Burning the Reichstag

BURNING THE REICHSTAG

An Investigation into the Third Reich's Enduring Mystery

BENJAMIN CARTER HETT

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© Benjamin Carter Hett 2014

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hett, Benjamin Carter.
Burning the Reichstag : an investigation into the Third Reich's
enduring mystery / Benjamin Carter Hett.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-932232-9
1. Reichstagsgebäude (Berlin, Germany)—Fire, 1933.
2. Germany—Politics and government—1933–1945. I. Title.
DD256.5.H378   2014
943.086—dc23     2013008386

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

To Robert Girvan and Dean McNeill: “Best men.”

The history we read, though based on facts, is, strictly speaking, not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgments
.

— Geoffrey Barraclough,
History in a Changing World

Prologue: Berlin, February 27, 1933

1. “Satanic Nose”: Rudolf Diels

2. “SA + Me”: Joseph Goebbels

3. “What Just Went on Here Is an Absolute Outrage”: Rumors

4. “Impossible Things”: The Investigations

5. Brown and Other Books: The Propaganda Battle

6. “Stand Up, van der Lubbe!”: The Trial

7. “This First Crime of the National Socialists”: The Fire at Nuremberg

8. “Persil Letters”: The
Gestapists'
Tale

9. “The Feared One”: Fritz Tobias and His “Clients”

10. “Snow from Yesterday”: Blackmail and the Institute for Contemporary History

Conclusion: Evidence and Self-Evidence

Epilogue: Hannover, July 2008

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Notes

Archival Sources

Index

BURNING THE REICHSTAG

BERLIN, FEBRUARY 27, 1933

THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY
27, 1933
, was a cold one in Berlin: six degrees below zero centigrade, with a sharp wind out of the east. There had been snow. The streets and sidewalks were icy.

That night twenty-nine-year-old Chief Constable (Oberwachtmeister) Karl Buwert, who had been posted to watch the west and north sides of the Reichstag building from 8:00 to 10:00, was expecting a quiet shift. The weather would keep most people indoors. There was an election on and the Reichstag was not in session; many deputies were away campaigning, and the work of the building's staff slowed down after 9:00. Between the rounds of the lighting man at 8:45 and the Reichstag mailman at 8:50 or 8:55, and the first inspection of the night watchman at 10:00, no one would be moving about inside the building. For this hour or so the Reichstag would be quiet, and, presumably—apart from the porter at the north entrance—empty.
¹

The Reichstag stood at the political and geographic heart of Berlin, a short block north of the Brandenburg Gate and the end of the famous boulevard Unter den Linden. Designed by architect Paul Wallot, it had opened in 1894. In 1916 wartime political pressures compelled an
irritated Emperor Wilhelm II to consent to the addition of the words above the main entrance: “To the German People” (
Dem deutschen Volke
). The bronze letters were crafted by the highly respected firm of S.A. Loevy, founded in 1855. The Loevys were Jewish. Later, in 1938, they would secure a commission for work on Hitler's new Reich Chancellery, but in 1939 their firm would be “aryanized,” expropriated and sold at a fire-sale price to a non-Jewish businessman. Some members of the family went into exile. Some survived the Nazis by living underground. Some were deported to the death camps and, in the name of the German people, murdered.
²

In the years of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), Germany's post–First World War democratic era, the Reichstag became an increasingly busy and crowded place. The deputies and the Reichstag staff amounted to nearly a thousand people, not counting the parties' employees; perhaps fifteen hundred people might be in the building on any given day. One entered the Reichstag through one of five “portals,” although the grand Portal I on the west side of the building, facing the Platz der Republik (square of the republic), was only used for ceremonial occasions. By contrast, the deputies' Portal II on the south side facing the Tiergarten resembled a servants' entrance. The same might be said for Portals III and IV on the east and Portal V on the north side, facing a bend in the river Spree.

The Reichstag's ground floor was taken up by kitchens and cleaning rooms, office space for the stenographers and messengers, and even a gymnasium, baths, and a hairdresser. The heart of the building was the main floor, one level up from the street. It was dominated by a long hall (in German:
Wandelhalle
) which, at nearly 320 feet, ran most of the length of the building's west side. Architect Wallot had added the hall to his plans only at the last minute; officials deemed its marble too expensive, and substituted a cheap replacement. At the north end of the hall was a comfortable reading room for the deputies, stocked with four hundred newspapers and periodicals. (In the northeast tower there was also a library with nearly three hundred thousand volumes.) At the south end of the hall was the Reichstag restaurant. Dubbed “Schulze's Caucus” (Fraktion Schulze) after its first proprietor, the restaurant was never much of a success either with its intended clientele, who complained about the quality of the food and the overly formal ambience, or its proprietors, who from Schulze on complained of low attendance. The reporters had their own
separate canteen, and members of the public could visit the restaurant only in the company of a deputy.
³

From the midpoint of the hall, turning toward the east side of the building and passing the equestrian statue of Emperor Wilhelm I, one came to the heart of the Reichstag, the plenary chamber where the deputies met and deliberated. The plenary chamber was a room of nearly seven thousand square feet, originally designed to provide space for 397 deputies. The deputies' seats were arranged in a half-circle, rising up from the front of the room, where there was a large desk for the president of the Reichstag, the speaker's podium, a desk for the stenographers, and seats for members of the Reich cabinet and of the parliament's upper house, the
Bundesrat
, or Federal Council (in Weimar days changed to the
Reichsrat
, or Reich Council). For the sake of better acoustics the chamber was furnished and paneled exclusively with wood. Its placement in the center of the building, with no windows to the outside world, was deliberate: the deputies were to be insulated from any and all disturbances. Fresh air for the chamber was supposed to come from vents in the iron and glass cupola that rose 246 feet above the chamber. A glass ceiling also let in the cupola's light. However, since the circulating air could only reach down to a height of about fifteen feet, the ventilation never did much for the deputies' health and alertness.
⁴

In democratic Weimar the number of deputies in each Reichstag depended on voter turnout, and in time the chamber grew crowded with far more deputies than originally planned—466 after the first Reichstag election of 1920, in later years over 600. The 1919 Weimar constitution mandated elections at least every four years, but especially in the crisisridden early 1930s they came more frequently. Deputies were elected from ranked party lists in a strictly proportional system, in which every party's share of the popular vote determined its share of deputies. The constitution stipulated that the deputies be paid one-quarter the salary of a Reich cabinet minister, which, as of 1927, meant a deputy received a base salary of 9,000 Reichsmarks per year along with various allowances—roughly corresponding to $25,000 today. Deputies also enjoyed immunity from prosecution, a considerable advantage in a time when many political extremists had scant regard for the law. Although politics in the Weimar Republic were marked by bitter ideological divisions and often violent instability, relations among Reichstag deputies of widely different parties could be surprisingly collegial. Two parliamentarians with whom we will be concerned in this story—Ernst Oberfohren, who led the caucus of the far-right German National People's Party (DNVP, usually known informally as the German Nationals or simply the Nationalists), and Ernst Torgler, who held the same position with the far-left Communist Party of Germany—were on friendly enough terms to spar while respectfully addressing each other as “Herr Colleague.”
⁵