Marinus van der Lubbe

Marinus van der Lubbe (1909-1934) was a Dutch communist best known for setting fire to the Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27, 1933. He was one of five men arrested and charged with the fire; the other four were cleared, but van der Lubbe was convicted on the basis of, among other things, a confession extracted under torture. He was guillotined in January 1934, three days before his twenty-fifth birthday.

Historians have long been torn as to whether he was part of a larger conspiracy and, if so, with whom. It has been suggested that he was conspiring with the leadership of the German Communist Party, the primary opposition party in the Reichstag at the time. It has also been suggested that he was an unwitting pawn of the Gestapo, seeking to give the Nazi Party an excuse to curtail German civil liberties in the name of security (which is in fact what the Nazi government did in the wake of the fire). There is circumstancial evidence supporting both theories, but neither can be said to have been proven conclusively. Neither can it be said with any degree of certainty that van der Lubbe was part of any conspiracy at all.

The evidence is much clearer that van der Lubbe, who had been convicted of arson in the past, did indeed physically set fire to the Reichstag building. However, the trial of van der Lubbe did not meet internationally recognized standards of criminal justice. For this reason, van der Lubbe's conviction was formally overturned by the Federal Court of Justice of Germany in 2008.

Marinus van der Lubbe in The War That Came Early
On hearing of the death of Winston Churchill, and of the British government's announcement that Churchill's death had been ruled an accident, Samuel Goldberg dreisively expressed his belief that it was no more likely that the death had been accidental than it was that Marinus van der Lubbe had acted unilaterally in setting the Reichstag Fire.

Literary Note
As stated above, it has never been conclusively proven whether or not the Reichstag Fire was part of a larger conspiracy. However, the evidence around which this debate centers mostly did not come to light until after World War II. In the absence of such evidence it makes sense that someone would suspect a Nazi conspiracy, especially someone in Goldberg's position, who had first-hand experience of the Nazis' dishonesty and opacity in government. Therefore, Goldberg's statement should not necessarily be considered an inconsistency.