How the 1933 Reichstag Fire Helped Nazis Rise to Power in Germany
The story of the Reichstag Fire and how it set the stage for Hitler’s power grab in Germany.
On February 27, 1933, when the meeting place of Germany’s “Bundestag” (Federal Assembly) caught fire, people came up with various conspiracies to explain the arson attack. Adolf Hitler claimed that the attack was a Communist attempt to take control of the government; this bit of Nazi propaganda eventually led to the rise of Nazi Germany under Hitler’s rule.
The Reichstag is Set Ablaze
The meeting place of Germany’s Bundestag is known as the Reichstag. On the night of February 27, 1933, pedestrians in the area heard the sound of glass breaking from the building; not long after the commotion, a fire erupted from the building. The flames completely reduced approximately $1 million worth of infrastructure to damages; even after firefighters extinguished the fire, nothing could be done to recover the losses.
Marinus van der Lubbe, an unemployed 24-year-old laborer from the Netherlands was arrested after he allegedly confessed to the crime and expressed Communist sympathies. He told the authorities that he had done it to fuel a workers’ uprising against the state. Hitler said that if the fire…
