Reichstag Fire in 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree, and Enabling Act of 1933.

The pivotal moment on Adolf Hiltler's way to seize total power in Germany
by Jim T. Slaaen

The Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 were used in the perceived state of emergency to effectively grant the new Chancellor broad power to act outside parliamentary control. Hitler promptly used these powers to thwart constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties, which brought about the swift collapse of democracy at the federal and state level, and the creation of a one-party dictatorship under his leadership.

Shortly after being appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, by the Reichspräsidenten der Weimarer Republik Paul von Hindenburg (* October 2, 1847, † August 2, 1934), Hitler asked the President to dissolve the Reichstag and schedule a new general election. That election was scheduled for March 5, 1933. Hitler hoped the election result would change the composition of the Reichstag in the Nazi Party’s favor. 

On the night between 27 and 28 February 1933, the German Reichstag burned down.
Photo: National Archives, Washington, D.C. (ARC Identifier: 535790)

Published under Creative Commons license: Public domain)

A short video and some info about the Reichstag fire can be found here:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Reichstag-fire

Reichstag Fire in 1933, and the Reichstag Fire Decree 

"Shortly before 10 p.m. on 27 February 1933, the telephone rang in Division IA, Police Headquarters, Berlin. When Detective-Inspector Heisig answered it, he was greeted by the voice of an extremely agitated Dr Schneider: "Is that you, Heisig? Listen carefully, the Reichstag is on fire. The whole thing is a Communist job because we’ve caught a Dutch Communist in the act. Göring has put the entire Prussian police on the alert, and I have just broadcast his orders over the Karlshorstpolice transmitter. Will you tell everyone in IA to get down to Headquarters as quickly as they can? The chief (Rudolf Diels) is bringing the criminal, and I want you to take a statement as soon as he arrives.""

Source: "The Reichstag Fire" by Fritz Tobias (With an Introduction by A. J. P. Taylor. First American Edition 1964), page 5. [English translation in 1963 by Martin Secker & Warburg. Limited First published in Germany under the title "Der Reichstagsbrand. Legende und Wirklichkeit", by G. Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung].

Only 6 days before the election, there was a fire in the Reichstag. A fire that Hitler and the Nazis blamed on the communists. Was it the communist or was it the Nazis who were the Reichstag arsonists? Many have speculated on that theory. Remember, inside German territory (including occupied territory), questioning the established "fact" of Communist guilt regarding the Reichstag fire was incredibly dangerous. It was possible to be charged with treachery (Heimtücke) if a Nazi sympathizer overheard suggesting that the Nazis had started the Reichstag fire themselves and reported it.
If we use the principle of motive - Cui Bono (for whose benefit? / to what purpose?) though, it seems possible that the Nazis themselves could have been responsible for the arson. At least in some form. It has been suggested that a group of Sturmabteilung (SA) agitators managed to infiltrate the building and cause the fire - intending to portray the Communist movement as the guilty party of the Reichstag Fire. Journalist William L. Shirer stated openly in his classic work from 1960: "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", that there was "enough evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the Nazis who planned the arson and carried it out for their own political ends". Anyway, Hitler saw (or used) the Reichstag fire as an attack on Germany and as a trigger point for the communists to start an uprising that could end in a communist revolution in Germany. Socialists and Communists had tried several times elsewhere in Europe to start a socialist/communist revolution. So from that time's perspective, the accusation was not too far out (or was it, if the Nazis actually did it themself?).
     

The Nazi leaders at the scene of the fire. Adolf Hitler talking to Prince August Wilhelm,

Herman Göring (second from left), and Joseph Goebbels (second from right)

from The Reichstag Fire by Fritz Tobias. page 30.

//**
As an example of Socialists and/or Communists trying to start a socialist/communist revolution elsewhere in the world, we don't need to go far away from Germany. Just take a look at what was revealed by the Minister of Defense of Norway (from 1931 to 1933) in the throne debate on April 7, 1932, in the Norwegian parliament (Stortinget).  The outcome of an investigation that the Storting started after the revelations, was that the Norwegian Labour Party (AP), Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), and Norwegian Communist Party (NKP), had received huge sums of money from the Communist International (Comintern), proof of collaboration, and conspiration with the Soviet Union for the mass riots, among others on June 8, 1931, at Norsk Hydro's shipping port at Menstad on the Skiens River between Skien and Porsgrunn in Telemark, Norway, and with clear connections to the riots in Ådalen in Sweden on May 14, 1931. A part of a larger plan to lead both Sweden and Norway into total chaos and riots, and with that, leave both countries open to armed communist revolution. The Storting supported the Minister of Defense's accusations with a guilty vote of 108 to 42 after a committee investigation of his proof. The 42 who voted against were, not unexpectedly, socialists and communists who represented the offending part of the crimes. Nevertheless, the Storting voted that nothing should be done about the case, because at that point (believe it or not) it was not good policy to do so. Even tho their crimes broke not only several penalty codes in Norwegian Law, but their actions broke the Norwegian Constitution and were an act of treason and high treason according to law. The Minister of Defense accused the leaders of these parties of, among other things, treason and high treason. For some of the same crimes the widely known Norwegian traitor himself was sentenced to death by firing squad, only 13 years later (by people mostly socialists and communists as judges. That Norwegian Minister of Defense's name was Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonsson Quisling. His last name is for all time after his conviction, been used as a synonym for a traitor - "a quisling",

"Catching a Quisling". Source: From the Book: "Inventions" by William Heath Robinson, page 97
Image published under Creative Commons license: Public domain)

 PS: If you're interested, you can read my article about the throne debate on April 7, 1932, and the following part of Norwegian history which I have mentioned a small bit of here. (The article is in Norwegian so please use the translation option if you need to).

https://jimshistorieogpolitiskeblogg.blogspot.com/2012/01/da-arbeiderpartiet-lo-og.html

**//

The fire was according to the Nazis set by a young Dutch worker and a communist by the name of Marinus van der Lubbe (* January 13, 1909, in Leyden, Netherlands, † January 10, 1934). Lubbe was caught on-site at the Reichstag and he confessed to the crime.

Route of Marinus van der Lubbe in the Reichstag on the night of February 27th, 1933

Marinus van der Lubbe, police statement March 3, 1933:

"I myself am a Leftist and was a member of the Communist Party until 1929. I had heard that a Communist demonstration was disbanded by the leaders on the approach of the police. In my opinion, something absolutely had to be done in protest against this system. Since the workers would do nothing, I had to do something myself. I considered arson a suitable method. I did not wish to harm private people but something belonging to the system itself. I decided on the Reichstag. As to the question of whether I acted alone, I declare emphatically that this was the case."

Source: "The Reichstag Fire - Legend and Truth" by Fritz Tobias (1963), page 36

In Lubbe's testifying in his trial that started on September 21, 1633, He had changed his statement from March 3rd. He left the Communist Party in 1931 – but still claimed to consider himself part of the communist movement. Beyond the evidence that clearly placed him at the scene of the crime (as he was arrested inside the building during the fire), van der Lubbe also had a record of unsuccessfully attempting to set fire to public buildings in protest against the political and social system he held responsible for mass unemployment.

Source:

The Reichstag Fire: Legend and Truth from 1963 by Fritz Tobias, page 39

According to other sources, Lubbes began mixing with different left-wing political groups in the summer of 1932. He rejected the political ideas of Joseph Stalin and became sympathetic to those of Leon Trotsky. He was also attracted to anarchist theories and eventually joined the Party of International Communists (aka Dutch Rade). This party, which had only a handful of members in Holland, "was opposed to the very idea of discipline and leadership, and saw the salvation of the working class in spontaneous, individual action alone."

Lubbe was found guilty of arson and treason by the Reichsgerich. Germany's highest court at the time. Lubbe was sentenced to death in December 1933. On January 10, 1934, was Marinus van der Lubbe beheaded in the Leipzig prison yard with a guillotine, three days before his 25th birthday. The sentence against him has been dealt with in German court several times after the war.

“From the night of the fire to this day, I have been convinced that the Reichstag was set on fire neither by the communists nor Herman Göring, but that the fire was the piece de resistance of Dr. Goebbels’s election campaign, and that it was started by a handful of Storm Troopers all of whom were shot afterward by SS commandoes in the vicinity of Berlin. There was talk of ten men and of the Gestapo investigating the crime.” 

- Martin Sommerfeldt – Herman Göring’s Press Chief writing is his memoirs ‘I Was There’ (1949)

Van der Lubbe was posthumously pardoned by the German government in 2008, under a 1998 law lifting the convictions of people who committed crimes against the Nazi regime.

In July 2019, the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung published a 1955 affidavit from a former member of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) named Hans-Martin Lennings, found in the archives of the Hannover Amtsgericht. In the document, Lennings states that on the night of the fire, he was with an SA group that transported van der Lubbe from a hospital to the Reichstag where they observed the "strange smell of burning" and "clouds of smoke billowing through the rooms". Suggesting that the building was already on fire when van der Lubbe was deposited inside and left as a decoy. Lennings further testified that he and his comrades objected to van der Lubbe's arrest.

"We were convinced that van der Lubbe could not have been the perpetrator since we saw that the fire was already underway in the Riksdag when we arrived with him  

He also said that both he and the others were forced to sign a document in which they said they knew nothing about the incident. Later, most of the others with knowledge of the fire were executed, but Lennings was warned and managed to escape to Czechoslovakia. 

Why van der Lubbe had to be transported to the Riksdag is still unclear.

​Hans-Martin Lennings died in 1962.

Marinus van der Lubbe (Jan 13, 1909 - Jan 10, 1934)
Pictures published under CC BY-SA: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Hitler used the Reichstag Fire as a pivotal moment on his way to try to seize total power in Germany. The exact circumstances of the Reichstag fire still remain unclear even to this day. What is clear though is that Hitler and the Nazis used the Reichstag fire to consolidate more power. Hitler and the Nazis almost immediately blamed the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) for causing the blaze and believed the fire would result in more Germans supporting the Nazis in the upcoming election on March 5th. Within just a few hours of the fire, dozens of Communists had been thrown into jail. The following day (February 28th), officials in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, which was led by Hermann Göring, discussed ways to provide legal cover for the arrests. On the following night after the Reichstag fire, the night of February 28th, Ludwig Grauert (earlier the head of the Prussian Police Department in the Prussian Ministry of Interior, and just five days before the Reichstag Fire (on February 22nd), promoted to Ministerial Director), proposed the adoption of an "emergency decree against arson and acts of terrorism" and an emergency presidential decree under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take any measure necessary to protect public safety without the consent of the Reichstag. A decree which ultimately formed one of the foundations of the Reichstag Fire Decree, through which the basic rights of the Weimar Republic were suspended and thus the basis for the Elimination of the rule of law and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship (Hitler just needed to replace von Hindenburg with himself as the president). It is still uncertain whether Grauert spontaneously proposed the regulation on the following night of the Reichstag fire or whether it had already been drawn up beforehand and just needed to be taken out of the drawer. It is also not clear whether he was heavily involved in the elaboration and design of its content or whether he merely presented the government's finished document at the ministerial meeting in the Ministry of the Interior on the night of the Reichstag Fire between February 27th to 28th or at the cabinet meeting on February 28th. presented in February. As a result, the regulation presented by Grauert provided the legal basis for the first mass arrests of political opponents of the National Socialists and the establishment of Nazi Germany's first concentration camps. According to later revealed sources, there had already been discussions within the Cabinet about enacting such measures as Grauert proposed. Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, a member of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (aka Deutsche Nationale Front), had actually brought a draft decree before the cabinet on the afternoon of February 27, 1933. In other words, before the fire started.

Reichtangacraguleddrug (the Reichstag Fire Decree)

The Reichstag Fire Decree was announced in the Reichsgesetzblatt on February 28. 1933. The ordinance was issued by Reichspräsidenten der Weimarer Republik Paul von Hindenburg after the Reichstag fire the night before, and set aside basic civil rights. Using the decree, the Nazis declared a state of emergency and began a violent crackdown against their political enemies. As Hitler cleared the political arena of anyone willing to challenge him, he contended that the decree was insufficient and required sweeping policies that would safeguard his emerging dictatorship. Hitler submitted a proposal to the Reichstag that if passed would immediately grant all legislative powers to the cabinet and by its extension, Hitler himself. This would in effect allow Hitler's government to act without concern to the constitution.

Together with the Enabling Act of 1933 a few weeks later (23 March 1933), the regulation paved the way for Hitler's seizure of power and the introduction of a Nazi dictatorship in the "Third Reich"

The Reichsgesetzblatt on February 28. 1933: Reichtangacraguleddrug (Reichstag Fire Decree)
Image published under Creative Commons license: Public domain)

The preamble and Article 1 of the Reichstag Fire Decree show the methods by which the civil rights enshrined in the Weimar Constitution were abolished by the Hitler Government (legally according to the Weimar Republic law):

Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat		Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State
Auf Grund des Artikels 48 Abs. 2 der Reichsverfassung wird zur Abwehr kommunistischer staatsgefährdender Gewaltakte folgendes verordnet:		On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:
§ 1.	Die Artikel 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 und 153 der Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs werden bis auf weiteres außer Kraft gesetzt. Es sind daher Beschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit, des Rechts der freien Meinungsäußerung, einschließlich der Pressefreiheit, des Vereins- und Versammlungsrechts, Eingriffe in das Brief-, Post-, Telegraphen- und Fernsprechgeheimnis, Anordnungen von Haussuchungen und von Beschlagnahmen sowie Beschränkungen des Eigentums auch außerhalb der sonst hierfür bestimmten gesetzlichen Grenzen zulässig.	§ 1.	Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is, therefore, permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of (opinion) expression, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, and the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications. Warrants for House searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

PS: The Reichsrat of the Weimar Republic was the de facto upper house of Germany's parliament; the lower house was the popularly elected Reichstag. The Weimar Republic (officially known as the German Reich) existed from November 9, 1918 to March 23, 1933.

Ermächtigungsgesetz (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich) aka
Enabling Act of 1933 (Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich)

Enabling Act of 1933, page 1 (Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich)
Image published under Creative Commons license: Public domain)

Enabling Act of 1933, page 2 (Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich)
Image published under Creative Commons license: Public domain)