a book reopens the case of the 1933 fire – Corriere.it

When on a cold January morning Martin van der Lubbe saw the scaffold, erected in the courtyard of the Court of Leipzig, a fit of rage seized him. He tried to free himself from the guards, he began to insult magistrates and members of the government who had come to witness his execution and you let out a desperate cry: And the others?. Who was he referring to?

317 days had passed since that February 27, 1933, when the Dutch left radical, just 24 years old, had been arrested at the crime scene and had confessed immediately. It was he, half an hour earlier, who had started the fire: the Reichstag, the German Parliament, was still an immense brazier.

It was the fire of the century. Adolf Hitler had become chancellor on January 30, appointed by President Paul von Hindenburg in full compliance with the Weimar Constitution. And civil liberties still existed on paper, even if disturbing things were already happening, such as the closure of leftist newspapers, the purge of unreliable officials in administrations or the legalization of violence by the Nazi militias SA, SS and Stahlhelm. The fragile Republic born from the defeat in the First World War remained standing in its own way.

But in those fateful moments, the Reichstagsbrand (Reichstag fire) change the course of history. With the flames still raging, what Sebastian Haffner would have termed legal state terror began. There will be no mercy – said Hitler, who rushed to the scene together with Goebbels – whoever stands in our way will be shot down, every communist functionary must be shot on the spot, the communist deputies must be hanged this very night. So it was. Thousands of politicians and militants of the opposition, not only communists, intellectuals and journalists were taken from their beds in the same night, arrested, deported, locked up in makeshift concentration camps, tortured or simply killed. The lists had already been prepared for some time by the Prussian Interior Minister, Hermann Gring. The following day, the famous Reichstag Fire Ordinance appeared on the walls of Berlin, suspending all fundamental freedoms in one fell swoop, reinforcing penal measures, liquidating federalism. It would remain in effect until the fall of Hitler’s dictatorship. In fact, the flames set by van der Lubbe offered Hitler and his criminal clique on a silver platter the opportunity to wipe out what remained of the Weimar Republic in a few hours.

Ninety years later, the thesis that the young Dutchman, among other things suffering from severe myopia, did it all by himself, managing to enter and reduce a massive and immense building like the Reichstag to rubble in a few minutes, still prevailing . Over time, it was consolidated by a famous serial investigation by Der Spiegel published in the late 1960s and the opinion of authoritative historians, from Hans Mommsen to Ian Kershaw. But in truth the dilemma of whether the Dutch extremist acted independently or had accomplices has never been solved. Various theses have conflicted. From the one dear to the Nazis of a communist plot, denied even by the trial that acquitted the other co-defendants, including the future Bulgarian premier Georgi Dimitrov, to that of a van der Lubbe manipulated by the National Socialists themselves, who would have secretly also helped him.

The controversy is now being rekindled by a book by Uwe Soukup, scholar who has been researching the fire for years, whose sensational conclusions are anticipated in a long article just published in Die Zeit. In Die Brandstiftung. Mythos Reichstagsbrand – was in der Nacht geschah, in der die Demokratie unterging

(Arson. The Myth of the Reichstag Fire — What Happened on the Night Democracy Collapsed), published by Heyne, Soukup admits he cannot demonstrate and prove an alternative thesis, but puts together an impressive series of clues, which from on the one hand they unmask contradictions and structural weaknesses of the single culprit scenario, and on the other they point the finger towards the involvement of the Nazis, or rather of a part of them in the preparation and execution of the attack.

One of these comes from Hermann Gring, who in 1946, in a conversation with the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor, Robert Kempner, said that probably the Berlin SA, led by Karl Ernst, were behind the fire.

Yes, the SA, the rebel militia that resented the course of Hitler’s legality and that in 1934 would have paid for the dissent with the massacre of its leaders. A hypothesis, that of Gring, corroborated by the recent discovery of the sworn declaration of Hans Martin Lennings, a man of the brown shirts, who in 1955 told a notary in Hanover that he had received from the SA the order to bring van der Lubbe to the Reichstag the evening of February 27, 1933. Another SA connection is that of Hans-George Gewehr, great expert on flammable liquids, considered the head of the fire brigade of the Nazi militia. Also called Pistolen-Heini, according to several witnesses in a night of libations he had boasted of having taken part in the Reichstagsbrand.

Even more important is the testimony given in Soukup by Ruth Weiss, a ninety-eight-year-old writer, widow of Hans Weiss, a much older journalist for the Berliner Tageblatt. You had told her that on the evening of February 27 you had gone to the Reichstag together with a colleague of the politician, who regularly attended Parliament and knew the building well. They had managed to get to a side entrance when they saw a group of young men in loden coat sneaking out of a large gate, get into a waiting truck and drive off. As they entered the building, Weiss and his colleague smelled a strong smell of gasoline.

Other details emerge, such as the wooden and cardboard plates with the names of the deputies of the Reichstag, over a thousand pieces normally kept in a trunk behind the speakers’ lectern, which were instead found reduced to ashes in the middle of the hemicycle: whoever had moved them ? Certainly not van der Lubbe, who could not know where they were and did everything in a short time. And how had the Dutchman managed to climb an 8-metre ledge to enter, as he declared at the trial? And why was a witness who said he saw two individuals smashing some windows, which had 8 mm thick glass, not taken into account?

Finally, Soukup recalls, van der Lubbe’s absent and apathetic attitude at the trial, which fueled the suspicion that he had been drugged. A suspicion that has already led to a sensational decision: at the end of January, van der Lubbe’s grave in the Leipzig cemetery was indeed opened and her remains dug up for examination by a forensic medical team. Not even these investigations will solve the mystery of what happened on February 27, 1933 in the Reichstag, admits Soukup, but will resume the inevitable discussion. And he concludes: The exact circumstances of the death of the first German democracy cannot leave us alone even 90 years later.