Talk:Reichstag fire: Difference between revisions

Unfounded conspiracy theories

This article contains unproven and unfounded conspiracy theories, like "However, some historians believe, based on archive evidence, that the arson had been planned and ordered by the Nazis as a false flag operation." That evidence is desputed. What is the difference to the idea that 9/11 was a false flag attack? This is not only disputed, it's a conspiracy theory without any evidence. It is no more reasonable as claims of "lampshades of human skin" or "soap made out of jews" or claims that the Holocaust didn't happen. 2003:E7:B716:60A9:F14F:7F8:AF4C:17A2 (talk) 23:47, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

In popular culture

@FieldMarine: I have to disagree. Per WP:IPCV, "passing mentions of the subject in books, television or film dialogue, or song lyrics should be included only when that mention's significance is itself demonstrated with secondary sources." How exactly is the Batman Returns reference significant or important? To me it just seems like trivia of no value. Sro23 (talk) 13:34, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

People who are researching what this incident means beyond the incident itself, with reference to it in books, television, etc. would be directed to the article. In my humble opinion, this would be helpful to people. FieldMarine (talk) 13:50, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a section on the use of "Reichstag fire" as a metaphor for an event designed to provoke a political reaction to help an opposing faction. However this one mention in one movie isn't enough. Are we also going to give it a section in the article on the Gulf of Tonkin incident?--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

What secondary sources have said this bit of dialogue was significant?--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 16:58, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Agree with Bellerophon5685, imagine if we included every single pop culture reference...Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, so only the most notable should be included, and I still don't understand what makes the Batman reference special. Sro23 (talk) 19:49, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Why is "Reichstag" randomly italicized in this article?

Yes, it's ultimately a foreign name, but it does not need to be italicized. (Even foreign terms that are italicized need only be italicized at the first reference.) There is no English equivalent; the Reichstag is called the Reichstag in English. The tedious italicizing is very distracting. Moncrief (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, this random italicizing makes absolutely no sense. OrganLeroy (talk) 18:25, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Reichstag fire as archetype

I propose deleting the entire section "Reichstag Fire as Archetype" if no secondary WP:RS can be found to justify it. I have certainly heard the term used as a metaphor for 9/11, and there was a line I just deleted (here) that showed an article in the Huffington Post where a journalist did so, but that doesn't make the use of of the term as a metaphor notable. It must be in a secondary source. I did a quick Google search of "Reichtag fire metaphor" and little came up. Without a reliable source talking about such use, can this section go? Agree? Disagree? --David Tornheim (talk) 00:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it should be kept, but it needs better citations. I also think it should be expanded. The fire is often referred to in this way.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:18, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

This article is of interest in this context:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-reichstag-fire-and-nazis-rise-power-180962240/ Cadar (talk) 11:56, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Edit to Lead -- not vandalism

@L3X1: I disagree that this edit by 86.147.186.114 is test/vandalism. It adds the following text to the lead:

It is said that Marinus Van Der Lubbe was set up for the fire and that Hitler used the fire as an excuse to take out his biggest competetors in the Reichstag so he could gain power.

I have heard this exact argument in documentaries and some of this is already in the lede. Our article to some degree supports the claim:

New work by Bahar and Kugel, as of 2001, has revived the theory that the Nazis were behind the fire. It uses Gestapo archives held in Moscow and available to researchers only since 1990. They argue that the fire was almost certainly started by the Nazis, based on the wealth of circumstantial evidence provided by the archival material. They say that a commando group of at least three and at most ten SA men led by Hans Georg Gewehr, set the fire using self-lighting incendiaries and that Van der Lubbe was brought to the scene later. 'Der Spiegel' published a 10-page response to the book, arguing that the thesis that Van der Lubbe acted alone remains the most likely explanation. Benjamin Carter Hett's 2014 study rejects the possibility of a single perpetrator, van der Lubbe, as he had neither time nor appropriate resources for a successful arson.

So it's not vandalism, but a question of whether the text is sufficiently supported by WP:RS, or whether it is WP:OR or WP:SYN, and whether it simply duplicates material already in the lead.

--David Tornheim (talk) 15:50, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

David Tornheim Yes, I reverted it because I thought it duplicated the lead, and was explained in the article. Personally, as a 3rd Reich/WW2 amateur historian (I love reading books about the subject) I believe that Hitler abused the act to further his political gains, but am not sure whether Marinus was "set up" or not. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 16:38, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@L3X1: Yeah, I definitely agree that Hitler used the fire, and whether Van der Lubbe was actually setup is at best disputed. The main reason I put so much effort into posting all of this both here and at the user's talk page is I was considering the perspective of the new editor who might feel a bit discouraged by having that edit construed as vandalism. Not exactly a pleasant first experience on Wikipedia, when I think it was a good faith edit, but justifiable reverted for other reasons. At first I thought it was bot that saw the word Hitler and thought it was vandalism. I have seen far worse edits labelled as "good faith." --David Tornheim (talk) 17:39, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Reverts

I reverted this deletion and El C reverted this edit by 2600:8801:0:1530:7c7d:da64:b396:4e24. The dispute is whether this sentence and source is justified:

Benjamin Carter Hett's 2014 study rejects the possibility of a single perpetrator, van der Lubbe, as he had neither time nor appropriate resources for a successful arson.

I believe is. Although the source is on a "blog", the blog is from Oxford University Press. The writer is a professor and historian and is therefore an expert in the subject matter. Hence is is WP:RS. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:50, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's a reliable source. Clearly a summary of his book.--Jack Upland (talk) 22:56, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

1. It's marginally WP:RS, but I would rather use a peer reviewed paper or scholarly book than a blog post from an expert. If you want to apply that rule consistently, cite a lot of JayMan's Blog and HBDChick in articles about race. I'm sure that will go over well. 2. The assertion in the article that "he had neither time nor appropriate resources for a successful arson." is not even asserted by that blog post. I read the blog post twice and there is nothing even remotely like that in there.2600:8801:0:1530:7C7D:DA64:B396:4E24 (talk) 04:01, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I would also add that the claim "he had neither time nor appropriate resources for a successful arson.", aside from not being in the given citation, is also absurd on its face. All it takes is a canister of gasoline, a match, and a minute.

I disagree. It takes more than just a five minute act of arson to produce a fire of that scale in so short a time. This article touches on an example of the counter argument:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-reichstag-fire-and-nazis-rise-power-180962240/ Of which these two specific quote addresses the issue: "For historian Peter Black, a consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the one-man theory of van der Lubbe acting alone seemed correct until 2013, when new research came out with Benjamin Hett’s book, Burning the Reichstag. Hett wrote that, given the extent of the fire and the amount of time that would have been needed inside the Reichstag to set it, there was no way that van der Lubbe acted alone." "Black does not entirely agree with Hett’s assessment, but he says that he is now convinced the one-man theory is false. “I would say that van der Lubbe could not have started that fire alone, based on the evidence that is now available,” he says." Cadar (talk) 12:01, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Leipzig

Why was the trial in Leipzig? The article doesn't explain.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:03, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Removal of Category:Nazi Germany

@Marcocapelle: with this edit you removed the category "Nazi Germany" because it is a "grandparent of" of 1933 Germany. I'm a bit confused on that. Can you please explain? I'm no expert on how categories are set up and do want to learn. I clicked on the category "Nazi Germany" and now the Reichstag Fire, a seminal event, is no longer listed--I don't understand why that is an improvement. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:24, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• Category:1933 in Germany is contained in Category:Nazi Germany by year is contained in Category:Nazi Germany. So the article is still in Category:Nazi Germany, but indirectly. We only categorize articles in the "lowest" possible categories because otherwise (if we would also duplicate them to "higher" categories) the higher categories would easily consist of thousands of articles, which would be pretty useless, and the articles would get awfully cluttered with too many categories at the bottom of the article, which would be equally useless. See WP:SUBCAT for more information. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:31, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Intro

I have taken this from the introduction:

In testimony recently made public, the former paramilitary Hans-Martin Lennings, who died in 1962, said he took Van der Lubbe from an infirmary to the Reichstag where they noticed a strange burning smell on arrival. As such he had stayed it wasn’t possible for him to have been the arsonist. At the time those who spoke up in support of van der Lubbe were made to sign papers stating they had no knowledge of any information regarding the fire

It isn't supported by a citation or text later on in the article, and I find it hard to understand.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:23, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Said intro wasn't written in good English, but there's plenty of sources now for this affidavit given by a former SA member that his squad had received orders to deliver a hospitalized van der Lubbe to the Reichstag building *AFTER THE FIRE HAD ALREADY STARTED*. So what about adding the information back into the intro in proper English? --2003:EF:13C1:6897:F883:C1B7:2968:8572 (talk) 02:46, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Nicht bin ich das zu tun, mein herr!--Jack Upland (talk) 08:49, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

A truly terrible introduction

Long before we should be told about what is known about the perpetrator or perpetrators of the Reichstag fire, we need to know what happened.

Just stating that it was an arson attack on the home of the German parliament on a certain date is important, but it is not nearly enough. Was anyone hurt? What was the immediate aftermath?

Then tell us what was learned about the perpetrator(s).50.205.142.50 (talk) 03:00, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

also, what is the significance to the fact that it was "precisely" 4 weeks after Hitler was made chancellor? --142.163.195.18 (talk) 12:06, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Removing deeply heterodox statements that don't represent historical consensus isn't violating Wiki:NPOV

One of most important principles of wiki editing are WP:NPOV, which states that editors must take a neutral point of view regarding all issues. This DOES NOT translate to giving equal validity to any and all views, however spurious they might be, in the name of neutrality.

I could only find one (admittedly positive) academic review of the work of Bahar and Kugel in the Historische Zeitschrift (Schmädeke, Jürgen, et al. “Der Reichstagsbrand in Neuem Licht.” Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 269, no. 3, 1999, pp. 603–651. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27632985. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021.), and that too a fairly ambivalent one that comes to no specific conclusions, and only about 23 citations for the text by Bahar and Kugel concerned (according to Google Scholar) of which only a few are specifically concerned about the Reichstag fire itself (of which one or two I will mention later), and one of them is another Bahar book and one is an article by Hett (which we'll come to later). Another is a reply by the Institute of Contemporary History to another researcher by a man already known for being part of the minority of historians who support the assertion that the Nazis were responsible (Fischler, Hersch. “Zum Zeitablauf Der Reichstagsbrandstiftung. Korrekturen Der Untersuchung Alfred Berndts.” Vierteljahrshefte Für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 53, no. 4, 2005, pp. 617–632. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30195617. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021.) With such a small quantity of actually relevant citations, one must wonder whether or not this is a source that can be portrayed as somehow having "revived the theory" and be given equal weight compared to the academic consensus (which we'll get to, later.)

Note that the above is concerned with specifically academic reviews and critiques, and not say, Telegraph articles. After all, you wouldn't give a THE article the same credibility as a Nature journal review.

The few reviews of Hett's work (outside Evans' LRB critique) seem uniform in their moderately positive assessments about the implausibility of Van Der Lubbe's role as a sole perpetrator, I will admit. Of these, fascinatingly, Eli Nathans' review (one of the two most extensive outside the LRB review) in Histoire Social focuses entirely on his examination of Tobias' methods and not on his work regarding perpetration, where it merely states that Hett and Bahar and Kugel agree (once again, curiously, the only citations of their work outside the above mentioned seem to be in reviews of Hett's book.) I am sure that it's potentially worth talking about, but once again, the previous paragraph indicated that it was somehow on equal footing with the academic consensus. There is an entire text by Sven Felix Kellerhoff criticizing it, with a preface by Hans Mommsen (a seminal historian; mind you that he comes under criticism in Hett's book), but I am not aware of any reviews attesting to it's reliability, so I am abstaining from quoting it. Funnily enough, it's noted that Hett does not provide any conclusion regarding who actually was responsible for the Fire, further making it questionable that Bahar and Kugel revived the theory of Hitlerian perpetrators.

Now, let's talk about the academic consensus. Bizarrely (or perhaps to his credit), Hett himself admits that "post-war historians since the 1950s have largely judged him solely guilty-a lone arsonist exploited by Hitler", to quote the book's description (He does so in multiple other online attempts to defend his thesis, always against the orthodoxy which has somehow not been able to see the truth). Let's not take his word, then. Let's hear it from Anton Rabinbach: " A few years later most professional historians were persuaded that Tobias's research was sound, the Brown Book had been discredited (at least in the Federal Republic of Germany), and the thesis of a "lone" arsonist widely accepted. During the past three decades a number of challenges to the details presented in Tobias's research have been mounted, though most have not withstood the scrutiny of experts.2 Today a dwindling number of dedicated researchers still maintain that Tobias was engaged in a cover up, though no credible evidence of conspiracy or of links between the arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe, a disaffected Dutch council communist, and the Nazis has ever emerged." (Rabinbach, Anson. “Staging Antifascism: ‘The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror.’” New German Critique, no. 103, 2008, pp. 97–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27669222. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021.Rabinbach, Anson. “Staging Antifascism: ‘The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror.’” New German Critique, no. 103, 2008, pp. 97–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27669222. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021.) Note the strong language used. "Dwindling number", "no credible evidence", "though most have not withstood the scrutiny of experts." Note how it is published after the publication of Bahar and Kugel's work (in 2008 compared to 2001) and still illustrates the situation regarding the "controversy" as dying, rather than having undergone any revival. In fact, in citation number 4. Rabinbach directly addresses the work of Kugel and Bahar, saying and I quote "an unconvincing effort to resuscitate the conspiracy thesis, despite its useful clarification of a number of issues, is Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel, Der Reichstagsbrand: Wie Geschichte gemacht wird (Berlin: Edition q, 2001). Of interest is the story of Hans Schneider's hitherto unpublished and allegedly suppressed book, contained in Dieter Deiseroth, Hersch Fischler, and Wolf-Dieter Narr, Neues vom Reichstagsbrand? Eine Dokumentation: Ein Versumnis der deutschen Geschichts schreibung (Berlin: BWV Berliner-Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2004), 53-180. Schneider's manuscript". Before that, Rabinbach continues: "3. The most recent phase of the controversy concerns trial documents found in Moscow and preserved as Fond 551 in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. Though these files do contain materials pre viously unknown to historians and offer a more complex picture of the investigation conducted by the police, the Gestapo, and the court, they do not present evidence of conspiracy or offer an alternative to previous explanation".

If one article was not to one's liking, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum without any qualification states: "On February 27, 1933, 24-year-old Dutch militant Marinus van der Lubbe set fire to the German parliament (Reichstag), causing extensive damage to the building that had long been the symbol of German unity. The government falsely portrayed the incident as part of a Communist plot to overthrow the state in response to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933"(https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/reichstag-fire-decree). Once again, sole responsibility is given to Marinus Van Der Lubbe. No mention is made of the notion that the Nazis were responsible for the fire.

We can go over and over this but the fact remains that in summary 1) Bahar and Kugel did not lead to some significant revival of the theory that Van Der Lubbe was not the sole perpetrator, in fact at most it has been used in qualified support by Hett, who himself is a minority and 2) it's disingenuous to give a small and diminishing minority the same weight of exposure to the general reading public as the consensus.

Notthedarkweb (talk) 15:42, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

For those playing along at home, the above refers to this edit, which was reverted. For what it's worth, I agree with OP's edit (except maybe as to the removal of Hett, as I think that small inclusion of his argument may be WP:DUE, as you suggest the general sense is "moderately positive" among historians, even if not the consensus view. But I don't think the support is strong enough to add it myself). Urve (talk) 15:53, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the inclusion of Hett (who at least is reputable enough to get positive assessments from a small group of institutional historians while being an academic historian himself does seem more palatable than the inclusion of Bahar and Kugel. Notthedarkweb (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Oregon GOP has cited this article as "evidence" support conspiracy theories about storming of the capitol

We have to be extra vigilant that this article is neutral and accurate. On January 19, the Oregon Republican Party passed a resolution which cited this article in support of conspiratorial claims that the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was a "false flag operation" by the Democrats.

Here is a tweet of the resolution by the Oregon Republican Party: https://twitter.com/Oregon_GOP/status/1351656484392759297/photo/1

Here is a Washington Post story that mentions the resolution: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/25/trump-departs-his-extremes-live-state-gops/

SecretName101 (talk) 12:03, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Arson link

An IP reverted my linking of arson in the lead sentence, referencing MOS:OVERLINK. I disagree. As often happens, this is a misapplication of that guideline, which forgets the "Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article," clause. Arson is clearly particularly relevant, so it should be linked, even though it is a common word. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:30, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

 Done per MOS:UL - a link to arson in the lead is easily relevant enough to include. Jim Michael (talk) 09:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Disastrously unclear sentence

The introductory section includes this sentence:

"A German court decided later that year that Van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he had claimed."

As who had claimed? The referent is unclear: Is it Van der Lubbe, or is it Hitler (who is mentioned in the previous sentence)?

I hope someone familiar with both history and clear writing can fiix this. 2601:200:C000:1A0:EC4E:3D24:A106:AEAE (talk) 22:36, 16 July 2021 (UTC)