Reichstag Fire Decree
On 2 June 1932, Gürtner was nominated as Reich Minister of Justice under Chancellor Franz von Papen. After serving in the cabinets of Papen and Kurt von Schleicher, Gürtner was retained by Hitler in his post, and made responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in the Third Reich. Although Gürtner was not a Nazi, he shared the increasingly authoritarian bent of most of his DNVP colleagues. He fully supported the Reichstag Fire Decree, which effectively wiped out civil liberties in Germany. Indeed, on the day before the Reichstag fire, he proposed a bill that was almost as heavy-handed as the Reichstag Fire Decree; it would have instituted severe restrictions on civil liberties under the pretense of keeping the Communists from launching a general strike. He also merged the German judges' association with the new National Socialist Lawyers Association (Nationalsozialistischer Rechtswahrerbund), and provided a veil of constitutional legality for the Nazi State.