Göring and Joseph Goebbels, who planned to use the event to help consolidate Nazi power. The book also examined Van der Lubbe's mental health, disputed the forensic evidence presented regarding the fire, and discussed the Nazi regime's suppression of trade unions and artistic expression, anti-Semitic persecution, and use of torture against prisoners. By 1935 the book had been translated into 23 languages and had sold 600,000 copies. The book was published shortly before a counter-trial organised by The League Against Imperialism, which concluded that the Nazis had set the fire themselves. The counter-trial attracted sympathetic press coverage, and the German government unsuccessfully pressured the British government to intervene and halt the proceedings. The counter-trial concluded one day before the trial began, and under the pressure of international public opinion, the court found Dimitrov, Popov, Tanev and Torgler not guilty. As he was barred from entering Britain at the time of the trial, Münzenberg went to the United States instead, where he spoke about and raised money for the campaign to free Thälmann from imprisonment. He toured the northeastern and midwestern US in June 1934 with his wife Babette Gross, sister of author Margarete Buber-Neumann; Welsh Labour figure Aneurin Bevan; and SPD lawyer Kurt Rosenfeld. Speaking at well-attended rallies at venues like Madison Square Garden and the Bronx Coliseum, he appeared alongside Sinclair Lewis and Malcolm Cowley. Later in 1934, Münzenberg's influence reached the antipodes when his Comintern machine sent Egon Kisch to the All-Australian Conference of the Movement Against War and Fascism (an Australian Communist Party front organization). What could have been a low-key visit from an unknown Czech writer quickly polarized Australian society when the Joseph Lyons government declared Kisch as "undesirable as an inhabitant of, or visitor to, the Commonwealth" and attempted to exclude Kisch from Australia. With the government unable to produce any legal proof that Kisch was a communist, its case collapsed, and Kisch became a popular speaker disseminating Münzenberg's Comintern message. However, attempts to foster a United Front against fascism in Australia eventually came to nothing. Münzenberg instructed his assistant, fellow Comintern agent Otto Katz, to travel to the United States to garner support for various pro-Soviet and anti-Nazi causes, as part of the 1935 Comintern Seventh World Congress' proclamation of a "Peoples' Front Against Fascism", aka the Popular Front. Katz made his way to Hollywood, and in July 1936 he formed the Hollywood Anti-Nazi