The Fourth Reich
The Specter of Nazism from
World War II to the Present Gavriel D Rosenfeld
Cambridge University Press 2019 Hb, 408pp, £22.00, ISBN 9781108497497
In this volume Professor Rosenfeld surveys the concept of a Fourth Reich not just from 1945, rising phoenix-like from the ashes, but how it has biblical roots and is tied to German folklore and the way it arose during the existence of the Third Reich. He has previously written on alternative histories of the Third Reich, but here he uses academic counterfactuals to examine how events of 1945–49 might have affected the development of German democracy.
The idea of a Fourth Reich has cropped up in The Boys From Brazil, The Odessa File, Marvel and DC comics, even in Mission Impossible and The Man From UNCLE. The Dead Kennedys sang about it and films like
Iron Sky have exploited (albeit ironically) the fear of a resurgent Reich. Postwar films such as
The Stranger (1946), by Orson Welles, showed Nazis embedded in US society: “Who would think to look for the notorious Franz Kindler amongst America’s first families?”. In Counterblast (1948), Nazi scientists intend to wage bacteriological warfare; and in Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), the Brazil-based Nazi weapon of choice is an atom bomb.
Writing in 1932 at the cusp of Hitler’s rise to power, Kurt van Emsen outlined the Fourth Reich which he believed would replace Nazi power. There would be a universalism in State, Church and Economy. Hitler was merely “the drummer of the German revolution”. A new ‘CommunisticChristian brotherhood’ would emerge. After building a new empire in Central Asia it would join with Hindu cultural circles in the spiritual homeland of the Aryans, creating an Armanist– Atlantic Reich. Other opponents of the Nazis hoped for a more prosaic, democratic Germany.
During the Allied occupation, there were several serious attempts at Nazi uprisings and mass infiltration of emerging government bodies and civil society. Using counterfactual methodology, Rosenfeld considers to what extent these plots might have succeeded, given slight changes in variables. But Allied soldiers, administrators and German public servants were killed in attacks. Readers will also be interested in an actual plot to wage germ warfare, and incidents of cannibalism during post-war famine in Germany. A wide-ranging survey with many ‘what ifs’ covers the idea of a Fourth Reich through history, the fear of a Nazi revival, the reawakening of fascist parties in Europe and even how the European Union is portrayed as the Fourth Reich.
Not just of interest to WWII or Nazi history buffs, there is also plenty here to provide forteans with stimulating mind candy. Páiric O’Corcráin ★★★★★