 Firefighters struggle to extinguish the fire. | |
| Native name | Reichstagsbrand |
|---|---|
| Date | 27 February 1933 |
| Location | Reichstag building, Berlin, Germany |
| Coordinates | 52°31′7″N 13°22′34″E / 52.51861°N 13.37611°E |
| Type | Arson |
| Participants | Marinus van der Lubbe (Disputed) |
| Outcome |
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The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was the alleged culprit; the Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists.[1] This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
The first report of the fire came shortly after 9:00 p.m., when a Berlin fire station received an alarm call.[2] By the time police and firefighters arrived, the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) was engulfed in flames. The police conducted a thorough search inside the building and found Van der Lubbe, who was arrested.
After the Fire Decree was issued, the police – now controlled by Hitler's Nazi Party – made mass arrests of communists, including all of the communist Reichstag delegates. This severely crippled communist participation in the 5 March elections. After the 5 March elections, the absence of the communists allowed the Nazi Party to expand their plurality in the Reichstag, greatly assisting the Nazi seizure of total power. On 9 March 1933 the Prussian state police arrested Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev, and Blagoy Popov, who were known Comintern operatives (though the police did not know it then, Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe). Ernst Torgler, head of the Communist Party, had surrendered to police on 28 February.
Van der Lubbe and the four communists were the defendants in a trial that started in September 1933. It ended in the acquittal of the four communists and the conviction of Van der Lubbe, who was then executed.
The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains a topic of debate and research, as while Van der Lubbe was found guilty, it is unclear whether he acted alone.[3][4] While most historians accept that the Reichstag was set ablaze by Van der Lubbe, some view that the fire was a part of a Nazi plot to take power, a view which historian Richard J. Evans labels a conspiracy theory.[5][6]
In 2008, Germany posthumously pardoned Van der Lubbe under a law introduced in 1998 to lift unjust verdicts dating from the Nazi era.
- ^ Holborn, Hajo (1972). Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution; Ten Essays. Pantheon Books. p. 182. ISBN 978-0394471228.
- ^ Tobias 1964, pp. 26–28.
- ^ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (10 June 2013). "The Reichstag Fire". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Washington, DC: Author. OCLC 57926366. Archived from the original on 31 December 2013. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
- ^ DW Staff (27 February 2008). "75 Years Ago, Reichstag Fire Sped Hitler's Power Grab". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 5 May 2015. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
- ^ Evans, Richard J. (8 May 2014). "The conspiracists". London Review of Books. Vol. 36, no. 9. Retrieved 9 October 2024.
- ^ Evans, Richard J. (2020). The Hitler Conspiracies The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination (Ebook ed.). Penguin Books Limited. pp. 59, 64, 65, 66, 75, 77, 78. ISBN 9780241413470.