When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he declared his new regime to be the third Reich, and that it would last a thousand years.

Turns out he was only off by 988 years.

The big question for many people outside of Germany was and still is if that was the third

Reich what were the first two Reichs and for non-German speakers what exactly is a Reich? Learn more about the First and Second Reichs and what exactly they were on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Before I get into exactly what the first and second Reichs were, it's probably worthwhile

to define exactly what a Reich is.

In German, the word Reich roughly translates in English to Empire.

For example, in German, the Roman Empire would be the Romishist Reich.

The Mongol Empire would be the Mongolist Reich. The word also has a second definition as

realm, examples of which I'll provide in a bit. So when Hitler was talking about

the Third Reich he was referring to a third German Empire. In German it was called

Drittis Reich. The idea of a Third Reich was not original to Hitler. The term was first coined in

1923 by the German historian and cultural commentator Arthur Molar Vandenbrooke.

Moeller wrote a book in the aftermath of the First World War titled

Das Drittereke or the Third Reich.

He was a right-wing German nationalist who thought that things like democracy, rationalism,

and the Enlightenment weren't true culture.

He felt that a fusion of the capitalism of the United States

and the communism of Russia could create a new German Empire.

Moller technically wasn't a Nazi but that's only because he killed himself in

1925 before the Nazi party rose to

national prominence.

I'm sure if he was around when the Nazis came to power he would have been an enthusiastic

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