On the night of February 27, 1933, a massive fire – apparently set by a Dutch communist who confessed to the crime, though other accounts suspect other communists or even Nazis – severely damaged the German parliament building, the Reichstag. Arriving at the scene, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler declared, “If this fire, as I believe, is the work of the Communists, then we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist.”
Within a month, Hitler incinerated German democracy.
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