The Reichstag Fire: Berlin, Germany

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/reichstagfire.htm

        The Reichstag burnt down due to arson on February 27^th, 1933.  At this time, the government communicated to the public that the fire was part of a Communist effort to overthrow the state.  This was false.
         Adolf Hitler’s cabinet has issued a Decree for the protection of the German people using emergency constitutional powers on February 4^th, 1933.  The decree placed restrictions on the press.  It also allowed the police to stop all political meetings/marches.  This effectively hurt political campaigns.  Though a temporary issue, what followed was more dramatic in civil rights following the fire of The Ringstag (parliament building).
         Even to this day, the start of the fire is still unknown, but the Nazis and the German Nationalist People’s Party blamed the Communists.  They demoralized the Reichstag fire to make safe President von Hindenburg’s approval for an emergency decree.  This Decree was for the protection of the people and the state on February 28^th.  The regulations stopped the right to assembly, other constitutional protections, and both the freedom of the press and of speech. 
         After this, the Reichstag Fire Decree permitted the government to arrest and incarcerate political opponents without “specific charge, dissolve political organizations, and suppress publications.”  Also, it gave the central government control to overrule and overthrow both the state and local laws.
Hearing this, the Nazi press said the Reichstag fire was a work of the Communist Party and a signal for their planned overtaking.  Even though the Communists did not develop any plan for an uprising, the impact of propaganda still convinced many German citizens that Hitler’s action had saved the nation from “Bolshevism.”

http://bio.bwbs.de/bwbs_biografie/Reichstag_fire_B1087.html

        The Nazi government destroyed Germanys free press within months.  By 1941, The Nazi Party’s publishing house had become the largest in Germany History.  The main daily newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter (The National Observer,) had reached a distribution of over 1,000,000 copies.








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 The Reichstag Fire - Historical Film Footage

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ALL PHOTOS AND  INFO: (unless noted otherwise)

"Holocaust History." The Reichstag Fire. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 11
             May2011. Web. 15 May 2013.