Oberfohren Memorandum

On the 26th April, 1933, the Manchester Guardian, published an article that suggested that the Reichstag Fire had been organized by Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels and carried out by Edmund Heines and a group of SA officers. The article claimed that this information was based on a memorandum that it had received from a prominent Nationalist politician in Germany. A few months later it was revealed that the document had been written by Ernst Oberfohren and it therefore became known as the Oberfohren Memorandum.

The article claimed that: "The fire was instantaneously attributed to the Communists by the Government, which at once began to manufacture false evidence, thereby not inculpating but rather exculpating the Communists and deepening the suspicion felt by all objective observers that the real incendiaries were to be found within the Cabinet itself. Before the tribunal of history it is not the Communists, not the wretched van der Lubbe (their alleged instrument, whose public execution Hitler had threatened before his guilt has been proved, before he has even been tried), but the German Government that is arraigned." (1)

The full text of the Oberfohren Memorandum was published in London later that year. "The agents of Herr Göring, led by the Silesian S.A. leader, Reichstag-deputy Heines, entering the Reichstag through the heating-pipe passage leading from the palace of the President of the Reichstag, Göring. Every S.A. and S.S. leader was carefully selected and had a special station assigned to him. As soon as the outposts in the Reichstag signaled that the Communist deputies Torgler and Koenen had left the building, the S.A. troop set to work." (2)

Fritz Tobias, in the book, The Reichstag Fire: Legend and Truth (1963) points out that the Oberfohren Memorandum was not written by Ernst Oberfohren. It was in fact a forged document produced by a group of left-wing journalists that included Arthur Koestler, Willi Münzenberg, Otto Katz and Erich Wollenberg. The group was also responsible for the forged confession given by SA officer, Karl Ernst. In this way that were able to convince the world's media that leading figures of the Nazi Party were responsible for the fire.

Tobias argues that Marinus van der Lubbe started the fire on his own: "Today there seems little doubt that it was precisely by allowing van der Lubbe to stand trial that the Nazis proved their innocence of the Reichstag fire. For had van der Lubbe been associated with them in any way, the Nazis would have shot him the moment he had done their dirty work, blaming his death on an outbreak of 'understandable popular indignation'. Van der Lubbe could then have been branded a Communist without the irritations of a public trial, and foreign critics would not have been able to argue that, since no Communist accomplices were discovered, the real accomplices must be sought on the Government benches". (3)

Primary Sources

(1) The Manchester Guardian (26th April, 1933)

The fire was instantaneously attributed to the Communists by the Government, which at once began to manufacture false evidence, thereby not inculpating but rather exculpating the Communists and deepening the suspicion felt by all objective observers that the real incendiaries were to be found within the Cabinet itself. Before the tribunal of history it is not the Communists, not the wretched van der Lubbe (their alleged instrument, whose public execution Hitler had threatened before his guilt has been proved, before he has even been tried), but the German Government that is arraigned.

(2) Oberfohren Memorandum (September, 1933)

Göring and Goebbels, the two most active champions in the fight for the hegemony of the N.S.D.A.P., took counsel. The ingenious Goebbels, handicapped by no scruple, soon devised a plan, the realization of which would not only overcome the resistance of the German-Nationalists to the demands of the N.S.D.A.P. for suppression of Social Democratic and Communist agitation, but, in case of its complete success, also force the actual prohibition of the Communist Party...

The agents of Herr Göring, led by the Silesian S.A. leader, Reichstag-deputy Heines, entering the Reichstag through the heating-pipe passage leading from the palace of the President of the Reichstag, Göring. Every S.A. and S.S. leader was carefully selected and had a special station assigned to him. As soon as the outposts in the Reichstag signaled that the Communist deputies Torgler and Koenen had left the building, the S.A. troop set to work.