Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire 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 said to be the 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. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi rule in Germany.
The first report of the fire came shortly after 9:00p.m., when a Berlin fire station received an alarm call. By the time police and firefighters arrived, the structure 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. 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. In 2008, Germany posthumously pardoned Van der Lubbe under a law introduced in 1998 to lift unjust verdicts from the Nazi era. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains a topic of debate, as while Van der Lubbe was found guilty, it is unclear whether he acted alone. The consensus amongst historians is the Reichstag was set ablaze by Van der Lubbe; some consider it to have been a part of a Nazi plot, a view Richard J. Evans labels a conspiracy theory.
Prelude
After the November 1932 German federal election, the Nazi Party had a plurality, not a majority; the communists posted gains. Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor and head of the coalition government on 30 January 1933. As chancellor, Hitler asked President Paul von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for a new parliamentary election. The date set for the elections was 5 March 1933.Hitler hoped to abolish democracy in a quasi-legal fashion, by passing the Enabling Act. The Enabling Act was a special law that gave the Chancellor the power to pass laws by decree, without the involvement of the Reichstag. These special powers would remain in effect for four years, after which time they were eligible to be renewed. Under the Weimar Constitution, the President could rule by decree in times of emergency using Article 48.
During the election campaign, the Nazis alleged that Germany was on the verge of a communist revolution and that the only way to stop the communists was to put the Nazis securely in power. The message of the campaign was simple: increase the number of Nazi seats.
The fire
Shortly after 9p.m. on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was reported as on fire when a Berlin fire station received an alarm call, and firefighters were dispatched. Despite their efforts, most of the building was gutted. By 11:30 p.m., the fire was put out. The firefighters and police inspected the ruins and found 20 bundles of flammable material unburned lying about. At the time the fire was reported, Hitler was having dinner with Joseph Goebbels at Goebbels' apartment in Berlin. When Goebbels received an urgent phone call informing him of the fire, he regarded it as a "tall tale" at first and hung up. Only after the second call did he report the news to Hitler. Both left Goebbels' apartment and arrived by car at the Reichstag, just as the fire was being put out. They were met at the site by Hermann Göring, Interior Minister of Prussia, who told Hitler, "This is communist outrage! One of the communist culprits has been arrested." Hitler called the fire a "sign from God" and claimed it was a signal meant to mark the beginning of a communist revolt. The next day, Hitler reported that "this act of incendiarism is the most monstrous act of terrorism carried out by Bolshevism in Germany". The Vossische Zeitung newspaper warned its readers that "the government is of the opinion that the situation is such that a danger to the state and nation existed and still exists".Walter Gempp was head of the Berlin fire department at the time of the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, personally directing the operations at the incident. On 25 March he was dismissed for presenting evidence that suggested Nazi involvement in the fire. Gempp asserted that there had been a delay in notifying the fire brigade and that he had been forbidden from making full use of the resources at his disposal. In 1937, Gempp was arrested for abuse of office. Despite his appeal, he was imprisoned. Gempp was strangled and killed in prison on 2 May 1939.
Political consequences
The day after the fire, at Hitler's request, President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree into law by using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, and the secrecy of the post and telephone. These rights were not reinstated during Nazi reign. The decree was used by the Nazis to ban publications not considered friendly to the Nazi cause. Despite the fact that Marinus van der Lubbe claimed to have acted alone in the Reichstag fire, Hitler, after having obtained his emergency powers, announced that it was the start of a wider communist effort to take over Germany. Nazi Party newspapers then published this fabricated story. This sent the German population into a panic and isolated the communists further among the civilians; additionally, thousands of communists were imprisoned in the days following the fire on the charge that the Party was preparing to stage a putsch. Speaking to Rudolph Diels about communists during the Reichstag fire, Hitler said "These sub-humans do not understand how the people stand at our side. In their mouse-holes, out of which they now want to come, of course they hear nothing of the cheering of the masses." With communist electoral participation also suppressed, the Nazis were able to increase their share of the vote in the 5 March 1933 Reichstag elections from 33% to 44%. This gave the Nazis and their allies, the German National People's Party, a majority of 52% in the Reichstag.While the Nazis emerged with a majority, they fell short of their goal, which was to win 50–55% of the vote that year. The Nazis thought that this would make it difficult to achieve their next goal, passage of the Enabling Act giving Hitler the right to rule by decree, which required a two-thirds majority. However, several important factors weighed in the Nazis' favour, mainly the continued suppression of the Communist Party and the Nazis' ability to capitalize on national security concerns. Moreover, some deputies of the Social Democratic Party were prevented from taking their seats in the Reichstag, due to arrests and intimidation by the Nazi SA. As a result, the Social Democratic Party would be under-represented in the final vote tally. The Enabling Act passed easily on 23 March 1933, with the support of the right-wing German National People's Party, the Centre Party, and several fragmented middle-class parties. The measure went into force on 24 March, effectively making Hitler dictator of Germany.
The Kroll Opera House, sitting across the Königsplatz from the burned-out Reichstag building, functioned as the Reichstag's venue for the remaining 12 years of the Third Reich's existence.
Legal proceedings
In July 1933, Marinus van der Lubbe, Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoy Popov, and Vasil Tanev were indicted on charges of setting the fire. The case against them was tried at the fourth criminal senate of the Reich Supreme Court in Leipzig from 21 September to 23 December in 1933.The trial known as the Leipzig Trial took place and was presided over by judges from the German Supreme Court, the Reichsgericht. This was Germany's highest court. The presiding judge was Judge Wilhelm Bünger of the Fourth Criminal Court of the Fourth Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court. The prosecutors were Chief Reich Prosecutor Karl Werner and his assistant Felix Parrisius. The accused were charged with arson and with attempting to overthrow the government.
While the official start and end points of the trial were in Leipzig, the court proceedings were relocated to the scene of the crime itself. The move to Berlin facilitated efficient witness questioning and examination of evidence directly at the Reichstag building. For the last month the court returned to Leipzig.
The opening of the trial
The trial began at 8:45 on the morning of 21 September, with Van der Lubbe testifying. Van der Lubbe's testimony was very hard to follow as he spoke of losing his sight in one eye and wandering around Europe as a drifter and that he had been a member of the Communist Party of Holland, which he quit in 1931, but still considered himself a communist.Media coverage
The Leipzig Trial was widely publicized and was broadcast on the radio. It was expected that the court would find the communists guilty on all counts.According to the German press, the Nazi government wanted to use the trial to get its own message out to the world. Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry had sent many of its officials to manage the flow of information to the foreign press. There were no fewer than eighty foreign correspondents in the courtroom, along with forty German colleagues, in the opening session of the court. The atmosphere of the opening of the trial was described by Otto D. Tolischus for The New York Times:
Repeatedly during the session glaring movie picture flares illuminated the somber court room. Microphones recorded the words of the participants in the drama and nearly half the large hall was filled with representatives of the world press. The rest of the hall was packed to the rafters with spectators, including representatives of foreign governments, foreign jurists of note and relatives of the accused.