The
Reichstag Fire
Hitler’s
Consolidation of Power 1933–34: Part 1
1.To establish who was guilty of burning the Reichstag on 27th
February 1933.
2.To assess the significance of the Reichstag fire in
Hitler’s consolidation of power 1933 – 1934.
TASK: What has
happened? Who would do this and why?
TASK: Click on
the image to watch a BBC documentary clip (from 5.28)
With reference to the two aims of the lesson (above), write
down your initial answers:
1.
2.
Timeline:
What was the Significance of the Reichstag Fire?
TASK:
Highlight/Underline
the most significant steps in Hitler’s consolidation of power (bonus point if
you can spot the error from the Walsh textbook from which this is taken)
Two
events seem to stand out as being linked directly to the Reichstag Fire:
TASK:
How
far and in what ways do the two developments below help Hitler consolidate his
power?
SOURCE
INVESTIGATION
Who
was guilty of burning the Reichstag?
You
are re-examining the case. There are three possible verdicts*.
Read the sources carefully and then state below which of these you believe to
be the most convincing. Be prepared to explain why.
Benjamin Carter Hett claims in the latest book to be
published on the subject (2014) that van der Lubbe was most likely working with
a larger group of arsonists, for the Nazis (Verdict C).
Examine
the evidence below critically, then deliver your verdict! Will you agree with
Hett?
*Options
Verdict
A: Van der Lubbe Started the fire alone. He was a ‘lone wolf’ (like
Lee Harvey Oswald – the assassin who killed JFK in 1963). He repeated this
claim to the police and the court. He was found guilty and executed.
Supported
by source(s):
Verdict B: Van der Lubbe was acting as part of a communist plot. The Nazis claimed they found plans and incendiary devices at the homes of many communists.
Supported
by sources(s):
Verdict C: That the Nazis started the fire themselves and used Van der Lubbe as a scapegoat to blame and then eradicate the Communists and other left-wing opponents. There was direct secret access to the fire from Goering’s residence and his own SA chief claimed to have started the fire.
Supported
by source(s):
Sources
A)
Marius van der
Lubbe, statement at his trial
(23rd November, 1933)
I can only repeat that I set fire to the Reichstag all by
myself. There is nothing complicated about this fire. It has quite a simple
explanation. What was made of it may be complicated, but the fire itself was
very simple.
B)
Victor Klemperer,
diary entry (10th March, 1933)
Eight days before the election the clumsy business of the
Reichstag fire - cannot imagine that anyone really believes in Communist
perpetrators instead of paid Nazi work. Then the wild prohibitions and acts of
violence. And on top of that the never-ending propaganda in the street, on the
radio etc…
C)
Seftan Delmer, British Journalist at the
scene claimed he heard Hitler say:
"God grant that
this is the work of the Communists. You are witnessing the beginning of a great
new epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning.... You see this
flaming building, if this Communist spirit got hold of Europe for but two
months it would be all aflame like this building."
D)
Karl Ernst, signed confession
(3rd June, 1934). Ernst was SA leader for Berlin. His story was published by
Communists in Paris in 1934. Ernst was killed in Hitler’s purge of the SA a
year after the fire.
I, the undersigned, Karl Ernst, S.A. Gruppenführer, Berlin
Brandenburg, Prussian State Councillor, born on September 1st 1904 in
Berlin-Wilmersdorf, herewith put on record a full account of my part in the
Reichstag fire. The document itself may only be published on the orders of
myself or of the two friends who are named in the enclosure, or if I die a
violent death…I hereby declare that, on February 27th, 1933, I and two
Unterführer named in the enclosure, set fire to the German Reichstag. We did so
in the belief that we should be serving the Führer and our movement. We hoped
that we might enable the Führer to deliver a shattering blow against Marxism,
the worst enemy of the German people.
E)
AJP
Taylor, British Historian leading the re-examination of the case in the 1960s
Because of the testimony of people such as
Gisevius* the vast majority of historians believed that the Reichstag Fire had
been started by agents of the Nazi government.
F)
Hermann Göring provided evidence on
the Reichstag Fire at the Nuremberg War
Crimes Trial in 1946.
I had nothing to do with it. I deny this absolutely. I can
tell you in all honesty, that the Reichstag fire proved very inconvenient to
us.
G)
Fritz Tobias, The Reichstag Fire: Legend and Truth (1963)
Today there seems little doubt that it was precisely by
allowing van der Lubbe to stand trial that the Nazis proved their innocence of
the Reichstag fire. For had van der Lubbe been associated with them in any way,
the Nazis would have shot him the moment he had done their dirty work, blaming
his death on an outbreak of 'understandable popular indignation'. Van der Lubbe
could then have been branded a Communist without the irritations of a public
trial, and foreign critics would not have been able to argue that, since no
Communist accomplices were discovered, the real accomplices must be sought on
the Government benches.
H)
A.
J. P. Taylor, History Today (August, 1960)
The conclusion is clear. Van der Lubbe could have set fire
to the Reichstag by himself; there is a good deal of evidence that he did so;
there is none that he had any assistants. Of course, new evidence may turn up
to disturb these conclusions. So far, none has done so.
There is one worrying point. The postman left the Reichstag
at 8.55. Van der Lubbe broke in almost immediately afterwards, within a matter
of minutes. How did he know when it was safe to break in? The only answer can
be: he did not know. We have to assume a lucky coincidence, from his point of
view. It is a smaller assumption than that demanded by any other story.
I)
Ian Kershaw has suggested that
Lubbe was motivated by a sense of injustice:
"He was... a solitary individual,
unconnected with any political groups, but possessed of a strong sense of
injustice at the misery of the working class at the hands of the capitalist
system. In particular, he was determined to make a lone and spectacular act of
defiant protest at the Government... in order to galvanize the working class
into struggle against their repression."
J)
*Hans
Gisevius, an official of
the Ministry of the Interior at the time of the fire disapproved of the Nazi government.
He joined the German resistance. He gave this evidence at the Nuremberg War
Crimes Trials after WW2.
"It was Goebbels who first came up with the idea of
setting fire to the Reichstag. Goebbels discussed this with the leader of the
Berlin SA brigade, Karl Ernst, and made detailed suggestions on how to go about
carrying out the arson. A certain tincture known to every pyrotechnician was
selected. You spray it onto an object and then it ignites after a certain time,
after hours or minutes. In order to get into the Reichstag building, they
needed the passageway that leads from the palace of the Reichstag President to
the Reichstag. A unit of ten reliable SA men was put together, and now Göring
was informed of all the details of the plan, so that he coincidentally was not
out holding an election speech on the night of the fire, but was still at his
desk in the Ministry of the Interior at such a late hour... The intention right
from the start was to put the blame for this crime on the Communists, and those
ten SA men who were to carry out the crime were instructed accordingly."
K)
R J Evans’s Review of Hett’s ‘Burning the Reichstag’ titled ‘The Conspiricists’
(London Review of Books, 8 May 2014)
Crucially, Hett is unable to deal convincingly with the
problem of van der Lubbe. Why would the Nazis have chosen him as their stooge
when he was not even a paid-up member of the German Communist Party or any
other Communist organisation? There is no evidence to back up Hett’s claim that
he was drugged by the Nazis during his trial to stop him revealing the fact
that he had acted on their behalf as part of a larger group of arsonists.
Contemporary reports describe him as panting and sweating profusely when he was
arrested, as he would have been had he just rushed through the building rather
than hanging around as a Nazi stooge or acting in concert with others. In
endless hours of interrogation, van der Lubbe never deviated from his story
that he had acted alone, and never once accused the Nazis themselves of being
behind the crime. His confession remains a compelling piece of evidence.
The
Reichstag Fire and the Election
Although Adolf Hitler had the support of certain
sections of the German population he never gained an elected majority. When
Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, the Nazis only had a third of the
seats in the Reichstag.
Soon after becoming chancellor he announced new
elections. On 27th February, a week before the election was due to
take place, someone set fire to the Reichstag. A young man from the
Netherlands, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested and eventually executed for
the crime. As a teenager Lubbe had been a Communist and Goering used this
information to claim that the Reichstag Fire was part of a KPD plot to
overthrow the government.
Van
der Lubbe at his trial for arson (and treason)
Hitler gave orders that all leaders of the German
Communist Party should "be hanged that very night." Paul von
Hindenburg vetoed this decision but did agree that Hitler should take
"dictatorial powers". KPD candidates in the election were arrested
and Hermann Goering announced that the Nazi Party planned "to
exterminate" German communists. The SA rounded up members of the KPD on 6
March, one day after the election:
Four thousand members of the Communist Party and Social
Democrat Party were arrested and sent to recently opened to concentration camps.
By the end of the year the number totalled 100,000.
Left-wing election meetings were broken up by the Sturm
Abteilung (SA) and several candidates were murdered. Newspapers that supported
these political parties were closed down during the 1933 General Election.
David
Low, 1 March, 1933
The
Election Result 5 March 1933
Although it was extremely difficult for the opposition
parties to campaign properly, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party still failed to
win an overall victory in the election on 5th March, 1933. The NSDAP received 43.9% of the vote and only
288 seats out of the available 647.
This presented the Nazis and Hitler with an issue. In
order to be able to pass the Enabling Act, they required a clear majority in
the Reichstag. Therefore, they arrested the Communist members, intimidated the
Centre Party and the Social Democrats. The Nationalists (DNVP) joined them.
Conclusion
In February 1933, Adolf Hitler had only a tenuous grasp on power.
Chancellor of Germany for merely four weeks, he led a fragile coalition
government. The Nazis had lost seats in the Reichstag in the recent election,
and claimed only three of thirteen cabinet posts. Then on February 27th, arson
sent the Reichstag, the home and symbol of German democracy, up in flames.
Hitler used
the Reichstag fire to consolidate his power:
·
He expelled the communists from Parliament and
imprisoned many communist leaders. This stopped them campaigning prior to the
March elections.
·
He announced that the country was in danger from
the communists during the election campaign. This encouraged many to vote for
the Nazis, who were seen as anti-communist.
·
Hindenburg declared a state of emergency using
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. This resulted in newspapers being
censored and personal letters and phone calls being checked. This is seen as
the start of the end of democracy in Germany.
Both these actions helped the Nazis to win more seats in the election of
5 March 1933, increasing their share of the vote from 33 per cent to 44 per
cent. This gave the Nazis and their allies, the German National People's Party
(who won 8 per cent of the vote), a majority of 52 per cent in the Reichstag.
This facilitated the passing of the Enabling Act on 23rd March 1933. Hitler
could now pass laws without consulting the Reichstag or the President. Weimar
democracy was dead.
Sources exploited in
this lesson:
Textbooks
Walsh
Lacy and Shephard ‘Germany 1918-1945’ (SHP)
Hite and Hinton ‘Weimar and Nazi Germany’ (SHP A-Level
textbook) – embedded sections within pack + blog
Digital
Superb online encyclopaedia with well selected primary
sources:
Richard J Evans dissects
and disagrees with Hett’s book in substance and approach:
Who Burnt the Reichstag? The Story of a Legend A.J.P. Taylor in History
Today (1960):
The US Holocaust
Memorial Museum:
Images
GHDI (German Historical Institute for Documents and Images):
Punch Magazine
Extension
Enrichment
reading below. Past Paper Questions as per below.
Enrichment
Reading:
A.J.P. Taylor ‘Who burnt the Reichstag? The story of a
legend’ History Today: http://www.historytoday.com/ajp-taylor/who-burnt-reichstag-story-legend
Benjamin Hett Carter: ‘Burning the Reichstag’
Len Deighton 'Winter: The Tragic Story of a Berlin Family
1899-1945'
Ian Kershaw ‘Hubris’ and ‘Nemesis’ – authoritative
biographical account(s) of Hitler’s rise and fall.
Past Paper Questions
May 2016 Paper 1
DEPTH STUDY B: GERMANY, 1918–45
11 Hitler increasingly
strengthened his control over Germany.
(a) Describe Hitler’s role
in the Nazi Party before 1929. [4]
(b) Why did the popularity
of the Nazi Party increase between 1929 and 1932? [6]
(c) ‘The Night of the Long Knives was the most important reason
Hitler was able to strengthen his control over Germany during 1933 and 1934.’
How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer. [10]
Nov 2015 Paper 1
DEPTH STUDY B: GERMANY, 1918–45
11 By 1933 Hitler had
achieved the position of Chancellor.
(a) What happened to Hitler
as a result of the Munich Putsch? [4]
(b) Why did the Nazi Party
have little success in elections before 1930? [6]
(c) ‘The election of 5 March 1933 was the most important reason
for Hitler gaining control over Germany.’ How far do you agree with this
statement? Explain your answer. [10]
Nov 2015 Paper 4 (43)
DEPTH STUDY B: GERMANY, 1918–1945
4 How significant was the Night of the Long Knives in securing
Hitler’s control of Germany? Explain your answer. [40]
May 2015 Paper 1 (12)
DEPTH STUDY B: GERMANY, 1918–45
11 In 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and by the end of
1934 he was Dictator.
(a) What was promised to the German people by the Nazis in the
election campaigns of 1930–33? [4]
(b) Why did Hitler turn against Röhm and the SA in 1934? [6]
(c) Which was the more important in allowing Hitler to
consolidate his power in 1933–34: the Enabling Act or the death of Hindenburg?
Explain your answer. [10]
2015 Paper 4 (42)
DEPTH STUDY B: GERMANY, 1918–1945
4 How important was violence in consolidating Hitler’s power
after he became Chancellor in 1933? Explain your answer. [40]
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