Editing Reich (section)

===During the Nazi period===
The [[Nazism|Nazi]]s sought to [[Legitimacy (political)|legitimize]] their power [[Historiography|historiographically]] by portraying their ascendancy to rule as the direct continuation of an ancient German past. They adopted the term ''{{lang|de|Drittes Reich}}'' ("Third Empire" &ndash; usually rendered in English in the partial translation "the Third ''Reich''"), first used in a 1923 book entitled ''[[Das Dritte Reich]]'' by [[Arthur Moeller van den Bruck]],<ref name=TR-N-01>{{cite book|title=The man who invented the Third Reich: the life and times of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck|date=May 1, 1999|publisher=Npi Media Ltd|isbn=978-0-75-091866-4}}</ref> that counted the medieval [[Holy Roman Empire]] (which nominally survived until the 19th century) as the first and the [[German Empire|1871–1918 monarchy]] as the second, which was then to be followed by a "reinvigorated" third one. The Nazis ignored the previous [[Weimar Republic|1918–1933 Weimar period]], which they denounced as a historical aberration, contemptuously referring to it as "[[The System (Nazism)|the System]]". In the summer of 1939, the Nazis themselves actually banned the continued use of the term in the press, ordering it to use expressions such as ''Nationalsozialistisches Deutschland'' ("National Socialist Germany"), ''Großdeutsches Reich'' ("[[German question|Greater German Reich]]"), or simply ''Deutsches Reich'' ([[German Reich]]) to refer to the German state instead.<ref name="Vocab">Schmitz-Berning, Cornelia (2000). [https://books.google.com/books?id=9jmWOMks6bkC&pg=PA607 ''Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus'']. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10875 Berlin, pp. 159–160. (in German)</ref> It was Adolf Hitler's personal desire that ''Großdeutsches Reich'' and ''nationalsozialistischer Staat'' ("[the] National Socialist State") would be used in place of ''Drittes Reich''.<ref name="Vocab"/> ''Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden'' ("[[Reich Chancellery]] [[Berchtesgaden]]"), another nickname of the regime (named after the eponymous town located in the vicinity of [[Berghof (residence)|Hitler's mountain residence]] where he spent much of his time in office) was also banned at the same time, despite the fact that a sub-section of the Chancellery was in fact installed there to serve Hitler's needs.<ref name="Vocab"/>

Although the term "Third Reich" is still commonly used in reference to the Nazi dictatorship, historians avoid using the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich", which are seldom found outside [[Propaganda in Nazi Germany|Nazi propaganda]]. During and following the ''[[Anschluss]]'' ([[annexation]]) of [[Austria]] in 1938, Nazi propaganda also used the [[political slogan]] ''Ein [[Volk]], ein Reich, ein [[Führer]]'' ("One nation, one ''Reich'', one leader"), in order to enforce [[Pan-Germanism|pan-German]] sentiment. The term ''{{lang|de|Altes Reich}}'' ("old Reich"; cf. French ''ancien regime'' for monarchical France) is sometimes used to refer to the [[Holy Roman Empire]]. The term ''{{lang|de|Altreich}}'' was also used after the Anschluss to denote Germany with its pre-1938 post-World War I borders. Another name that was popular during this period was the term ''Tausendjähriges Reich'' ("Thousand-Year Reich"), the [[Millennialism|millennial connotations]] of which suggested that [[Nazi Germany]] would last a thousand years.

The Nazis also spoke of enlarging the then-established Greater German Reich into a "[[Greater Germanic Reich|Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation]]" (''Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') by gradually and directly annexing all of the historically Germanic countries and regions of Europe into the Nazi state ([[Flanders]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Denmark]], [[Norway]], [[Sweden]] etc.).<ref>Elvert, Jürgen (1999) (in German). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=siuV-6dosWwC&pg=PA325 Mitteleuropa!: deutsche Pläne zur europäischen Neuordnung (1918–1945)]'', p. 325. Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH. {{ISBN|3-515-07641-7}}.</ref>