The general consensus among historians today is that the NSDAP was not responsible for the fire, but that they were preparing for some type of pretext to expand the emergency powers they already possessed. Several legal measures that greatly expanded the central government's power had already been instituted before the Reichstag Fire Decree. The emergency decree "For the Protection of the German People" of 4 February had granted the Chancellor the right to ban political parties, press organs, and lock up political opponents. Such decrees built on prior precedents in the 1930s when various central governments used the emergency powers of the constitution to curtail press freedoms and other political restrictions. The SA had already been elevated to the status of auxiliary police by 22 February. The Reichstag Fire Decree provided a capstone for removing most of the civil rights protected by the constitution, yet many of these rights were in the process of already being stripped away. The debate over the fire's origins often obscures this crucial facet of the death of Weimar.

Richard J. Evans at the LRB has a good book review essay explaining the mainstream historical opinion on the fire as well as the more heterodox historians who maintain the NSDAP was guilty of a conspiracy.