Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE REICHSTAG FIRE 555for war invalids. But this was not yet the great symbolic deed thatbathed his figure in the aura of irresistibility. The tempo should not bestepped up too much, wrote Goebbels in his diary on February 25, 'forup to the last day it must be possible to intensify it.'The great act, which would give content to Hitler's speeches, hadbeen considered for over a decade. The 'fight to the finish betweenSwastika and Soviet Star' must appear to the people in the garish light ofan 'attempted Bolshevist revolution.' 'Then you will see that the Lordhath sent me to do these works.' When the revolution refused to flare up,Goring's police and auxiliary police set out in search of the flame. OnFebruary 24 they invaded the Karl Liebknecht House. The building hadbeen quietly evacuated long before by the Communist Party leadership.But in the cellar lay piles of pamphlets; and the mere existence of acellar led the S.A. to speak of 'catacombs.'The German press was full of stories about catacombs and undergroundpassages. Otherwise there were no exciting revelations in theofficial reports. True, in the night of February 25, a trifling fire wasdiscovered beneath the roof of the rambling 'Castle' in the center ofBerlin, the former residence of the Hohenzollerns, now used forgovernment offices. The blaze was extinguished at once; there wereindications of incendiarism, but nothing was made public. Regardlesswho had set it, there was not enough fire to talk about.Meanwhile, the material from the Karl Liebknecht House wascarefully studied — though it seems to have consisted only of pamphlets.But three days later, Goring made breath-taking disclosures,though he remained vague about the evidence. The Communists, itseemed, were planning to fire government buildings, castles, museums,and vital factories all over Germany. A sensational fire was to be the'signal for bloody revolution and civil war.' At four in the afternoon, onthe day after the fire, general looting was to begin in Berlin. (Report ofthe official Prussian Press Service, February 28, 1933.) According toone of Goring's reports, hostages were to be arrested and food poisonedin restaurants. All this was discovered by Goring and Daluege in the