thumb|right|upright=0.8|The final issue of [[Das Andere Deutschland, announcing its own prohibition (Verbot) by police authorities under the Reichstag Fire Decree]]
The Reichstag Fire Decree (), officially the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (), was an emergency decree issued by Paul von Hindenburg on 28 February 1933, one day after the Reichstag fire. Issued under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, the decree suspended key civil liberties guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution, including personal liberty, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, the privacy of postal and telephone communications, and protections against house searches and property confiscation.
The decree became one of the central legal foundations of the Nazi dictatorship. It enabled the arrest and imprisonment of political opponents without specific charges, the banning of opposition publications and meetings, and the expansion of central government authority over the German states. Although formally promulgated as a temporary emergency measure, it remained in force until the end of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Background
The Reichstag Fire Decree emerged from the constitutional crisis of the late Weimar Republic. By the early 1930s, successive presidential cabinets were increasingly governing through emergency decrees under Article 48 rather than through stable parliamentary majorities, weakening the Reichstag and normalizing rule by decree. Article 48 allowed the Reich president, in cases where public order and security were "seriously disturbed or endangered", to take emergency measures and to suspend specific constitutional rights; it also required that the Reichstag be informed and allowed it to revoke such measures. According to Rudolf Diels, Hitler reacted to the fire by denouncing the alleged Communist perpetrators and insisting that ruthless measures were necessary.
Within hours of the fire, dozens of Communists had been arrested. The government publicly presented the blaze as the beginning of an insurrection and used that claim to justify much broader emergency legislation.
Promulgation
The decree was signed by President Hindenburg on 28 February 1933 and countersigned by Hitler, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, and Justice Minister Franz Gürtner. Other leading Communists, including Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht, escaped arrest and later lived in exile. The KPD nevertheless won 81 seats, but its deputies were prevented from participating effectively in parliamentary life as arrests, expulsions, and intimidation continued.