Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - What Were The First and Second Reichs? (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he declared his new regime to be the Third Reich, and that it would last a thousand years. Turns out he was only off by 988 years. The big question for many people outside of Germany was, and still is, if that was the Third Reich, what were the first two Reichs? And for non-German speakers, what exactly is a Reich? Learn more about the First and Second Reichs, and what exactly they were,

Starting point is 00:00:33 this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Before I get into exactly what the first and second Reichs were, it's probably worthwhile

Starting point is 00:01:19 to define exactly what a Reich is. In German, the word Reich roughly translates in English to empire. For example, in German, the Roman Empire would be the Romishist Reich. The Mongol Empire would be the Mongolist Reich. The word also has a second definition as realm, examples of which I'll provide in a bit. So when Hitler was talking about the Third Reich, he was referring to a third German Empire. In German, it was called Drittus Reich. The idea of a Third Reich was not original to Hitler. The term was first coined in 1923 by the German historian and cultural commentator, Arthur Mueller Vandenbrook. Mueller wrote a book in the aftermath of the First World War titled Das Drittir Reich, or the Third Reich. He was a right-wing German nationalist who thought that

Starting point is 00:02:08 things like democracy, rationalism, and the Enlightenment weren't true culture. He felt that a fusion of the capitalism of the United States and the communism of Russia could create a new German empire. Mueller technically wasn't a Nazi, but that's only because he killed himself in 1925 before the Nazi Party rose to national prominence. I'm sure if he was around when the Nazis came to power, he would have been an enthusiastic Nazi. Nonetheless, the Nazis used the idea and language of a Third Reich in their propaganda.

Starting point is 00:02:38 So, okay, if that's the origin of the phrase, third Reich, it still raises the question, what were the first two Reichs? These were the first two German empires. Empires, which, to be totally honest, had nothing to do with Nazis other than the fact that the Nazis wanted to ride on the coattails of past German success. The first Reich in this three-Rike framework was the Holy Roman Empire. In German, it's called the Heiligest Romishist Reich. I've previously done an episode on the Holy Roman Empire, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it. The Holy Roman Empire was established in the year 800 by the Emperor Charlemagne and ended in 1806 when the last emperor, Francis II, abdicated the throne. The Holy Roman Empire was a very odd empire as empires went. The emperor was elected, and the throne

Starting point is 00:03:24 was not necessarily handed down from father to son, although it often was. It also wasn't a unitary state. The empire was really a collection of smaller kingdoms, principalities, and duchies. If you ask the average person who lived in the Holy Roman Empire where they lived, they probably would not say the Holy Roman Empire. They would be much more likely to identify with whatever the lower level jurisdiction they lived under. Also, it wasn't necessarily a German state. There were many non-German parts of the empire, which at times included things like Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. It's important to note that while in the Nazi worldview this was the First Reich, Charlemagne and his successors did not consider them to be the first of anything. The whole point of the empire,

Starting point is 00:04:08 Its name and getting crowned by the Pope in Rome was that it was supposed to be a continuation of the Western Roman Empire. So neither Charlemagne nor anyone else considered themselves to be a First Reich. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, all of the smaller states which made up the empire splintered. Some of them like Prussia and Bavaria were sizable, but others were nothing more than city states. In 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, 39 of these German states formed the German Confederation. The German Confederation was an attempt to fill the void left by the Holy Roman Empire. However, the Confederation was extremely weak. Each individual state was sovereign, and they didn't have to heed what the Confederation said. There was a grassroots movement of German nationalism

Starting point is 00:04:53 across the Confederation to try to create a united Germany. There were a series of revolutions across Europe in 1848, which included an attempt at creating a unified German state, complete with rights guaranteed to the people such as press, speech, and assembly. Ultimately, the revolutionaries were unorganized and the aristocrats won out. By the mid-19th century, Prussia had established itself as the dominant state in the German Confederation. In 1862, Otto von Bismarck was appointed as the Minister-President of Prussia. Bismarck was not a revolutionary, but was rather a high-ranking official who believed in German unification. In 1867, the North German Confederation was established, which was a more unified state and the earliest thing which could be traced back to

Starting point is 00:05:37 modern Germany. The North German Confederation consisted mostly of what is today northern Germany and much of northern and western Poland, and the first chancellor was Otto von Bismarck. The event which brought about real German unification was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This was a resounding victory for the German states led by Prussia. While France technically declared war on Germany, many people think that Bismarck was clever in goading France into acting first so they would appear as the aggressor. The Franco-Prussian War was actually an important turning point in history, and will be the subject of a future episode. It set the fuse, which would explode 45 years later with the First

Starting point is 00:06:15 World War. But more immediately, the Franco-Prussian War was the trigger to finally create a unified Germany. On January 18, 18, 1871, as Prussian forces laid siege to Paris, the leaders of the various German states assembled at the Palace of Versailles to proclaim the creation of the German Empire, or as it was known in German, the Deutsche Reich. The German Reich consisted of almost all German lands, except for Austria, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, with some non-German lands thrown in as well. The head of state of this new country was Kaiser Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia, and the new chancellor was Otto von Bismarck. This was the creation of the Second Reich, also sometimes known as the Hoenzollern dynasty named after the Prussian royal house. I really need to stress that until 1871,

Starting point is 00:07:05 there was no such thing as a country called Germany. Germany was a term to describe the cultural and linguistic lands where German was spoken. There were German people, but no country of Germany. So, Otto von Bismarck would probably have considered the German Reich to be the First Reich, as it was the first true German state. And I'm guessing Charlemagne probably would have agreed with him. The German right grew militarily and economically powerful over the next several decades. They were at the forefront of industrialization in Europe, as well as producing some of the world's best scientists. In a previous episode, I talked about the Schleifen plan and German preparations for the First World War. There is an argument to be made that ever since the end of the Franco-Prussian War, another war between France and Germany was inevitable.

Starting point is 00:07:49 It was just a matter of when it would happen, not if. And I don't need to rehash the story of the First World War. After four horrible years, the end result was the capitulation of Germany, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the disillusion of the German Empire. In its place was the New Republic of Germany, or Joychus Republic. However, the New Republic actually kept calling itself by the same name as the previous government, the German Reich. Most people are familiar with this government as the Weimar Republic.

Starting point is 00:08:20 Whereas the term Third Reich was not created by Hitler, the term Weimar Republic actually was. Hitler coined the term Weimar Republic in 1929, in reference to the Constitutional Assembly which created the Republic, which meant in the city of Weimar. The term Weimar Republic wasn't widely used outside of Germany until the 1930s after the Nazis took control of the German government. The Weimar Republic suffered a host of problems, including hyperinflation and political extremism, and this eventually paved the way for Hitler to come to power in 1933. While Hitler unofficially called his government the Third Reich, the official constitutional name of Germany never changed. It was still officially called the German Reich. He also called his government the Thousand-Year

Starting point is 00:09:04 Reich, which he was wildly off about as the Third Reich only lasted for 12 years. So, the Holy Roman Empire and the Hoenzollerun-Zolan dynasty were the First and Second Reichs, and the Nazis were the self-proclaimed Third Reich. Is there, or was there, a Fourth Reich? And the answer, is no. The term Reich has fallen out of favor since the end of the war for obvious reasons. However, the term is still in limited use in some cases. The German federal government building is still known as the Reichstag, but the word is used more in the sense of the term realm, not empire. Fourth Reich has mostly been used as the name of fictional Nazi governments, or it's often used as a pejorative when someone wants to say something against the current

Starting point is 00:09:47 German government. I should close by noting that this idea of three Reichs has no real basis in anything. There's no direct line connecting any of these governments, save for the fact that they all happen to have been in Germany. It was an invention of Arthur Mueller Vandenbrook, and adopted by Adolf Hitler to try to aggrandize Nazi Germany by associating it with past successful German states. Historians will probably continue to call the Nazi regime the Third Reich, and that's fine it has to be called something. But just be aware that the other two Reichs really didn't have anything to do with the Third, and it was all the creation. of a 1920s German nationalist.

Starting point is 00:10:28 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects,

Starting point is 00:10:52 please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - What Were The First and Second Reichs? (Encore)

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