[The Reichstag in ruins]

Date

• 1933

Summary

• The empire which many Germans hoped would last a thousand years would not last as long as the republic it had brought down, but Hitler wasted no time consolidating his power and enforcing his rule. Less than a month after his assumption of power, the Reichstag building in Berlin was burned. The ash-heap visible in the photograph on this postcard had barely cooled before the new leader of the German people, blaming "enemies of the state," declared his "Decree for the Protection of the People and the State," which suspended all legal guarantees of human rights.