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The Reichstag fire ((ドイツ語:Reichstagsbrand), ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch council communist, was caught at the scene of the fire and arrested for the crime. Van der Lubbe was an unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany. He declared that he had started the fire and was tried and sentenced to death. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazi Party that communists were plotting against the German government. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. The fire started in the Session Chamber of the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament. A Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the building was on fire at 21:25.〔.〕 By the time the police and firemen arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was engulfed in flames. The police conducted a thorough search inside the building and found Van der Lubbe. He was arrested, as were four communist leaders soon after. Adolf Hitler, who was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany four weeks before, on 30 January, urged President Paul von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree to suspend civil liberties in order to counter the ruthless confrontation of the Communist Party of Germany. After passing the decree, the government instituted mass arrests of communists, including all of the Communist Party parliamentary delegates. With their bitter rival communists gone and their seats empty, the Nazi Party went from being a plurality party to the majority; this enabled Hitler to consolidate his power. In February 1933, three men were arrested who were to play pivotal roles during the Leipzig Trial, known also as the "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. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research. Historians disagree as to whether Van der Lubbe acted alone, as he said, to protest the condition of the German working class. The Nazis accused the Comintern of the act. A few historians endorse the conspiracy theory〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://blog.oup.com/2013/12/reichstag-fire-conspiracy-theories/ )〕 proposed by the Communist Party; that the arson was planned and ordered by the Nazis as a false flag operation. Whatever the truth, the Nazis used the fire to solidify their power and eliminate the communists as political rivals. ==Prelude== Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor and head of the coalition government on 30 January 1933. As Chancellor, Hitler asked German President Paul von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for a new parliamentary election. The date set for the elections was 5 March 1933. Hitler's aim was first to acquire a National Socialist majority, to secure his position and remove the communist opposition. If prompted or desired, the President could remove the Chancellor. Hitler hoped to abolish democracy in a more or less legal fashion, by passing the Enabling Act. The Enabling Act was a special law which gave the Chancellor the power to pass laws by decree, without the involvement of the ''Reichstag''. These special powers would remain in effect for four years, after which time they were eligible to be renewed. Under the Weimar Constitution, the President could rule by decree in times of emergency using Article 48. The unprecedented element of the Enabling Act, was that the Chancellor possessed the powers. An Enabling Act was only supposed to be passed in times of extreme emergency and had only been used once, in 1923–24 when the government used an Enabling Act to end hyperinflation (see hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic). To pass an Enabling Act, a party required a vote by a two-thirds majority in the ''Reichstag''. In January 1933, the Nazis had only 32% of the seats. During the election campaign, the Nazis alleged that Germany was on the verge of a Communist revolution and that the only way to stop the Communists was to pass the Enabling Act. The message of the campaign was simple: increase the number of Nazi seats so that the Enabling Act could be passed. To decrease the number of opposition members of parliament who could vote against the Enabling Act, Hitler planned to ban the ''Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands'' (the Communist Party of Germany or ''KPD''), which at the time held 17% of the seats, after the elections and before the new ''Reichstag'' convened. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reichstag fire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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