Third Realm - Name

Name

The official name of the state was the Deutsches Reich ("German Reich") from 1933 to 1943, and the Großdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich") from 1943 to 1945. The name Deutsches Reich is usually translated into English as "German Empire" or "German Reich". The term "Reich" does not always connote an empire; the official name of Germany remained "Deutsches Reich" during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933).

Common English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich." The latter, adopted by the Nazis, was first used in a 1923 novel by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. The book counted the medieval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) as the first Reich and the German Empire (1871–1918) as the second. The Nazis ignored the Weimar Republic, which they denounced as a historical aberration, contemptuously referring to it as "the System". Modern Germans refer to the period as Zeit des Nationalsozialismus ("National Socialist period") or Nationalsozialistische Gewaltherrschaft ("National Socialist tyranny").