The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

C HAPTER 1A NEW REICH BEGINSH ITLER’S S UPPORT G ROUPFOL LOW I NG T H E A R M IS T ICE OF 1918, WHICH ENDED WORLD WAR I,German soldiers returned home, to a country economically devastated bythe war. The Bavarian city of Munich was hit particularly hard, with joblessex- soldiers wandering the streets and a number of splinter politicalparties vying for membership.It was in this setting that Hitler, a twenty-nine-year- old veteran, cameinto contact with members of the Thule Gesellschaft, or Thule Society,ostensibly an innocent reading group dedicated to the study and promotionof older German literature. But the society, composed mostly ofwealthy conservatives, ardent nationalists, and anti-Semites, actually delvedinto radical politics, race mysticism, and the occult under its emblem—aswastika superimposed over a sword.The society also served as a front for the even more secretive Germanenorden,or German Order, a reincarnation of the old TeutonicKnights, which had branches throughout Germany patterned after Masoniclodges. It is believed that these lodges carried on the agenda of theoutlawed Bavarian Illuminati, with its fundamental maxim that “the endjustifies the means.” In other words, members should pretend to be