Who started the Reichstag Fire?

It was Goebbels who first came up with the idea of setting fire to the Reichstag. Goebbels discussed this with the leader of the Berlin SA brigade, Karl Ernst, and made detailed suggestions on how to go about carrying out the arson. A certain tincture known to every pyrotechnician was selected. You spray it onto an object and then it ignites after a certain time, after hours or minutes.

- Source 8



From the original police report on the Reichstag fire (February 1933). This report shows the route van der Lubbe confessed to taking through the Reichstag.

- Source 11



SOURCE 1:

The fire broke out at 9.45 tonight in the Assembly Hall of the Reichstag. It had been laid in five different comers and there is no doubt whatever that it was the handiwork of incendiaries.”



Photographs of Marinus van der Lubbe taken shortly after his arrest by the Nazis in February 1933. He was arrested in the Reichstag building. He was a 24 year-old vagrant and had just arrived in Berlin from Leiden. Van der Lubbe was interviewed by the Gestapo and he admitted setting fire to the Reichstag.

- Source 3



I myself am a leftist and a member of the Communist Party. Something absolutely had to be done to defeat this system. The workers will rise up once the flames of repression are seen over Germany. My comrades and I will bring revolution to Germany!



He was brought to trial along with the head of the German Communist Party and three Bulgarian members of the Comintern. At his trial, Van der Lubbe was convicted and sentenced to death for the Reichstag fire. The four other defendants (Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov, and Vasil Tanev) were acquitted. Van der Lubbe was guillotined in a Leipzig prison yard on 10 January 1934, three days before his 25th birthday.