rumbold expressed the hope that the decree would be annulled immediately after the elections. ‘In his opinion it was not possible to maintain such a state of exception for any length of time.’

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  103. Tobias, pp. 113, 115f.

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  104. Goebbels, Wetterleuchten, p. 271.

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  105. ‘Reichskabinettssitzung vom 28.2 vormittags’, op. cit., p. 618.

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  106. Ibid., App. 17, pp. 641f.

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  107. ‘Reichskabinettssitzung vom 2.3. 1933’ in Tobias, p. 623. Cf. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, p. 527: ‘No further proof is needed that the material with which Göring duped the Reich ministers on the day after the Reichstag fire existed only in his imagination.’ At the cabinet meetings Göring argued on the strength of material that had been put at his disposal by the Political Police. Later as well Göring made use of the thoroughly dubious conjectures brought forward in the preliminary investigation, which were not even very suitable for propaganda purposes. The questioning of the police inspectors before the Reich Court (45, 46, and 47 ST) throws light on the genesis of the material incriminating the KPD, yet the participants, including so outstanding an expert as Heller, held this material to be reliable. For example, the charge of ‘poisoning public kitchens’ (cf. ‘Aussage Kriminalkommissars Will,’ 47 St, pp. 24f.) goes back to an episode in Düsseldorf when the police believed they had arrested a ‘Communist poisoning team’. Experts calculated that the confiscated poison would have sufficed to poison 18,000 persons. Although the investigation had not even begun, the report was passed on to higher authority. This impelled Gürtner to introduce into the emergency decree a provision for increased penalties in cases of murder by poisoning. The assertion that van der Lubbe had had close ties with Moscow (‘Kabinettssitzung vom 2.3’, WTB, 28 February) derived from van der Lubbe’s statement that he had wished to visit the Soviet Union in 1932. It is characteristic of the uncritical mentality of all the participants that the German Embassy in Moscow was subsequently asked to track down the alleged instigators of the Communist uprising in Germany. The embassy wired back on 14 September 1933: ‘It would be desirable that the State’s Attorney’s sources should provide more detailed information if we are to arrive even at indirect conclusions that may be of any use’ (telegrams to ORA, AA/Rechtsabt.: ‘Korrespondenz und Zeitungs-Ausschnitte zum Reichstagsbrandprozess’, Microfilm IfZ MA-194, 1, p. 125).

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  108. Cf. the telegrams of 28 February and 3 March 1933, to the foreign missions, reprinted in Tobias, App. 15, pp. 636f.

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  109. Mentioned in Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, p. 527. This shows the utter helplessness of the government in the face of Münzenberg’s offensive; cf. also BA Koblenz, R 58/718: ‘Denkschrift über die kommunistische Wühlarbeit im Winter 1932/33 betr. die Vorbereitung der gewaltsamen Verfassungsänderung durch die KPD vom 14.3. 1933.’

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  110. This has never been investigated in detail. For the Political Police’s dubious appraisal of Communist tactics, cf. confidential report of 7 April 1933 (Nachrichtensammlung, R 58/626): Up to 5 March, it was believed, the Communists had considered themselves to be in the stage of preparation for an armed uprising, but Neumann’s more radical view set forth in his book Der bewaffnete Aufstand was making headway.

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  111. Cf. Rudolf Hess’s letter of 16 September 1933, to the Supreme SA Command, requesting it to send immediately all available material proving that the Communists were planning an uprising, and to find out ‘whether there are in the SA any former Communists who are able and willing to testify if necessary that arson etc. are among the methods forseen by the KPD within the framework of such actions’ (BA Koblenz, Sammlung Schumacher, Röhm, Röhmputsch und Reichstagsbrand, p. 402).

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  112. Sammlung Brammer, BA ZSg. 101/26, Anweisungen Nos. 55, 62, 77, Mitteilung No. 107.

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  113. A. François-Poncet, Als Botschafter in Berlin 1931–1938 (Mainz, 1949), p. 94; but cf. Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 325.

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  114. Cf. for example the report of the Münchern Neueste Nachrichten, 14 December 1933.

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  115. Cf. Diels, Lucifer, pp. 269f.

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  116. Cf. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, p. 523, ‘Urteil’, p. 94ff., also Schlegelberger’s affidavits and opinions, BA Koblenz, RK 43/II/294.

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  117. Tobias (p. 470) correctly points out that the in dubio pro re principle was crassly transgressed in the verdict, which started from the assumption that van der Lubbe had acted ‘in conscious and deliberate collusion with unknown accomplices’. Seuffert moved that van der Lubbe’s action be qualified only as ‘an act of preparation for high treason’, which would have avoided the death penalty (cf. 55 ST, pp. 133ff. and Sack, BA,Ll.Erw. 396/1, reprinted in Tobias, pp. 269ff.). The attempt to rehabilitate van der Lubbe in 1955 is irrelevant to the present context (Aufh. 473/55, Gen. St. A., Berlin). On 6 August 1963, the Oberlandgericht in Düsseldorf took the position that there was no reason to presume ‘that the judgment of the Reich Court was a deliberate miscarriage of justice, or that the judges of the Reich Court stretched the law’, but admitted that the verdict had been strongly influenced by National Socialist thinking.

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  118. Cf. Tobias, p. 628. The harsh criticism of the Leipzig verdict in the National Socialist press and the attitude of the Reich Ministry of Justice are dealt with in Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, p. 563, and in Hubert Schorn, Der Richter im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt, 1959), pp. 67ff.

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  119. The position taken by Bormann in a letter of 2 March 1933, to Elfriede Conti strikes me as characteristic: ‘It seems almost unbelievable that Communists should have been so exceptionally idiotic as to stage the fire in the Reichstag building a few days before the elections, because from a pure party standpoint nothing better could have happened to us’ (Sammlung Schumacher, see n. 111 above).

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  120. Goebbels, Wetterleuchlen, p. 271.

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  121. This expression is recorded by Delmer, Die Deutschen und ich, p. 195.

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  122. Cf. the analysis of Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Faschistisches Führertum. Ein Beitrag zur Phänomenologie des europaischen Faschismus,’ in HZ 189 (1964), p. 631: ‘The leadership cult prevented almost everyone from seeing to what extent the leaders were the playthings of their wishful thinking....’

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  123. Op. cit., p. 593. For all our criticism of this exaggerated interpretation, Tobias’ guiding idea should not be overlooked, to wit, the fundamental importance ‘of the incorrigible blindness to reality [that prevails] in an authoritarian Führerstate’. It is only with this in mind that we can gain a full historical understanding of the actions of the National Socialists.

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  1. University of Bochum, Germany

    Hans Mommsen

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H. W. Koch

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© 1985 H. Mommsen

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Mommsen, H. (1985). The Reichstag Fire and Its Political Consequences. In: Koch, H.W. (eds) Aspects of the Third Reich. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17891-9_3

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