to the quailing Cabinet ministers the next morning:
Admittedly the man arrested [Van der Lubbe] was
maintaining that he had perpetrated the outrage on
his own, [said Göring according to the Cabinet min-
utes], but this statement was not to be credited. He,
Reich Minister Göring, was assuming that there had
been at least six or seven attackers. The arsonist was
definitely observed some time before the fire con-
sorting with the Communist Reichstag deputy Tor-
gler; both are reported to have walked around inside
the building.All of this was quite untrue, as was the rest of Göring’s report to
the Cabinet, about the seizure of Communist plans to set up ter-
ror squads, burn down public buildings, poison communal soup
kitchens, and kidnap the wives and children of leading minis-
ters.
Playing the role to the full, Göring announced that he had
closed every museum and castle, had banned every Communist
and Social Democrat newspaper in Germany, and had arrested
the Communist officials. The world press was already indig-
nantly proclaiming that the Nazis themselves had torched the
Reichstag. Göring was privately facetious about the allegation.
“The next thing we know,” he sniffed, “they’ll be claiming I
stood and watched the blaze wearing a blue toga and playing the
violin!” Not least among the administrative problems that the
fire had caused him was that he now had to relinquish Prussia’s
best theater, the Kroll Opera House, to provide a home for fu-
ture Reichstag sessions.
Perhaps some Cabinet ministers still voiced misgivings
about the evidence, because on March , Göring would assure
them that further documents had been seized during the night,
proving this time that Moscow had given the Communists in