Five Brothers and a War

Fascism

1. The First Reich was the Heiliges Römisches Reich , the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted from the coronation of Otto I as a Holy Roman Emperor in 962 to 1806, to the Napoleonic Wars. 2. The Second Reich was the Deutsches Reich, the German Empire, which lasted from the unification of Germany in 1871 to its collapse after World War I, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. 3. At that point, the Weimar Republic was created, which continued to use the name “ Deutsches Reich” as its official name, though Hitler regarded it as an interim reich. It lasted from 1933 until Hitler declared the Dritte Reich , or Third Reich in 1933. Of course, it did not last the thousand years it was supposed to, and the 12 years it existed were hardly utopian. Critically important to Hitler was that all of these had Germany at their center, which would work to Hitler’s advantage in fomenting the nationalism required to pull the nation out of its doldrums and catapult it to the top of the world, to fulfill its rightful destiny. Much has been made of the ability of one person to dupe an entire nation, yet the reality is that this happens all the time. After the February and October Revolutions in Russia in 1917, and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922, the world’s political systems were challenged by the ideologies of communism, and the opposite system, fascism. The origins of fascism can be traced to the Roman Empire. The essential comparison of the two systems include a number of facets. In pure communism, there is no direct leader, because everyone is equal, according to the classic “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Fascism is a system that holds the state as the ultimate glory, and therefore is always headed by a charismatic, strong man. The two are similar in one key area, notably in the need for central planning, but for very different reasons. In communism, central planning is done to ensure that everyone is equal, but in fascism, it is done to further the nationalist intentions of the state. Both are expansionistic, in order to subvert competing systems. Within the context of World War I and World War II, the rise of communism was in many ways caused by a rejection of the aristocratic and monarchistic systems that were so instrumental in causing World War I. Almost 18,000,000 civilian and military deaths, along with about that number of wounded, shocked the world. Beyond the cost in terms of human lives, the economic cost was also monumental. The United States paid more than 50% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on the war. The impact on Great Britain was that it came close to bankruptcy. Aside from the actual money spent on the war effort, Great Britain was heavily impacted by declining international trade, because all affected nations had to re-convert and re-establish their own domestic industrial bases. The result was that Great Britain went through its deepest recession in 1919-22. The final two years of that recession saw deflation of 10% in 1921 and 14% in 1922. The impact of World War I on Russia was also enormous, and directly caused the Russian Revolution.

nazi germany

Five Brothers and a War

Page 147