Political polarisation had led to parliamentary deadlock which presented the Hitler government with their opportunity to take power in January 1933. They lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Overnight on 27/28 February 1933 the Reichstag fire presented a timely justification for an accelerated termination of democracy. With implausible haste, the government blamed the fire on communists. On 28 February, as the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed by parliament, communist members of parliament and other activists were arrested. Ernst Reinke was one of them. He was taken to the and "badly mishandled". For more than a year he was then detained at the Esterwegen concentration camp in the north-west of Germany.