Third Reich, the Nazi state of Germany

By Isabella Ponce de León

The designation "Third Reich" was created in 1922 by the romantic-conservative, writer-intellectual Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. In his publication Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich), Moeller envisioned the rise of an anti-liberal, anti-Marxist Germanic Empire in which all social class divisions would be reconciled in national unity under a charismatic "Führer" (leader), who was Adolf Hitler. Moeller's "Third Reich" referred to two previous Germanic Empires: Charlemagne's medieval Frankish Empire and the German Empire under the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty between 1871 and 1918.

This government existed from January 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945.

The rise to power of the Nazis led to the end of the Weimar Republic, a democracy established in Germany after the First World War. Following the naming of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Third Reich quickly became a government in which the Germans had no basic right guaranteed. After a suspicious fire in the German Parliament, in February 28, 1933, the government issued a decree that suspended constitutional civil rights.

Here is where it began a cruel dictatorship by the antichrist leader Adolf Hitler.

In the first months of Hitler's chancellorship, the Nazis instituted a policy of "coordination" and made the alignment of individuals and institutions with the same goals of the Nazis. Culture, economics, education and law all came under Nazi control. The Nazi government also tried to coordinate and organize the German churches, and although it was not entirely achieved, the government won support from a majority of Catholic and Protestant clergymen.

An extensive propaganda was used to spread the goals and ideas of government. With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler assumed the powers of the presidency. The army took personal loyalty to Hitler. He was very popular and so was his government, he was also charismatic and nice with the people. According to the "Fuehrer principle", Hitler was out of legal state and he determined his own policy issues. He had all in his favor: The power, the army and the followers.

 The Nazi foreign policy was guided by the racist belief that Germany was biologically destined to expand to the east by military force and the population that was racially superior should expand and establish a permanent authority in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler turned Germany into a world power through his many conquests and through his ability to control and manage his country perfectly.

Here the women had an important role. Aggressive population policy encouraged women of the Third Reich "racially pure” to have as many Aryan children possible. They made this because they considered the Aryan race as the authentic and pure Germanic race, that is why they encourage these women to have as many children as they wanted.

 Within this system, people "racially inferior" as Jews and Gypsies, would be eliminated and viciously exterminated in the region. The foreign policy of the Nazis went from the beginning to make a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, and the years of peace in the  Nazi rule were passed preparing the German people for war. In the context of this ideological war, the Nazis planned and carried out the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews, who were considered the enemy "racial" principal, and other people who had different ideologies than the Nazis or rebelled against the Nazi system. The open criticism of the government was suppressed by the Gestapo (secret state police) and the Security Service of the Nazi party, but Hitler's government was popular with most Germans. The Allies defeated Nazi Germany and forced the German surrender on May 8, 1945.

This government was like no other. Through these 12 years innumerable unfair acts were carried out: Massacres of almost an entire race happened and racist ideas were spread through all the European continents, affecting more millions of people who were sent to concentration camps and were killed by Nazi hands. But also the intelligent and dissatisfied Fuhrer led a destroyed Germany, to be a world power in his first 6 years of leader. This has been never seen in history which speaks of a formidable government.