Reichstag fire

1933NotableContested

A fire at Germany's parliament becomes the pretext for suspending civil liberties.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Alexandria founded → Library of Alexandria → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → French Revolution → Revolutions of 1848 → German unification → World War I → Treaty of Versailles → Great Depression → Nazis take power → Reichstag fire

Contested history

Consensus: Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was caught at the scene and executed; the Nazis used the fire to suspend civil liberties.

Van der Lubbe acted aloneDebated by scholars

Argued by Fritz Tobias and accepted by many historians for decades.

Nazis were involved in setting itDebated by scholars

Historian Benjamin Carter Hett and newly found testimony revived this view.

A communist conspiracy, as the Nazis claimedDebunked

The other communist defendants were acquitted at trial.

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BookBenjamin Carter Hett

Burning the Reichstag ↗