Around 9 P.M. on Feb. 27, 1933, Hans Flotter witnessed a man on a balcony of the Reichstag building in Berlin. The man was carrying something on fire. Flotter called the police. A policeman went into the building and shot at a man moving around in it. The man without a shirt was arrested and when asked why he had set the building on fire, responded: “As a protest.” Marius van der Lubbe was a 24 year old Dutchman who was mentally challenged. He was a communist which was lucky for the newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler. His Nazi Party was not dominate yet, but the fear of a communist uprising could turn the German public toward the Nazis as their saviors. Within a day, 5,000 communists were rounded up. Soon, the Enabling Act was passed giving Hitler emergency power to deal with the threat. The Chancellor became der Fuhrer. Historians have suspected that Lubbe was a patsy and the fire was actually started by the Nazis. Specifically, Herman Goering led a group of arsonists through a secret passageway to set fires and then escaped through the passage. Goering supposedly admitted later that he had set the fire. However, recent scholarship has pointed to Lubbe setting the fires on his own. One addled individual apparently helped Hitler consolidate his power.
– Strange 367-8
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