[lbo-talk] The Politics of Conspiracy Theory

[Joseph Wanzala]

The idea for the fire almost certainly originated with Goebbels and Göering. 
Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the 
time, testified at Nuremberg that "it was Goebbels who first thought of 
setting the Reichstag on fire," and Rudolf Diels, the Gestapo chief, added 
in an affidavit that "Göering knew exactly how the fire was to be started" 
and had ordered him "to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who 
were to be arrested immediately after it." General Franz Haider, Chief of 
the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at 
Nuremberg how on one occasion Göering had boasted of his deed:

"At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation 
turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I 
heard with my own ears when Göering interrupted the conversation and 
shouted: 'The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I 
set it on fire!' With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand."

[Marinus] Van der Lubbe, it seems clear, was a dupe of the Nazis. He was 
encouraged to try to set the Reichstag on fire. But the main job was to be 
done — without his knowledge, of course — by the storm troopers. Indeed, it 
was established at the subsequent trial at Leipzig that the Dutch half-wit 
did not possess the means to set so vast a building on fire so quickly. Two 
and a half minutes after he entered, the great central hall was fiercely 
burning. He had only his shirt for tinder.

The main fires, according to the testimony of experts at the trial, had been 
set with considerable quantities of chemicals and gasoline. It was obvious 
that one man could not have carried them into the building, nor would it 
have been possible for him to start so many fires in so many scattered 
places in so short a time. Van der Lubbe was arrested on the spot and 
Göering, as he afterward told the court, wanted to hang him at once.

- William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich