Who Was Really Responsible For The Reichstag Fire?

“I had nothing to do with it. I deny this absolutely. I can tell you in all honesty, that the Reichstag fire proved very inconvenient to us. After the fire I had to use the Kroll Opera House as the new Reichstag and the opera seemed to me much more important than the Reichstag. I must repeat that no pretext was needed for taking measures against the Communists. I already had a number of perfectly good reasons.”

Hermann Göring – founder of the Gestapo, Prime Minister of Prussia & head of the Nazi Airforce

Regardless of the perpetrators of the Reichstag fire, the result was clear: it would be the funeral pyre of Weimar democracy, usher in the opening chapters of National Socialist state terror, and lead to a further consolidation of power around Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.

On February 27th 1933, Hitler had been Chancellor for fewer than four weeks. His control of the government extended uncomfortably beyond the three of thirteen cabinet seats occupied by the Nazi Party – which held no majority in parliament. The seats held, however, by the conservative coalition partners the Nazi Party was attempting to rule alongside were at this point firmly in Hitler’s sights: as President Paul von Hindenburg had already dissolved parliament and set the date for a new election – March 5th. Hitler hoped the result would change the composition of the cabinet in the Nazi Party’s favour.

Was a democratic transition of power finally in sight?

The results of that election – six days after the Reichstag fire – would still leave the Nazis thirty six seats short of a parliamentary majority with 43.9% of the vote. Despite the violent repression of political opposition: as thousands of Communists, Social Democrats, and political enemies were detained, many tortured, some murdered, by the Nazi brownshirt militia – the Sturmabteilung – and the German police. Legal repercussions, in the form of the suspension of civil liberties and suppression of publications not considered friendly to the Nazi cause, would further pave the way for the establishment of a one-party state.