[Peter Clare]

WHY THE THIRD REICH? A question I've often thought about, this goes some way to an answer.


This was the official name for the Nazi period of government from January 1933 to May 1945.
The First Reich (or 'Empire') was the Holy Roman Empire period of the German Nation begun in A.D. 962 when Otto the Great was crowned in Rome. This Empire, regarded as the union of Germanic States which dominated Europe after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. The First Reich did indeed last - more or less intact - for around a thousand years.
The Second Reich was founded by Otto von Bismarck in 1871 after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. When the Hohenzollern dynasty collapsed in 1918 with the abdication of Emperor William II, the Second Reich came to its end.
The days of glory under Bismarck led to the establishment of the ill-fated Weimar Republic. Unwanted and unloved it was proclaimed by the Social Democrats or Labour Party at the end of 1918 and which lasted until 1933.
In turn, it was followed by Hitler's Third Reich which he regarded as an empire that would also last for a thousand years. On January 30, 1933, President von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. (Hitler had adopted the term 'Third Reich' in the early 1920s after the German writer Arthur Moeller von der Bruck used it as a title for one of his books.) Hitler's 'Thousand Year Reich' actually ended up lasting only 12 years, 4 months, and 8 days. (2,191 days)