Fourth Reich

The Fourth Reich is a term used to describe a potential future golden age for German ascendency - a successor of the previous three German Reichs.

The term had currency in the 1960s and 1970s because several current or recent West German political figures, such as Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had ties to the former Third Reich regime. Jim Garrison, the investigator of the assassination of John F. Kennedy entitled a speech on the CIA's attempts to stifle his investigations "The rise of the Fourth Reich". Edwin Hartrich's 1980 book "The Fourth and Richest Reich" outlined West Germany's postwar reconstruction and its economic boom.

Joseph Wechsberg, scholar of the Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs who attended the Nuremburg Trials, in his 1967 book "The Murderers Among Us", wrote (pp.79-80): "At the Nuremburg trial I met a German who was there as a witness. I shall call him Hans... he was - and is - an outspoken anti-Nazi who now lives in Germany and must be protected... He had been a member of the Abwehr." Weschberg further quotes Hans (Wechsberg, p.80): "The Allied made a mistake when they tried to clean up Germany... Commendable, but hopeless. They will never understand the Nazi mentality... The Nazis' secret weapon is the pretty girls of Germany and Austria. The crisis is over, and the Nazis are getting cocky again. You would be surprised how much talk there is in Nazi circles about a future Fourth Reich. The big shots are abroad, plotting again. They live safely in certain countries that have no extradition treaties with Germany."

Neo-nazi usage

In terms of Neo-nazism, the Fourth Reich is an envisioned resurface of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. The social, mental, and governmental norm of Aryan Supremacy, anti-Semitism, "Lebensraum", aggressive-militarism, and totalitarianism would be re-enforced. Subsequently, neo-Nazis believe on a grand scale that this rise would pave the way for the establishment of the "Western Imperium", a potential pan-Aryan world empire encompassing lands with promient Aryan ties (Europe, Russia, Anglo-America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southern South America).

Fourth Reich today

In his book, [http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061245589/The_Rise_of_the_Fourth_Reich/index.aspx "The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America"] , Jim Marrs argues that some surviving members of Germany's Third Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere, given safe haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die Spinne, have been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to insinuate at least some of the principles of Nazism (militarism, fascism, conquest, widespread spying on citizens, use of corporations and propaganda to control national interests and ideas, etc.) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the United States. He cites the influence of Nazis brought into the United States at the end of World War II, such as Nazi scientists brought in under Operation Paperclip to help advance aerospace in the US, as having had influence in ways not expected by some involved in the original operation, and the acquisition and creation of conglomerates by Nazis and their sympathizers after the war, in both Europe and the US.

ee also

*Western Imperium
*Neo-Nazism

Bibliography

* Infield, Glenn "Secrets of the SS" (Stein and Day, New York, 1981) ISBN 0-8128-2790-2
* Schultz, Sigrid "Germany Will Try It Again" (Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, 1944)
* Tetens, T.H. "The New Germany and the Old Nazis" (Random House, New York, 1961) LCN 61-7240
* Wechsberg, Joseph "The Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs" (Mc Graw Hill, New York, 1967) LCN 67-13204