The Nazi Party used whatever opportunity they created, or were given, to further their campaign destroy the Weimar Republic, and with it the possibility of future elections and any accountability. The Reichstag Fire was a key one of those events, used to justify the outlawing of opponents and mass repression, including murder, of anti-fascists and labor as they consolidated state power in 1933. Accusing Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe of starting the fire as part of a wide, top-level Communist conspiracy with others like Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov, whose successful self-defense at the subsequent trial brought him world renown. The Supreme Court would find all the defendants but van der Lubbe, who was executed, not guilty. In response Hitler created a new court to try treason cases so that would not happen again. Below is a statement signed by Wilhelm Pieck for the C.P.’s already hard-hit leadership on the events.

‘Declaration on the Reichstag Fire and Leipzig Trial’ by the C.C. of the Communist Party of Germany from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 13 No. 43. September 29, 1933.

The following important declaration was sent by the C.C. of the C.P. of Germany to the International Commission of Enquiry in London, with the following accompanying letter:

“Contrary to the assertions of the German incorporated press, according to which the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany have placed themselves in safety outside of the German frontiers, the Central Committee of the C.P. of Germany states that all members of the Central Committee, insofar as they have not been arrested or murdered, are still in Germany. The plans for provocation prepared by the Hitler government, and which have already been exposed by the Communist intelligence service, render necessary the presence of every leading member of our Party in Germany. We therefore request you to take note of this declaration and to have it read out before the Commission.”–ED.

The burning of the Reichstag, staged by the Hitler government, served the obvious purpose, in a general pogrom atmosphere created by the terrorist act, to suppress the Communist Party, to proclaim the bloody terror against all anti-fascists as necessary for reasons of State, and to enforce a “people’s plebiscite” for the Hitler-Hugenberg government on the day of the Reichstag election on March 5. The “plans of revolt” of the C.P. of Germany, inspired and forged by the lie-propaganda minister. Göbbels, and at present published by the German press, as well as the attempts on the lives of Hitler and Hindenburg, dynamite outrages and poisoning of wells, for the carrying out of which the burning of the Reichstag is alleged to have been the signal, is the desperate attempt at absolution by a political band of adventurers and criminals found guilty by the whole world. The fact alone that, according to the reports of the German press, the “discovered material” is based on official sources, whilst the same press has to admit a few lines farther on that official material was not placed at the disposal of the press, shows that it is nothing else but forgery and invention. It is not the first time, and even lacks all originality in the history of the persecution of the German and the international labour movement, that provocations and forgeries have been resorted to in order to create the pretext for slaughtering revolutionary workers in the interests of the “safety of the State.”

Contrary to the German fascist government, which before its seizure of power promised the masses of its supporters the social and national revolution, and now, after the seizure of power, interns in concentration camps even those of its own supporters who demand the fulfilment of the promises made:

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” (From the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Engels.)

The existence of the fascist dictatorship in Germany confirms the correctness of the Communist strategy and tactics, that the ruling capitalist class cannot be overthrown by means of the “peaceful” “democratic seizure of power,” as the social democracy maintains, but only by the organised revolutionary force of the proletariat acting unitedly and the working strata allied with it. Precisely, therefore, the Communist Party leaves no stone unturned in order to lead the majority of the proletariat into the general strike by means of organising partial and mass struggles, so as to prevent the setting up of the fascist dictatorship of blood and starvation. The class-treacherous policy of the German social democracy and of the German General Federation of Trade Unions prevented the revolutionary mass actions of the German working class. The social democracy and the trade union federation, under the leadership of Wels, Leipart, Severing and Grzesinski, replied to the open general strike offer made by the Communist Party on July 21, 1932, against the fascist coup d’état in Prussia with cowardly and contemptible capitulation to the fascist rulers. These leaders replied in the same way to the renewed offer of a general strike made by the Communist Party on the occasion of the taking over of the government by Hitler on January 31 and the national socialist Reichstag arson on February 27. The dominating influence which the social democracy at that time still exercised over the majority of the German proletariat rendered it impossible for the Communist Party to bring about in February, 1933, the overthrow of the fascist regime by revolutionary mass actions and to adopt the revolutionary way out of the crisis.

The Communist Party of Germany, as the only party of Marxism, is ruthlessly combating all putschism and political adventurism. It thereby bases itself upon the strategy of Marxism-Leninism:

“We cannot win the victory with the advance-guard alone. To throw the advance-guard alone into the decisive fight before the whole class, before the broad masses directly support or. at least, exercise a benevolent neutrality towards it, would not only be stupid, but also a crime.” (Lenin.)

The Communist Party openly declares to-day that the Hitler dictatorship can only be overthrown by the general strike and its development into the violent uprising of the majority of the German proletariat. The Communist Party, unbroken in its strength and filled with the firm confidence of its victory, declares that it is working uninterruptedly, in daily illegal mass work, in defiance of every kind of terror, for the day of revolutionary settlement with the social and national deceivers. It is precisely for this reason that the Communist Party is not pursuing any “secret plans of revolt,” but is openly preparing together with the masses the forceful uprising against the Hitler dictatorship. Hence it is irreconcilably opposed to provocation and individual terror as fighting methods. Individual terror and provocations are the methods of a ruling system doomed to perish, in order to divert the masses from the fight for their own emancipation and to make use of the most backward sections of the toiling people for pogroms against the progressive revolutionary advance-guard. The Reichstag arson is part and parcel of the methods of the fascist dictatorship in Germany, just as the fascist dictatorship itself represents the terrorist form of the rule of the capitalists and junkers for exploiting and oppressing the toiling masses and preventing the inevitable social revolution.

Against the forger’s tricks employed at present by the Hitler government and its propaganda minister, Göbbels, against the Communist Party, the Central Committee of the C.P. of Germany is able to produce numerous Party official and programmatic documents on the question of the individual terror. The Central Committee refers, inter alia, to its decision of November 10, 1931, in which the ideological and practical defence of individual terror was declared to be incompatible with membership of the Party. The Central Committee refers to the important programmatical statements of its imprisoned leader, Ernst Thaelmann, which were published in the theoretical review of the Party, “Die Internationale,” of December, 1931, No. 11/12:

“Those workers who allow themselves to be influenced by the systematic Nazi provocations and apply the same methods of individual terror in defence, are alienating themselves from the principles of Marxism-Leninism in regard to the methods of the proletarian struggle for emancipation. For individual terrorism has just as little place in the system of Leninism as the cowardly, miserable, liberal talk of the social pacifists…needless to say, we Communists are in favour of using force, without which no historical transformation has been possible…But all this has nothing to do with individual terror, into the meshes of which the national socialist murderers wish to entice the revolutionaries. Class-conscious workers, who allow themselves to be diverted from the tasks of mass work to this sphere of individual terror, exchange the armour of Leninism for the methods of the social revolutionaries of the period of Russian Tsarism, methods which have long ago been refuted by the history of the labour movement. Thus the decision of the C.C. of the C.P. of Germany of November 10, 1931, against individual terror is by no means, as the bourgeois press wishes to persuade the revolutionary workers, a mere tactical manoeuvre in order to safeguard the Party against prohibition, but in reality not meant seriously. On the contrary, the main reason for this extremely serious and important decision was the consideration that any neglect of the Bolshevist fight against individual terror and any conciliatory attitude to it would only facilitate the game of the national socialists and thereby of the bourgeoisie who wish to divert the working class from the decisive revolutionary tasks of the mass struggle.”

Only a government whose members are interested in concealing the origin and perpetrators of the Reichstag arson, only political bandits who are daily making workers and intellectuals, Christians and Jews the target of their provocations, of their sadism, their moral depravity and political bargaining, can impute to the Communist Party the use of individual terror and provocations, arson and poisoning of wells as fighting methods.

The Communists, Torgler, Dimitrov, Popov, and Tanev, accused in the Leipzig trial, have just as little to do with the Reichstag arson as the Hitler government has to do with the social and national interests of the German toiling people. The intellectual instigators of the arson are Hitler, Göring, Göbbels, the German Reichs government and the leaders of the storm troops and special troops, Heine, Helldorf and consorts, entrusted by Göring to carry out the job.

The Central Committee of the C.P. of Germany submits this declaration to the world public, and exposes at the same time the fresh plans of provocations of the Hitler government to be carried out in the autumn and winter, and which were discovered by the Communist intelligence service (bomb outrages on railways and water-works, arson on peasants’ farms, robber attacks, attempts on the lives of leaders of the storm troops and special guards, as well as on members of the Reichs government).

By means of the Leipzig trial, by means of the judges and lawyers dependent on the Hitler government, by means of the witnesses bought by the government, the Hitler government wishes to justify its past crimes and cover up its future provocations.

The Central Committee of the C.P. of Germany is firmly convinced that the fresh threatening crimes of the Hitler government, before all the threatening judicial crime against Ernst Thaclmann, disciplined revolutionary mass struggle of the German proletariat, the leader of the Communist Party, will be prevented by the by the revolutionary united front of the social democratic and Communist workers against the class-treacherous policy of waiting pursued by the social democratic leaders.

The Central Committee of the C.P. of Germany calls upon the workers of the world and all friends of the proletarian emancipation movement to side with the German communards in the fight of the Communist Party of Germany, the only organising force for the overthrow of the Hitler dictatorship, for winning the proletarian Soviet power, for the German workers’ and peasants’ Republic.

Berlin, September 14, 1933.

Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany. (Signed) Wilhelm Pieck.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1933/v13n43-sep-29-1933-Inprecor-op.pdf