The Reichstag Fire Becomes the Pretext for Dictatorship
A burning parliament building gives the Nazis their opening to suspend civil liberties
Quick facts
- Date of fire
- 27 February 1933
- Decree issued
- 28 February 1933
- Rights suspended
- Assembly, free speech, free press, police restraints
- Stated justification
- Alleged Communist uprising plot
What happened
On 27 February 1933, less than a month after Hitler's appointment as chancellor, the German parliament building, the Reichstag, burned down. The Nazi leadership and its coalition partners used the fire to claim that Communists were planning a violent uprising, and they pushed through emergency legislation, commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the following day. That decree abolished a wide range of constitutional protections, including the rights to assembly, free speech, and a free press, and removed restraints on police investigative powers, in the name of protecting the state from the alleged Communist threat.
Why it matters
The decree gave the Nazi regime the legal tool to suppress political opponents, above all the Communist Party and Social Democrats, in the weeks before the March 1933 elections and the vote on the Enabling Act, converting a fire of contested and still-debated origin into the constitutional hinge for dismantling German democracy within a single month.
How we know
The Reichstag Fire Decree survives as a primary government document, and the museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia contextualizes its use as part of a documented sequence of legal steps the Nazi leadership took to consolidate power in early 1933.
Sources
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Reichstag Fire · Reputable sourceencyclopedia.ushmm.org · The domain "encyclopedia.ushmm.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Article 48 · Reputable sourceencyclopedia.ushmm.org · The domain "encyclopedia.ushmm.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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