The Reichstag Fire Decree, 28 February 1933 - the instrument, which canon held at zero
eventIntelligence & Surveillance
The fire is the part nobody can prove. The decree signed the next morning is printed in the official gazette — and this site did not have it.
Who they are
Hindenburg, who signed it, on the government's submission.
What they do
On 28 February 1933 the president signed an emergency decree suspending the freedoms guaranteed by Germany's constitution — speech, assembly, the press — and authorising mass arrests. The Social Democrats' newspaper was banned the same day.
How it works
This is the instrument that did the work, and it is why everything after it functioned. The 81 Communist members of parliament were arrested and shut out under this decree, and their absence is what made the arithmetic of the Enabling Act vote possible four weeks later. It is also the decree whose death-penalty clause was later applied backwards in time, and the decree whose repeal was promised in writing to the Catholic party in exchange for its votes — a promise never kept.
Why it matters
A search of this site for 'Reichstag fire' returned eight hits, every one of them about present-day politics. A search for the decree returned nothing. The dramatic event got borrowed and the legal machinery got left behind, which is the wrong way round if what you are tracking is how states actually take emergency powers.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #202] **In plain terms:** the fire is the part nobody can prove. This is the part printed in the official gazette, and the engine did not have it.
Canon returned ZERO hits for 'Reichstag Fire Decree' on 2026-10-19 while returning eight for 'Reichstag fire', all of them present-day template uses. The event was borrowed; the instrument was left out.
WHAT IS CARRIED: that on 28 February 1933 Reich President Hindenburg signed the Verordnung des Reichspraesidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat; that it suspended the civil liberties guaranteed by the Weimar constitution, including speech, assembly and press; and that it authorised the mass arrest of KPD and SPD functionaries. The German Historical Museum's chronicle for 28 February records 'Hindenburg unterzeichnet Notverordnungen' and that the SPD paper Vorwaerts 'wird vorläufig verboten'.
WHAT MAKES IT LOAD-BEARING FOR EVERYTHING AFTER IT, from Schneider 1953: it is under this decree that the KPD deputies were arrested and excluded, and its section 2 is what the Reich government relied on to install Reich commissioners in the states where the March 1933 takeover had not yet happened. It is also the decree whose paragraph 5 the Lex van der Lubbe then applied retroactively - see lex_van_der_lubbe_1933_03_29 - and whose repeal, promised in writing to the Zentrum in exchange for its Enabling Act votes, never came (see enabling_act_1933_03_23).
HELD OPEN: the gazette page. The research pass gave 'RGBl I S. 83' in a table and cited it nowhere in its body; the decree text was not retrieved for this record. The three-month-later mandate annulment of 8 March 1933 is noted in secondary accounts and not minted here. Held; name no holder.
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