Burning the Reichstag by Benjamin Carter Hett Page B

judge named Alois Eugen Becker came forward after he saw an article in the newspaper the
Frankfurter Rundschau
(Frankfurt review) in which people who might have been expected to have information about the fire denied all knowledge. Becker had been a political police official in 1933 under Diels. He testified that in mid-February a meeting took place at which the terms of the future Reichstag Fire Decree were discussed. Beyond that he knew little that was concrete, though he did say that there had been rumors around the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin concerning Nazi involvement in the fire, and that the detectives working on the case had told him that van der Lubbe could not have done it alone. Becker reported that Diels’s remarks the morning after the fire had been “as usual somewhat cynical, without being in any way definite.” 19
    The most important witness was Diels himself, who gave a deposition in early 1957. By this point Diels had brought evasion to a high art. “I cannot testify here to more on the case of van der Lubbe than I explained in my book,” he said. He did not deny Becker’s evidence, claiming only that he could barely remember Becker. He repeated his claim that his knowledge of the case was limited because Göring had cut him out of the investigation.
    He continued with a virtuoso display of sinuous negation. “I have absolutely considered the idea that the SA could have set fire on the Reichstag not to be impossible,” he said. “On the other hand, I was then, and am now, of the view that the assumption that van der Lubbe absolutely could not have set fire to the Reichstag alone is erroneous.” Van der Lubbe had been “a pathological arsonist” who was “well supplied with incendiary materials.” After speaking with van der Lubbe, Diels had become convinced that the suspect had set the fire alone. “That on the other handlater I did not close my mind to the rumors about the involvement of the SA had nothing to do with this, my original opinion.” He did not elaborate. It was a skillful performance, creating the impression that he himself was not directly involved and could treat the whole subject with intellectual detachment. 20
    Brandt used the press to bring the Reichstag fire back into the court of public opinion. Apparently at Brandt’s urging, in late 1957 the journalist Curt Riess wrote a series of articles on the fire for the magazine
Stern
. Similar series ran in other illustrated weeklies. Riess’s series (written under the pseudonym Peter Brandes, which means roughly “Peter of the fire”) was based on what information was available in 1957, which was in fact very little. His account was indebted to such dubious sources as the
Brown Book
, the
White Book
, and Diels’s memoirs, alongside contemporary newspaper accounts. Nonetheless Riess also interviewed people who might have had information on the fire. And back around came Diels. What Diels told Riess—as well as what he said to two other reporters at approximately the same time—constituted the most valuable part of these articles, although it would still be a few years before full details of what Diels had said, and
that
he had said it, became public. Riess accepted Diels’s version of how he and other “brave police officers” had fought against the violence of the SA. Goebbels had been the main inspiration for the fire. Karl Ernst had been in charge of the operation, and in turn Ernst had delegated its execution to Heini Gewehr. 21
    In May 1958 the Berlin Superior Court dismissed Brandt’s case on a technicality: he and J.M. van der Lubbe had missed the deadline for filing the claim. In 1965, however, a change in the laws allowed Brandt and van der Lubbe to revive the case and bring it once again before the Berlin Superior Court. This time the prosecution sided with Brandt. The court was not so easily won over, however, and the