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Post-Racialism
The Third Reich, meaning “Third Realm” or “Third Empire,” was the name the Nazi Party gave to their era of totalitarian governance in Germany (and, eventually, throughout Europe as they occupied countries like Poland and France). Defined by an obsession with creating of an Aryan ethnostate and removing Jews, Sinti, Roma, homosexual people, and disabled people from society, the Third Reich was led by the dictator Adolf Hitler. The Third Reich lasted from 1933–1945.
Third Reich Quotes in Caste
The Caste quotes below are all either spoken by Third Reich or refer to Third Reich. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 8
Quotes
The Nazis needed no outsiders to plant the seeds of hatred within them. But in the early years of the regime, when they still had a stake in the appearance of legitimacy and the hope of foreign investment, they were seeking legal prototypes for the caste system they were building. They were looking to move quickly with their plans for racial separation and purity, and knew that the United States was centuries ahead of them with its anti-miscegenation statutes and race-based immigration bans.
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Chapter 9
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The villagers were not all Nazis, in fact, many Germans were not Nazis. But they followed the Nazi leaders on the radio, waited to hear the latest from Hitler and Goebbels, the Nazis having seized the advantage of this new technology, the chance to reach Germans live and direct in their homes anytime they chose, an intravenous drip to the mind. The people had ingested the lies of an inherent Untermenschen, that these prisoners—Jews, Sinti, homosexuals, opponents of the Reich—were not humans like themselves, and thus the townspeople swept the ash from their steps and carried on with their days.
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Chapter 27
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In Germany, displaying the swastika is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. In the United States, the rebel flag is incorporated into the official state flag of Mississippi.
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Third Reich Term Timeline in Caste
The timeline below shows where the term Third Reich appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue: The Man in the Crowd
...a famous black-and-white photograph taken in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936, at the height of Hitler’s Third Reich . In the picture, there’s a lone man in a sea of shipyard workers who...
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Epilogue: A World Without Caste
...argues, is living proof that a caste system can in fact be dismantled. But the Third Reich was not a “bizarre aberration”—caste systems that subordinate and dehumanize exist throughout the world, and...
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