The Reichstag Building on fire.

The Reichstag fire (German: Der Reichstagsbrand) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

At 21:25hrs (UTC +1), a Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament, was ablaze. The fire started in the Session Chamber,[1] and by the time the police and firefighters had arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was engulfed by flames.

Inside the building, a thorough search conducted by the police resulted in the finding of a naked Marinus van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe was a Dutch insurrectionist, council communist and unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany, ostensibly to carry out his political activities. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that the Communists were beginning a plot against the German government. Van der Lubbe and four Communist leaders were subsequently arrested. Adolf Hitler, who had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany four weeks before, on 30 January, urged President Paul von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree in order to counter the “ruthless confrontation of the Communist Party of Germany”.[citation needed] With civil liberties suspended, the government instituted mass arrests of Communists, including all of the Communist parliamentary delegates. With them gone, and their seats empty, the Nazis went from being a plurality party to the majority; subsequent elections confirmed this position and thus allowed Hitler to consolidate his power.

Meanwhile, investigation of the Reichstag fire continued, with the Nazis eager to uncover Comintern complicity. In early March 1933, three men were arrested who were to play pivotal roles during the Leipzig Trial, known also as “Reichstag Fire Trial”: Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov. The Bulgarians were known to the Prussian police as senior Comintern operatives, but the police had no idea how senior they were; Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe.

Historians disagree as to whether van der Lubbe acted alone or if the Nazis were involved. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research.