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Commented a high Nazi official in Berlin, "It was a concession that he was not hanged. The [retroactive] law specifies hanging for political arson but hanging is a shameful death. Van der Lubbe was spared that."
An autopsy by neutral Dutch physicians would have proved or disproved the charge that Nazis drugged van der Lubbe into the amazing apathy he showed throughout his trial for life. Though his old father asked for the head and trunk of his son, Public Prosecutor Werner insisted on burying the remains of Marinus van der Lubbe at Leipzig.
Other defendants at the Reichstag trial, all of them acquitted, were still held in prison by the Hitler State last week while their relatives waited in dread lest they be confronted at any moment with another Nazi surprise fait accompli.
*The Dutchman's confession that he alone set the fire (despite the testimony of German experts that he must have had accomplices) is widely accounted for on the theory that Nazis employed penniless van der Lubbe to help them set the fire, promising to save his neck by a Presidential reprieve and to reward him handsomely for hiding their identity and taking the whole blame in court. If this be true, Nazis would obviously have had every reason to stop him from writing letters as soon as he knew he had been double crossed.