Submitted by Paul Brewer, Jul 26, 2007 00:24

Mr. Twersky, I fully agree with the opinions set forth in your aarticle, and I enjoy reading your columns. But if you read recent historians, Toland etc. and chroniclers, the Reichstag fire was the work of Van der Lubbe alone and not the Nazis. Although the fire resulted in Hitlers Enabling Act signed by President Hindenburg which meant instant loss of legal and civil rights, the results would have been the same if the Nazis had set the fire. The incident played right into their hands. At the subsequent trial, Van der Lubbe was found guilty, and fellow accused defendant Georgi Dimitrov, later postwar boss of communist Bulgaria, actually had the charges against him dismissed by the German court at the same trial. Shirers book is over forty years old, full of factual errors, and doesn't reflect in any way the 'general view' of historians. It's also been said Van der Lubbe was a 'dimwitted' Dutchman. In reality he was an articulate, though misguided fanatical communist.

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