Adolf Hitler’s Third Empire

Founded in 1919 by a group of men who were frustrated by Germany’s defeat in the First World War, not to mention Germany’s crippling war reparations as stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles that heavily burdened the German economy, the newly-formed German Workers’ Party soon captured the attention of a charismatic army veteran named Adolf Hitler, who blamed Jews and Marxist Communists for the nation’s woes, espousing extreme nationalism and the concept of an Aryan “master race.” After the German Workers’ Party renamed itself the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party or simply the Nazi Party, in July of 1921, Hitler assumed leadership of the Nazis, where his fiery speeches swelled party ranks in response to his insistence that unemployment, runaway inflation and economic stagnation in postwar Germany could only be defeated by a total revolution in German society.

Superior Race Doctrine

Hitler’s vision for Germany further congealed after the 1923 publication of Arthur Moeller van der Bruck’s Das Dritte Reich or Third Empire, which called for the elevation of German intellectualism and nationalism, at the same time insisting much like Hitler’s emerging beliefs that Marxism and Western-style democracy were impediments to Germany’s ascendancy as a superior race and nation state. While scholars continue to disagree regarding Brock’s influence on Hitler’s vision for Germany, both men came to embrace the concept of a Third Empire or Reich, which would rise from the ashes of both the Holy Roman Empire followed by the German Empire. During his time at Landsberg Prison following his failed government takeover during the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, fellow revolutionary Rudolph Hess dictated Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf or “My Struggle” in the English, which insisted that Germany was not an economic or social entity but a racial one, requiring the removal of all non-Aryan races from the nation.

Lebensraum

He also called for Lebensraum or “living space,” which saw the need for Germany to expand eastward into Russia by pushing out or eradicating the Slavic people. Published in 1925, Mein Kampf became the de facto Nazi Party handbook, earning Hitler a staggering $27 million in today’s currency after he rose to power in 1933. Six years later, after Germany had sufficiently rearmed itself for an all-out war against Europe, Hitler ignited the Second World War after his blitzkrieg invasion of Poland, making Adolf Hitler’s Third Empire, a foundational primer for the horrors to come.