“having given us such a vivid insight into the way your mind is
working.” The Führer left Göring’s apartment amid the rustle
of checkbooks (Schacht had indicated that three million
Reichsmarks was the kind of campaign fund they had in mind).
Stepping up the fight against their opponents, four days
later Göring’s police officials swooped on the Communist party
headquarters in Berlin. He claimed that they had found in-
criminating documents in what he picturesquely called its “cata-
combs.” “I was told,” he later recalled, “that the Communists
were winding up for a major coup. I had lists of all the Commu-
nists drawn up so that we could arrest them immediately when
the balloon went up.” For the moment these lists were kept on
ice, since President Hindenburg had already proven unrecep-
tive to the Nazis’ radical measures, like a new law proclaiming
their swastika to be Germany’s national flag.
All such reservations were dramatically dispelled a few days
later. At : .. on February , , as Göring was toiling at
his desk, reports reached him that his Reichstag building was
ablaze. He threw on a voluminous camel-hair coat and jumped
into his car. He pulled up outside his official residence, across
the street from the Reichstag. He could see flames already
shooting up through the building’s glass cupola, and the first
fire engines were on the scene. His first thought was for the
heirlooms that he had inherited from his father some of them
were hanging in the Speaker’s office. He was also heard to shout,
“We must save the tapestries!” as he dashed into the tunnel that
connected the speaker’s residence with the blazing Reichstag
building. He came up inside the latter to find the big session-
chamber already a furnace sucking in air from outside so vio-
lently that, although not of negligible bulk, he found himself
being dragged forward into the flames.
It is now generally accepted by reputable historians that the