Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People

by Julia Boyd

Four days later, at five past nine on the evening of 27 February, Denis Sefton Delmer, now back in Berlin, received a telephone call from a garage attendant with the startling news that the Reichstag was on fire. Running the mile and a half from his office, he was one of the first to arrive at the burning building, where flames were funnelling up through the great glass dome in a pillar of fire and smoke. ‘Every minute fresh trains of fire engines were arriving, their bells clanging as they raced through the streets.’ Lady Rumbold and Constantia were driving home after a Beethoven concert conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Seeing the commotion they parked and joined the watching crowds. Delmer, ducking under ropes, managed to reach one of the Reichstag entrances just as Hitler leapt from his car and, followed by Goebbels and his bodyguard, ‘dashed up the steps two at a time, the tails of his trench coat flying, his floppy black artist’s hat pulled down over his head’. Inside they found Göring – more massive than ever in a camel-hair coat, his legs astride ‘like some Frederician guardsman in a UFA film’. He informed Hitler that communists had started the fire and that an arrest had already been made. Delmer followed Hitler and his party into the building: ‘Across pools of water, charred debris, and through clouds of evil smelling smoke we made our way through rooms and corridors. Someone opened a yellow, varnished door, and for a moment we peeped into the blazing furnace of ...

Reichstag fire