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

THE REICHSTAG FIRE 557Arnim, that he was tired and was going to bed — Helldorf himselfrelated all this later as a witness in court. He instructed Sixt to go to theReichstag and see what was going on, and report to him if there wasanything serious.At the same time, Hitler was eating dinner in Goebbels's house. Werethey anxiously conferring about the Communist blow that hung overtheir heads? Oh, no — 'we play music and tell stories. ... Suddenly aphone call from Doctor Hanfstaengl: the Reichstag is burning. I think heis making wild jokes, and refuse to tell the Leader anything about it.'It was no wild joke. The flames were rising over the Reichstag'scupola; the inside was completely gutted and the building a ruin. Thepolice arrested a single suspect at the scene: Marinus van der Lubbe,twenty-four-year-old mason and vagabond, a Dutch subject who hadpreviously belonged to the Communist organization in Holland, anasocial type of Left radical tendencies and definitely unbalanced. Atonce the official bureaus flooded the public with announcements thatlater had to be retracted: van der Lubbe had carried a Communist Partybook on his person; he had confessed to relations with the SocialDemocrats. Hitler and Goebbels drove to the scene of the fire with alarge escort; to an English newspaper correspondent Hitler said that thiswas the incendiary torch of Communism, and that the fist of NationalSocialism would now descend heavily upon it.The next day Goring, through the official Prussian Press Service,reported the plans for a Communist uprising. To the assembled cabinethe made a speech in which he claimed 'that Torgler, the Communistdeputy, had conversed with van der Lubbe for several hours in theReichstag building.' Of this, said Goring, 'we have unexceptionableproof.' The 'unexceptionable proof was the observation of three NationalSocialists, later rejected as false by the court. Goring also spoke of menwith torches, and, according to an official report, he said that these menhad escaped through an underground passage which led from theReichstag to the palace of the Reichstag president — that is, Goring'sown palace, filled from top to bottom with S.A. men.On the morning after the fire, Ernst Torgler, chairman of the