The Coming of the Third Reich

Instead of seeing the Third Reich’s origins in the Protestant Reformation or the absolutism of the 18th century, Evans traces them to Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of the German Empire in the late 19th century. Bismarck came from both the northern German kingdom of Prussia’s traditional nobility, the Junkers, and the modern “civil service nobility” (2). He opposed socialism, liberalism, democracy, “and many other aspects of the modern world” (3).

Since the Early Middle Ages, Germany had been divided into many different principalities and city-states loosely united under the Holy Roman Empire or the “Thousand-year Reich” (4). After Napoleon expanded his empire into Germany, the Holy Roman Empire collapsed and, by 1815, its territories were reorganized as the German Confederation. During the 1848 Revolution, revolutionaries in the German Confederation tried and failed to establish a liberal constitution. Historians argue that the 1848 Revolution was completely crushed, and Germany was steered toward authoritarianism. Yet, after 1848, many German states developed guaranteed human rights, freedoms of speech and press, and democratic assemblies.

Inspired by Italy, which had recently unified as a single nation-state, German liberals hoped to do the same. Although a conservative, Otto von Bismarck acknowledged the spread of nationalism in Europe and worked toward German unification once he became a minister of Prussia.