Das Dritte Reich
Das Dritte Reich (German for 'The Third Realm') is a 1923 book by German author Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the ideology of which heavily influenced the Nazi Party. The book formulated an "ideal" of national empowerment, which found many willing adherents in a Germany desperate to rebound from the Treaty of Versailles.
 First edition | |
| Author | Arthur Moeller van den Bruck |
|---|---|
| Language | German |
| Subject | German nationalism |
Publication date | 1923 |
| Media type | Print book |
For Moeller van den Bruck, Germany's great misfortune lay in the political system created by the Weimar Republic, one of competitive parties and liberal ideologies. An admirer of Benito Mussolini, he called for a strong leader.
Concept
Moeller van den Bruck's empire is not a state in the usual sense of the word, but is the ideal condition and the only way in which the scattered German people can achieve a common purpose and destiny. However, this should not be a limited state, and the Second Reich established by Otto von Bismarck was an imperfect empire as it did not include Austria, which survived on from "our First Empire", side by side with "our Second Empire". According to the author, "Our Second Empire was a Little-German Empire which we must consider only as a stepping stone on our path to a Greater German Empire."
The weak Weimar Republic, he argues, will have to be replaced by a new revolution from the right. He also calls for a new political movement that will embrace both socialism and nationalism, a unique form of German Fascism. He takes all of his philosophical cues from the work of Nietzsche "who stands at the opposite pole of thought from Marx". The one contemporary politician he praises above all others is Benito Mussolini.
Implications
On the eve of publication Moeller van den Bruck inserted a preface, in which he wrote that "The Third Reich is but a philosophical idea and not for this world, but for the hereafter. Germany could well perish dreaming the Third Reich dream." To pursue the philosophical idea, he believed Germany would need an Übermensch of the type described by Nietzsche, but to him that individual was not Adolf Hitler, nor anyone living.
Soon after the collapse of the Munich Putsch he wrote: "There are many things that can be said against Hitler, and I have sometimes said them. But one thing you have to give him credit for: he is a fanatic in his devotion to Germany. He is undone, though, by his proletarian primitive ways. He does not know how to give an intellectual basis to his Nazi party. Hitler is all passion but lacks sense or proportion. A heroic tenor, not a hero. (Meaning, in an operatic sense, an aspiring but ultimately comical figure full of pathos rather than an actual protagonist.)" Hitler, in the eyes of van den Bruck, was no Mussolini. These were the last words he is known to have written before his suicide in 1925.
References
- Fritz Stern. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. University of California Press, 1974. ISBN 0-520-02626-8
- Stan Lauryssens. The Man Who Invented the Third Reich. History Press, 2011. ISBN 978-075-246816-7