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The Ashes. Ever since. Communists have contended that the fire was deliberately set by the Nazis themselves to justify snuffing out political freedom in Germany, and their contention has been widely accepted. But recently, West Germany's enterprising weekly newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, has been publishing a 60,000-word series of articles based on three years of research by its staff. Its contention: Van der Lubbe did it alone after all. Der Spiegel pictures him as a warped idealist of more than ordinary intelligence whose strange courtroom behavior—alternately listless or roaring with laughter—resulted from "many months in solitary confinement, chained to the wall with a bright electric light burning day and night."
Spiegel's findings, praised by West German Historian Theodor Eschenburg as "serious and scientific," point out that the case against Hitler, Göring & Co. rests on hearsay as suspect as the Nazi accusation against the Communists. Spiegel had used, among other evidence, the institute's files in Munich. Historian Anton Hoch, the institute's archivist, accepting the scientific basis of Spiegel's findings, commented: "We must report atrocities such as Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps, but for the sake of truth we must also show that Nazis were not to blame for the Reichstag fire. The purposes to which they turned it were grim enough."