THE FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD REICH
The Nazis referred to themselves as the Third Reich, but it wasn’t a term they came up with. It became a familiar concept in right-wing German politics after the publication of a book by that title in 1923. What set the Nazis apart was the fact that they were basically alone in their belief that a Third Reich could succeed. Most everyone else thought the USA was going to take over a war-torn Europe with the industrial capitalism it developed by the end of WWI. It’s important to understand not only the politics of the Third Reich as it related to the First and Second, but to understand it as an overall three phase process.
The First Reich was founded back in the year 800 AD in what is now modern day Germany. It actually just called itself “The Empire” until June 1180 when it became “The Holy Roman Empire.” That lasted until the year 1806 AD. It emerged from what we call “The Dark Ages” and operated under a belief in its divine mandate to spread Christianity and European civilization.
They used this self-proclaimed civilizing mission to justify military conquests and the imposition of European cultural norms on populations deemed “savage” or “barbaric.” The Empire positioned itself as a protector of Christendom, with a sacred obligation to transform the lives and beliefs of those seen as inferior through conversion and cultural assimilation. Its most famous figure was none other than Christopher Columbus.
The Second Reich eventually emerged after the fall of the First. Generally speaking, this is not considered to be a particularly stable period politically, with a confederation of German states emerging in 1815. On the one hand, this period witnessed rising movements to establish a republic with a constitution and a capitalist economic system. On the other side though, forces like the Kingdom of Prussia wanted to stop this. They were trying to maintain a degree of what the First Reich once had, while fighting against outside forces including the Russian, French, Swedish, and the Austrian Empire.
After multiple wars, Germany’s Second Reich was established in 1871, brought together by Otto von Bismarck with the support of the King of Prussia. Though internal conflicts and struggles for unity remained, the Second Reich was a time of industrial growth and increased military power. It was also responsible for the establishment of settler colonies in Africa. Despite this though, it remained far behind other other colonial nations, including in its settler expansion. In losing WWI in 1918, the empire was defeated, lost all its settler colonies, and had to pay war reparations. Immediately after the war, it was then replaced by the Weimar Republic, which lasted until the first half of 1933.
From the perspective of those who wanted a Third Reich, the Second was a “lesser empire.” It was certainly genocidal, but it supposedly didn’t fully embrace that “civilizing mission” of the First Reich, nor did it sufficiently view its people as being ubermensch, superior to the “barbarians” and “savages” all around. This weakening of the warrior spirit, or so it went, was what led to the downfall. Rather than a dictator to unite the nation in a Third Reich as a “greater empire” to even the First, Germany fell to the feminized version, i.e. a republic where even the “savages” got a say.
In the eyes of the fascists, the republic was even weaker than the Second Reich under Bismark, its dictator. While the Nazis were trying to foster crisis to collapse the republic, they blamed cosmopolitan or multi-cultural ideas and of everyone becoming middle class. They said that without a robust national identity of a Third Reich, the pursuit of cosmopolitanism middle classes risked undermining the very foundations of governance and stability. Ultimately though, they were the ones weakening the very foundations of the republic, while capitalism began spiraling downward into crisis.
