The Reichstag Fire 1933: Nazi Conspiracy or Lone Arsonist?

Introduction

On the night of February 27, 1933, fire broke out in the German Reichstag building in Berlin. Firefighters arriving around 9:14 PM found multiple simultaneous burn points in the plenary chamber. Marinus van der Lubbe, a 24-year-old Dutch communist, was found inside the burning building and immediately arrested. Within hours, Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler arrived at the scene and publicly blamed a Communist Party (KPD) conspiracy.

The Reichstag Fire is one of the most consequential events in twentieth-century political history — not because of the fire itself, but because of what happened the following morning. On February 28, 1933, Hitler presented President Paul von Hindenburg with the Reichstag Fire Decree (Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat), which Hindenburg signed. The decree suspended Article 48 civil-liberty protections including freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the inviolability of private correspondence. Within days, more than 4,000 Communist Party officials were arrested.

The question that historians have argued about ever since is whether van der Lubbe acted alone — and whether the Nazis knew in advance or even arranged the fire they so rapidly exploited.

What Is Documented and Undisputed

The following is not in dispute among historians:

• The fire happened. February 27, 1933, at approximately 9:14 PM.
• Van der Lubbe was arrested at the scene. He confessed to starting the fire and never recanted, claiming he acted alone as a protest against the oppression of the German working class.
• The Leipzig Trial (1933) convicted van der Lubbe alone on the arson charge. Four other defendants — KPD Reichstag member Ernst Torgler and three Bulgarian Comintern members including Georgi Dimitrov — were acquitted for lack of evidence. This outcome itself was embarrassing for the Nazi narrative.
• The Reichstag Fire Decree was signed on February 28, 1933. Its political consequences were immediate and catastrophic for German democracy.
• The German Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof) in 2008 reversed van der Lubbe's conviction posthumously, citing the 1998 German law that overturns Nazi-era convictions obtained through violation of fundamental principles of justice. This reversal addressed the conviction's legal legitimacy, not its factual basis.

The Historical Debate

The "Lone Arsonist" Position

The dominant scholarly view since Fritz Tobias published Der Reichstagsbrand in 1962 is that van der Lubbe acted alone. Tobias, a former intelligence officer turned journalist, examined thousands of documents from the trial and concluded that the physical and circumstantial evidence was consistent with a single determined arsonist, and that there was no credible documentary evidence linking the Nazi leadership to prior knowledge or orchestration.

This view was subsequently endorsed by Hans Mommsen, one of the most respected historians of the Nazi period, who argued that the Nazis were opportunists who exploited the fire but did not plan it. Mommsen's position — that the Nazis were sufficiently chaotic, reactive, and opportunist in their early months of government to have seized on an accident they did not create — has been influential.

The "Nazi Orchestration" Position

The claim that the Nazis arranged the fire is older than the debate itself. Rudolf Diels, the first head of the Gestapo, alleged in post-war memoirs that Göring had told him he knew of Nazi involvement. The early post-war period produced several books and a famous counter-trial (The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, 1933, produced by Willi Münzenberg for the Comintern) arguing for Nazi guilt, but these were heavily influenced by Communist Party interests and the documentary base was weak.

Benjamin Carter Hett's 2014 book Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich's Enduring Mystery reopened the question with fresh archival research. Hett examined records from East German archives that had not been available to Tobias, and argued that the single-arsonist thesis requires accepting capabilities that van der Lubbe — who was partially blind, unfamiliar with Berlin, and had arrived in Germany only weeks before — probably did not have. Hett does not definitively prove Nazi orchestration but argues the evidentiary balance is closer than Tobias's dismissal suggests.

Where Historiography Currently Stands

As of 2025, most mainstream historians who have written on the subject hold one of two positions:

1. Van der Lubbe acted alone, and the Nazis exploited the result (Tobias, Mommsen, Richard Evans). This remains the plurality view.
2. The question remains genuinely open, with recent archival evidence making the lone-arsonist thesis harder to sustain than Tobias believed (Hett, some German academic historians).

A minority position still holds that Nazi orchestration is the most parsimonious explanation, but direct documentary proof — a memo, a contemporaneous order — has never emerged.

The Fire, the Trial, and the Historiographical Debate

The Reichstag fire occurred on the night of February 27, 1933 — less than a month after Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was arrested at the scene, was found with fire-starting materials, and confessed to acting alone. The Leipzig trial of 1933 convicted van der Lubbe while acquitting the four co-defendants, including the Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov, whose acquittal embarrassed the Nazi prosecution. Van der Lubbe was executed in January 1934; in 2008 the German Federal Court of Justice issued a posthumous pardon under a law annulling Nazi-era convictions, addressing the legal injustice without adjudicating the historical question of sole versus multiple arsonists.

The historiographical debate has two main positions. Fritz Tobias's 1962 work, later endorsed by the historian Hans Mommsen, argued on the basis of forensic and documentary evidence that van der Lubbe acted alone and that Nazi claims of Communist conspiracy were fabricated post-facto. Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel's 2001 reconstruction, drawing on East German Stasi archival material, argued that the physical evidence of multiple ignition points was inconsistent with a lone arsonist. Neither position has achieved definitive consensus; serious historians including Richard Evans have assessed the lone-arsonist hypothesis as the more defensible reading of available evidence while acknowledging that the Nazi regime's exploitation of the event was immediate and orchestrated. The Reichstag Fire Decree, signed within hours of the fire, suspended civil liberties and press freedom, giving the Nazi government emergency powers that were never revoked.

The verdict of partially true reflects that the Nazi state did exploit the fire with apparent pre-prepared legal machinery, that structural features of the event remain unexplained on the lone-arsonist account, and that the political consequences were clearly beneficial to the regime — while the direct evidentiary case for Nazi orchestration falls short of documentary proof.

The Verdict: Partially True

The verdict "partially true" reflects the following:

• True and thoroughly documented: Hitler and the Nazi government exploited the Reichstag Fire to dismantle Weimar democracy through the Reichstag Fire Decree. The political consequence was not an accident; the decree had been prepared in advance and was signed within hours.
• Contested and unresolved: Whether the Nazis orchestrated or had prior knowledge of the fire is genuinely disputed among serious historians. The physical evidence is consistent with both positions; the documentary evidence for Nazi prior knowledge is suggestive but not conclusive.
• Van der Lubbe was real: He existed, he acted, and he was executed on January 10, 1934 — only days after the law was changed to make arson a capital offense retroactively.

The common shorthand — "the Nazis burned their own parliament" — overstates what can be proven. The common dismissal — "it was just a lone communist" — understates the legitimate historical uncertainty that serious scholars like Hett have revived.

What Would Change Our Verdict

• Discovery of a contemporaneous Nazi document ordering or authorising the fire
• Definitive forensic analysis ruling out single-arsonist capability
• Scholarly consensus formation definitively resolving the debate in either direction