Historical Events of the Revolutionary World Movement

90 years Berlin - The Reichstag Fire

90 years ago ...

REISCHSTAG-FIRE

- 27 FEBRUARY 1933 -

"The Reichstag in flames - set on fire by communists".
(Hitler)

The Nazis set the fire themselves !

Long live Communism

"Fascism is the mortal enemy of communism.

For fascism is the form of rule of rotten capitalism against a socialist change of the existing capitalist barbarism. The conditions of its continued existence is the destruction of the revolutionary workers' organisations, the decapitation of the fighting proletariat, its leaderlessness. Just as Noske crushed Spartacus in 1918/1919 to give capitalism a breathing space, so today, at a new low point of the post-war capitalist crisis, the organising force of the oproletarian struggle for freedom is to be crushed. The tops of the ruling class have changed. Its only enemy, communism, has remained the same. Not a hair of a capitalist has been touched, not a bank expropriated, not a stock exchange newspaper banned. But no KPD newspaper is published any more. The freedom of demonstration for the revolutionary workers has been completely abolished. The election material of the KPD is confiscated in heaps, workers are arrested, anti-fascists are killed by the brown gangs, even a poorhouse is stormed by the fascists.

The present regime is the highest concentration of all fascist forces to date. It is both the expression of the extreme intensification of fascist methods of attack against the proletariat, but at the same time it is also the expression of weakness, of the permanent fear of the revolutionary mass upsurge, of the realisation of the bourgeoisie that a solution of the crisis seems impossible to it in the foreseeable future. Fascism is neither able to remedy the general crisis, to cut through the nodes and contradictions of the Versailles system, nor to satisfy even the most elementary and burning needs of the working masses. The more fragile the capitalist system, the greater, faster and more surprising the internal and external conflicts, the narrower the parliamentary base of fascism, the more stubbornly, furiously and violently fascism will try to assert itself.

In our unbreakable will for socialism, we German communists and anti-fascists know ourselves to be at one with comrade Stalin, the leader of the world communist party: for Bolshevists, there is no fortress they would not conquer !"

* * *

ERNST THÄLMANN

On 27 February 1933 , the same date of the burning of the Reichstag, Ernst Thälmann addressed the Social Democratic workers with an appeal, in the form of an open letter, for a united front:

"With terror and persecution the bourgeoisie is trying to crush the working class and its organisations. Fascist bandits are committing a chain of assassinations of Social Democratic, non-party and Communist workers. Time and again, the Communist Party has expressed its firm, unbreakable readiness to lead the struggle against fascism together with all workers and every organisation who, in turn, are ready to fight. I extend my brotherly hand to you for the common struggle alliance against fascism. Long live the common struggle for workers' power and socialism!"

Ernst Thälmann called for the united front of the German working class against fascism until his death.

The social-fascist leaders, as we know, betrayed the workers' anti-fascist struggle and fought the KPD. And the revisionists have misused Ernst Thälmann as a useful victim to extend and assert their own power in the international communist movement.

* * *

On 27 February 1933, shortly after 9 p.m., a fire had been detected in the Reichstag building. A few minutes later the leading members of the Nazi Party arrived at the scene of the fire, They then accused the Communists of arson. That same night, the fascists arrested over 10,000 members and functionaries of the KPD throughout Germany. The communist press had been banned, while the fascist press was financially supported by the big capitalists.