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The death of Hindenburg was the most important reason for Hitler’s consolidation of power?
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2. Is this man the most unluckiest man in History?

3. How did the Nazis benefit from the fire?
Reichstag Fire
27th February
1933
How did the Nazis benefit from the fire?

4. How did the Reichstag Fire help Hitler?
In February 1933
Reichstag Parliament building mysteriously burnt to the ground.
Hitler claimed that the Communists were responsible.
Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to use Article 48 to start arrest any Communists.
The Nazis also did very well in the March 1933 elections (with the help of the Propaganda machine)

5. Who was to blame for the Reichstag fire?

6. Taken from historian A. Bullock (1952) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Source A
Goring had been looking for an excuse to smash the Communist Party. He at once declared that Van der Lubbe was only part of a larger communist plot to start a campaign of terror…
In fact, I believe that the burning of the Reichstag was planned and carried out by the Nazis themselves. Van der Lubbe was picked up by the SA (the brownshirts) after he had attempted to set fire to other buildings. He had been allowed to climb into the Reichstag and start a fire on his own in one part of the building while Nazis started the main fires.
Taken from historian A. Bullock (1952) Hitler: A Study in Tyranny

7. Source B
The Nazis had nothing to do with the burning of the Reichstag. The young Dutchman, Van der Lubbe, did it all alone, exactly as he claimed. Hitler and the other Nazis were taken by surprise. They genuinely believed that the Communists had started the fire.
Taken from A.J.P Taylor (1961) from the Origins of the Second World War.

8. Source C
“At a lunch given on the birthday of the Fuhrer in the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building. I heard with my own ears when Goering ( a leading Nazi) interrupted the conversation and shouted, ‘the only one person who knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!’’
General Halder, a Nazi chief of staff, speaking after the collapse of the Nazi state in late He was speaking at the Nuremburg trials. The trials convicted leading Nazis of war crimes.

9. Source D
“It never occurred to me that the Reichstag might have been set on fire”. Only when he heard the words ‘arson’ did it occur to him the fire had been set alight on purpose. “In this moment I knew that the Communist Party was the culprit…”
From Goering’s testimony at Van Der Lubbe’s trial in Goering was one of the four leading Nazis

10. Who was to blame for the Reichstag fire?

11. What might this cartoon be about?
It was published in England in February 1933.

12. Prep 4
Choose the Reichstag fire: Explain one effect on the democracy in the Weimar Republic of the event you have chosen (4 marks)