In this program we presented and discussed Fire in the Reichstag, by Peter Wainwright, which may be found at the Institute for Historical Review, and also
Myths, Wartime Propaganda and the Burning of the Reichstag by Fred Blahut, which was published in the January, 1996 issue of The Barnes Review, the text of which is found below.
Before presenting these articles, we discussed a 2008 article from Der Spiegel, Late Justice for Nazi Scapegoat: Verdict against 1933 Reichstag Arsonist Thrown Out, which helps to establish that there is absolutely no evidence that National Socialists set the Reichstag blaze, and any assertions that they did are admittedly based only upon assumptions, by their own admittance.
Myths, Wartime Propaganda and the Burning of the Reichstag
By Fred Blahut
If the burning of the German Reichstag brought the National Socialists to power in 1933, were the Nazis responsible for the arson? if not, who was?
By 1933, Germany was ripe for another revolution. The Moscow-backed communist revolutions of 1919 had been put down at awful cost. And then the Allies imposed “reparations” that stripped the country of its ability to employ its workers and feed its people, including a British-engineered blockade that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Germans by starvation.
The worldwide depression of 1929 hit the country, still staggering under the yoke of the Treaty of Versailles, in the gut. Food was scarce. Jobs were disappearing. Those who had jobs earned money that was close to worthless.
It was clear that the centrist government of President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Heinrich Bruning, under extreme pressure from both the left and the right, could not hold. Fearing civil war, Hindenburg dismissed Bruning and in January of 1933 appointed Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialists, as chancellor, even though Hitler had no absolute majority in the lower chamber of the German Parliament - the Reichstag.
And then, on the night of February 27, the Reichstag building burned.
