BERLIN, NOVEMBER 8.

The two main features of to-day’s Reichstag fire trial were the evidence of Dr. Goebbels describing how Hitler and he first heard of the fire and the testimony of eight witnesses contradicting the prosecution case against the three Bulgarians.

Dr. Goebbels, who appeared in court punctually, asked the President to put single questions to him, declining to make a speech as other distinguished witnesses have done. He began by ridiculing the suggestion that he or the Nazis had anything to do with the Reichstag fire.

FIRE REPORT AT FIRST DISBELIEVED

“On the night of the fire,” he said, “Herr Hitler came to dinner with me in my flat in the west of Berlin. There was nothing remarkable in this as Herr Hitler had not a home in Berlin then. During dinner Dr. Hanfstaengl rang and said ‘The Reichstag is burning.’ I did not believe it and thought it was revenge for a joke I had played on him a week before and hung up the receiver.

“The telephone rang again immediately and Dr. Hanfstaengl repeated his words. ‘I can see the flames from my window,’ he said. Thereupon I told Herr Hitler and we drove with all speed to the fire.”

Dr. Goebbels replied to the President’s questions at length, repeating in a clear, subdued voice with a good deal of gesture the old arguments against Communism. Not till the very end of Dimitroff’s questioning was the witness provoked to an outburst of anger. The Bulgarian asked: “Mr. Minister, do you know that your fellow-Nazis in Austria and Czecho-Slovakia also have to work illegally and make illegal propaganda with false and coded addresses and correspondence?”

Dr. Goebbels (seriously): It seems you want to insult the Nazi movement. I answer you with Schopenhauer – “Every man deserves to be looked at, but not to be spoken with.”

DIMITROFF’S HANDICAP

Dimitroff was fighting against heavy odds with his difficulty as a foreigner in speaking German, and his having to submit to frequent interruptions of Dr. Bünger, the Court President, who shouted at him: “I do not understand you; you must speak more clearly,” or, when he did so, ‘You must not speak so slowly. You must go quicker.”

Van Der Lubbe at Reichstag fire trial, behind, on the right, Georgi Dimitroff, also accused, November 1933. Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

Dr. Goebbels punctuated his answers with jokes, which evoked laughter and applause from the public.

Dimitroff asked if it was true that Dr. Goebbels had used the Reichstag fire as a propaganda weapon, not only against the Communists but also against the Socialists and other Opposition parties.

Dr. Goebbels: I have the impression Dimitroff wants to do some propaganda for the Communist party before this court. I know what propaganda is, and he need not try to throw me out of my calm by such questions. The connection of the Socialists with the Communists was a fact.

To a later question however, of Herr Torgler (the accused Communist deputy) Dr. Goebbels replied. “The obstinacy of both the Socialist and Communist parties was so great that they would rather be ruined separately than defend the existence of their parties together.”

Dr. Goebbels’s hearing was taken up largely with discussion of a Communist catchword issued up to November, 1930, when it was officially banned by the party. It ran: “Strike the Fascists wherever you meet them.” The judges, the prosecution, and Dr. Goebbels vehemently argued that this slogan had in fact been propagated ever since and that the official ban was just a blind.

EXPLAINING NAZI OUTRAGES

In strong terms Dr. Goebbels represented the Nazis as going about in terror of Communist murder bands. There was a long discussion of alleged Communist terrorism.

Dimitroff asked: “In August, 1932, there were a series of bomb outrages in Germany. Nazis were condemned to death for them. Were not these terrorist acts an affair of Nazis?”

Dr. Goebbels: “It is possible that outsiders sent provocateurs into the ranks of the Nazi party to instigate such outrages.”

Dimitroff: “Does the Minister know that Nazis who murdered an opponent, and were condemned to death for it, were solemnly and demonstratively greeted by Chancellor Adolf Hitler?”

Dr. Goebbels: “These Nazis thought they were acting right in crushing the Polish traitor, so the leader could not leave them in the lurch.”

Dimitroff: “Has not the Nazi party passed an amnesty for all terrorist acts committed by Nazis?”

Dr Goebbels: “Of course, these men who defended themselves against the Red terror, and who committed their deeds to save the German nation, could not be allowed to drift into prison.”

TORGLER’S DENIALS

There followed a lively exchange between Torgler and Dr. Goebbels more reminiscent of a political debate, Dr Goebbels calling the accused “Deputy Torgler” when the latter put a question. After Torgler had in a series of questions indignantly, repudiated the charges of terrorism made by Dr. Goebbels and the bench against the Communist party, he asked, “Do you not know that serious attempts at conciliation were made, and that I myself discussed the philosophy of Communism and National Socialism with Nazis?”

Dr. Goebbels, with great excitement, “Yes, you discussed with little Storm Troopers to whom you felt superior. Whenever you were faced with my rapier point you dared not answer because you were then inferior. I often invited you, but you preferred to use force.”

Torgler (raising his voice and very earnestly): “I declare that I spoke at popular meetings in the same tone of voice, in the same language, and with the same actuality as in the Reichstag. If the Minister represents me as posing as a worthy bourgeois citizen I must answer that the German Labour movement for me was a matter of highest idealism. I have never thought of posing as an intellectual. I am a shop assistant and a son of the proletariat. This I wanted to remain and have remained.”

Referring to the Oberfohren Memorandum, Dr. Goebbels added: “I knew Oberfohren well, and I think he would have been absolutely incapable of composing the so-called memorandum. Even if the statements in it had been true, he would not have written them, as they would have conflicted with his Nationalist feeling of responsibility. Although ambitious he would not have thus endangered the safety of the German people.”

Guardian breaks the Oberfohren Memorandum story, 27 April 1933. Read full article

Dr. Goebbels also declared that although he was not a member of the Cabinet at that time he knew that they were united in the view that the Communists set the Reichstag on fire.

THE LONDON “FARCE”

Referring to the International Commission Dr. Goebbels says: “The Communists arranged this farce in London. I only regret that the British Government permitted it, and the only explanation I can see is that it does not know the Communist party.”

Dr. Goebbels said an instance of Communist terrorist methods was the threatening letters which he received. In times when the Communist party was doing well he received few, but in bad times many. Just before the fire he received hundreds of threatening letters saying: “Wait a few days. The decision will come,” followed by a description of tortures reserved for him.

NAZI WAITER’S EVIDENCE CONTRADICTED

Of more importance to the actual case against the accused than the address of Dr. Goebbels was the testimony of seven waiters and the manager of the Restaurant Bayernhof, where the three Bulgarians were arrested. With substantial unanimity all eight witnesses declared that they had never seen Van der Lubbe in their restaurant with the Bulgarians or alone.

In all important points they contradicted the evidence of the Nazi waiter Hellmer who testified yesterday that he had seen Dimitroff, Popoff, and Taneff in the restaurant with Van der Lubbe. They had seen Dimitroff and Popoff, the latter not before November or December of last year, which agrees with Popoff’s own statement. Some of them had seen Taneff on the day of his arrest. This agrees with Taneff’s statement that he went there for the first time on that day.

The Reichstag in flames during the Nazi ascent to power in Berlin, 1933. Photograph: Fox Photos/Getty Images

VAN DER LUBBE’S DOUBLE

More than one witness said he had seen a man resembling Van der Lubbe, whom he had almost been prepared from police photographs to identify as Van der Lubbe, but when he saw the Dutchman in the flesh he was convinced it was quite a different person from the one he had seen with Dimitroff. The latter is, according to the defence, the Austrian author Rossner, who also has a shock of hair like Van der Lubbe, and has been called from Prague to give evidence.

The witnesses said they were sure from the beginning that their colleague Hellmer was making a mistake. One said: “One of our waiters had the idea that the photograph of Van der Lubbe showed a likeness to one of our guests. When we were confronted with Van der Lubbe we saw at once that it could not possibly have been him.”

At this Dr. Coenders, one of the judges, angrily interposed, asking: “How many guests come to your restaurant every day?”

The Witness: “Sometimes thousands.”

The Judge (still angrily): “That will do for me.”

The evidence of these eight witnesses is regarded with considerable interest, since had it not been for Hellmer’s statement to the police that he had seen Van der Lubbe with the Bulgarians in the restaurant it is unlikely that they would have been arrested and charged with complicity in the Reichstag fire.

During to-day’s proceedings the Court read out a report received from the Bulgarian Government of three sentences imposed on Dimitroff in his absence, one of death by strangling, another of fifteen years’ rigorous imprisonment, both of which were annulled by amnesties, and the third sentence of fifteen years’ rigorous imprisonment which he would still have to serve if he returned to Bulgaria.

Dimitroff declared: “All these sentences were pronounced in my absence in a state of emergency and were of a political nature. I declare before the Supreme Court and the Bulgarian Government that I am ready after the conclusion of this trial to return to Bulgaria to account for my whole activities before the court there and to take whole responsibility for them. I make only one condition: free public trial.”