The Man Who Invented the Third Reich [Paperback]

Stan Lauryssens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 2010

The man who created the concept of the Third Reich, had a great influence upon Hitler, and was horrified at what he unleashed 

 

This remarkable biography of the key figure in the formation of the political ideals behind the Third Reich charts the progress of a political activist as his theories became reality, and the repercussions that led to his suicide. Arthur Moeller van der Bruck’s seminal work Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich) was Hitler’s main inspiration, and it was the authoritarian state hypothesized by Moeller that Hitler implemented, taking his recommendations of violent dynamism to achieve increasingly his own aims. Moeller was able to predict the atrocities to come, and racked with guilt, this recognition of the monster he had created led to his suicide. Lauryssen explores the political and artistic whirlpools of Weimar Germany in Moeller’s time and using personal interviews with contempories such as Kafka, Munch, and Dietrich he gives exceptional insight into both Moeller’s life and this fascinating period of political change.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Hitler may have been a "genius" as a rabble-rouser and demagogue, but his ideas on politics, class divisions, and race were strictly derivative; they were the product of the hot-house political atmosphere that permeated both Vienna and the Austro-Germany borderlands. A major contributor to that atmosphere was Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, a morose intellectual who promoted extreme nationalism and virulent anti-Semitism as a poet and polemicist. Lauryssens, a Belgian author of five books on the Third Reich, writes in a melodramatic style, and he often engages in unwarranted speculation regarding both Moeller van den Bruck and his direct influence on Hitler. Still, he does succeed in conveying the intellectual ferment and underlying current of violence that characterized prewar Vienna. As for Moeller van den Bruck, he emerges here as a brilliant, tortured, and strangely sympathetic character unable to cope with the political demons he helped to unleash. Jay Freeman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Stan Lauryssens is a journalist and has interviewed many of Hitler's henchmen. He is the author of Dali & I: A Surreal Story.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: The History Press (July 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750930543
• ISBN-13: 978-0750930543
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,841,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the Man Who Invented The Third Reich, July 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Man Who Invented the Third Reich (Hardcover)

This is billed as the history of Moeller Van Den Bruck, the man who's book "The Third Reich", inspired Hitler.

While this book had some potential it falls down on the lack of basic material. Stan Lauryssens reveals in the last pages that all of Moeller Van Den Bruck's papers were destroyed at the end of WWII. This explains the structure of the rest of the book - a brief guide to the world in which van den Bruck lived and died. The result is that you only get brief glimpses of the man who was supposed to be the centre of this book.

It's also my opinion that Lauryssens also takes Otto Strasser (the so-called Anti-Hitler Nazi) altogether too much on his word.

Yet for all of this, it is an interesting book to read. For anyone interested in Weimar and what happened to it, it's worth a look.

2.0 out of 5 stars Is there enough evidence to suggest the author is right?, November 1, 2008

By 

Kevin M Quigg (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Man Who Invented the Third Reich (Hardcover)

As with one of the previous reviewers noted, I am not sure there is enough evidence to suggest that this sickly man actually came up with the idea of the Third Reich itself. The book is basically a side by side comparison of the inter war years of Hitler and van den Bruck. The author tells us that much of the evidence was destroyed in the German occupation. However, if what Lauryssens says is correct, then Hitler was not only a dictator, murderer, but also a cheat. He basically took someone else's ideas and treated them as his own.

There is really little meat in this thin book. Hitler occupies half and does van den Bruck. However, this is a rehash of Hitler's story along with the man who came up with the idea of the Third Reich.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tantalizing, puzzling and revealing, yet dangerous, July 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Man Who Invented the Third Reich (Hardcover)

I am not a book reviewer. I am not a great historian either. But I am a reader, an anybody, "interested" in history rather than a history scholar. I had (and still have) not read the book "The Third Reich" by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, so I did not know first hand what to expect here.

Bottom line: This book is a study in character. It is not the biography of just one man (AMVB), but two: AH as well. Brilliantly, maybe even unconciously, this work reveals what I believe the difference was beetween AH and the rest of the people of his time, as exemplified by AMVB. The ideas between AMVB and AH did apparently not differ very much, yet the personalities do: human bevavior, "morals", versus absolute wild and barbaric, in-human ruthlessness. AH could kill a lifelong friend without loosing a second of sleep over it, AMVB was plagued by depression (consience?) and killed himself. History (and politics) is all about character, not about philosophies. The story of AMVB puzzles, it is tragic drama of classical a stature. The picturesque and minutely detailed szene descriptions capture the readers imagination, the reader literally lives through early 20th century Berlin and Vienna. Yet, it this, this all to human picturesque in stories about AH that could easily make one forget what a mass murderer he really was. This is the danger of such a book. It tells a story from eyewitness accounts (O Strasser, a black shirt!) and personal (the authors) imagination; it describes the philosophy of the absolut inhuman from a perspective all too human; hence it cannot claim to be objective or entirely truthful. It can only tell a story, like a novel writer does. It is work of fiction in an unfictious world. A puzzling story, yes, but how much of it should we really believe?