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great building was gutted, and the government was charging that it had been deliberately fired

by emissaries of the Red International.

All four of the young people were familiar with that elaborate specimen of the Bismarck style

of architecture, and could picture the scenes, both there and elsewhere in the city. "It is a

frame-up," said Bess. "Communists are not terrorists." Lanny agreed with her, and Irma,

whatever she thought, kept it to herself. It was inevitable that every Communist would call it a

plot, and every Nazi would be equally certain of the opposite.

"Really, it is too obvious!" argued Hansi. "The elections less than six days away, and those

scoundrels desperate for some means of discrediting us!"

"The workers will not be fooled!" insisted Bess. "Our party is monolithic."

Lanny thought: "The old phonograph record!" But he said: "It's a terrible thing, as Papa

says. They will be raiding Communist headquarters all over Germany tonight. Be glad that you

have a good alibi."

But neither of the musicians smiled at this idea. In their souls they were taking the blows

which they knew must be falling upon their party comrades.

XI

What happened in the Reichstag building on that night of February 27 would be a subject of

controversy inside and outside of Germany for years to come; but there could be no doubt

about what happened elsewhere. Even while the four young people were talking in Paris, the

leader of the Berlin S.A., Count Helldorf, was giving orders for the arrest of prominent

Communists and Socialists.

The list of victims had been prepared in advance, and warrants, each with a photograph of

the victim in question. The Count knew that the Marxists were the criminals, he said; and

Goring announced that the demented Dutchman who was found in the building with matches

and fire-lighters had a Communist party membership card on him. The statement turned out

to be untrue, but it served for the moment.

Next day Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to sign a decree "for the safeguarding of the state

from the Communist menace," and after that the Nazis had everything their own way. The

prisons were filled with suspects, and the setting up of concentration camps began with a

rush. The Prussian government, of which Goring was the head, issued a statement concerning

the documents found in the raid on Karl Liebknecht Haus three days before the fire. The

Communists had been plotting to burn down public buildings throughout Germany, and to

start civil war and revolution on the Russian model; looting had been planned to begin right

after the fire and terrorist acts were to be committed against persons and property. The

publication of these documents was promised, but no one ever saw them, and the story was

dropped as soon as it had served its purpose—which was to justify the abolishing of civil

liberties throughout what had been the German Republic.

XII

As the evidence began to filter into the newspapers of Britain and France, the young Reds

and Pinks spent many an hour trying to make up their minds about one of the great "frame-

ups" of history. What brain had conceived it? What hand had carried it out? For the former

role their suspicions centered upon a German World War aviator who had fled to Sweden,

where he had become a dope addict and had been in a psychopathic institution. Hermann

Goring was a great hulk of a man, absurdly vain, with a fondness for gaudy uniforms which

was to make him the butt of Berlin wits; he was also a man of immense energy, brutal and

unscrupulous, the perfect type of those freebooters who had ravaged the borders of the German

empire in medieval times, had given themselves titles, and now had huge white marble statues of

themselves in the Siegesallee, known to the Berlin wits as "the Cemetery of Art."

Hermann Goring had got his titles: Minister without Portfolio, Federal Commissioner for Air

Transport, Prussian Minister of the Interior. They carried the same grants of power as in the

old free-booting days, but unfortunately they were subject to elections; on the following

Sunday the proletariat might go to the polls and strip Hermann of his glories—and this would

be extremely annoying to a man of aristocratic tastes, a friend of the former Crown Prince and

of Thyssen. As it happened, the man of action was in position to act, for his official residence

was connected with the Reichstag building by a long underground passage; also he had at his

command a well-trained army, eager to execute any command he might give. What did a

building amount to, in comparison with the future of the.N.S.D.A.P.?

The man whom the Nazis were finally to convict of the crime was a feeble-minded Dutchman

who had been expelled from the Communist party of that country and had been a tramp all

over Europe. The police maintained that at his original examination he had told a detailed

story of setting fire to the curtains of the restaurant with matches and fire-lighters. But the

restaurant wasn't the only room that burned; there had been a heavy explosion in the session

chamber, and that vast place had become a mass of flames and explosive gases. The head of

the Berlin fire department had observed trains of gasoline on the floors of the building.

Immediately after the fire he announced that the police had carted away a truck-load of

unburned incendiary materials from the scene of the fire; and immediately after making this

announcement he was dismissed from his post.

Such were the details which the young radicals abroad put together and published in their

papers. But the papers which might have spread such news in Germany had all been

suppressed; their editors were in prison and many were being subjected to cruel tortures. A

sickening thing to know that your comrades, idealists whom you had trusted and followed,

were being pounded with rubber hose, danced upon with spiked boots, having their kidneys

kicked loose and their testicles crushed. Still more terrible to know that civil rights were being

murdered in one of the world's most highly developed nations; that the homeland of Goethe

and Bach was in the hands of men who were capable of planning and perpetrating such

atrocities.

XIII

The fire had the intended effect of throwing all Germany into a panic of fear. Not merely the

Nazis, but Papen and Hugenberg were denouncing the Red conspirators over the radio. All

the new techniques of propaganda were set at work to convince the voters that the Fatherland

stood in deadly peril of a Communist revolution. Friday was proclaimed the "Day of the

Awakening Nation." The Nazis marched with torchlights, and on the mountain-tops and on

high towers in the cities great bonfires burned—fires of liberation, they were called. "O Lord,

make us free!" prayed Hitler over the radio, and loud-speakers spread his words in every

market-square in every town.

On Sunday the people voted, and the Nazi vote increased from nearly twelve million to more

than seventeen million. But the Communists lost only about a million, and the Socialists

practically none. The Catholics actually gained, in spite of all the suppressions; so it appeared

that the German people were not so easy to stampede after all. The Nazis still didn't have a

majority of the Reichstag deputies, so they couldn't form a government without the support

and approval of the aristocrats. What was going to come out of that?

The answer was that Adi Hitler was going to have his way. He was going right on, day after

day, pushing to his goal, and nobody was going to stop him. Objections would be raised in the

Cabinet, and he would do what he had done in party conferences—argue, storm, plead,

denounce, and threaten. He would make it impossible for anyone else to be heard, raise such a

disturbance as could not be withstood, prove that he could outlast any opposition, that his

frenzy was uncontrollable, his will irrepressible. But behind this seeming madness would be a

watchful eye and a shrewd, calculating brain. Adi would know exactly what he was doing and

how far he could go; if the opposition became too strong, he would give way, he would make

promises—and then next day it would be discovered that his followers were going right ahead

doing what he wanted done, and he would be saying that he couldn't control them. If it was

something serious, like the Reichstag fire, he would know nothing about it, he would be

completely taken aback, astounded, horrified; but it would be too late—the building would be

burned, the victim would be dead, the die would be cast.

For more than a decade he had been training his followers to these tactics. They must be a

band of desperadoes, stopping at nothing to get their way. Nothing on earth or in heaven was

sacred except their cause; nothing was wrong that helped their cause and nothing was right

that delayed it for a single hour. Individually and collectively they must be the most energetic

and capable of criminals, also the most shameless and determined liars. They must be able to

say anything, with the most bland and innocent expression, and if they were caught they

must admit nothing, but turn the charge against the other fellow; he was the liar, he was the

crook, he alone was capable of every wrongdoing. Adolf Hitler had never admitted anything to

anybody; he had never told a lie in his life, had never committed any improper action; he was

a consecrated soul, who lived and was ready to die for one single cause, the triumph of

National Socialism and the liberation of the German Volk.

For ten years he had been organizing two private armies of young men, several hundred

thousand fanatics imbued with that spirit: the Sturm Abteilung, or Storm Division, and the

Schutz Staffel, or Defense Formation. They were the men who were going to carry out his will,

and by now they knew it so well that they could act while he was eating, resting, sleeping—even

while he was telling the world that he didn't want them to do what they were doing. Even if he

told them to stop they would go right ahead to crush the last foe of National Socialism inside

the Fatherland, and make the streets free to the brown battalions—the promise of that Horst

Wessel Lied which Hitler had taught them to sing.

XIV

A dreadful series of events to watch; and the fact that you were physically safe from them

wasn't enough for persons with any sensitiveness of soul. Hansi and Bess couldn't eat, they

couldn't sleep, they couldn't think about anything except what was happening to their friends

and associates at home. The Stormtroopers came when they pleased and did what they

pleased; the police had orders to co-operate with them. They came to people's homes at night

and took them away, and nothing more was heard of them. But gradually, through secret

channels, word began to leak out concerning the dreadful happenings in the cellars of the Nazi

headquarters in the Hedemannstrasse, in the Columbus-Haus, and in the old military prison

in the General-Papen-Strasse.

Papa wrote brief notes, carefully guarded; he said: "Don't worry about us, we have friends."

But Hansi and Bess knew a hundred people to worry about, and they read all the papers they