Ernst Torgler (25 April 1893 – 19 January 1963) was the last chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) faction in the German Reichstag before he worked for the Nazis.

Against the wishes of the KPD leadership, Torgler voluntarily handed himself over to the police on February 28, the day after the fire, when Hermann Göring issued a warrant for his arrest.

Heinz Linge would recount in his memoirs, published under the title "With Hitler To the End", that Torgler was eventually released as part of an amnesty offered to the former leaders and pre-eminents of banned parties, on the condition that they make signed statements that they would not partake again in political activity that would be to the detriment of the regime (something that Linge suggested Ernst Thälmann refused to do).

In 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Torgler worked on anti-Bolshevik propaganda at the behest of Joseph Goebbels.

Linge recounted in his memoirs that Torgler had done this having heard from his son, who had served on the Eastern Front, about the horrid conditions that the "Russian worker" had been enduring under Stalin.

Hitler supposedly reacted happily, stating in Linge's presence: "We should send all German Communists to Russia, to see the paradise for themselves."

[citation needed] After World War II, he was denazified and landed a job with the administration of Bückeburg, with help of the US Army.

His son, Kurt Torgler (1919–1943), was a witness on behalf of his father at the 1933 countertrial in London that was organised by the German Communist Party on the Reichstag fire.