A fine looking text from the www.jrbooksonline.com site (The Reichstag Fire, F. Tobias, 1964) on the facts surrounding the Reichstag fire which is such a pillar in the Nazi Boogeyman Fun House.  Death Cult Jones LOVES it.

The renowned scholar A.J.P. Taylor provided the introduction.  A few quotes of Taylor's which rang the famliar bells for:

ingenious Communist speculation, plausible only to those who knew nothing of the physical obstacles which the tunnel and its many locked doors provided

It illuminates Communist methods and, by comparison at any rate, their competence – particularly their competence in manufacturing legends which deceived high-minded people all over the world.

The full records of the proceedings before the High Court are locked away at Potsdam under Communist control. They would surely have been released before now if they had helped to convict the Nazis.

The legends about the Reichstag fire became a cardinal part of recent history. Like all legends, they should be demolished

And this gem which I'll gladly steal and lean on:

As a scholar, I am just as pleased at being proved wrong as at being proved right.

Anyhow, here is most of Prof. Taylor's introduction:

Introduction by A. J. P. Taylor

The fire in the Debating Chamber of the Reichstag on 27 February 1933 has a place in all the history books. Historians, who find so much to disagree about, are for once in agreement, or were until the present book was published. National Socialists – Nazis for short – started the fire, we believed, in order to cause an anti-Communist panic in Germany and so to influence the general election, due on 5 March. The trick succeeded. The German electors took alarm. The Nazis got their majority, and Hitler was able to establish his dictatorship. The Reichstag fire not only explained the initial Nazi success. It also set the pattern for explanations of all Hitler’s later acts. We saw at every stage – over rearmament, over Austria, over Czechoslovakia, over Poland – the same deliberate and conspiratorial cunning which had been first shown on 27 February 1933. Historians, writing about Nazi Germany, did not look closely at the events of that night. They took the central fact for granted: Nazis set fire to the Reichstag; and there was an end of it. Most historians were less sure how the Nazis did it. They used some equivocal phrase: ‘we do not know exactly what happened’; ‘the details are still to be revealed’ – something of that sort. Much evidence was in fact available: police reports, fire inspectors’ reports, large excerpts from the proceedings of the High Court at Leipzig, kept by Dr Sack, Torgler’s counsel. Herr Tobias was the first to look at this evidence with an impartial eye. He took nothing for granted. He was not concerned to indict the Nazis, or for that matter to acquit them. He was that rare thing, a researcher for truth, out to find what happened. His book sticks closely to the events of 27 February and to the legal or sham-legal proceedings which followed.

Some knowledge of the political background may be useful.....On a cool retrospect, the burning of the Reichstag occupies a comparatively small place in the story of Hitler’s rise to absolute power. He was Chancellor before the fire occurred; it did not much affect the electors; and they did not give him the crushing majority which he needed. The passing of the Enabling Law, not the general election, was the moment of decision. But these were not cool days.

A democratic system was being destroyed in the full glare of publicity. Berlin was thronged with newspaper correspondents from foreign countries, eager for stories. With nerves on edge, everyone expected conspiracies by everyone else. The fire at the Reichstag supplied the most dramatic story of a dramatic time. It was naturally built up beyond its merits. For instance, we talk to this day as though the entire Reichstag, a great complex of rooms and building, was destroyed. In fact, only the Debating Chamber was burnt out; and the burning of a Chamber, with wooden panels, curtains dry with age, and a glass dome to provide a natural draught, was not surprising. Many other similar halls have burnt in an equally short space of time, from the old House of Commons in 1834 to the Vienna Stock Exchange a few years ago. A prosaic explanation of this kind did not suit the spirit of the time. People wanted drama; and there had to be drama...

Such is the background for this book. Herr Tobias has not produced new evidence. He has merely looked again at the evidence which always existed. His examination involves much detail. This is essential if we are to judge what the evidence is worth. He has had to follow many false trails, and it is exasperating when these lead to a dead end. In the original German edition, he ran after still more false trails. Some of these have been left out, in order to spare the English reader. They do not, in my judgement, affect the general picture. I do not know Herr Tobias. He was never a Nazi; nor was his book written to please the present authorities in Germany – very much the contrary. It was written in an endeavour, whether mistaken or not, to discover the truth. In my opinion, he has succeeded, so far as anyone can succeed with the evidence we have at present. The reader will, I hope, believe me when I say that I have no desire to ‘acquit’ the Nazis. I welcome the investigations by Herr Tobias, solely because their conclusions seem to me right.

The case against the Nazis rested on two arguments or rather assumptions: the first that van der Lubbe was a physical degenerate who was incapable of starting the fires alone; the second that it was impossible, in any case, for the fires to have been started by a single man. Herr Tobias has shaken both these assumptions. He shows that van der Lubbe was quick-witted, ingenious, and physically active. His defective eyesight was balanced, as often happens, by sensitivity in other ways. He described precisely how he had set fire to the Reichstag; and his description tallied with the evidence. The police took him through the Reichstag with a stop-watch. He covered the ground at exactly the right times. Herr Tobias also provides a convincing explanation of van der Lubbe’s motives and of his later behaviour. Van der Lubbe despaired at the lack of fight shown by the Communists and other opponents of Hitler. He wished to give a signal of revolt. When his gesture failed, when indeed it helped to consolidate Hitler’s dictatorship, he fell into despair. There is a cry of human tragedy in his repeated declaration to the High Court: ‘I did it alone. I was there. I know.’ No one believed him.

Herr Tobias shows too that the fires were not beyond the capacity of a single man. The opinion of the ‘experts’ against this rested on conjecture, not evidence. Thus, there is good ground for believing that van der Lubbe did it all alone, exactly as he claimed. We can go further. There is some evidence, though naturally more conjectural, that the Nazis did not do it. If they in fact started the fire, why did they so strikingly fail to provide any evidence against the Communists or even that van der Lubbe had accomplices? The Nazi leaders certainly behaved as though they were surprised when they arrived at the scene of the fire. Indeed everyone acknowledges that Hitler had no previous knowledge of the fire, and was genuinely surprised. Yet it was his spontaneous reaction in accusing the Communists which gave the Reichstag fire political significance so far as it had any. Hence even the believers in Nazi guilt must admit that Hitler’s method was to grab at opportunities as they occurred, not to manufacture them beforehand.

Again, there has been total failure to show how the Nazis were associated with the fire. The strongest point in Herr Tobias’s book is perhaps the firm and final demonstration that neither the Nazis nor anyone else could have come through the famous ‘tunnel’ from Göring’s house. Use of this tunnel by the Nazis was an ingenious Communist speculation, plausible only to those who knew nothing of the physical obstacles which the tunnel and its many locked doors provided. We are thus left with two conclusions. There is no firm evidence that the Nazis had anything to do with the fire. There is much evidence that van der Lubbe did it alone, as he claimed. Of course new evidence may turn up, though this is unlikely after thirty years. The full records of the proceedings before the High Court are locked away at Potsdam under Communist control. They would surely have been released before now if they had helped to convict the Nazis. I have an uneasy feeling that van der Lubbe talked about his intentions beforehand and that he may have been egged on by Nazi companions. This does not imply that the Nazi leaders knew anything of it, and it makes no difference to the story.

Should this book have been written and published at all? Many people have been indignant at any so-called attempt to ‘acquit’ the Nazis of any charge, true or false. It is easy to understand why people have been indignant in Germany. Nazi guilt means innocence for everyone else. In particular, present German Ministers, who, as members of the Centre, voted for the Enabling Law in 1933, can plead that they were cheated by Hitler into believing in a Communist danger. But why should people mind in England? They are reluctant, I suppose, to confess that they were taken in the other way round – by the Communists, not by Hitler. Writers and lecturers on German history are annoyed at having to change their texts or their lecture-notes. I do not sympathize with them. As a scholar, I am just as pleased at being proved wrong as at being proved right. The essential thing is to acknowledge one’s mistakes. On the Reichstag fire I was as wrong as everyone else; and I am grateful to Herr Tobias for putting me right. The Nazi (and Communist) method is to stick to every charge against one’s opponents, whether it be true or false. We sink to their level if we copy their methods. Every act of fair judgement against the Nazis – every ‘acquittal’ of them if you like – is a triumph for the free spirit. Herr Tobias has performed a great service for all those who believe in truly free inquiry.

An essay by Sir Lewis Namier on Open Diplomacy opens with the words: ‘There would be little to say on this subject, were it not for the nonsense which has been talked about it.’ This is true of many topics besides Open Diplomacy. It is true of the fire at the Reichstag. Taken by itself, merely as a fire, there is little to say about it. An unbalanced Dutch boy started the fire all alone, much as Martin set fire to York Minster in 1829. Martin wanted to stop the organ buzzing. Van der Lubbe wanted to give the signal for a rising against the Nazis. Both were disappointed. The organ of York Minster still plays. Not a single German responded to van der Lubbe’s call. But then everyone talked nonsense. The Nazis accused the Communists of starting the fire. Communists and others accused the Nazis. The nonsense talked about the fire illuminates, perhaps better than anything else, the political climate of the nineteen-thirties. It illuminates Nazi methods and Nazi incompetence. It illuminates Communist methods and, by comparison at any rate, their competence – particularly their competence in manufacturing legends which deceived high-minded people all over the world. It was their best stroke since the affair of Sacco and Vanzetti, where, it now appears, Sacco, though probably not Vanzetti, was guilty after all. The legends about the Reichstag fire became a cardinal part of recent history. Like all legends, they should be demolished; and Herr Tobias has gone a long way towards demolishing them.

MAGDALEN COLLEGE

OXFORD

Full text of intro and book here.

Submitted by Fester on Mon, 2010-04-12 05:02

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