Encyclopedia Britannica
Micropedia, Vol 9 (1987) 15th Ed
Reichstag fire, burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building in
Berlin, on the night of Feb. 27, 1933, a key event in the
establishment of the Nazi dictatorship and widely believed to
have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government itself to
turn public opinion against its opponents and to assume emergency
powers. Hitler had secured the chancellorship after the elections
of November 1932, but his Nazi Party had not won an overall
majority. He therefore obtained Cabinet consent to fix new
elections for March 5, 1933. Meanwhile, his propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels, is supposed to have devised the scheme whereby
10 agents led by Karl Ernst were to gain access to the Reichstag
through a tunnel leading from the official residence of Hermann
Goring, Reichstag president and Hitler's chief minister, who was
then to conduct an official investigation, which would fix
responsibility for the fire on the Communists. The supposed
arsonist was a Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, whom some have
claimed was brought to the scene of the crime by Nazi agents.
Others have contended that there was no proof of Nazi complicity
in the crime, but that Hitler merely capitalized on van der
Lubbe's independent act. The fire is the subject of continued
debate and research.
On Feb. 28, 1933, the day after the fire, Hitler's dictatorship
began with the enactment of a decree "for the Protection of the
People and the State," which dispensed with all constitutional
protection of political, personal, and property rights. Though
the ensuing elections still did not give the Nazis an outright
majority, they were able to persuade the Reichstag to pass an
Enabling Act (March 23) whereby all its legislative powers were
transferred to the Reich Cabinet by a vote of 444 to 94, so
sanctioning the dictatorship. A feature of the ensuing arson
trial, at which van der Lubbe was convicted, was the acquittal of
the Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov after a strong defense.
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