Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The
Reichstag fire, a pivotal event in the establishment of
Nazi Germany, began at 9.14 p.m. on the night of
February 27,
1933, when a
Berlin fire station received an alarm that the
Reichstag building, assembly location of the
German Parliament, was ablaze. The fire seemed to have been started in several places, and by the time the police and firemen arrived a huge explosion had set the main
Chamber of Deputies in flames. Looking for clues, the police quickly found
Marinus van der Lubbe, half-naked, cowering behind the building.
Adolf Hitler and
Hermann Göring arrived soon after, and when they were shown Van der Lubbe, a known
Communist agitator, Göring immediately declared that the fire was set by the Communists and had the party leaders arrested. Hitler took advantage of the situation to declare a state of emergency and encouraged the aging president
Paul von Hindenburg to sign the
Reichstag Fire Decree, abolishing most of the
human rights provided for by the 1919
constitution of the
Weimar Republic.
According to the police, Van der Lubbe claimed to have set the fire as a protest against the rising power of the
Nazis. Under
torture, he
confessed again, and was brought to trial, along with the leaders of the opposition Communist Party. With their leaders in jail and denied access to the press, the Communists were badly defeated in the next election and those Communist (and some
Social Democratic) deputies that were elected to the
Reichstag were not permitted by the
SA to take their seats. Hitler was swept to power with 44 percent of the vote and coerced the remaining minor parties to give him the two-thirds majority for his
Enabling Act which gave him the right to rule by decree and suspended many civil liberties.
At his trial, Van der Lubbe was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was beheaded on
July 10, 1934, three days before his 25th birthday.
On the other hand, in one of the last twitches of a constitutional state, the
Reichsgericht court acquitted the communist party leadership. This infuriated Hitler, who decreed that henceforth treason – among many other offenses – would only be tried by a newly established
Volksgerichtshof ("People's Court"), which became infamous for the enormous number of death sentences that it imposed under the later lead of
Roland Freisler.
Historians generally agree that Van der Lubbe, sometimes described as a half-wit, was involved in the
Reichstag fire. The extent of the damage, however, has led to considerable debate over whether he acted alone. Considering the speed with which the fire engulfed the building, Van der Lubbe's reputation as a fool hungry for fame, and cryptic comments by leading Nazi officials, it is generally believed that the Nazi hierarchy was involved in order to reap political gain—and it obviously did.
At
Nuremberg, captured General
Franz Halder, claimed that Göring had confessed to setting the fire: "At a luncheon on the birthday of Hitler in 1942, the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building [fire] and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Göring interrupted the conversation and shouted: 'The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!' With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand."
Göring denied that he had any involvement in the fire. "I had nothing to do with it. I deny this absolutely. I can tell you in all honesty, that the Reichstag fire proved very inconvenient to us. After the fire I had to use the Kroll Opera House as the new Reichstag and the opera seemed to me much more important than the Reichstag. I must repeat that no pretext was needed for taking measures against the Communists. I already had a number of perfectly good reasons in the forms of murders, etc."
Notable Defendants in the Reichstag Fire Trial:
\n\n\nCategory:German historyCategory:Nazi Germany\nCategory:Historic fires