HISTORIC TRIAL

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 163, 7 April 1934, Page 7

HISTORIC TRIAL

Burning of Reichstag FIRE STILL A MYSTERY Buttle Between Nazis and Communists Not since tlie celebrated Dreyfus case in France has a trial aroused such world-wide interest as that of the five men accused of firing the German Reichstag on the night of February 27. 1933. The recent Moscow trial was of immense import to the British peoples. But the enigma that is Hiflerised Germany drew the avid interest of the world to the Reichstag lire trial. Five men were on (rial, but political issues dominated the case. Tlie fourth penal chamber of tlie Supreme Court of the German Reich held it to have been proved that the accomplices and instigators of Marinas van der Lubbe (condemned for high treason ami executed) “stood in tlie Communist camp” and that the Reichstag fire “was tlie work of tlie Communists.” Tlie International Commission of Inquiry into tlie burning of the Reichstag, in London, "found that no connection could lie traced between tlie Communist party ami the burning of the Reichstag. and expressed tlie suspicion that tlie Reichstag was tired by. or on behalf of. loading personalities of tlie National Socialist Party.” Mr. Douglas Reed, as the special correspondent of "The Times,” London, was one of the 60 foreign and 40 German journalists present at the trial at Leipzig and Berlin. In his book* he accents neither of these views. That the fire was tlie work of the Communist Party, he says, “was not proved for those who were not Germans and hud closely followed the trial ami studied the evidence. . . . And. further, those who closely studied every word uttered in the trial, the geography of the Reichstag, and the demeanour of the witnesses, found no proof that the National Socialists had tired the Reichstag or caused it to be fired.” The great trial had not answered the question. "Who tired the Reichstag?” An Impartial Survey. From tlie vast amount of evidence in a trial of over three months’ duration, Mr. Reed selects the salient features. He tells the story in splendid English and adopts throughout a thoroughly impartial attitude which makes needless the assurance of the foreword that the author "does not aspire to defend or attack anybody.” - , , Events moved rapidly on the night or February 27, 1933, in Berlin. At 9.5 p.m. a student of philosophy. Floter, saw a man with a burning object in bis hand at a window on the first floor of the Reichstag. At 9.8 Thaler, a typesetter, saw a man climbing through the window. At 9.10 Thaler met the police sergeant Buwert, who at 9.12 fired at lights moving behind windows on the ground floor. At 9.21 the first fire engine reached the Reichstag. At 9.27 Van der Lubbe, naked from the waist up, was arrested in the Bismarck Hall, and at 9.35 General Goering arrived. Later Torgler. a Communist deputy, was arrested, and on March 9 Dimitroff, Popoff. and Taneff, all members of the central committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and exiles from their own land. Seven months later the trial commenced, on September 21, at Leipzig. Van der Lubbe went through the trial in a trans-like condition. His answers to questions were given in monosyllables, and were often unintelligent. To some he appeared to be "foxing’’: to others to be mentally deficient. Experts who examined him. however, testified that there was no sign of mental ailment. He insisted that lie had fired the Reichstag and fired it alone. Tlie Irrespressible Dimitroff. Dimitroff throughout tlie trial took the keenest interest in proceedings. The trial resolved itself into a duel between him and the presiding judge. Dr. Bugner. Five times lie was expelled from his own (rial for coming into conflict with Dr. Bugner. "In vain.” writes Mr. Reed, “did the little judge, an ertswhile Saxon Premier, seek to subdue Dimitroff. to compel linn by admonition, by threat of expulsion, by repeated expulsion itself, to be meek, to behave himself as a disreputable Bulgarian Communist should who is under grave suspicion' of tempering with the edifice of the Reich. Dimitroff felt himself not only innocent but as good as any man in court, and was not prepared to have an inferiority thrust. on him which be did not feel. Nothing could ston him. At the end the court itself had a certain rueful affection for this disarming and dauntless man.” General Goering’s Intuition. One of the most interesting phases of the trial was the appearance of two of Herr Hitler's satellites. General Goering. Premier of Prussia and Speaker of the Reichstag, and Dr. Goebbels, "the physically diminutive but brilliant Propaganda Minister.” “No two men could be more, different than General Goering nnd Dr. Goebbels, says Mr. Reed. "The one a soldier by every instinct, an airman, tlie last commander of Richthofen's multicoloured circus. wounded in the war. and wounded again in Herr Hitler's Putsch of 1923., a man of action, happiest in uniform. The other a rhetorician and dialectician, handicapped by a physical injury, but ,with a fiercely flaming spirit iu a diminutive frame.’’ General Goering told how. on reaching tlie Reichstag, on the night of the lire, he heard someone use the word "arson.” "It was as if a veil were suddenly lifted from my eyes. In this moment I knew: 'The Communist Party is guilty of this fire.’” This “intuition” of (he general of reiehswehr explains many things, about the Reichstag fire trial. Herr Hitler, arriving at the Reichstag on the night of the lire, called it “a sign from Heaven to show to what we should have come if these gentry had gained power." Dr. Goebbels said that “For (he National Socialist no other version was possible than tluit tills was the lust attempt of the Communist Party to wrest power among general confusion, and that the tire was to be the signal.” Van der Lubbe was “condemned to death for high treason in the overt act of insurrectionary arson.” and t h e other accused were acquitted, but the trial left many questions unanswered. Whose were the nocturnal footfalls in the underground tunnel? Mr. Reed asks. And why did the National Socialist deputy. Dr. Albrecht, when he left the Reichstag at 10 p.m. that night, leave "as if in flight"? Why were the police officer? not called who seized Dr. Albrecht as he dashed out? The only man who might conceivably have known the secret, van der Lubbe, did not tell it at the trial. And he was executed on January 10 this year.

’“The U'.P.-n’ng of (lie Reichstag," ny Douglas Reed, -pecial correspondent of “The Times" at Hie Leipzig trial. (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd.}.