25 Responses to “Secrets of the Reichstag Fire”

1. Steve Adams says:

   Monday, January 29, 2007 at 4:15 am

   Hey, I really enjoy this series.

   Reply
2. JoeC says:

   Monday, January 29, 2007 at 6:52 am

   Thanks, Steve! I’m enjoying posting it. History seems a lot more interesting now than when I was having a bunch of sanitized facts crammed down my throat in school.

   Reply
3. PETE says:

   Monday, January 29, 2007 at 11:52 am

   BBBAAADDD Joe, there you go again, we are going to have to send you to one of the youth camps and straighten you out.
   How are people in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska supposed to feel safe, knowing that rural America is the next target of these terrorists. If they don’t give up their ALL their freedoms and rights and let the president do whatever it takes, how can they sleep safely at night.

   Reply
4. JoeC says:

   Monday, January 29, 2007 at 7:10 pm

   > have to send you to one of the youth camps and straighten you out

   Pete: I already take my two boys to Cub Scouts. I like scouts, was an Eagle myself (brag brag ;-) ) but sometimes I wonder if the Hitler Youth meetings weren’t pretty similar to the Cub meetings. At that age I think it’s ok to instill some whitewashed national pride, but on occasion I want to say, “Hey kids, don’t get too brainwashed that you put aside all rationality. Lies aren’t worth dying for, and love of country shouldn’t be blind or at the expense of the rest of the world.”

   Reply
5. PETE says:

   Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 10:11 am

   I got kicked out of the scouts, they caught me eating a Brownie.
   A little brainwashing is ok. But the surprising thing is how easily it is done and how a large percentage of the adult society falls prey to it.

   Reply
6. JoeC says:

   Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 11:24 am

   PETE: Dohhhhhhh! I always thought Camp Fire Girls were cuter…

   Reply
7. PETE says:

   Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 1:15 pm

   If I could have tied those knots, maybe I to would have advanced and found out about Camp Fire Girls. But I was a Sea Scout for a year.

   Reply
8. u2r2h says:

   Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 7:22 pm

   This is not a good page. You should tell us more about the fire itself.

   … and even helped the blaze spread by scattering gasoline and incendiaries….

   is so vague that it stuffs-up the holw basis of your argument.

   Much much more is nkown about how the fire started. (The use of the hundreds of cardboard

   A 1970 study of the “Thermodynamisches Institut der TU Berlin” would have to be mentioned, at the very least.

   more facts that could have easily made it into your little page:

   - Van der Lubbe was almost blind.
   - Airforce General Freiherr von Freyberg-Eisenberg said he set the fire on Goering’s orders.

   and please leave out the “facts” that destract from the subject at hand.

   I could digress, then, too:

   Anglo-americans are fascinated by Hitler. If you deconstruct this fascination you’ll find that they admire
   the uniforms, the regalia, the racism, the machismo and the engineering of powerful weapons.
   Whether Mr Schicklgruber-Hitler was a vegetarian, doesn’t matter in history, but it does matter to anglo-americans!

   Reply
9. JoeC says:

   Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 8:27 pm

   u2r2h: Thanks for the extra information about the fire, and the 1970 study.

   I disagree about leaving out facts that had no known measureable influence on the course of history. That’d be like writing my 9th grade history textbook, which was pretty dry. I need some sauce and a good pinot to help digest the over-cooked filet. Weird bits of trivia like Hitler being a vegetarian are interesting to me…not the boring framework of facts, but the personalities and characters and the impossible situations they found themselves in.

   Reply
10. Anna Nimus says:

    Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Hey, I would like to see more research on what happened to all the financiers who funded and sponsored Hitler and the Nazis! I heard that these bankers (the real bosses of these puppet politicians) were able to escape or avoid prosecution at the Nuremberg “War Crimes” trials, getting off scot free!

    Follow the money trail! The same thing is happening today… the people who control the money, call all the shots (even literally! Anybody who gets in their way or opposes their plans, um… dies, or loses their job… just like JFK or Bill Clinton…)

    Reply
11. JoeC says:

    Monday, March 5, 2007 at 6:40 am

    Anna Nimus: That’s a good idea. I know there were a lot of corporations financially in bed with Germany who didn’t pull out until the very last moment (or who discreetly kept doing business with them well into the war.) That’s something I haven’t read into much, but I’m curious too….gotta go do some homework about that.

    Reply
12. Xman says:

    Monday, March 5, 2007 at 10:32 am

    Joe,
    Great effort!
    Have been thinking we really need to get this stuff out there, but unfortunately, I don’t have the skills or knowledge.

    What would be really cool is if you could do a side by side comparision of the nazi actions vs the bush actions. I mean showing that the bush guys are just like the hitler guys.
    You know, two columns/one page in a quick study comparision chart kind of way that is easy to read and distribute.

    I think it would have impact. Easy to distribute and would compete for “eyes” well. Since I have a hard time reading everything important being said these days….and given that the intent is to change minds…minds that don’t want to be changed. This means a fast easy chart could have impact…you know…could be distributed as fast as brittanys crotch shot…and actually be read since it is short.

    I think it would scare the hell out of the sheeple and give more credibility to those who are saying both parties are screwed up….and there are ways to get out of this mess.

    Xman
    Just a soldier

    Reply
13. JoeC says:

    Monday, March 5, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    Thanks, Xman. Thom Hartmann has done a good job of pointing this out in depth in his book What Would Jefferson Do? (Thanks to my big sister for gifting me a copy!) You can watch Thom read the chapter here: Thom Hartmann video

    But I agree, a short and sweet in-your-face comparison is just what the doctor ordered…I’ll put it on my short list!

    Thanks again!

    Reply
14. Xman says:

    Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Excellent!
    When you do, I’ll help disribute the hell out of it.

    Reply
15. Ashley says:

    Monday, April 23, 2007 at 1:53 pm

    Hitler wasn’t actually a vegetarian; it’s just a myth.

    Reply
16. JoeC says:

    Monday, April 23, 2007 at 5:07 pm

    Ashley: Thanks for the correction! Looks like although Hitler liked veggies a lot, reduced his meat intake at times, and did own a vegetarian cookbook, he actually never stopped eating meat: Vegetarianism of Hitler.

    Reply
17. Godwhacker says:

    Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    Wow, really great articles! I still haven’t read through all 10 yet, but I really appreciate the detail and thoroughness.

    Reply
18. JoeC says:

    Monday, July 2, 2007 at 5:26 am

    Thanks, Godwhacker! I appreciate the appreciation ;-)

    Reply
19. Xman says:

    Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 11:40 am

    Was agin thinking about the similarities between “us” and the nazi’s. But, really thinking about all the propaganda. They way Tony Snow and others just keep trying to stay on top of things. The way the major hate radio and hate tv shows keep pushing the party line. The way the major media keep pushing the next war…with Iran. Thinking about the “news” pieces put out by the various government agencies to news organizations as if they were real news instead of hopped up propaganda.
    Just thinking about all the enablers in the media.
    Was thinking about this in relation to Joseph Goebbels, the nazi minister of propaganda and all he did to sell the war in all it’s many colors. Though he committed suicide, I suspect he would have been tried and convicted and hung as a war criminal. Anyone else think so too?
    Just wondering if anyone has much knowlege about the similarities and if it is possible that official government propaganda mouthpieces might possibly be in trouble were the worm to turn? Some of the hate I see on radio and tv seems to amount to shouting fire in a crowded theater to me.
    Just thinking…after a week of watching the convolutions of the WH and their minions.

    Reply
20. JoeC says:

    Monday, July 9, 2007 at 5:49 am

    Don’t know if Rupert Murdoch or anybody else will get tried for crimes, but I’m hoping they’ve finally pushed the envelope too far…I mean, I hope the majority of people will soon start associating corporate-owned news sources as propaganda megaphones.

    When that happens (maybe it’s already there where Fox News is concerned?) then the masses will start thinking and digging for the truth instead of taking the spin for the truth. It’d be nice if government megaphones posing as journalists eventually get some comeuppance, but I’ll bet they’ll either switch sides or just slither away and crawl back under their rock…unless somebody starts making a list now and reminding everybody who purposely misreported talked us into an illegal war(s).

    Reply
21. Fearless says:

    Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    The Power That Created and Supported Hitler

    In the book, “The Secret History of the Jesuits”, written by Edmond Paris, it was the Jesuit Bernhardt Staempfle who wrote Hitler’s Mein Kampf. This fact is further confirmed by one of the founders of the Nazi Party, Roman Catholic Otto Strasser, in his revealing book, Hitler and I. It was Roman Catholic Hitler who said of the Roman Catholic Himmler having modeled the SS after the Jesuit Order.

    Hitler rose to power under the veneer of legality, ensuring that each tiny step toward dictatorship seemed legitimate. The Reichstag fire, burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin, on the night of Feb. 27, 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

    Hitler had secured the chancellorship after the elections of November 1932, but his Nazi Party had not won an overall majority. He therefore obtained Cabinet consent to fix new elections for March 5, 1933. Meanwhile, his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, is supposed to have devised the scheme whereby 10 agents led by Karl Ernst were to gain access to the Reichstag through a tunnel leading from the official residence of Hermann Goring, Reichstag president and Hitler’s chief minister, who was then to conduct an official investigation, which would fix responsibility for the fire on the Communists.

    The Jesuits’ evil Council of Trent used Hitler and the Nazi Party to destroy apostate Protestant Germany with the help of FDR’s USAF and Churchill’s RAF.

    Reply
22. 10 False Flags That Changed the World « infowars says:

    Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 7:59 am

    [...] 7. Secrets of the Reichstag Fire [...]

    Reply
23. "V" says:

    Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Propaganda never sleeps. The Victors write what they call
    the truth.

    http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p177_Wainwright.html

    Reply
24. "V" says:

    Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 3:59 pm

    “V” is Catholic and tells the truth.

    Fire In The Reichstag
    PETER WAINWRIGHT

    By the early 1930s, the situation in Germany was becoming highly explosive. A third of the workers were unemployed, and democracy was on the verge of collapse. The Communists saw in this their best opportunity to seize power since their abortive revolution in 1918. A revolution was clearly in the offing, but despite the support of a few million voters and the Soviet Union, power seemed to be slipping from the Marxist grip.

    The German people were turning to a new kind of socialism — National Socialism — and even some of the Communists were looking to Adolf Hitler for their salvation.

    The Red response to this situation was one of extreme violence. One notable victim was the 21-year old poet and voluntary social worker Horst Wessel, who was murdered in 1930 after writing a stirring marching song for his Brown Shirt comrades. Two years later, as the General Election of July 1932 loomed nearer, the Reds abandoned all pretence of debate and discussion. Bloody terror became the order of the day.

    In the six week period before the election there were more than 450 political riots in Prussia alone. In July, 38 Nazis and 30 Communists were killed. But the Red Terror failed. In the election, the Nazis more than doubled their number of seats in the Reichstag, and became the largest party; and in January 1933 President Hindenburg bowed to the inevitable and asked Adolf Hitler to lead a coalition government. The general election in the March of that year resulted in a clear victory for the Nazis and their nationalist allies.

    Red fury now knew no bounds. In the campaign of violence and illegality that followed, the Union of Red Fighters openly called on their followers to disarm the SA and SS, while a few days later an official Communist publication, Red Sailor, urged: “Workers to the Barricades: forward to victory: fresh bullets in your guns: draw the pin of the hand grenades.” A bloody revolution seemed imminent. A signal for its commencement was anxiously awaited, and it appeared to come on 27 February when the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire.

    A Dutch communist, Van der Lubbe, was arrested near the scene, and subsequently he and four other suspects, including Torgler, the leader of the communist group in the Reichstag, were put on trial. The official report of the provisional inquiry showed that the Red group had had “a remarkable number of party meetings in the Reichstag of late, without any reason which could be traced.” At Liebknechthaus (the Communist HQ named after a leader of the abortive 1918 revolution), the authorities found lists of a large number of people who were to have been killed or arrested.

    Van der Lubbe admitted that he had fired the building and that it was meant to be a signal for revolution. But, he claimed, contrary to expert testimony at the trial, that he had destroyed the building single handed. He stuck to his story, but elsewhere the Reds were spreading the lie that the fire had been started by the Nazis themselves, and that Van der Lubbe was a degenerate half-wit and homosexual prostitute planted on the scene as a “fall guy.”

    Just two days after the fire the Daily Worker (forerunner of the Morning Star) official organ of the British Communist Party, carried the banner headline “Nazis burn down the German parliament,” and then went on to state that the “Fascists” had accused the Communist Party of having done it “without a shred of evidence.”

    Thus was born one of the great myths of modern history that the Nazis set fire to their own Parliament to provide an excuse for curbing the activities of the Communists. It might be said that some plausibility was given to the myth by the action of President Hindenburg (who was not a Nazi) on the day after the fire.

    Fearing that another Communist revolution had started, he declared martial law and suppressed Marxist propaganda in Prussia. More substance was provided for the myth when the old Weimar Constitution was changed by the passing of the Enabling Act, which has been falsely represented as giving dictatorial powers to Hitler.

    The act had nothing to do with the Reichstag fire, but was a necessary part of the Government’s program for overcoming the grave social and economic crisis in Germany. Nonetheless, such actions provided hooks on which the anti-Nazi media and politicians could hang their multi-colored coat of lies and misrepresentation which came to be seriously accepted as authentic history.

    The trial of Van der Lubbe and the other suspects should have dispelled any suspicion of Nazi guilt. It was a scrupulously fair trial which resulted in the acquittal of all the defendants except Van der Lubbe himself.

    Anti-Nazi propagandists, however, were far from being dismayed. They turned their attention on a Brown Book of alleged evidence compiled by communist exiles, and a farcical “counter-trial” which they staged in London which, not surprisingly, found the Nazis guilty.

    According to the Brown Book, a group of Nazis entered the Reichstag via a tunnel which was connected to the residence of Herman Göring, President of the Reichstag. They were supposed to have gained entry at 8.40pm, set the building on fire and then left, after pushing the half-wit Van der Lubbe into the building just after 9 pm. The police arrived on the scene at 9.22pm. Evidence was given at the “counter-trial” by witnesses, purporting to be Nazis seeking repentance, that they were led by a Brown Shirt named Heines. It was ascertained later that Heines was making a speech elsewhere at the time of the fire.

    Another confession was supposedly made by Karl Ernst, then chief of the Brown Shirts in Berlin. Apart from the fact that this confession did not turn up until after Ernst’s death, it slipped up on one vital point. As with the other “confessions,” it alleged that the Nazi arsonists were in the Reichstag from 8.40 pm until 9.30 pm. But at 8.45 pm, a postman entered the building to collect the mail, and left again at 8.55 pm without seeing anything out of the ordinary or noticing the smell of gasoline or other fire raising substances.

    The full truth is not yet known, but sound basic facts — certainly more than enough to discredit allegations of Nazi responsibility were brought to light in Britain by the liberal historian Professor A. J. P. Taylor, who admits that he had accepted the myth unquestioningly “without looking at the evidence.”

    Later, however, writing on “Who burnt the Reichstag” in the August 1960 issue of the specialist magazine History Today, Taylor, working largely on evidence provided by Fritz Tobias, an anti-Nazi German civil servant, and which had been published earlier in Der Spiegel, points out that the Nazis made no attempt to manufacture evidence against the Communists -which seems a strange omission if, as alleged, the whole affair was staged to justify the suppression of the Communists.

    As for the counter-trial, one of the witnesses there was “muffled to the eyes” according to Taylor, who wryly adds: “This was a wise precaution: he was in fact a well-known communist and unmistakably Jewish.”

    When considering the facts, it seems incredible that the myth of Nazi responsibility for firing the Reichstag could ever have been accepted at all. Yet it was, and by reputable historians such as Alan Bullock, author of Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, and Anthony Sutton, author of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. One wonders what other mythical versions of historical incidents have been accepted by historians and others “without looking at the evidence.”

    Reply
25. Xman says:

    Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 10:53 am

    Interesting.
    One point you left out, was the heavy Jewish membership is the mentioned communist party.

    Reply

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