The Reichstag fire of 1933 is one of the most pivotal events in modern European history. It served as a catalyst for the ascent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to absolute power in Germany.
This in turn led to the horrors of both the Holocaust and WW2. That’s a lot of repercussions for an act of arson supposedly carried out by one rebellious communist.
So how is it that this incident became a linchpin for Hitler’s consolidation of power? Was it just clever political maneuvering by one of the 20th century’s worst monsters?
Not everyone is convinced. Some believe the Nazis themselves were behind the fire and just happened to find the perfect scapegoat.
The Fire
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament at the time, became a blazing inferno. Authorities rushed to the fire, trying to put it out but to no avail. Most of the building was destroyed.
The police arrived while the building was still ablaze and quickly found and apprehended a culprit. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was arrested at the scene.
He had a background as a labor activist and was associated with leftist ideologies that put him at odds with the newly elected Nazi party, which had come into power a month prior with Hitler at its head as Chancellor. After being arrested Van der Lubbe readily confessed to the arson, doing the police a favor.
He claimed that he had acted alone and was protesting against the perceived injustices of capitalism. The authorities weren’t convinced he acted alone, however and months of investigations ensued. During this time, several other foreigners with communist/left-wing sympathies were arrested on suspicion of working with the Dutchman.
Eventually, van der Lubbe’s trial began in Leipzig, Germany on September 21, 1993, lasting until December 23 of the same year. At its conclusion, he was convicted of arson (which was bad) and high treason (which was much, much worse). The treason charge meant he was sentenced to death and he was duly executed on January 10, 1934, beheaded by guillotine.
Why such a harsh sentence? Well, the trial was heavily politicized, and the Nazi leadership seized upon the incident, portraying it as evidence of a communist plot to overthrow the government. As such an act of arson and protest was made into treason, partially for political reasons.
For his part, Judge Bunger, who sentenced van der Lubbe, towed the party line. In his verdict, he made it clear that he believed van der Lubbe had been working with the communists when he burned down the Reichstag.
Unfortunately for the Nazis, there just wasn’t enough evidence to connect van der Lubbe to the other suspects. Everyone else accused of working with van der Lubbe was acquitted, and most of them were expelled to the Soviet Union.
History has shown the burning of the Reichstag was far from an open and shut case. The investigation and subsequent trial were conducted under a cloud of political tension and manipulation.
While van der Lubbe’s culpability was officially established, the circumstances of his arrest and the swift attribution of blame to communist elements raise suspicions about the possibility of a more orchestrated event.
Setting Fire to Democracy
Why do people suspect some kind of cover-up? Because for the Nazis the burning of the Reichstag was the gift that kept on giving. When they came into power in January of 1933, they didn’t have a majority, meaning their power to effect change was limited. After the fire that quickly began to change.
The burning gave Adolf Hitler the perfect pretext to begin reshaping the German legal system and consolidate power in new and unprecedented ways. One of the most influential was a decree that stipulated that offenses such as treason would now be exclusively tried by a newly established People’s Court, known as the Volksgerichtshof.
The People’s Court, under the leadership of Judge-President Roland Freisler, became synonymous with Hitler’s ruthless suppression of dissent. Freisler presided over numerous trials up to and into the Second World War, including those related to the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944. The court handed down a substantial number of death sentences, reflecting its role as a tool for political persecution and intimidation.
It wasn’t just the People’s Court. The Reichstag had barely cooled before Hitler used its burning to enact the Reichstag Fire Decree on February 28, 1933.
This worrying decree suspended civil liberties, allowing for the arrest of political opponents and the suppression of free speech. Obviously, the Nazis leveraged these measures to silence dissenting voices and eliminate potential threats to their regime.
If this wasn’t bad enough the fire was also used as a pretext for The Enabling Act. Passed just after the fire, this further concentrated power in Hitler’s hands.
It gave the Chancellor (Hitler) the power to enact laws without the Reichstag’s approval, and essentially overrode democracy and completely dismantled the democratic framework of the Weimar Republic. With these new powers, Hitler was free to push through ever more radical legislative changes that paved the way for his dictatorial rule.
Hitler also knew that beyond political power he needed the people’s support. So, he exploited the fire to intensify Nazi anti-communist propaganda, portraying the event as part of a larger Bolshevik conspiracy. This narrative fueled anti-communist sentiment among the German population and justified the ruthless persecution of communists and other perceived enemies of the state.
Lucky Break or Nazi False Flag?
Following van der Lubbe’s execution people began voicing concerns that the Reichstag fire had been a cover-up. Those voices have never really gone quiet. Could it be that the Nazis set the fire and the Dutchman was a scapegoat?
Over the years the enigma surrounding the Reichstag fire has deepened with the emergence of testimonies and documents that challenge the official narrative. Hans-Martin Lennings, a former member of the Nazis’ paramilitary SA unit, provided a crucial perspective in a 1955 declaration of facts uncovered in the papers of Fritz Tobias, a German historian interested in the fire.
Lennings was part of the SA group who rushed to the Reichstag on the night of the fire. He asserted that they drove Marinus van der Lubbe to the Reichstag (in itself a suspicious act: why were Nazis bringing van der Lubbe to the scene of his crime), only to discover signs of a fire already in progress. The sworn statement suggests that the SA, who were already there, may have played a role in the arson, challenging the idea that van der Lubbe was the sole perpetrator.
Lennings went further, claiming that he and his squad protested Van der Lubbe’s arrest, contending that he could not have been the arsonist based on their observations. According to Lennings, they were detained, forced to sign denials of any knowledge of the incident, and witnessed the execution of those with knowledge of the Reichstag fire. Lennings, having escaped to Czechoslovakia, sought to certify his account in 1955, anticipating the possibility of the Reichstag fire case returning to trial.
Lennings wasn’t the only one whose account challenged Nazi claims. During the Nuremberg trials General Franz Halder claimed that the Reichstag fire had been a Nazi false flag operation. In other words, the Nazis had set the fire themselves.
He claimed that Hermann Göring, a prominent Nazi figure, had boasted about setting the fire during a lunch on Hitler’s birthday in 1943. Of course, Göring vehemently denied these allegations during cross-examination at the Nuremberg trial in 1945 and 1946.
Since both men were Nazis being tried for war crimes neither can exactly be called a reliable source. Still, these testimonies and the suggestions of a cover-up within the Nazi government itself are intriguing. As the saying goes there’s no smoke without fire and the official government account blaming the Communists never really added up.
So, what’s the truth? As is so often the case with history, the answer lies somewhere between the two. Most modern historians agree that the Nazis didn’t set the fire. Van der Lubbe admitted to it, he had a motive and there are no signs of coercion in his testimony.
However, there’s also no real evidence that the fire was a communist conspiracy either. That bit seems to have been made up by the Nazis to fuel their political goals.
They were already busy making Jews the “enemy” and with the fire, they added their political rivals to the mix. There is some evidence that both the judge at the trial and the head detective on the case were Nazis.
The Reichstag fire was just what Hitler needed and it came at exactly the right time. In burning the Reichstag van der Lubbe unwittingly became one of Hitler’s greatest benefactors. This being said, the Nazis were committed, and it seems likely that if it hadn’t been the fire, they would have happily seized upon, or indeed manufactured, something else.
Top Image: Despite the official conclusions, there is a surprising amount of evidence that the Reichstag fire may have been deliberately started by the Nazis. Source: Eugenio Hansen, OFS / CC BY-SA 3.0.
References
