Reichstag fire as evidence of a Communist insurrection

Nazi German authorities treated the Reichstag fire as evidence of a Communist insurrectionary conspiracy threatening the state and used that alleged threat to justify extraordinary emergency powers and political repression.

1 episode

Current understanding

The Reichstag burned on 27 February 1933 and Marinus van der Lubbe was convicted of setting the fire, but the government's alleged wider Communist conspiracy was not substantiated. Four other defendants accused of taking part in a plot to trigger a Communist uprising were acquitted for lack of evidence, although the regime continued to maintain the conspiracy thesis. Modern scholarship still disputes whether van der Lubbe acted entirely alone or had accomplices, so the correction does not depend on resolving the ultimate authorship of the fire.

Consequences and human impact

The alleged Communist revolutionary threat was written directly into the legal justification for the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933. The decree suspended central constitutional protections and enabled sweeping restrictions on liberty, speech, press, assembly, association, communications privacy, searches and property. It became a durable legal foundation for political repression and the Nazi police state even after the criminal prosecution failed to establish the broader conspiracy against four of the five defendants.

How the consequences followed

Whether Nazi officials themselves participated in setting the Reichstag fire remains historically disputed. The documented institutional falsehood is narrower: authorities treated the fire as evidence of a Communist insurrectionary conspiracy and used that alleged threat to justify emergency measures.

Van der Lubbe was convicted and executed. The evidentiary failure concerned the wider prosecution theory that he and four Communist defendants had jointly committed arson and high treason in order to trigger an uprising.

The decree was consequential beyond the fire investigation itself: its emergency powers remained part of the legal machinery of Nazi rule until the regime's collapse in 1945.

Weimar constitutional articles suspended by the Reichstag Fire Decree

4 of 5

defendants in the Reichstag fire trial acquitted for lack of evidence

1933–1945

state of emergency created by the decree remained formally in force under the Nazi regime

Quantitative figures are highlighted only when the cited evidence supports them. The scale of a related catastrophe is not automatically treated as a death toll caused solely by this belief.

Institutional episode

Nazi Germany

1933–1945Policy basis

The Reichstag fire became the factual premise for an emergency-law regime rather than merely the subject of an arson prosecution. The decree of 28 February explicitly invoked Communist violence threatening the state and suspended seven constitutional guarantees. Nazi authorities then pursued a criminal case alleging that five men had acted together to provoke a Communist uprising. Four were acquitted for lack of evidence, but the government did not abandon the conspiracy narrative or the emergency powers attached to it. The decree's state of emergency survived for the remainder of Nazi rule.

Institutions

Reich government
Reich Ministry of the Interior

Documented consequences

Suspension of constitutional protections for personal liberty, expression, press, assembly and association
Authorization of expanded searches, confiscations, communications interception and central intervention in the Länder
Mass political repression, including detention of opponents and suppression of organizations and publications
Continued use of an emergency legal framework after the wider Communist conspiracy case failed in court

Institutional machinery

On 28 February 1933, the day after the fire, President Paul von Hindenburg issued the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State on the advice of Adolf Hitler's government. Its preamble expressly presented the measure as a defense against Communist acts of violence endangering the state. The decree suspended seven constitutional articles and authorized exceptional restrictions on civil liberties and state intervention. Nazi authorities simultaneously accused Communists of planning an overthrow and prosecuted five men on a theory of joint arson and high treason intended to trigger a Communist uprising. In December 1933 the Reichsgericht convicted van der Lubbe but acquitted the other four defendants for lack of evidence. The regime nevertheless maintained the conspiracy thesis, and the emergency decree remained formally operative through 1945.

Sources and what they establish

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State — 28 February 1933German History in Documents and Images
English translation and German-source citation for the Reichstag Fire Decree. The preamble describes the decree as a defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state and Section 1 suspends seven named constitutional articles.
23 December 1933: Judgment of the Reich Court in the Reichstag fire trialGerman Federal Archives
Official archival history describing the accusation of a Communist overthrow plot, the prosecution theory of joint arson to trigger an uprising, the acquittal of four defendants for lack of evidence and the regime's continued maintenance of the Communist-conspiracy thesis; it also notes that authorship of the fire remains disputed.
27 February 1933: Reichstag fire in BerlinGerman Bundestag
Official parliamentary history explaining the decree's suppression of political rights and that the emergency condition it created was not lifted before 1945.

Last reviewed: 25/08/2026