What we can still learn from the Reichstag fire

The Hill

27-02-2025

I'm always troubled when politicians or commentators attempt to link the authoritarianism of the Trump administration to 1930s Germany. The years that led to the Holocaust were unique in modern history, a systematic plan imposed by Hitler's government to identify, persecute, segregate, impoverish, expunge and ultimately annihilate an entire group of people based on underlying racial laws.
There are however, specific and isolated events during that period that can warn us today. One such occurred in Berlin, exactly 92 years ago: the Reichstag fire of Feb. 27, 1933.
The fire served as a convenient crisis for Hitler's government to declare a state of emergency and begin dismantling what had been a constitutional democracy. And similar events have been frequently replicated in the authoritarian playbook.
Almost a month after Hitler was installed as chancellor, an arson attack engulfed the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament. Firefighters and police found and arrested Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist. That night, Hermann Goring told Hitler, 'This is a communist outrage!' Hitler called the fire a 'sign from God.' The head of the Berlin fire department later presented evidence suggesting Nazi Party involvement in the fire. He was arrested, imprisoned, strangled and killed in prison.
The day after the fire, President Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended most civil liberties in Germany and banned media considered unfriendly to Hitler.
Despite van der Lubbe's own claims that he had acted alone, Hitler pushed the narrative of a widespread attack against the nation. Nazi party media outlets ignored overwhelming evidence to the contrary and amplified the claim.
Many Germans who had enjoyed liberal democracy consequently supported draconian measures to keep them safe, including the arrests of thousands of communists and the suppression of legitimate opposition parties in the parliament. In the elections one week later, the Nazi Party increased its share of the vote in the Reichstag from 33 percent to 44 percent.
Then came the second blow to democracy. On March 23, the parliament, where meaningful opposition to Hitler had been eliminated, effectively neutered itself by approving the Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler to rule by decree.
Since then, historians have argued whether the Reichstag fire was a conspiracy caried out by Nazi stormtroopers to justify Hitler's rollback of legal protections. Wiliam Shirer called van der Lube 'a dupe of the Nazis' who had been encouraged by them to set the building on fire. Still others, including Ian Kershaw, have argued that van der Lube acted alone, but that the emergency was exploited by Hitler.
Either way, the fire itself was what Hitler needed to terrify a population already buffeted by economic and social crises after World War I. In the name of national security, which hadn't actually been threatened, the German people surrendered their rights.
In a recent New York Review of Books essay, ' The Making of Emergencies,' Caroline Elkins reminds us of the long history of invoking emergency powers, in and outside of the U.S.. Since 1976, American presidents have declared national emergencies more than 80 times.
President Trump however, has come closer to the voices we heard in 1933 than any of his predecessors. He speaks of enemies within; he has repeatedly threatened to jail his political opponents (just Google 'Trump' and 'jail opponents' and choose from the multitude of links).
Vice President JD Vance has argued that judges can't control Trump's legitimate power, leaving the interpretation of 'legitimate' rather vague. And Trump himself recently posted on social media, 'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.'
I repeat, explicitly: the totality of events in Germany, starting 92 years ago, have no parallel with the totality of policies and social media posts today. But both the left and the right have learned how easy it is for people to toss away their freedoms when the fire alarm sounds.