Ich

Whenever I find the term "Third Reich" in an article, I usually change it to "Nazi Germany" or "during Nazi rule", which has less ideological baggage and is clearer to the unfamiliar reader.

The term "Drittes Reich" ("Third Empire") was coined in 1923 by German nationalist Arthur Moeller van den Bruck in a book of the same name, echoing ideas and language from much older Christian millennialism, messianism, and eschatology.^[a] An admirer of Mussolini, he imagined a future "third" German empire with a strong leader, as a successor to Germany's "first" (Holy Roman Empire, 800-1806) and "second" empires (German Empire, 1871-1918). Moeller van den Bruck's writings were influential among conservatives, and the Nazis incorporated many of his themes into their ideology and propaganda, adopting the term "Drittes Reich" to cast their brutal dictatorship as a rebirth and continuation of a perceived glorious national history. Using "Third Reich" implicitly accepts this tendentious, decontextualized narrative. In light of the term's origins, it should not be used uncritically.^[b]

Nonetheless, it wasn't long before opponents of Nazism were mockingly using the term "Fourth Reich" to imply the Nazi regime's days were numbered. After the Nazis had seized power, the term fell out of favor, due to its religious overtones and the associations with Moeller van den Bruck, who despite his ideological influence had been an opponent of Hitler. In July 1939, the Ministry of Propaganda ordered the press to stop using "Drittes Reich", suggesting instead "nationalsozialistisches Deutschland" or "Deutsches Reich". Under Nazi rule, Germany's official name was "Deutsches Reich" from 1933–1943; from 1943–1945, it was "Großdeutsches Reich".

After the war, former Nazis and Mitläufer generally preferred "Drittes Reich", as it came across as a neutral, anodyne-sounding name for the Nazis' murderous reign of terror. Beginning in the 1980s, the phrase "Drittes Reich" fell out of favor among German academics; by the 1990s, it had been supplanted in German newspapers and popular usage by "NS/Nazi-Zeit" or "NS-Diktatur" ("National Socialist/Nazi-Era" and "National Socialist Dictatorship" respectively). When the phrase is used in German today, it is often presented with a distancing "sogenannte »Dritte Reich«" ("so-called 'Third Reich'"), highlighting the need for a nuanced and critical awareness of the term's baggage.

I feel the reason many writers in English use "Third Reich" is because they are looking for more ornate language or want a (fancy) synonym to avoid constantly repeating the word "Nazi". I believe it is important to use language carefully, and while I can't change the way some books are named (like 1960's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or 1985's The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich), I am doing what I can to reduce Wikipedia's (mis)use of the term.

Lastly, if you consider the terms "Third Reich" and "Nazi Germany" effectively interchangeable, then my changes are at worst a quixotic but wholly uncontroversial waste of my own time.

 

 

In a similar vein, "died in the Holocaust" should be avoided in favor of "was murdered in the Holocaust". The verb "murder" is used preferentially by scholars and institutions such as Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the German government.

The Holocaust was systematic, premeditated, state-sponsored mass-murder, and its victims were not accidental deaths or casualties of war: they were murder victims. This encompasses not just fatal beatings, hangings, drownings, burnings, live burials, electric fences, shootings, firings squads, gas chambers, gas vans, poison injections, horrific medical experimentation, etc.: deaths in a ghetto, train car, or concentration camp from forced labor, deliberate squalid conditions, overcrowding, malnutrition, dehydration, cold, heat, exhaustion, suffocation, epidemic disease, or deprivation of medical care are still premeditated murders (i.e. foreseen and intentional). If someone deliberately locks a person in an unheated cellar without food or water for a week, the resulting death is not an accident: it is murder. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the official daily food ration was 180 calories, far below the level needed to sustain human life. (Polish people outside the ghetto received about 700 calories per day; Germans received 2,600.) Executions carried out by starvation are sometime referred to as "immurement"; the ghettos in German-occupied Poland have been described as instruments of "slow, passive murder". The Hunger Plan was the deliberate genocide of millions by starvation.

Furthermore, some Jews were driven to suicide to escape the torture, arrests, further persecution, or to end their needless, relentless suffering. A suicide committed by a person as a result of having been subjected to unspeakable psychological horrors is an indirect but still wholly deliberate murder.

The verb "die" is neutral and accurate for plenty of deaths, but when applied to the Holocaust, it obscures the Nazis' crimes. It is certainly appropriate to say "up to 12,000 people died during the 1900 Galveston hurricane"; the sentence "up to 900,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka extermination camp where they died" awkwardly elides the fact that these were premeditated murders. Using verbs like "died" or "perished" avoids assigning any blame or responsibility to the perpetrators.

From a legal standpoint, the governments of Allied-occupied, East, West, and reunited Germany all prosecuted and convicted perpetrators for the murders that took place during the Holocaust. Arguments that "murder is a legal term; the killings were lawful at the time" are a red herring: Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that Nazi Germany operated as an Unrechtsstaat or Verbrecherstaat, a criminal state whose legal system was perverted to pursue criminal means. The actions taken to legalize these murders were illegitimate and void ab initio, the same way that just following orders is not a defense for committing a war crime. When prosecuting perpetrators of Nazi crimes, post-war German courts have repeatedly applied the Radbruch formula, ruling that laws that deliberately pursued injustice were fundamentally incompatible with the tenets of a legal system, and thus were never valid laws, i.e. "an unjust law is no law at all."

In Germany, the federal government has taken full responsibility for the Holocaust and frequently refers to the events that took place during the Holocaust as "murder", such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. State and local governments also commonly use the term "murder" without qualification or controversy, as well as newspapers, academics, memorials, foundations, and companies that were involved as perpetrators. Simply put: murder is "the verb of choice in Germany's culture of public remembrance".

The Nazis' victims deserve better than to have words minced about their murders.

A fact from Ich appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 November 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that the song "Ermutigung" by Wolf Biermann, encouraging people not to become hardened in hard times, was written for Peter Huchel, then under house arrest? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/November.

 

 

 

 

Some pages I created or substantially improved. Much of the work I've done has been translating pages from German, with a particular focus on German music and breweries.

• Altbier - I added an image
• Arcobräu - translated from .de
• Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan - translated from .de
• Beer boot - translated from .de
• Beer stein - I added an image
• Berliner-Kindl-Schultheiss-Brauerei - translated from .de
• Berliner Pilsner - translated from .de
• Brauerei Gebr. Maisel - translated from .de
• Brauerei Gold Ochsen - translated from .de
• Brauerei Kaiserdom - translated from .de
• Brauerei zur Malzmühle - Substantial cleanup work
• Category:Breweries in Germany - I've worked on most of these articles, mostly adding logos, infoboxes, and citations
• Fill line - I created this article
• Fürstenberg Brewery - translated from .de
• Herzoglich Bayerisches Brauhaus Tegernsee - translated from .de
• Helles - translated from .de
• Klosterbrauerei Andechs - translated from .de
• Mecklenburgische Brauerei Lübz - translated from .de
• Neshaminy Creek Brewing Company - I did some cleanup work
• Paulaner - translated from .de
• Radeberger Group - translated from .de
• Rothaus - translated from .de
• Störtebeker Braumanufaktur - translated from .de
• Wheat beer - I added an image

• Bierbrand - translated from .de
• Bierlikör - translated from .de
• Bottle opener - I added an image
• Butter mountain - translated from .de
• Fischbrötchen - translated from .de
• Flip-top - translated from .de
• Gentian (spirit) - translated from .de
• Händlmaier - translated from .de
• Mexikaner - translated from .de
• Port tongs - translated from .de
• Sawdust brandy - translated from .de
• Succade - added new picture
• Toast - I added a picture

• Afrikanisches Viertel - translated from .de
• Fritz Schloß Park - translated from .de
• Goethepark - translated from .de
• Jungfernheide - translated from .de
• Kleiner Tiergarten - translated from .de
• Mohrenstraße - translated from .de
• Reformation Church - translated from .de
• Volkspark Rehberge - translated from .de
• Wuhle - translated from .de

• Directorate General for Public Security - translated from .de
• East German coffee crisis - translated from .de
• Federal Central Tax Office - translated from .de
• Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism - translated from .de
• Gedenkbuch - translated from .de and expanded
• Lobbying in Germany - translated from .de
• Jodeldiplom - translated from .de
• Reich Flight Tax - translated from .de
• Schlüsselgerät 41 - translated from .de
• Sindelfingen - I started this article
• Standing Committee on Vaccination - translated from .de
• Stasi Records Agency - cleaned and moved
• Transparency in Wage Structures Act - translated from .de
• Westpaket - translated from .de

 

• 4630 Bochum - translated from .de
• Badnerlied - translated from .de
• Chausseestraße 131 - I created this article mostly from scratch
• Computerliebe (Die Module spielen verrückt) - translated from .de
• E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals - I created this article from scratch
• Ermutigung - translated from .de
• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical) - I started this article
• IV (Ton Steine Scherben album) - translated from .de
• Keine Macht für Niemand - translated from .de
• Radkey - I added some pictures
• Solidaritätslied - translated from .de
• Warum geht es mir so dreckig? - translated from .de
• Wenn die Nacht am tiefsten... - translated from .de
• Wizo - I created this article and added some pictures on commons
• You have to win Zweikampf - I created this article from scratch

 

• Captive audience meeting - I created this article
• Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment - I created this article
• Faserland - I created this article
• First Look Media - I started this article
• GiveSendGo - I substantially expanded this article
• Green track - translated from .de
• Guy Montag - The first article I ever created
• Holographic will - I substantially expanded the international section
• Mystic Pizza - I started this article
• Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We... - I created this article
• The Intercept - I contributed a fair amount to this article
• The Rise of David Levinsky - I created this article but it's still not finished
• Women's International Zionist Organization - I started this article

• Steven G. Bradbury - I did a major revamp of this article
• Steven Engel - did some cleanup work
• Peter Frank - translated from .de
• Wolfgang Grams - translated from .de
• Gina Haspel - did some cleanup work
• Bruno Kahl - translated from .de
• Dionys Mascolo - translated from .de
• Harald Range - translated from .de
• Rita Jackson Samuels - made from scratch
• Gerhard Schindler - translated from .de
• Jagjit Singh (activist) - made from scratch
• Aminata Touré (German politician) - translated from .de

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This user has been on Wikipedia for 20 years, 9 months and 14 days.

-	This user likes to translate articles from German to English.

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