The Reichstag fire and Gleichschaltung
On the night of February 27, 1933, a large fire broke out in the Reichstag building, the assembly hall for the German parliament. Judging from the speed and size of the blaze - most of the building had been gutted by the fire by the time the authorities were able to respond - investigators on the scene concluded that fire had broken out in multiple places, and was probably the work of an arsonist, or a team of arsonists.
A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found naked and cowering behind the building. Nazi party members Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, who later became the head of the Gestapo, arrived on the scene shortly, and van der Lubbe was presented before them. Based on van der Lubbe’s presence in the scene of the crime, Göring declared the fire to be the handiwork of communists, and promptly had Communist Party members arrested. Hitler, in his capacity as Chancellor, used the fire to justify the declaration of a state of emergency. Within a day, Hitler was able to convince the aging President, Paul van Hindenburg, to declare the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended the rights to warrants for arrest, search, confiscation, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of peaceful assembly.
Thus began the process of Gleichschaltung - literally, synchronization - by which the Nazi Party consolidated its hold on the democratic Weimar republic. Within a month, all legislative powers had been effectively transferred to Hitler and his cabinet. Opposition parties were either banned or dissolved themselves voluntarily, and their members arrested; labor unions were forcibly broken up. The formation of new political parties became illegal, transforming the republic into a one-party state. The assassination of enemies of the state was legalized. Finally, upon the death of President van Hindenburg a year and a half after the fire, a secret law transferring the responsibilities of the Chancellor and the President into a single office came into effect and eliminated whatever check and balance remained.
In hindsight, it is clear that Hitler and the Nazi Party took advantage of the situation. Worth noting is how they were able to use the pretext of a single incident to gradually introduce increasingly totalitarian policies, through superficially legal and constitutional means. Beginning with what was ostensibly a temporary measure to resolve an urgent state of emergency, they eventually succeeded in transforming a democratic state into the Third Reich.
Also worth noting is the way the Nazis were able to do all of this without ever establishing the complicity of the communists, even though the rational behind the Reichstag Fire Decree was to facilitate a crackdown on their activities. While van der Lubbe was indeed a communist, it wasn’t as if he was acting as one: the communists were quick to distance themselves from van der Lubbe and his actions, and it eventually became clear that he was acting on his personal megalomaniac tendencies.
In other words: the justification used for the declaration of the state of emergency might not have existed at all.
In fact, some comments made by Nazis at the Nuremberg trials seem to indicate that some Nazis - including Göring - were involved. If this was indeed the case, then the Reichstag fire was part of a larger ploy to drum up support for their policies: an instance of orchestrated lawlessness to justify the creation of a totalitarian police state.
A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found naked and cowering behind the building. Nazi party members Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, who later became the head of the Gestapo, arrived on the scene shortly, and van der Lubbe was presented before them. Based on van der Lubbe’s presence in the scene of the crime, Göring declared the fire to be the handiwork of communists, and promptly had Communist Party members arrested. Hitler, in his capacity as Chancellor, used the fire to justify the declaration of a state of emergency. Within a day, Hitler was able to convince the aging President, Paul van Hindenburg, to declare the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended the rights to warrants for arrest, search, confiscation, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of peaceful assembly.
Thus began the process of Gleichschaltung - literally, synchronization - by which the Nazi Party consolidated its hold on the democratic Weimar republic. Within a month, all legislative powers had been effectively transferred to Hitler and his cabinet. Opposition parties were either banned or dissolved themselves voluntarily, and their members arrested; labor unions were forcibly broken up. The formation of new political parties became illegal, transforming the republic into a one-party state. The assassination of enemies of the state was legalized. Finally, upon the death of President van Hindenburg a year and a half after the fire, a secret law transferring the responsibilities of the Chancellor and the President into a single office came into effect and eliminated whatever check and balance remained.
In hindsight, it is clear that Hitler and the Nazi Party took advantage of the situation. Worth noting is how they were able to use the pretext of a single incident to gradually introduce increasingly totalitarian policies, through superficially legal and constitutional means. Beginning with what was ostensibly a temporary measure to resolve an urgent state of emergency, they eventually succeeded in transforming a democratic state into the Third Reich.
Also worth noting is the way the Nazis were able to do all of this without ever establishing the complicity of the communists, even though the rational behind the Reichstag Fire Decree was to facilitate a crackdown on their activities. While van der Lubbe was indeed a communist, it wasn’t as if he was acting as one: the communists were quick to distance themselves from van der Lubbe and his actions, and it eventually became clear that he was acting on his personal megalomaniac tendencies.
In other words: the justification used for the declaration of the state of emergency might not have existed at all.
In fact, some comments made by Nazis at the Nuremberg trials seem to indicate that some Nazis - including Göring - were involved. If this was indeed the case, then the Reichstag fire was part of a larger ploy to drum up support for their policies: an instance of orchestrated lawlessness to justify the creation of a totalitarian police state.