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90 years ago – a key moment in the rise of the Nazis 
JOHN ELLISON assesses the significance of the Reichstag fire, for which communists were blamed in the early days of Hitler’s dictatorship
FRAME-UP: Firemen work on the burning Reichstag, 1933

ON FEBRUARY 27 1933, 90 years ago, Berlin’s parliament building, the Reichstag, was set alight, less than a week before polling in national elections was due.  

National Socialist Party leader Adolf Hitler, appointed chancellor four weeks earlier by president Paul von Hindenburg, seized the moment to declare total war on democratic processes and political opponents, and in the hope of maximising electoral support for the Nazi party.  

In Britain, the next day, Labour’s Daily Herald reported the fire, “said to have started in five or six places at once,” and the cause of which was “a complete mystery.” 

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