Fourth Reich
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Fourth Reich (Viertes Reich) is a hypothetical future German empire that is the successor to Nazi Germany (1933–1945). The term Third Reich was coined by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck as the title of his 1923 book Das Dritte Reich. It was used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes to legitimize their regime as a successor state to the retroactively-renamed First Reich (the Holy Roman Empire, 962–1806) and the Second Reich (Imperial Germany, 1871–1918). The terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich" were never used by historians.
The term "Fourth Reich" has been used in a variety of different ways. Neo-Nazis have used it to describe their envisioned revival of Nazi Germany, while others have used the term derogatorily, such as conspiracy theorists like Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, Peter Levenda, and Jim Marrs who have used it to refer to what they perceive as a covert continuation of Nazi ideals, and by critics who point out that Germany exercises a dominant role in the European Union.
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