Pro memoria: The Reichstag Fire

Or why it is worthwhile contemplating historical events

by Dr Annemarie Buchholz, Historian

Lately, with increasing apprehension, one has begun to hear experienced bankers and politicians explain that the problem of Western countries’ debts, especially America’s, can only be solved by war, a major war. An arms build-up would ‘revitalize’ certain sectors of industry, national debt could then continue to rise and the world would be divided even more clearly into creditor and debtor countries. ‘Time and again, the word “defense” was the lubricant that helped unlock the Treasury doors’, explaines John Pitney Jr. in his paper ‘Khaki-Socialism’, published on 16 December. He coined the term ‘Khaki-Socialism’ to characterize the state justifying its rampant omnipotence with military necessity or couching domestic affairs in military language. And once the treasury is empty, the state will work ‘on pump’. Warning voices say that in the chaos of a major war national debts could be ‘dropped’ in the general currency collapse. The ‘have-not’ countries— because of which, or for whose ‘welfare’, the war was started to be carried on ‘for a very long time’—could then pay with their raw materials or agree reparation payments for decades. The 20th century, Pitney argues, has some experience to offer in such matters.

Indeed it does. Is it then not worthwhile contemplating those historical events? The responsibility we bear for our own time, for ourselves, our families and fellow citizens, and all the people in the world suggests that we should do so. Much that happens cannot be foreseen. But we are capable of drawing conclusions from what happened in the past. If all higher developed mammals can learn from experience and, by doing so, better cope with the present, then human beings can, too. Of course, one cannot mechanically apply historical experiences to other situations—water does not flow from the European watershed to the sea over the same stone in the same way twice. However, historical experience may make us more cautious in judging current events, so that we exercise caution and care towards what should not be lost. We are perfectly capable of deciding what protects human life and what destroys it. As a result, the issue of war or peace concerns us all: war destroys.

The exhibition in Germany marking the 350th anniversary of the ‘Peace of Westphalia and the 30 Years War’ made clear that once war has been decided on, the existing control mechanisms protecting peace are revoked one after another. Whoever wants war, also prepares it. And war preparations take time: alliances must be forged and arms depots replenished. The people, in whose name and on whose back war is carried out, and who must pay for it with their taxes, lives and suffering, must first of all be made to accept the reason for this historical necessity. And then an event is needed to trigger it off.

The alliances that grew out of colonial rivalry and led to World War I are relatively easy to comprehend. The arms build-up and propaganda machinery also functioned well. All it needed then was just one small trigger: the famous shot in Sarajevo, which to this day has been hard to explain to students as the ‘reason’ for World War I. And what about the United States? ‘The First World War gave an incredible boost to the US economy, catapulting it into a position of a world power. As a debtor nation before 1914 with a debt to European creditors of 3.7 billion dollars, the US became a creditor nation with assets totalling 12 billion dollars, consisting of 10 billion dollars war debt from other nations. The US overtook all former great powers and economic powers in Europe, and by the end of the war it was the uncontested world leader. The economy flourished and American banks were willing to support a devastated Europe with investments,’ writes Professor Walther Hofer, a historian from Berne, Switzerland, in his excellent new book ‘Hitler, der Westen und die Schweiz 1936-1945’ (Hitler, the West and Switzerland 1936-1945).

Germany was then hit by the repercussions of the war: a hitherto unheard-of inflation rate in the world. Eighty per cent of its war expenditures had been financed with short-term loans that could only be brought under control by printing fresh ‘paper’ money. And the victors of the war wrote their bill: reparation payments, whose size was constantly changed during the 1920s, culminating in the Young Plan of 1929 that demanded a total of roughly 116 billion Marks, which meant annual reparation payments of 2 billion Marks up to 1988! Will it be any different today after a war?

In 1923 inflation rose so quickly that bread costing 15 billion Marks at 2 p.m. cost 25 billion Marks an hour later. A pair of shoelaces cost as much as the entire shoe store had been worth before. Stefan Zweig, in his autobiography, recounted that 100 Dollars was enough to buy a whole row of 6-storey buildings on Berlin’s Kurfürstendam. Medium and small businesses and a large number of the middle classes lost everything they had, companies had to close and unemployment rose accordingly. A very small number of individuals became very rich. Are things any different today? Will it be any different in the future? The misfortune of millions of people was at the same time an experimental field for all kinds of recipes for social reorganization: a Bolshevist variety of state monopoly capitalism, a form of corporate socialism in the US which later became part of Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, Mussolini’s fascism, which attracted ardent admirers in American financial circles, and finally Hitler’s National Socialism, originally conceived as a bulwark against Russia, and at the beginning perhaps just a theoretical exercise among all the others. These different theoretical exercises gave different answers to the question of how a society’s productive forces could be used for the state’s purposes when the state stands up in the name of the proletariat, or in the name of Big Business. What will be any different in the future, other than that the solution must be a ‘global’ one? In this variation the Trotskyists and the United Nations [with their concept of Internationalism] might find the theoretical exercise of today quite appealing.

In this huge experimental field something occurred which is often ignored today because it is so taken for granted: Franklin Delano Roosevelt founded the ‘United European Investors Ltd.’, which was used to discretely buy out the German entrepreneurial class.

Exploiting the crisis of millions of people for personal gain: Will it be any different today? Ought we not to learn our lessons from the history of the past century in order to prevent such things from happening again, and to clearly determine what we certainly never want again? If politicians wanted no inflation, there would not be any inflation. Currency depreciation in Germany would never have been on such a scale if interested and powerful circles had not given a helping hand, or at least done something about it, suggest Ferdinand Lips and Jacques Trachsler in ‘Geld, Gold und die Wahrheit’ (Money, Gold, and the Truth). And what about today?

Exploitation of the plight of a defeated country is one side of the coin. Dealings within a ‘holy alliance’, between brothers and friends in a sense, is the other side of the coin. Likewise, the past century has provided us with interesting models. For example, for England Roosevelt developed the ‘lend and lease’ solution, a leasing of armaments as it were. After one year of war, England had already spent so much money that they had to ask the American government for help. Churchill writes in his memoirs: ‘Up till November, 1940, we had paid for everything we had received. We had already sold $335000000 worth of American shares requisitioned for sterling from private owners in Britain. We had paid out over $4500000000 in cash. We had only two thousand millions left, the greater part in investments, many of which were not readily marketable. It was plain that we could not go on any longer in this way. Even if we divested ourselves of all our gold and foreign assets, we could not pay for half we had ordered, and the extension of the war made it necessary for us to have ten times as much.’ (‘Their Finest Hour’, Boston 1949, p. 557f.) Churchill relied on his good relationship with Roosevelt and told him openly about the state of affairs in a letter dated 8 December 1940.

On 16 December Roosevelt gave his answer at a press conference using an interesting comparison: ‘Suppose my neighbour’s house catches fire and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out the fire. Now what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, “Neighbour, my garden hose cost me fifteen dollars; you have to pay me fifteen dollars for it.” No! What is the transaction that goes on? I don’t want fifteen dollars—I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.’ Then Roosevelt went on to explain his principles: ‘There is absolutely no doubt in the mind of a very overwhelming number of Americans that the best immediate defence of the United States is the success of Great Britain defending itself; and that, therefore, quite aside from our historic and current interest in the survival of Democracy in the world as a whole, it is equally important from a selfish point of view and of American defence that we should do everything possible to help the British Empire to defend itself.’ The further development of this amicable relationship between the two countries and the London and New York finance centres, capped by the present brotherhood-in-arms between Bush and Blair and all their common interests in the UK-US agreement, needs to be examined separately, but the matter would definitely be worth considerable thought.

But let us return to the thirties.

The Reichstag fire—a model

Since the mid-twenties things were deve–loping inside a diseased Europe that would later drag the world into the abyss of WW II: National Socialism formed and asserted itself with the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933. Democracy had been defeated—in just one night. This affair deserves careful consideration for the very reason that it is a model that could be copied today or in the future—to be performed in a different place, of course, and in a different form, but so that the aim is accomplished, namely to pave the way for the will to war.

If tomorrow you read about England or America in the papers that ‘The police can now arbitrarily arrest anyone without reason and without questioning, they can detain them indefinitely without judgement, they can spy on anybody, tap anyone’s telephone, and dissolve associations,’ wouldn’t you say that you had already reckoned with this for weeks from news items on the internet? However, this list is taken from a history book and characterises the ‘Decree for the Protection of the People and the State’, the so-called emergency decree of 28 February 1933. On the very next day after the fire, it was issued by the German president. It contained several other details: ‘to censor or prohibit newspapers’, which is less necessary nowadays as many media themselves only publish what the belligerent alliance wants published anyway; ‘to dissolve parties’, which does not appear necessary, at least for the time being, because they have their ‘advisors’, spin doctors, agents, etc.; ‘to dissolve meetings’, which is likewise hardly necessary because overt surveillance is far more effective and productive. Now that everybody and everything is connected electronically, it is ‘Echelon’s’ golden age…

Back to 1933 again. The ‘Decree for the Protection of the People and the State’, which was immediately introduced the day after the fire, was changed to the ‘Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich’ on 24 March 1933, a law that is known in history as the Enabling Act. The government gave itself the power to ignore the constitution and to govern without the restrictions of such ‘bonds of democracy’. In this respect a distinct difference existed in comparison to the current situation: Hitler and his cronies openly declared themselves enemies of democracy. Today such radical intrusions on society are made more discreetly, they are better wrapped so to speak, so that people are more inclined to buy them.

With world events of the past few weeks and months still fresh on one’s mind, one reads the speeches and writings of the period around 1933 with the greatest apprehension. For example, in a radio broadcast two days after the fire, Goering argued for the necessity of acting quickly and with a grip of iron in the following manner:

‘Since the beginning of February communist functionaries have been developing numerous activities everywhere. The police managed to find out that this new activity, openly and admittedly, aimed at unleashing an uprising, which, according to a confiscated plan of international communism, was to be the stepping stone to total civil war […]

On 27 February the Reichstag had gone up in flames as a first signal for this uprising. Believe me: if we had not taken vigorous and harsh action that same evening, if we had not at the same time used all the powers of the Reich, if we had not instantaneously shown the communist movement that the Reich is not to be toyed with for a single minute, then we would find ourselves having to speak about a number of other fires and a number of other assassinations. In spite of this, I am by no means convinced that the danger has already been overcome.’

Taking vigorous action meant arresting thousands of so-called enemies of the people, using lists, prepared beforehand, the same night all over the country. These included communists, socialists, trade unionists, intellectuals including writers, e.g. Ernst Thälmann, Egon Erwin Kisch, and Carl von Ossietzky. Everything had been prepared thoroughly beforehand and on a large scale. And what are things like today in this regard?

During the late sixties and early seventies Professor Walther Hofer, director of the University of Berne’s Institute of History, headed an international research commission to investigate the Reichstag fire since there had always been a lot of polemics surrounding this historical event, but little objective clarification. Either attempts had been made to whitewash the whole affair or the gravest accusations, which finally boiled down to ‘suppositions that …’. The research group reached the conclusion that the Reichstag fire had been a deliberately staged provocation aimed at bringing about what had been intended all along: doing away with the state of law and with parliamentary democracy. The emergency decree, introduced the day after the fire, provided Hitler with the means to mercilessly persecute the Marxist leftists and to also intimidate and terrorise the middle classes, who were faced with the choice: red or brown. Oppressively reminiscent of today?

In July 1933 a number of communists were taken to court and charged with arson, among them Bulgarin Dimitrov, member of the Comintern’s Executive Committee, and Ernst Torgler, leader of the communist parliamentary group (KPD) of the Reichstag. The monster trial was conducted during the months of October and November, and on December 23, all of them had to be acquitted, except for the Dutchman van der Lubbe. The majority of the population, and in particular the firemen who extinguished the fire, were of course aware that he alone could not have set fire to the Reichstag. The acquittal, however, did not change anything: The march towards imperialistic dictatorship continued. The emergency decree remained, the Enabling Act remained—democracy was dead.

Which statesman today would have the magnanimity to stand up and confess that everything has been an error, that the dictatorship has to dissolve itself and the state functions handed back to the democratic institutions? Such developments are so dangerous because power does not tend to strip itself of power. It tends to stay.

Walther Hofer and his research team attached so much importance to a correct assessment of the Reichstag fire because it presented a pattern that—in a modified version—could be used again. In the twelve years after the fire, the development of the National Socialist regime showed

‘that the fire of the 27 February 1933 was only the starting signal for a whole series of far greater crimes—crimes, incidentally, that worked precisely according to the pattern of the Reichstag fire. This pattern consisted of passing off one’s own operations, which were carefully planned and cold-bloodedly carried out, first of all in the domestic policy field and then in foreign policies too, as retaliation against alleged operations or just plans of real or imaginary enemies. In this way the regime justified its own actions. This was the pattern that was used in the St Bartholomew’s Night on 30th July 1934 when a faked SA (Sturmabteilung) coup d’état had to be nipped in the bud. And the regime also attempted to justify its persecution of the Jews and struggle against the Church with claims that it had been provoked by World Judaism and the Church in Rome.

The operation, however, with the worst consequences was the unleashing of the war. A faked assault on the broadcasting station of Gleiwitz was staged so that in his speech before the Reichstag on September 1, 1939 Hitler could tell the world that he was merely “shooting back”!

In all these cases it has clearly been proved that alleged provocations by adversaries were all pure fabrication, incidents staged by the Nazis to make it appear as if their own actions were merely reactions.’

In the modern age mankind has developed democracy, that fine fabric of rules, in order to keep state power and despotism in check. Democracy has provided foundations acknowledging the equality of man, and guaranteeing people’s active participation in shaping the world around them. Direct democracy in particular, as practised in Switzerland, is a model safeguarding ethnic and religious diversity and enabling people, at grass root level, to shape their own lives in a dignified way, and not just at elections every four years: the instruments of the petition for a referendum and the referendum itself permit a civilised form of exertion of influence on all relevant matters independent of elections.

Each generation, however, has to think these foundations through anew and adopt democracy for themselves and their lives. Or do we want a world divided into slaves and masters again, into glossy super-rich and people living in abject poverty? Or can we possibly fashion more dignified lives together in this world if we can look each other in the eye as equals, with mutual respect, and without waging wars?

Would it not be worthwhile learning lessons from history, so that we can take a more principled stand towards the concerns of our time? Reflection on the terrible destruction brought about by the First and Second World Wars should cause us to take a decisive stance against war. When we hear the war drums being beaten again today heralding war, large-scale war, then be on the alert. Reflection on the requirements of human life on this planet instead of simply surrendering to the propaganda—to a new variation of the Reichstag fire—is the first condition if one wants to remain human in difficult times, too.

It is not the law that matters but victory

Extract from the diary of General Halder

22 August 1939

Meeting with the Führer (Obersalzberg, 12 a.m.)

Present were army group leaders and army commanders of the German army, navy and air force.

The Führer demands of the military leaders:

1. Unyielding resoluteness: counter-moves by England-France will ensue. We must hold out. W-deployment will be utilized. ‘Iron, unshakable firmness of all those in charge!’
   
2. Aim: Poland’s annihilation—extermination of its vital force. It is not a question of advancing towards any particular line or drawing new borders, but about destroying the enemy, for which new ways need to be constantly devised.
   
3. Trigger: means immaterial. The victor is never asked the question whether his reasons were justified. It does not matter whether we have the law on our side, the only thing that matters is victory.
   
4. Execution: tough and ruthless. Harden yourselves against all considerations of compassion! Swift: faith in the German soldier even if scruples emerge. Most important is the wedge from the SE to the Vistula, the wedge from N to the Narev and the Vistula. Adapt swiftly to new situations. Swiftly apply new means to new situations.
   
5. Drawing new borders: new territory of the Reich? Forefront protectorate territory. Military operations are not to take into account future borders.
   
   

Source: Walther Hofer, Die Entfesselung des Zweiten Weltkrieges – Eine Studie über die internationalen Beziehungen im Sommer 1939, S.-Fischer-Verlag 1964. (How World War II Was Unleashed – A Study of International Relations in the Summer of 1939)

According to the ‘Statistical Yearbook of the German Reich’, the devaluation of the German Mark amounted to this:

The inflation accelerated with the foundation of ‘United European Investors Ltd.’, whose chairman was Franklin D. Roosevelt. John von Berenberg Gossler was a member of the German advisory board:

After the German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno was dismissed, inflation got completely out of control. Cuno returned to his post as chairman of HAPAG. John von Berenberg Gossler and Max Warburg were among his colleagues on the board of directors.

The political manœuvres which led to the ruinous inflation in Germany began under Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno, who was chairman of the board of directors of the ‘Hamburg-America-Line’ (HAPAG) immediately before he became Chancellor. Among Cuno’s colleagues on the board of directors were Max Warburg—a Hamburg banker and a brother of Paul Warburg, who sat on the United States’ Federal Reserve Board—and John von Berenberg Gossler, who was on the German advisory board of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘United European Investors Ltd.’. Cuno was dismissed as Chancellor in August 1923. As the tables above show, inflation had already got out of control by then and the Mark had reached rock-bottom in November that year.

The crucial point thus is that Cuno was German Chancellor between 1922 and 1923 when the plummeting of the Mark accelerated and that he belonged to a circle of business people that profited from the German inflation both personally and financially and that did so deliberately. The alarming devaluation and the eventual collapse of the German currency in 1923 ruined the German middle classes while there were three groups that benefited from it: a few big businessmen in Germany, some foreign businessmen who were in a position to take advantage of the inflation and, thirdly, the rising Hitler movement. As chairman of ‘United European Investors Ltd.’ FDR belonged to those foreigners who took advantage of Germany’s plight for their personal gain.

Source: Anthony C. Sutton, Roosevelt und die internationale Hochfinanz. Tübingen 1990.

(Translation by Current Concerns)

Emergency Decree in Effect on the Day of its Publication

In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence, endangering the state:

§1 Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

§2 The German Reich may temporarily exercise the powers of the highest regional authority if it fails to enforce measures necessary to restore public law and order.

§3 The regional authorities and the municipal authorities are to observe, within the framework of their competencies, the orders of the Government based on §2.

§4 Whosoever contravenes the orders of the Government and its subordinate bodies to enforce the provisions of this decree, or instigates or incites such a contravention, or violates the orders of the German government based on §2, will be punished with imprisonment for not less than one month or a fine between 150 and 15000 Reichsmarks, unless the crime is subject to a greater penalty according to other regulations.

Acts in violation of § 4, section 1, posing a common threat to human life, will be punished with penal servitude, under mitigating circumstances with imprisonment of not less than 6 months, and in the event of death, with the death penalty or, under mitigating circumstances, with penal servitude of not less than 2 years. In addition, confiscation of assets can also take place.

Instigation to contravention constituting a public danger (§4, section 2) is punishable with penal servitude, under mitigating circumstances with imprisonment of not less than 3 months.

§5 The death penalty is to be imposed in cases of crimes which—according to the penal code—have so far been punished with lifelong imprisonment: § 81 (high treason), § 229 (poisoning), § 307 (arson), § 311 (detonation of explosives), § 312 (flooding), § 315, section 2 (destruction of railways), § 324 (poisoning constituting a public threat).

For the following offences the death penalty, or penal servitude for life or up to 15 years, is to be applied unless the crime is subject to a greater penalty according to other regulations:

1. Whoever assassinates the President of the Reich, or a member or a commissioner of the German Reich or regional authority, or who endeavours to assassinate, or plans such an assassination with a third party;

2. Whoever violates § 115, section 2 of the penal code (revolt) or § 125, section 2 (a severe breech of the peace) if the deed was committed using weapons or in conscious and planned collaboration with an armed person;

3. Whoever undertakes wrongful detention (§ 239 of the penal code) with the aim of holding persons hostage for political purposes.

§6 This decree comes into effect on the day of its publication.

*Article 48 of the German Constitution of August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153.

It Was Just the Beginning
Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich (Enabling Act)

Text of the Law

Article 1: Laws of the Reich may, besides by the procedure provided for by the Reich’s Constitution, be passed by the Reich’s Government as well. This is also valid for the laws, referred to in article 85, paragraph 2 and article 87 of the Reich’s Constitution.

Article 2: The Acts, passed by the Reich’s Government, may deviate from the Reich’s Constitution, as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The Rights of the President of the Reichstag stay the same.

Article 3: The Acts passed by the Reich’s Government will be issued by the Reich’s Chancellor and will be published in the Reich’s Law Gazette. They come into force on the day after their proclamation as far as there is no other regulation. The articles 68 to 77 of the Reich’s Constitution must not be applied to those acts passed by the Reich’s Government.

Article 4: Treaties of the Reich with foreign states which affect matters dealt with by the Reich’s legislation do not need the consent of the legislative bodies. The Reich’s Government passes the regulations needed for the enforcment of those treaties.

Article 5: This Act comes into force on the day of its proclamation. It will be repealed on April 1st 1937, it will also be repealed in case the present government will be replaced by another government.