I Was an Editor in Germany. II. "Fire in the Reichstag!".

After the author was forced out of the editorship of the Ullstein Berliner Zeitung am Mittag in December, 1931, the author served as American correspondent for the Ullstein papers for a year. On January 4, 1933, the author returned to Germany and became editor of the daily "12 Uhr Blatt" and the weekly "Montag Morgen," both smaller left-democratic journals. As it happened, the author started to work on January 30, the day the German dictator Adolf Hitler came into power. The very first news item laid on the author's desk was a solemn declaration that in the Third Reich the freedom of the press would be inviolate.