Yesterday

The progress of the arson trial in Germany has brought the Nazi's to a somewhat embarrassing dilemma. As every well-informed family knows, immediately after the burning of the Reichstag Hitler's party came to power, on the pretext that Communists had fired the building, that this was the last straw, Germany must awake! etc. And having eradicated the opposition they proceeded to erect the totalitarian state based on scrupulous unfairness. But now, obeying an incongruous twirk of conscience, they have decided to use legal processes to discover and convict those they accuse of the crime. This was a mistake. For the legal process has enabled the real defendants--Torgler, Dmitroff, and Teneff--to demonstrate quite conclusively that only if sudden insanity had seized them would they even have conceived the idea of burning the Reichstag, and that as a matter of strict fact it was physically impossible, none of them having been near the place within hours of the outbreak of fire. Torgler especially impressed the court and the world with the imbecility of charging either himself or his party of an act wholly inconsistent with the known principles and plans of the German Communists. The fourth defendant, van der Lubbe, is an obvious type of village idiot who was discharged from the Party in 1931 after a very brief stay, and who has in the trial volunteered absolutely no information of use to the prosecution, refusing to implicate anyone but himself in the arson.

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The nasty position into which the Nazis have pitched themselves becomes apparent. Three courses are open, none of them inviting. The first is to disregard the overwhelming evidence for the defense, and convict the Communists, or at least Torgler, who is the only German of the accused. But the uproar which would follow this decision would make of it a second Sacco-Vanzetti case. In his statements Torgler has not only cleared himself but displayed remarkable courage, sincerity, and intelligence. The second choice is acquittal. But the implication of this is to divert the charge from the Communists to--whom? A Soviet radio station repeats every evening a simple, insinuating question to German listeners: "Captain Goering, who fired the Reichstag?"

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The third and most probable course is to switch the case to another charge: that of being a Communist. By the present Nazi laws, membership in that party can be construed as high treason; and on that basis Torgler, Dmitroff, and Ten-off may be returned to their prison camps for life. To say that this is postfacto and the sentence unjust, may be right but it will not affect the court's decision. The Nazis don't dare to back down; and the alternatives are, as Pollux termed it succinctly, disgusting. Castor