Ben Wilson

Hitler's fury, by most accounts, was not performed.

He was genuinely, viscerally enraged.

This is someone who genuinely did hate communists.

Standing in the charred ruins, he turned to Papin and declared, this is a God-given signal.

Anyone who stands in our way tonight will be cut down.

He immediately, and without waiting for any investigation, proclaimed the fire to be the opening shot of a communist revolution.

A coordinated nationwide campaign of arson and terror that would plunge Germany into chaos unless it was stopped right now, tonight, with iron force.

By the following morning, he had convinced Hindenburg to sign what became known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, officially the decree for the protection of the people and the state.

The Reichstag Fire Decree is one of the most consequential documents of the 20th century.

In a single stroke, it suspended indefinitely the basic civil liberties guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution.

Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to privacy of postal and telegraphic communications, the inviolability of the home, the right to due process, and more.

It gave the Reich government authority to assume the functions of any state government deemed unable to maintain order.

It established the constitutional legal framework such as it was for everything that followed under Hitler.

Within hours of the decree signing, the Communist Party's Reichstag deputies had been arrested.

Coordinated sweeps across Germany detained hundreds of communist officials, union leaders, socialist journalists, lawyers, academics, everyone in the regime's crosshairs.

Six days later, on March 5th, 1933, the elections were held.

Under these conditions of mass intimidation, of state coercion, the NSDAP won 43.9% of the vote, okay?

Which is actually kind of a remarkable fact.

They still only won 44% of the vote.

However, together with their coalition partners in the German National People's Party, which is sort of the center-right nationalist party, they had a narrow but workable parliamentary majority.