MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You have testified as to the investigations which you made when you were connected with the police administration and you mentioned the Reichstag fire but you did not tell us what your findings were when you investigated that. Will you please tell us?
GISEVIUS: To speak briefly and to begin with the facts, we ascertained that Hitler in a general way had expressed a wish for a large-scale propaganda campaign. Goebbels undertook to prepare the necessary proposals and it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire. Goebbels discussed this with the leader of the Berlin SA Brigade, Karl Ernst, and he suggested in detail how it should be done.
A certain chemical, known to every maker of fireworks, was chosen. After spraying it, it ignites after a certain time—hours or minutes. In order to get inside the Reichstag, one had to go through the corridor leading from the palace of the Reichstag President to the Reichstag itself. Ten reliable SA men were provided, and then Göring was informed of all the details of the plan, so that by chance he did not make an election speech on that particular evening, but at such a late hour would still be sitting at his desk in the Ministry of the Interior in Berlin.
Göring—and he gave assurances that he would do so—was to put the police on wrong trails in the first confusion. From the very beginning it was intended that the Communists should be accused of this crime, and the 10 SA men who had to carry out the crime were instructed accordingly.
That is, in a few words, the story of the events. To tell you how we got hold of the details, I have only to add that one of these 10 who had to spray the chemical was a notorious criminal. Six months later he was dismissed from the SA, and when he did not receive the reward which he had been promised he decided to tell what he knew to the Reich Court sitting in Leipzig at the time. He was taken before an examining magistrate who made a record of his statement, but the Gestapo heard of it and the letter to the Reich Court was intercepted and destroyed. The SA man, named Rail, who betrayed the plan, was murdered in a vile manner with the knowledge of the Defendant Göring, by order of Gestapo chief Diels. Through the finding of the body, we picked up the threads of the whole story.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: What happened to the 10 SA men who carried out the Reichstag fire? Are any of them alive now?
GISEVIUS: As far as we are aware none of them are still alive. Most of them were murdered on 30 June under the pretext of the Röhm revolt. Only one, a certain Heini Gewaehr, was taken over by the police as a police officer, and we tracked him down as well. He was killed in the war, while a police officer on the Eastern Front.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I think you testified that you also investigated, with the entire affair of Röhm, the murders that followed the Röhm affair. Didn’t you so testify?
GISEVIUS: I cannot actually say that we carried out the investigation, as we, of the Ministry of the Interior, had really been excluded from the entire affair. However, matters were such that after 30 June, all the appeals for help, and all the complaints of the people who were affected reached us in the Ministry of the Interior; and during 30 June, through the continual radio messages, incidental visits to Göring’s palace, and the information received from Nebe, we discovered all the details.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Now, about how many people were killed in that purge?