== Consolidation of Power ==
In the lead up to the 1933 election oppression and harassment of of political opponents increased. On February 27, 1933, six day before the Reichstag election, the Dutch National and communist Marinus van der Lubbe was caught setting the Reichstag on fire. While the exact events surrounding this event are still contended, it was blamed on a communist conspiracy. President Hindenburg signed the Reichtag Fire decree the next day, which increased Hitlers powers and gave him the opportunity to arrest political opponents, among them elected members of parliament.
In the election the national socialist failed to win a majority, but the newly formed Reichstag voted in favor of an Enabling Act, giving the national socialist government the power to enact new laws without interference from parliament or constitution. In the summer of 1933 the Nazi government declared first the communist and social democratic party illegal, briefly afterwards all other parties. At the end of the year the Reichstag cast officially into law that Germany was a one-party-state.