Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation Into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery (2014)

Adolf Hitler had been in power exactly four weeks and a crucial election campaign was underway when a mysterious fire destroyed the chamber of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament. Hitler responded immediately with a draconian emergency law that put an end to all democratic freedom in Germany. But who set the fire? The Communists, as Hitler claimed? The Nazis themselves, as most of Hitler’s opponents assumed? Or one man acting alone – the twenty-four-year-old Dutch journeyman stonemason Marinus van der Lubbe, mentally handicapped and with only 20% of his vision? The fire made Hitler a dictator, but the mystery of who set it endures and controversy has raged ever since 1933. This book, based on a huge trove of newly available sources, sets out a surprising solution to the enduring mystery – and tells how and why shadowy ex-Nazis and their opponents struggled over the meaning of the fire for years after the Second World War.