Burning of the Reichstag

Reichstag fire
Reichstagsbrand

Firefighters struggle to extinguish the fire.
Date	27 February 1933
Location	Reichstag building, Berlin, Germany
Participants	Marinus van der Lubbe
Outcome	Van der Lubbe executed Civil liberties suspended Nazi control of government entrenched

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand,  listen ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building (home of the German parliament) in Berlin on 27 February 1933, just one month after Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. The Nazis stated that Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that Van Der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. After the fire, the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazi Party that communists were plotting against the German government. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

The fire started in the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament. A Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the building was on fire shortly after 21:00. By the time the police and firefighters arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was engulfed in flames. The police conducted a thorough search inside the building and found van der Lubbe. He was arrested, as were four communist leaders soon after. Hitler urged President Paul von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree to suspend civil liberties and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communist Party of Germany. After passing the decree, the government instituted mass arrests of communists, including all of the Communist Party parliamentary delegates. With their bitter rival communists gone and their seats empty, the Nazi Party went from being a plurality party to the majority, thus enabling Hitler to consolidate his power.