Ever wonder why the Nazi dominion over Germany was called the “Third Reich” and who the first and second were? Well, wonder no more.
To begin with, the phrase “Third Reich” was first mentioned as the title of a book published by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck in 1923. As you might expect given the moniker for the regime caught on, the book was a hit with the far right in the region.
The author was a German cultural historian, who in the aftermath of the defeat of the First World War pondered the situation of the German nation and saw the newly established Weimar Republic with scepticism, as a non-natural entity. He wished for a more nationalistic solution. A revolution that would bring forth a German form of fascism, incorporating ideas of Nietzsche instead of those of Marx, to combine socialism with nationalism.
You’ll be further unsurprised from this description that this book had a huge influence on the Nazi party – which at the time was still in its early growing phase. Within his musings, Moeller more or less prophesied that a future ideal state with all German peoples (including Austria) would be the “Drittes Reich” in German, which we call the “Third Reich”. A more full translation however would be the “Third Empire”.
