Use this source and your own knowledge to explain how useful this account of the events of 27th February is. Explain your answer.

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Question 2

Use this source and your own knowledge to explain how useful this account of the events of 27th February is.  Explain your answer.

Source C is an extract from a book called ‘My part in Germanys Flight’ published in Germany in 1935.  Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, wrote the book.

As Minister of Propaganda, it was Josef Goebbels job to gain support for the Nazi party.  He is not going to portray the Nazis in a negative way.  Anything he says is likely to make the Nazis seem like a decent party and possibly make the communists (the Nazis main opposition) look bad.  Goebbels is having dinner with Hitler when the phone rings; the person on the other end of the phone tells him that the Reichstag is on fire.  Goebbels does not bother to tell Hitler about this conversation, dismissing it as ‘pure fantasy’.  It seems strange how calm Goebbels is about the conversation.  After making a few quick calls Goebbels discovered that the Reichstag was indeed on fire.

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Goebbels went to the Reichstag that night, he tells us “It had already been established the fire was due to arson”, very quickly this fact had been discovered.  If the fire had happened today in the year 2003, firefighters would not have been able to establish the cause of the fire so quickly, let alone in 1933.

According to Goebbels, there was “no doubt” that the Communists were responsible for starting the fire and had done it in order to create “an atmosphere of panic and terror”.  This is only one mans opinion and that man is a ...

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