The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

In 1807, following Prussia’s humiliating defeat by Napoleon at Jena, Johann Gottlieb Fichte began his famous “Addresses to the German Nation” from the podium of the University of Berlin, where he held the chair of philosophy. They stirred and rallied a divided, defeated people and their resounding echoes could still be heard in the Third Reich. Fichte’s teaching was heady wine for a frustrated folk. To him the Latins, especially the French, and the Jews are the decadent races. Only the Germans possess the possibility of regeneration. Their language is the purest, the most original. Under them a new era in history would blossom. It would reflect the order of the cosmos. It would be led by a small elite which would be free of any moral restraints of a “private” nature. These are some of the ideas we have seen Hitler putting down in Mein Kampf.