A historian published a history book in 1974. There is an extract from this book in Source L that denies that Van de Lubbe acted alone. The historian writes that due to ‘the brief time available to Van de Lubbe’ it would have been impossible for him to have ‘set the building alight on this scale’. You would except that the author writing this history book would have researched the topic thoroughly but this may not be the case, we do not know this for sure.
At the time of the Reichstag Fire many people believed that Van de Lubbe was working as art of a Communist lot, especially the Nazi leaders. Source A contains quotes from Goering and Hitler. Goering and Hitler both seem certain that the Communists were responsible for the fire. Goering says ‘There will be no mercy now… Every Communist will be shot or hanged’ and Hitler says ‘the criminals have thought all this out beautifully’, the ‘criminals’ that Hitler speaks of is surely the Communists. However Goering and Hitler are two leading Nazis whose main oposition is the Communists, anything they say is likely to be trying to cripple the Communists.
Source D is an extract from a book it reads ‘there could be no doubt that the Communists had made a final attempt to seize power’. According to this extract it is obvious that the Communists were responsible for the fire. However Josef Goebbels, Nazi Minister of propaganda, wrote the book that this extract is taken from. Like Goering and Hitler we need to be very cautious because Goebbels job meant he had to make sure the public thought good of the Nazi party but were against the Nazi’s opposition. However in Source B Van de Lubbe said at his trial ‘the other defendants in this trial were not in the Reichstag’. The ‘other defendants’ who were being tried alongside Van de Lubbe were Communists. Van de Lubbe is denying that he acted alone with a group of Communists although Van de Lubbe had a good reason to say this.
The Reichstag Fire could have been art of a lot to frame and therefore get rid of the Communists. The Nazis did make gains from the fire whilst the Communists only appear to have suffered. In Source E Rauschning says ‘It was not until I heard this conversation that I discovered that the National Socialist leadership was solely responsible’, according to Rauschning, he overheard Nazi leaders boasting about setting fire to the Reichstag. If the Nazi leadership were responsible for the Reichstag Fire, surely they wouldn’t be talking about it so as to let people overhear them. But according to Rauschning they were talking about it with ‘laughter, cynical jokes, boasting, being very complacent about it’.
Source F, a speech by General Franz Halder says that ‘Goering confessed that “The only one who really knows about the Reichstag Fire building is I, for I set fire to it’. The fact that this happened at ‘lunch on Hitler’s birthday’ makes the source quite believable because there would have been Nazis at the lunch so Goering may have felt free and able to say whatever he wanted and not be confined as if he were amongst non-Nazis who would take the news to officials.
Source H the ‘confession’ of Karl Ernst says ‘I and two SA men set fire to the Reichstag’, the ‘SA’ or Storm Troopers were Hitler’s private army, they frightened and terrorized opponants of the Nazis -Karl Ernst was the leader of the SA. This source is showing that the Nazis were involved in the fire. However the Communists published the source after Ernst had died in the Night of the Long Knives. We have no way of knowing how genuine this source is, for all we know the Communists could have made the source up.
In Source G Goering blasts General Halders evidence (Source F) as ‘not true’. He says that even if he had started the fire he wouldn’t have ‘boasted about it’. However Goering may be telling lies to save himself from punishment and also according to Hernan Rauschning in Source E, Goering was boasting about it.
The Nazis were the only people to gain from the fire. Shortly after the fire Hitler claimed that the Communists were planning a revolution, and asked the Reich resident, Hidenburg, to approve a set of emergency powers. This allowed the Nazis to arrest leading Communists ban them from election campaigns and shut their arty offices – very convenient for Hitler and the Nazis. Source I is a cover of a book showing the Reichstag building on fire with a figure of Van de Lubbe at the top. The cover says boldly “Armed Uprising”. This is an example of Nazi Propaganda. It was to remind and tell German people that Communists set fire to the Reichstag. The title “Armed Uprising” suggests that the Communists were unstable, violent and were planning to take over Germany. It is obviously intended to scare the German people. The Source is very unbelievable because Nazis wrote it.
Source J and K also talk about Nazi gains. Source J talks about how Goering ordered “the arrest of all communists, deputies and leading officials”. Written by a modern day British historian there seems to be no reason why he would lie, however we cannot be sure of this. Source K depicts Hitler and Hiddenburg as Roman emperors, with Hiddenburg telling Hitler (whilst handing him the emergency powers) to take advantage of the situation. The Source is saying that because of the fire, Hitler was able to become a dictator. They are shown as roman emporers because roman emporers were dictators. The title of the cartoon is ‘The Red Peril’ meaning Communists being a danger. There seems to be chaos in the background as the Reichstag building burns. This was taken from a British magazine and does have reliability problems. Hindenburg did not actually say this to Hitler.
In conclusion it seems there is evidence to support all three interpretations. Source A and B suggest Van de Lubbe was guilty alone, Source C and D suggest it was a Communist lot and sources E, F and H suggest that the Nazis did it. However it seems that it is most likely the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag because the evidence that supports this interpretation seems to back up each other well and also because of the way the Nazis were able to gain from the fire.
