Word: reichstager
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Still on their horseshoe bench the six red-robed judges of Germany's Supreme Court heard more evidence last week against the five men accused of firing Berlin's Reichstag building (TIME, March 26, et seq.). Center of interest was still the dull-witted Dutch arson boy, Marinus van der Lubbe (only defendant to be kept manacled and in prison garb in the court room). Chief pain to the prosecution was still the pugnacious Bulgarian Communist Leader George Dimitroff...
...progress of the arson trial in Germany has brought the Nazi's to a somewhat embarrassing dilemma. As every well-informed family knows, immediately after the burning of the Reichstag Hitler's party came to power, on the pretext that Communists had fired the building, that this was the last straw, Germany must awake! etc. And having eradicated the opposition they proceeded to erect the totalitarian state based on scrupulous unfairness. But now, obeying an incongruous twirk of conscience, they have decided to use legal processes to discover and convict those they accuse of the crime. This was a mistake...
...only cleared himself but displayed remarkable courage, sincerity, and intelligence. The second choice is acquittal. But the implication of this is to divert the charge from the Communists to--whom? A Soviet radio station repeats every evening a simple, insinuating question to German listeners: "Captain Goering, who fired the Reichstag...
...loose-lipped Dutch youth with wild hair and shabby clothes sat laughing and laughing. There he was, Marinus van der Lubbe, propped up before Germany and the world as one of five defendants in a great Nazi anti-Communist propaganda trial, charged with setting fire to Berlin's Reichstag building last winter. All Germany was prepared to believe him guilty. Yet in London fortnight ago a committee of international jurists had held an unofficial trial of the same case, produced important witnesses, listened to reams of testimony, and convinced most of the world that if Marinus van der Lubbe...
...night of the fire and completely discredited van der Lubbe's Communist standing. They described the latter as "weak, vainglorious, partially blind and frequently in debt." German Communist leaders claimed they had never heard of van der Lubbe until he was arrested running out of the Reichstag during the fire. An anonymous witness declared that van der Lubbe was an intimate of famed Nazi Captain Ernst Roehm...