NARRATOR: February 27th, 1933,
Berlin, Germany.
9:17pm.
Black smoke veils the night sky over the German capital.
The Reichstag, the German parliament building, is burning.
The beating heart of democracy.
Police cordons quickly blocked the roads around the Reichstag.
Flames rise up to its 75-metre-high dome,
before warning of the terrible fire
that would soon sweep through all of Germany.
Hitler has been in power 29 days.
29 days, which have so far been insufficient for him
to impose his dictatorship.
But in a single night,
the Reichstag fire will give him the means to do so.
The culmination of a bitter struggle between Nazis and Communists.
Five men were designated as culprits.
One of them, the youngest,
was discovered alone inside the burning Reichstag
and placed in the prisoner's dock for a show trial.
Miraculously preserved recordings of the trial
have enabled us to reconstruct the proceedings
through the voices of both the accused and the accusers.
Almost a century later, questions remain.
Who started the Reichstag fire?
And how did it provide the death blow to German democracy?
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
March 1933.
Adolf Hitler used the Reichstag fire
as a pretext to start a reign of terror.
Even before the investigation of the suspects had begun,
the Fuhrer cracked down on the Communists.
Thousands of men were arrested over the following days and nights,
when only one man was found inside the Reichstag once it was burning.
Marinus van der Lubbe,
whose personality and history sat uneasily with the fire scenario.
Easy to manipulate.
Sight impaired. Dutch.
Nothing linked him to German communism.
And nothing linked him to the Communist leader Ernst Torgler,
apart from a false statement given by a Nazi member of parliament
who claimed to have seen the two men plotting together
inside the Reichstag on the day of the fire.
Another witness, a member of the Nazi Party,
claimed to have seen Marinus in a restaurant with other men
just before the fire.
After the fire,
the witness stated he had seen the same so-called Bolsheviks
once again at the restaurant.
He called the police to claim his reward.
An officer recounted.
Blagoi Popov and Vasil Tanev,
two Bulgarians recently arrived from Moscow under false identities,
didn't speak a word of German.
Georgi Dimitrov, also Bulgarian, was a bigger catch.
He had already taken part in a coup d'etat in Bulgaria
and had the ideal profile of a communist conspirator.
The three Bulgarians were associated with the Dutchman,
with the German member of parliament Torgler, the link-up man.
This gave the plot more of an international dimension.
In Hitler's mind, this was an affair of state.
He promised a fast-tracked trial of the five accused.
In this red-hot atmosphere,
the agents of Nazi terror were on the lookout everywhere.
While Hitler stood alongside Hindenburg to reassure the people.
The political opponents of yesterday
appeared to unite in the face of danger.
The Reichstag In Flames became the Nazis' new campaign slogan.
The election, held six days after the fire,
was no longer a free one.
The Nazis supplied shuttle buses to take voters to the polling stations.
In his diary, the intellectual Victor Klemperer wrote...
"I find it hard to believe that, deep down, the masses still support.
"Everybody, absolutely everybody, is terrified.
"No more letters, no more phone conversations.
"Not a single word on the street is safe from denunciation.
"Everybody suspects their interlocutor of being a traitor
"or an informer.
"To tell the truth, it's terribly unwise to write this in my diary."
(BRAKES SQUEAL AND BELL RINGS)
The Brownshirts controlled the streets
and occupied trade union and newspaper head offices.
Democracy was in ashes.
Nazis, like Goebbels,
wanted to have the public believe
that joining their movement was spontaneous.
With 44% of the vote and 288 seats,
the Nazi triumph was mainly owed to the removal of the opposition
before election day.
Goering's mood was rejoiceful.
On March 21st, the new Reichstag was inaugurated.
The left wing was absent.
The Social Democrats boycotted the event.
Only the conservatives remained.
The fear that arose from the fire closed ranks around the Chancellor.
He manoeuvred to gain full power and talks were already underway.
In this puppet show, Hindenburg had a role to play.
The last weakened link of the Weimar Republic,
barely able to step from his car, was forced out by Hitler.
The French ambassador to Berlin recounted,
"Hitler walks close to him like a shy newcomer
"that a considerate protector has introduced to a society
"which is not his own.
"Who would believe that this pale, common-looking man
"is the one who, in reality, rules over the other?"
Just opposite the burned down Reichstag stood the building
which the Nazis had chosen for parliament -
an opera house.
A tragedy was being performed there.
The suicide of the assembly gathered together with one sole aim -
to relinquish its powers to Hitler.
The first law passed is remembered as Lex van der Lubbe,
and it ensured that the death sentence could be applied
to the instigators of the Reichstag fire.
A retroactive law, the negation of all rule of law.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(TRAIN HORN BLARES)
In this climate of fear,
half a million Germans fled their homeland.
They settled in neighbouring Switzerland, Belgium and France.
Those who left were those who had the means,
like Willi Munzenberg,
one of the few Communist parliamentarians
to escape the round-up on the night of the fire.
His Communist networks spread out across the world
and notably to Moscow.
With the help of Otto Katz,
an influential Austrian Jew and staunch supporter of Stalin,
Munzenberg set out about organising the counter-trial of Hitler's regime.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
The Soviet intelligence service acted as a relay
to the countless antifascist groups and leagues and congresses.
In Paris, in support of the Bulgarian Dimitrov,
his portrait was handed out before meetings to raise concerns
on the increasing number of right-wing leagues.
..that they have declared...
In London, the accused family members set out to sway public opinion.
Four Communists are now on trial, in danger for their lives.
They're accused of burning the Reichstag.
One of them is my brother Dimitrov.
The other is the father of this boy, Torgler.
The other two are Popov and Tanev.
My father and the three Bulgarian are innocent.
The Communist International didn't hold back.
Day and night,
Munzenberg's helpers worked on compiling
the Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire...
..a considerable document filled with accusations,
mixing snippets of information, bluff calls, truths and lies.
Munzenberg obtained the plans of the Reichstag...
..which showed a tunnel leading from the building
to the official residence of its president...
..Hermann Goering.
These formulated suspicions provided a field day for the press,
which pointed to a Nazi plot.
A slogan was born and soon spread.
"Goering, the Reichstag fire was you."
The parliamentary president defended himself
in the Reichstag debating room.
Another compromising piece was added to the dossier -
a memorandum signed by Ernst Oberfohren,
the leader of a right-wing party allied to the Nazis.
In it, Oberfohren directly accused Goebbels and a Brownshirt squad
of setting fire to the Reichstag.
A week later, Oberfohren was found dead in his apartment,
a supposed suicide.
But Goebbels was annoyed.
The counter-propaganda of Munzenberg's network was working.
The Brown Book, published by the Communists, was a best seller,
with tens of thousands of copies sold all over the world.
In Germany, it was sold under the counter,
disguised as Goethe's epic poem
Hermann and Dorothea.
As a pretext for responding to the lies
of the international Jewish press,
Goebbels organised an anti-Semite boycott in Germany.
Victor Klemperer wrote...
"During the day, the Nazis made a public call for a boycott.
"The mood was just like before a pogrom
"in the darkest days of the Middle Ages.
"We, all Jews, feel threatened.
"To tell the truth, I feel more shame than fear.
"I have always felt German.
"My mistake.
"I'm no longer German, but Jewish.
"And must count myself lucky that I'm still alive.
"But we are hostages."
For a month, despite orders to the contrary,
the Brownshirts had beaten Jews to death on the streets
and set fire to synagogues.
The boycott had heightened their bloodthirstiness.
They took part in book burnings held in a number of German cities
of works by Jews and Communists,
now irremediably associated.
The Brownshirts maintained terror in the name of the party.
They had significantly increased in number from 2 million to 4 million.
After a decade of frustration,
they eagerly awaited the dictatorship.
Could they have started the fire to win Hitler's favour?
It seems plausible, but unlikely without his say so.
The Fuhrer kept them firmly under his control
with his hypnotic eyes.
On July 14th, the NSDAP was decreed the sole party.
The Nazi salute became compulsory for all civil servants.
It was better to obey, rather than risk being noted as an opponent
and ending up at a camp.
Added to the Communists were trade unionists, social democrats
and an increasing number of Jews.
The unofficial camp of Oranienburg was made official and permanent,
like Dachau, the laboratory of terror,
which became the model for the future camps
of Ravensbruck,
Buchenwald,
Mauthausen,
Treblinka,
Majdanek
and Auschwitz.
The Nazis claimed they concealed nothing.
German reporters were even invited to visit the model camp of Oranienburg.
A misleading showcase for the other camps.
Nazi propaganda played down the harsh reality of the camps.
100,000 men were imprisoned in them at the same time
without any form of trial.
But five others were about to undergo theirs in broad daylight.
Held in a prison in Berlin,
Marinus van der Lubbe and his misfortunate companions
were handcuffed day and night until they bled.
A long ordeal which Torgler complained about.
The judicial investigation
was suspected of all kinds of scheming.
Behind the scenes,
Goering intervened in the appointment of an examining magistrate...
..a card holding member of the Nazi Party.
The judge for the trial would be Wilhelm Bunger,
not a Nazi, but very anti-communist.
The defence of the accused was made difficult.
Their attorneys were declined and replaced by others,
court appointed and with questionable profiles.
While Torgler ended up accepting his - Alfons Sack, a Nazi -
Dimitrov decided to defend himself
and his two fellow Bulgarians, who didn't speak German.
In the summer of 1933, the Reichstag fire show trial was eagerly awaited.
The Communist press had already determined its line of defence.
Marinus van der Lubbe would be the target.
In France, L'Humanite ran the headline,
"Van der Lubbe, instigator of the Reichstag fire,
"acted on Hitler's orders."
The Dutchman was said to have been paid 50,000 marks
for acting for the Nazis.
He was accused of carrying fake ID.
The U of his name on his passport, presented to the press,
had an umlaut, two dots over it, which doesn't exist in Dutch.
So it was obviously a fake
produced to mask his membership of the Nazi Party.
Marinus van der Lubbe,
two days ago, a Communist,
yesterday, a Nazi,
was painted as being weak minded,
and what's more, homosexual -
the lover of Sturmabteilung leader Ernst Rohm.
All means were admissible.
The final warning shot
was a counter-trial held in mid-September in London.
Unsurprisingly, the four men accused alongside van der Lubbe
were declared innocent, but not him.
His brother wrote him a letter which he would never receive.
"Yesterday, a police commissioner from Berlin visited us.
"I told him you have a good character,
"that you are sensitive, upright and honest,
"and that you certainly have no reason to commit such an act.
"But, my dear Rinus, what's done is done,
"and you remain forever my brother.
"Be brave."
On September 21st, the Reichstag fire trial opened in Leipzig.
124 reporters attended.
Microphones invaded the High Court of Justice
for an almost live broadcast.
The proceedings were recorded on wax discs
and preserved for almost a century.
The German people followed the trial at home.
Goebbels had seen to that.
Small, cheap transistor radios
were produced on his orders and sold by the millions.
Over three months,
the people would listen to more than 200 witnesses and experts.
It was van der Lubbe's attitude that most struck the courtroom.
He was alone against everyone,
despite the permanent presence of his interpreter.
The Nazis claimed he was a Communist,
and the Communists, a Nazi.
In the very first minutes, for no particular reason,
he was overcome with laughter,
which caught the judge's attention.
Serious concerns arose
about Marinus van der Lubbe's physical and mental health.
His condition worsened in spectacular fashion.
He would soon only appear with his head bowed.
According to Dimitrov, between each session,
van der Lubbe was the only one of the accused to receive his meals
with his name written on the package.
The jailers forced him to eat everything.
Was he drugged?
What is sure is that his image of a dumb, disarticulated puppet
suited both the Nazis and the Communists.
After an expert declared him sound of mind, the trial went on.
On the 13th day of the trial,
the court travelled to Berlin and the Reichstag itself,
the scene of the crime,
for the night-time reconstruction.
The accused passed under the window through which Marinus van der Lubbe
was supposed to have entered.
Lined up on the steps of the parliament building...
..van der Lubbe couldn't even manage to strike a pose.
With his stopwatch in hand,
the judge nonetheless made him
walk through the corridors of the Reichstag.
This reconstruction, in the presence of all parties,
upheld the conspiracy theory.
The sight-impaired fire setter should have taken only 14 minutes
to reach the spot where the fire was started.
But his movements to the Reichstag took at least three times longer.
One expert affirmed,
"Save for a miracle or supernatural phenomenon,
"events could not have unfolded as van der Lubbe described them."
A security guard confirmed that no incendiary material
could have been introduced into the building
through one of its five main doors.
Which lent credibility to the theory of the tunnel under the Reichstag,
which was explored by the examining magistrates.
Another security guard stated that he had heard noises
coming from below.
This information was critical
and led to the witness facing a barrage of questions
from the judge and the attorneys.
The allegations against the Nazis had become plausible.
The fire-damaged Reichstag itself became a courthouse.
One of its wings, undamaged by the fire,
was turned into a courtroom.
From then on, the accusations made in the Brown Book
would hang over each examination in the trial.
Judge Bunger questioned Marinus van der Lubbe
on where he stayed the night before the fire.
(GALLERY MURMURING)
Van der Lubbe's interpreter stepped up.
Sudden drama.
Despite his torpor,
had Marinus van der Lubbe just confessed
to acting on behalf of the Nazis, as the Communists claimed?
The radio broadcast was suddenly cut short.
On October 20th, the court set out to unravel the true from the false.
The Communists accused the head of Berlin's Brownshirts,
Graf von Helldorff,
of meeting van der Lubbe on the eve of the fire.
Helldorff was called to the bar for a confrontation.
The microphones were switched off,
but the court's secretary's transcriptions
allow us to reconstruct the exchange.
Judge Bunger questions Marinus.
"Do you know this man?"
Van der Lubbe, his head bowed, doesn't react.
Helldorff shouts at him,
"Van der Lubbe, look up."
Van der Lubbe looks up.
Dimitrov exclaims, "He recognises his master's voice."
The court bursts into laughter.
Dimitrov gradually grows in assurance,
which results in him being removed from court on three occasions
by Judge Bunger for communist propaganda.
But, on November 4th, the judge exceptionally allows him back,
because it's a special day.
Minister Goering is invited to the bar to defend himself
from the accusations brought against him.
The microphones are switched back on.
Dimitrov directly questioned Goering.
The exchange has gone down in history.
(GALLERY MURMURING)
This decisive moment when Goering lost ground against Dimitrov
should never have taken place.
The trial was turning into a disaster for the Nazis.
Hitler had committed the fatal error
of providing the Communists the tribune they dreamed of,
and in the media spotlight provided by Goebbels.
A furious Goering complained to Hitler.
"The attitude of the judges is scandalous.
"It's as if they're trying us and not the Communists."
Hitler replied, "It's just a matter of time.
"Soon all those old men will be speaking our language
"and we'll replace them with our own.
"But as long as old man Hindenburg is still alive,
"we must take all harm with patience."
Hitler drew his conclusion.
All suspicions of Nazi involvement must be buried.
The trial had to stop.
Van der Lubbe had to become the sole guilty party.
And, suddenly, the Nazi line joined that of the Communists.
Just one head would roll instead of five.
But the results would be adequate.
Two days before Christmas, the court gave its verdict.
For lack of proof, the Communists were found not guilty.
(LAUGHTER, CHEERING)
The three Bulgarians were given a hero's welcome in Moscow.
Hitler ostensibly showed himself to respect the court's decision
to appear as democratic to the watching world
and to appease Stalin.
Torgler met the same fate as other German Communists
and was arbitrarily imprisoned for three more years...
..before finally being freed after cooperating with the Nazis.
On January 10th, 1934, at 7:28 in the morning,
Marinus van der Lubbe was guillotined
in the courtyard of the Leipzig Tribunal...
..the victim of an unjust law that bears his name.
His singular history, his silence
and his incomprehensible lethargy during the trial
have made it impossible to determine his exact role in the fire.
The great Reichstag fire trial
was meant to present the world with communist guilt.
Instead, it gave the illusion that justice can prevail
even when democracy is dead.
In the 1933 election, the Nazi Party, the sole party,
gained 92% of the votes.
Hindenburg's death in January 1934
allowed Hitler to combine the posts of chancellor and president.
Germany plunged into tyranny and prepared for war...
..with no Reichstag to oppose it.
The communist conspiracy theory fizzled out in 1934.
The Nazi plot was buried.
The Sturmabteilung fell from grace.
Thousands of Brownshirts were murdered on Hitler's orders
during the Night Of The Long Knives.
After the Second World War,
a turncoat Gestapo agent would make new revelations...
..at the Nuremberg trials.
MAN: What happened to the 10 SA men who carried out the Reichstag fire?
The investigation was never completed.
But presumptions concerning Goebbels, Goering,
and the Brownshirts persist.
Tanev would die in Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
Popov would spend 17 years in the Gulag.
Torgler would be expelled from the Communist Party,
accused of working for the Gestapo.
Dimitrov would reach the high spheres of Stalin's regime
and become President of Bulgaria after World War II.
In imposing his power, he, too, eliminated his opponents,
just as he might have been.
In 2008, the guilty verdict against Marinus van der Lubbe
was posthumously annulled.
Until very recently,
the theory of his sole involvement in the Reichstag fire had prevailed.
For decades, Marinus van der Lubbe was seen as the perfect scapegoat
for both Nazis and Communists,
making him forever guilty of a crime
that served as a pretext for Hitler to impose his dictatorship.
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2023