1 Haken: {looking out of the zeppelin windows over a night landscape with city lights dominated by a large glow} Soon we land in Berlin. Look. You can see die glow on die horizon.
2 Monty: A navigation beacon for zeppelins?
3 Haken: Nein. Die Communists burn down die Reichstag every Monday around this time.
3 Monty: Convenient.
4 Haken: Ja. Die Führer likes to remind people who he is framing.

The Reichstag fire was an important event in the establishment of the Nazi Party as the rulers of Germany in 1933. On the night of 27 February (yes, a Monday), the Reichstag - the building in which the German Parliament assembled - caught fire and was partially destroyed by a subsequent explosion.

Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany less than a month earlier. Parliamentary president and Nazi Party official Hermann Göring quickly declared the fire the work of communist insurgents. Hitler then declared a state of emergency and persuaded the aging German President Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended the Weimar Constitution, thus nullifying many of the basic civic liberties previously guaranteed to German citizens on the grounds that the state needed to act against communism and needed the powers to search, detain, ban, disperse, and censor anything they deemed subversive.

In hindsight, von Hindenburg's assent wasn't the greatest political move ever made.

As to the fire itself, known communist Marinus van der Lubbe was tried, found guilty, and executed by the Nazis after he confessed to starting the fire. It later emerged that van der Lubbe had been tortured to confession. Later in 1933, a retrial held by the pre-Nazi German Imperial Court found the (now dead) van der Lubbe and the Communist Party leaders to be innocent. This infuriated Hitler, who established his own court, the Volksgerichtshof, at which treason and other capital offences were to be tried. The Volksgerichtshof became famous for the huge number of death sentences it handed down.

Further investigation into the Reichstag fire further muddied the waters, with serious suspicions (including a sworn affidavit by Nazi general Franz Halder at the Nuremburg Trials) that Göring himself had started the fire. Historians argue variously that communists really did start the fire and that the Nazis simply seized a golden opportunity to tighten their grip on Germany, while others conclude that the Nazis masterminded the entire plot themselves and framed the communists. The truth may never be known... until this comic becomes common knowledge.

The background photo here is another royalty-free unrestricted non-commercial use image from the fine folks at stock.xchng. Ironically, given the subject matter of this theme, the city shown is in fact Tel Aviv. I added the fire digitally.