The history of the Fourth Reich

From the New Statesman:  a rather fascinating review of a book that deals with the history of the Nazi idea of a Third (and now Fourth) Reich:  and it's fairly complicated.

First surprise:

...the concept of the “Third Reich” is more strange than it at first appears. For one thing, the term itself was effectively banned by Hitler in the lead-up to the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.

The reason is hard to pin down. Rosenfeld suggests that Hitler found its Christological associations unattractive and, moreover, misleading. The Führer did not want to make false promises about delivering any kind of regime associated with peace and world brotherhood when he was planning to realise it through war, conquest, extermination and sacrifice. Hitler instructed the German press to use other formulations such as the “Germanic Empire of the German Nation” (Germanisches Reich Deutscher Nation) and the “Greater German Empire” (Grossgermanisches Reich).

Second surprise:

A more intriguing explanation for the Nazis’ retirement of the “Third Reich” was that they were already contending with a barrage of counter-propaganda about a coming “Fourth Reich” by the anti-Nazi resistance. This is where Rosenfeld’s book becomes truly revelatory, for it seems perplexing that anti-Nazis would latch on to the concept of a “Reich” at all. But this is what many German Social Democrats in exile did. The former member of the German parliament Georg Bernhard and fellow SPD intellectuals went so far as to write a “Draft of a Constitution for the Fourth Reich” that would come about after the fall of Hitler. The Fourth Reich, its constitution declared, would be dedicated to global democracy and the equality of peoples.  

Third surprise (and perhaps the biggest, since I have never been to Indonesia):

The Fourth Reich is the latest in a grand series of works that Rosenfeld has devoted to the afterlife of Nazism. But towards the end of the book he makes one small assumption that strikes me as opening up the possibility of a further volume, about the Nazi afterlife in Asia. “Germany’s popularity”, he writes, “did not last” after the financial crisis of 2008. This may be true for Europe, but it is hardly the case globally, where, especially in south and south-east Asia, Germany is regularly ranked as the favourite country.

What is disconcerting for any European traveller to Indonesia, for instance, is not merely that people equate Germany with perfection – automobiles, appliances and football – but that Nazi prowess is also admired as an example of German excellence. That there was a genocide is not particularly notable for people who have lived through one of their own, but German nationalism coupled with industrialism and the apparent bounty of its socialism draws admirers. The news-stands of Jakarta are full of magazines devoted to U-boats alone. At the Soldatenkaffee in Bandung, couples order “Nazi goreng”, below the German heraldic eagle and a wall decorated with a slogan that reads: “We are Socialists, we are enemies of the capitalist economic system…” In a country where to be on the left is still forbidden, it’s at least cool to quote to Hitler.

So the wingnuts who have convinced themselves that the Nazis were always and in every sense socialists can go take comfort in some nutjob's cafe in Jakarta.   If only they would go and stay there.