On 27 February 1933, the German parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, went up in flames from an arson attack. Adolf Hitler skillfully harnessed the after effects of the Reichstag Fire to seize absolute power. Hitler claimed the fire was a Communist attempt to overthrow the government. He played upon public and political fears of chaos to consolidate his power, cementing the rise of his Nazi regime. As the newly named Chancellor, he used the fire as an excuse to seize absolute control in Germany and ultimately declare himself Fuhrer. All this happened in little over a year.
Germany’s post-World War I democracy began with the Weimar Constitution in 1919. It established an elected president, who appointed a chancellor to lead the elected Reichstag or parliament. Adolf Hitler rose through the ranks to head the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) whose membership exceeded 100,000 by 1928. The Nazis denounced the current government as criminals who had cowardly signed the World War I Treaty of Versailles. They slowly gained strength due to the people’s growing dissatisfaction with their government.
Despite its growth, the Nazis won only 3% of the vote in 1928. But then the Great Depression hit across the U.S. and Europe. The number of unemployed in Germany rose to 6 million (30% of the population). German President Paul von Hindenburg replaced the chancellor, dissolved the Reichstag, and called for elections. The Nazis exploited the economic depression to gain political power. By 1930, they won 18% of the Reichstag and became the 2nd largest party, after Hindenburg’s Social Democrats, with the Communist party 3rd.
January 1933, Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler as chancellor in the belief that together they could keep the Communists out of power. In March, there would be another series of new Reichstag elections. Hitler and the Nazis set about both campaigning and suppressing any chance of political opposition. In February, Hitler issued the Decree for the Protection of the German People.
It restricted the German free press and ordered the police to ban all political meetings and marches, supposedly for safety reasons. Hitler empowered his own party members as police officers. He enrolled 50,000 Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) stormtroopers as police. Interior Minister Hermann Göring ordered a raid on the Communist party headquarters in Berlin, falsely claiming they had uncovered leaflets encouraging an armed public revolt.
Then came the Reichstag Fire.
On the evening of 27 February 1933 around 9 PM, pedestrians walking near the Reichstag building heard the loud sounds of breaking glass. Soon, tall orange flames erupted from the structure. It took Berlin firemen hours until dawn to quash the huge fire. The blaze destroyed the Reichstag’s famous gilded cupola, the main parliamentary chamber, and caused over $1 million (US) in damage.
At the scene, police arrested Marinus van der Lubbe, a 24-year-old unemployed Dutch construction worker with Communist sympathies. Police found the young man outside the building with fire-lighting implements in his possession, out of breath and sweating. Van der Lubbe confessed to setting the fire, saying he did it to encourage a worker’s uprising against the German state.
That night, Adolf Hitler went to see President Hindenburg, saying “This is a God-given signal! If this fire is the work of the Communists, as I believe, then we must crush this murderous pest with an iron fist.”
The Nazi Party used the atmosphere of public panic and terror to their advantage, employing propaganda to blame the Communists. Göring publicly declared that the Communists were planning a national uprising to overthrow the Republic!
By the end of the next day, Hitler had convinced the 86 year-old Hindenburg to sign the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State.” The act declared a state of German emergency and abolished freedom of speech, assembly, privacy and the press; legalized phone tapping and interception of letters and telegrams; and suspended the autonomy of the German states. The decree also allowed the Nazis to arrest and jail their political opponents indiscriminately for any or no reason, labelling them as traitors to the republic.
That night, Hitler’s SA stormtroopers arrested and imprisoned over 4,000 Communist party members. Ironically, the swift and brutal response to the Reichstag Fire bolstered Hitler’s image amongst the German people as Germany’s strong savior from the dreaded Bolsheviks. With this act, the Nazis were able to complete the journey from democracy to dictatorship.
In March, the general election took place, with a high national turnout of 89%. The Nazis secured 44% of the vote, but not enough to command a majority in the Reichstag. Hitler would take care of that soon enough. Later that month, the new Reichstag met temporarily at the Berlin Kroll Opera House and passed THE ENABLING ACT. The meeting supposedly marked the union of the Nazi Party with Hindenburg’s Social Democrats, but it essentially turned the country over to the Nazis. The Enabling Act gave ALL legislative power to Adolf Hitler.
Given the atmosphere of terror and chaos that followed the Reichstag Fire, plus Hindenburg’s support of Hitler, the proposal seemed legitimate and even necessary to the German people. The Bill passed by 444 votes for, to 94 votes against, on 24 March 1933.
Though Hindenburg and the Reichstag existed, Hitler could now basically govern by decree.
Gleichschaltung was the process of the Nazi Party taking control over ALL aspects of Germany. The Nazis started with the Civil Service, removing anyone of non-Ayran descent. In the judicial system, Hitler removed any judges deemed non-compliant with strict Nazi principles. The so-called People’s Court, created by the Nazis in 1934, replaced the German Supreme Court.
The dually elected 81 Communist deputies in the March elections, were detained indefinitely. Their empty seats left the Nazis largely free to do as they wished. To control cultural policies, the Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister for Public Engagement. Goebbels now controlled the national media, film, theatre, and the arts, ensuring that they advocated only Nazi propaganda.
By the end of 1933, all non-Nazi political parties, labor unions, and other social organizations ceased to exist. The Nazis ordered the closure of over 1,600 newspapers. Censorship was heightened, and any person spouting anti-Nazi ideas was arrested. The Nazi SA and SS arrested and imprisoned up to 200,000 people. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was opened in a old World War I munitions factory to handle all the new prisoners. It would soon be filled with Jews.
The final domino to fall was President Hindenburg. World War I hero Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 at the age of 87. With Hindenburg gone, there was no longer a controller of Hitler’s power. He was now a dictator. The German military sanctioned a new Hitler law that combined the posts of president and chancellor, cementing his absolute power in Germany as the new Fuhrer.
Who Set the Reichstag Fire?
Many Germans at the time challenged the Nazi propaganda that the arson was a Communist plot. Some diplomats and foreign journalists within Germany suggested that the Nazis had started the fire themselves as a ruse for taking power. German Communist Willi Münzenberg headed an independent investigation that produced The Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror, a 1933 bestseller published in Paris. It suggested van der Lubbe was a Nazi pawn.
It included the argument that the Nazis were the real criminals who orchestrated the fire to foment fear and consolidate power. He wrote that, given the extent of the fire and the amount of time needed to set it, there was no way van der Lubbe acted alone inside. He argued that the Communists were not involved; but rather, the Nazis, who investigated the fire, covered up their own involvement.
Later that year, a sensational trial got under way in Leipzig. The confessed arsonist, van der Lubbe, and Ernst Torgler, leader of the Communist Party in the Reichstag, were put on trial. Only Van der Lubbe was convicted, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was ultimately beheaded in January 1934.
[The German government later exonerated Marinus van der Lubbe in 2008, seventy-five years after his execution by the Nazis.]
Since then, the Reichstag Fire has become something of a metaphor. It is referenced even today by citizens around the world as a cautionary lesson learned – one that calls up images of a manufactured crisis, sowed fears and hatred, followed by a ruthless grab for power.
So was Hitler’s seizure of power the result of political arson or simply taking advantage of an opportune event? Did the Nazis really set the fire, or did van der Lubbe act alone? It’s impossible to know, since those who survived WWII did not talk about the fire during East German Communist rule. One thing is certain, the Reichstag Fire played a critical role in Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rise to absolute power. The German people were now willing to blindly follow their new Fuhrer … even into the hell of World War II and the Holocaust.