During the period of long simmering fears over an amorphous international threat -- communism -- German opposition forces were willing to give Hitler the chancellorship despite his capturing only a minority of votes during the recent election. But it was the Feb. 27 Reichstag fire, a fire that the Nazis accused a Dutch Communist of setting, that sent the country on a quick road to fascism. Within 60 days, Hitler had begun the process of arbitrary arrests, warrantless surveillance and searches, incarceration without charges, suspension of habeas corpus, the implementation of torture, the mustering of a private army, and was pushing through the passage of the "Enabling Act," which gave Hitler and his henchmen the power to ignore the legislative branch and write laws themselves.