The 27 February 1933 Reichstag Fire That Hitler Used as Pretext for the Emergency Decree That Suspended German Civil Liberties for the Next Twelve Years

Adolf Hitler had been appointed German Chancellor on 30 January 1933. His Nazi Party had only three of eleven cabinet seats; the conservative coalition partners controlled the rest. The Nazis needed a working parliamentary majority. New elections had been called for 5 March 1933.

The Reichstag building in central Berlin burned on the evening of 27 February 1933. The fire was reported at 9:14 p.m. By 11 p.m. most of the central debating chamber was destroyed.

A 24-year-old Dutch unemployed bricklayer named Marinus van der Lubbe was found at the scene with matches and his shirt off. He had a small criminal record for arson elsewhere. He admitted to having started the fire alone, motivated by Communist sympathies.

The Reichstag Fire Decree

Hitler and the Interior Minister Hermann Göring arrived at the scene within the hour. By 11:30 p.m. Göring was publicly claiming the fire was the start of a coordinated Communist insurrection. Hitler told the British ambassador the same night that “this fire is the beginning.”

The Reichstag Fire Decree (Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) was issued by President Paul von Hindenburg on the morning of 28 February 1933 at Hitler’s request. It suspended:

— Freedom of expression — Freedom of the press — Freedom of assembly — Privacy of correspondence and telephone — Inviolability of the home — Habeas corpus

The decree was used the same day to arrest about 4,000 Communist Party members, Social Democrat politicians, and assorted political opponents. The Communist Party was effectively suppressed before the 5 March election.

The Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote on 5 March — short of an outright majority. They formed a working majority with the German National People’s Party.

The Enabling Act

The Enabling Act (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich) of 23 March 1933 transferred legislative authority from the Reichstag to Hitler’s cabinet for four years. The vote was 444 to 94. Only the Social Democrats voted against; the Communist deputies had already been arrested under the Fire Decree. The Centre Party voted for the Act after Hitler personally promised to respect the Catholic Church (he did not).

The Enabling Act made Hitler the legal dictator of Germany. It was extended in 1937, 1941, and 1943, and never expired.

Van der Lubbe

Van der Lubbe was tried before the German Supreme Court at Leipzig from September 1933 to January 1934. The Nazi government had wanted to use the trial to convict four prominent Communist co-conspirators — Ernst Torgler and three Bulgarian Communists led by Georgi Dimitrov — alongside van der Lubbe. The trial’s substantial evidence collapsed under Dimitrov’s defence; the four Communist defendants were acquitted on 23 December 1933.

Van der Lubbe was convicted and sentenced to death. He was beheaded by guillotine at Leipzig on 10 January 1934. He was 24.

The German Federal Republic posthumously vacated his conviction in 2007 — 73 years later — under a 1998 law permitting reversal of Nazi-era political verdicts.

Did he do it alone?

The substantial historical question of whether van der Lubbe acted alone or whether the Nazi government had organised or assisted the fire has been disputed since 1933. The Nazi claim that the fire was a Communist conspiracy is clearly false; the Communist counter-claim that the Nazis themselves started the fire was widely believed in the contemporary anti-Nazi press.

The substantial 21st-century academic consensus, supported by Benjamin Hett’s 2014 reassessment, is that van der Lubbe most likely acted alone but that the Nazis may have had advance warning and chose not to prevent the fire. The substantial Nazi exploitation of the fire was substantially faster than would have been possible without at least some advance political preparation.

The fire’s substantive importance is not the proximate cause but the speed and totality with which the Nazi government used it. Within 24 hours German civil liberties were suspended for what turned out to be twelve years. The Reichstag Fire Decree remained in force until the German surrender on 8 May 1945.