Reichstag Fire Decree - Effects

Effects

The decree was not accompanied by any written guidelines from the Reich government; this omission gave wide latitude in interpreting the decree to Nazis like Göring, who as Prussian interior minister was the commander of the largest police force in Germany. The Länder not yet in the Nazis’ grasp largely restricted themselves to banning the Communist press, Communist meetings and demonstrations, and detaining leading KPD officials. In Prussia, however, summary arrests of KPD leaders were common, thousands were imprisoned in the days following the fire, and the total number of arrests in Prussia on the basis of the Reichstag Fire Decree in the two weeks following 28 February is believed to be in the vicinity of 10,000. Göring had actually employed such tactics even before the decree, only to have them thrown out by the courts — a check that no longer had any effect with the decree in place.

Among the German communists arrested on the basis of the Reichstag Fire Decree was KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann; while KPD founding members Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht — later to be leaders in postwar East Germany — were among those who escaped arrest and lived in exile.

Göring issued a directive to the Prussian police authorities on 3 March, stating that in addition to the constitutional rights stripped by the decree, “all other restraints on police action imposed by Reich and Land law” were abolished “so far as this is necessary … to achieve the purpose of the decree.” Göring went on to say that

In keeping with the purpose and aim of the decree the additional measures … will be directed against the Communists in the first instance, but then also against those who co-operate with the Communists and who support or encourage their criminal aims… I would point out that any necessary measures against members or establishments of other than Communist, anarchist or Social Democratic parties can only be justified by the decree … if they serve to help the defense against such Communist activities in the widest sense.

Just over three weeks after the passage of the Reichstag Fire Decree, Hitler’s National Socialists further tightened their grasp on Germany by the passage of the Enabling Act. This act gave Hitler’s cabinet the legal power to decree laws without being passed by the Reichstag — effectively making Hitler a dictator. In theory, Article 48 gave the Reichstag the power to demand the cancellation of the measures taken to enforce the Reichstag Fire Decree. However, any realistic chance of it being cancelled ended in July; by this time the other parties had either been banned outright or intimidated into dissolving themselves, and the Nazi Party had been declared the only legal party in Germany.

The Reichstag Fire Decree remained in force for the duration of the Nazi era, allowing Hitler to rule under what amounted to martial law. Along with the Enabling Act, it formed the legal basis for Hitler’s dictatorship. Thousands of Hitler’s decrees, such as those which turned Germany into a one-party state, were explicitly based on its authority, and hence on Article 48. This was a major reason Hitler never formally abolished the Weimar Constitution, though it no longer had any substantive value after the passage of the Enabling Act.