The Reichstag fire at the end of February 1933 was immediately blamed on the KPD, and before the end of the year participants in the Ziegenhals meeting and most of the other active communist party politicians had either fled abroad or else been arrested. The Communist Party structure was shattered. Kippenberger took on and preserved much of its paramilitary apparatus under conditions of enhanced secrecy and certain important tasks were accomplished, but the Gestapo nevertheless succeeded in infiltrating his information and communications structures.