The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2018 | Page 35

Third Reich to continue in this vein of historical heritage and promised a
“Thousand-Year Reich” 21 starting in 1933.
Though reich in this context can mean empire, the term can also mean
realm. 22 Before the German Empire there was no Germany in the sense of a
nation, kingdom, or other form of unified political construct. The Ancient
Romans knew of a Germania located in North-Central Europe, but Tacitus
described this land as a vast king-less realm populated with predominately, if not
exclusively, German-speaking tribes. 23 German, then, denoted a distinct
European language, race, and culture but not a unified national identity. This
German Realm concept may have been the context in which German-speakers
used reich before the advent of German imperialism—before the language
required a term for empire.
Harrison recognized a “Pan-Germanic movement” that “Radical and
Labour politicians do not study” but “all who study the German Press . . . must
recognize as real.” 24 He deducted that this would mean “the eventual
amalgamation . . . of the entire German-speaking people of Central Europe.” 25
Combining this ethno-linguistic variable with German imperial ambitions,
Harrison predicted, “Within a few years Europe will be face to face with a
hundred millions of Germans trained to war and practically under one military
headship. . . . a single war lord . . . Then Europe will see a power which she has
not known since Napoleon and Louis XIV.” 26
Compellingly, at least one other modern nation has invoked similar
justification for militaristic aggression based on ethno-linguistic homogeneity as
Second Reich Germany once practiced. 27 The Russian Federation under Vladimir
Putin has used military force in two sovereign states within the past decade to
ostensibly protect the target nations’ citizens of Russian descent from perceived
threats. 28 This “Russian World” paradigm, like the early twentieth-century
German Realm model, maintains that Russians everywhere, within and outside of
the Federation’s borders, belong to the same national identity and heritage. 29
Accordingly, Moscow repeatedly justifies its participation in the Russo-Georgian
War of 2008, the armed annexation of Crimean Ukraine in 2014, and the
subsequent Russian-backed Ukrainian Civil War prevailing to the present. 30
Elsewhere, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, many
Islamic leaders, such as the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, have
sought a new caliphate system based on an ethno-religious context of the entire
Middle East and Northern Africa. 31 Though terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda
and ISIS, have sought these ends, nonviolent movements presently exist. The
Turkish-Islamic Union (TIU), for example, presumes itself as “heir to the Ottoman
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