Today in history: The burning of The Reichstag advances the Nazi party

There are a lot of theories out there about what established the Nazis as the prevailing political party in Germany in the early 20th century and many of them were coincidental such as the Great Depression occurring right around the same time that resulted in the population becoming disenfranchised with their elected leaders. However, the rise of potential Communist takeover of the government was something that was a major concern for Nazis, who just a few years before the Depression enjoyed a mere 3% level of support.

The Nazi party (which was also called The National Socialist German Workers’ Party at the time) wasn't in full command of the government and the Communist party was basically in a dead heat for control at the time.

But something like a fire in a major political building, and some rather crazy accusations afterwards, put an end to the 3-way deadlock in governance and gave the Nazis complete power over the country's legislators and eventually, the rise of Adolf Hitler as a dictator who was already serving as Chancellor.

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This fire was what many consider to be the false flag operation that resulted in many things, including Hitler's rapid rise to power and it all happened today in 1933.

There were things that lead up to this fire that eventually gave Hitler complete power over the government of Germany and one of them was a raid on the Communist Party headquarters that resulted in the discovery of contested or planted materials that the Nazis claimed were seditious and contained information stating that they intended to attack and destroy government buildings. Isn't it a little convenient that shortly after this raid something of that exact nature happened.

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Witnesses at the scene when the fire began claim to have heard the sound of broken glass around 9pm just before the blaze started. The fire, which became huge very quickly ended up being blamed on a single person, an unemployed Dutch man named Marinus van der Lubbe who was conveniently just standing outside the building with what was described as "firelighters" on his person. Apparently, he made no attempt to flee the scene even though it took firefighters several hours to put out the blaze. Does this sound a bit sus yet?

There has been much debate over the years about van der Lubbe's involvement but most people come to the conclusion that given the very large size of the fire and the fact that it was a rather conspicuous building with security, that there is very little chance that a single individual could have possibly started a fire of that magnitude especially considering the very limited tools that he had on his person.

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Whether or not he had help from the Nazis or even if he had anything to do with the blaze at all is something that has never been resolved. He confessed to the crime citing that he had operated alone and was sentenced to death for the crime.

Less than a month after the investigation had been completed regarding the blaze, the government passed the "Enabling Act" which granted complete power to then Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his ministers. This still didn't ensure Hitler complete power though because then President Hindenburg still retained the ability to relieve Hitler and his ministers of their positions. For reasons the world still doesn't know, Hindenburg did not do this and a year later when the President died, Hitler wrote a new law that combined the powers of President and Chancellor effectively making him and his cohorts the sole rulers of Germany that could not be voted out.

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_{one of the many pictures of Hindenburg and Hitler together}

We all know what would end up happening shortly thereafter of course. The rise of Hitler to power and subsequently the most famous war the world has ever known (and hopefully ever will know) might not have happened if it had not been for the Reichstag Fire and to this day no one has come forward with the truth about what really happened that night. It is presumed that all people with real knowledge of what happened died in WW2 or if they didn't, they were very good at keeping secrets.

The German government exonerated Marinus van der Lubbe in 2008, 75 years after he was put to death for a crime that it appears as though he couldn't have possibly done unassisted.

I suppose the lesson here is to be very careful about what you decide to trust from a potentially manufactured government crisis - because at least in my mind, this isn't the only one of these that we have seen in our lives.

It all happened today 90 years ago.