| Firemen in the Reichstag (German parliament) building after it was damaged by arson. The heart of the Reichstag was the plenary chamber, where the deputies met and deliberated. The plenary chamber was a room of nearly 7,000 square feet, originally designed to provide space for 397 deputies, but the number expanded as electoral participation rose. The deputies’ seats were arranged in a half-circle, rising up from the front of the room, where there was a large desk for the president of the Reichstag, the speaker’s podium, a desk for the stenographers, and seats for members of the Reich cabinet and of the Parliament’s upper house, the Bundesrat (“Federal Council”) during the Weimar Republic, it was changed to the Reichsrat (“Reich Council”). For the sake of better acoustics the chamber was furnished and paneled exclusively with wood. Its placement in the center of the building, with no windows to the outside world, was deliberate: the deputies were to be insulated from any and all disturbances. 21-year-old Werner Thaler (January 27, 1912 – June 11, 1943), a typesetter at the Nazi Party paper the Völkischer Beobachter (“Nationalist Observer”), was on his way home from work that night. He had walked along Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse from the Brandenburg Gate to the Reichstag, and crossed the square to the west, Thaler recalled later. He also remembered that by this time the 1st fire engines had arrived, which would make the time about 1718 Hours. Thaler naturally assumed the firefighters could handle the situation, and turned to go home. But as he crossed the Platz der Republik he “turned around one more time and noticed that the cupola of the Reichstag was brightly lit.” That could only mean a much larger fire in the plenary chamber at the center of the building. “I ran back to the firemen and told them that the interior of the building was also burning.” The firefighters attacked the plenary chamber from all sides, running 15 “B hoses” (75 millimeter) and 5 “C hoses” (45 millimeter) in from the south, east, north, and west entrances. Some of the water was drawn from a fireboat in the Spree. Once this equipment was in place it took only about 75 minutes to get the fire in the chamber under control, and it was completely extinguished by 0025 Hours. By that time, however, the chamber had been totally destroyed, while the glass and iron cupola above it was heavily damaged. Police and firefighters found other fires in the hallways around the chamber, but the damage from them was negligible, as was the damage to the restaurant. Head of the Preußische Geheimpolizei (“Prussian Political Police”) Rudolf Diels (December 16, 1900 – November 16, 1957) found Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) with Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (“Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda”) Joseph Goebbels (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945), Hermann Goering (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946), and Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick (March 12, 1877 – October 16, 1946) on a balcony overlooking the burning chamber. “Hitler stood leaning his arms on the stone parapet of the balcony and stared silently into the red sea of flames,” Diels recalled. “As I entered, Goering came towards me. His voice was heavy with the emotion of the dramatic moment. ‘This is the beginning of the Communist revolt; they will start their attack now! Not a moment must be lost!’” Diels could see that Hitler’s face was purple with agitation and the heat from the fires. The Führer now launched into 1 of his trademark rages: “There will be no mercy now. Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down. The German people will not tolerate leniency. Every Communist official will be shot where he is found. The Communist deputies must be hanged this very night. Everybody in league with the Communists must be arrested. There will no longer be any leniency for Social Democrats either.’” Goering ordered Diels to put the police on “an emergency footing” and insisted that no “Communist and no Social Democratic traitor must be allowed to escape us.” By the time Diels returned to the Alex he could already see the results: “astonished arrestees, dragged out of their sleep,” were being brought in droves to the Alex’s entrance. The arrestees were known opponents of the Nazis, their names and addresses carefully recorded; their number ran into the thousands. But even as the police carried out these official arrests there was a separate, unofficial arrest program. That night Berlin’s Nazi stormtroopers, the Sturm Abteilung (SA), also went looking for their enemies, mostly Communists. The stormtroopers, Hitler’s paramilitary enforcers during his rise to power, had also been making lists, complete with addresses, since at least 1931. They did not bother taking their prisoners to the headquarters of the Berlin police at Alexanderplatz—the “Alex,” to Berliners, however. Instead, they dragged them to SA headquarters, empty basements, and abandoned warehouses, for beatings, torture, and in many cases murder. Soon Germans were calling these improvised facilities wilde Konzentrationslager, or “wild concentration camps. Photo by Georg Pahl (October 20, 1900 – May 13, 1963), a German press photographer and journalist who founded his own company, A-B-C-Aktuelle-Bilder-Centrale. He was the 1st photographer to publish a photo of Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) when he was an early activist with the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; Nazis, or “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”). | |
| Image Filename | wwii1805.jpg |
| Image Size | 672.99 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2732 x 2008 |
| Photographer | Georg Pahl |
| Photographer Title | Aktuelle-Bilder-Centrale |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | February 28, 1933 |
| Location | Reichstag |
| City | Berlin |
| State or Province | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Bundesarchiv |
| Record Number | 102-04607 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database