I declare that on February 27, 1933 I and two SA men set fire to the Reichstag. We did so in the belief that we would be serving the Führer. I suggested to Goering that we use the underground passage leading from his house to the Reichstag. We decided to start the fire at about 9 pm, in time for quite a number of radio bulletins. We used van der Lubbe. He would climb into the Reichstag and blunder about while we set fire to the building.

The confession of Karl Ernst, a leader of the SA, published by communists in 1934 after Ernst had been killed in the Night of the Long Knives.