Book Review: 'The Rise of the Fourth Reich'

Author Jim Marrs’ The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America(Harper Collins, 2008) is not a book to be read lightly. After completing it, a reader will either have wasted the time spent to work their way through nearly 400 pages of increasingly complex and disturbing data and relationships, or will be forced to acknowledge things about the world that they can no longer ignore (even if it was possible to do so when they only vaguely suspected they might be true).

Marrs is the author of several bestselling books that focus largely on subjects like conspiracies, secret societies, the subversive agendas of “power elites,” and the like, works that tend to resonate on some level with many modern readers (while variously enthralling or repelling those at the extreme ends of the spectrum). Some of his other titles include Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, the book upon which the Oliver Stone film JFK is based; The Terror Conspiracy: Deception, 9/11 and the Loss of Liberty; and Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us.

Because it alludes to subjects like the Templars and Illuminati, which have become familiar even to the unread through popular films, The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over Americais in some ways very much a product of its time. As indicated by a significant number of online reviews of his books, however, some readers are disinclined to take any of Marrs’ work seriously simply because he goes far beyond these popular themes and into the realm of UFOs, time travel, and conspiracy theories.

And Marrs is certainly no less extreme in his approach in The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over Americathan in any of his other works. His thesis in this book is, in short, that the industrial and philosophical basis of Nazi Germany was not destroyed in World War II, even though its political and military apparatus was. Beyond just surviving, Marrs says, these systems were disseminated around the world, notably to the United States, and have subsequently become an integral part of what Eisenhower dubbed “the military-industrial complex” — and cautioned Americans to beware of.

“Always remember that a typical attribute of fascism is the merging of state and business leadership,” Marrs writes. “In fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the state gained control over the corporations. In modern America, corporations have gained control over the state. The end result is the same.”

Marrs demonstrates this merger, which was well underway by the early 20th century, and his revelations are disturbing and even a little sickening, especially when considered in light of each other. These include, for example, Prescott Bush’s role as a principal in corporations that supported the rise of Hitler in Germany, his son George H.W. Bush’s support of secret Nazi assistance programs while director of the CIA, and his grandson George W. Bush’s use of propaganda techniques identical to those used in fascist Germany.

And revelations about the pro-Nazi activities of individuals (e.g., Dick Cheney, Nelson Rockefeller, Donald Rumsfeld) and companies (e.g., Chase, IBM, I.G. Farben) we all are explicitly familiar with are equally horrifying.

Isolated facts aside, whether or not Marr’s conclusions in The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over Americaare correct, they do constitute a unified theory on why things are the way they are in the United States today. The unending wars with vague justifications and no apparent end in sight to which Americans are becoming accustomed, for example, are perfectly explained in his schema (and he certainly articulates the possible motivations behind the current U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan better than any major political leaders have in the past nine years).

His detractors and extreme conclusions aside, Marrs does not write like a nut and presents his case adeptly. And, the rather sensationalistic title of the book notwithstanding, he does nonetheless maintain a sober style of writing that lends credibility to his case. He also does a fairly good job of weighing even information that supports his case and expressing skepticism about claims that he does not deem likely.

At 42 pages, the most substantial chapter in the book — and one of the most fantastic — is on “Nazi Wonder Weapons,” such as the familiar V2 rockets. This chapter focuses in some detail on the German atomic weapons program, and touches briefly on things like flying-saucer-shaped concept aircraft and the “Bell,” an energy-manipulating device with some characteristics of a time machine. One of the most compelling things Marrs does in this chapter is present a believable case that the Germans might have not just had functioning atomic bombs late in the war but that they might have tested them on a number of Russian targets — and that the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki several months after the Nazi surrender might have been of German manufacture and been transferred to the United States as part of a deal on behalf of certain Nazi leaders and researchers.

There are a few potential or actual flaws in The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America.
While the sprawling patchwork of facts presented by Marrs has disturbing implications when considered as a whole, beginning to build inexorably early in the book and reaching critical mass well before its conclusion, it does not always go beyond implications of probabilities or possibilities. And, as largely a distillate of other authors’ findings and points of view, it often presents a disturbing collage but one that was not necessarily intended to hang together.

Marrs also draws almost exclusively on secondary rather than primary sources, so the overall effect of his presentation is potentially undermined by any weaknesses in the works of the disparate authors to whom he refers. This methodology has been effectively applied in the case of other significant books, of course (e.g., William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp), and does not negate his prodigious accomplishment with The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America.

Marrs does also not necessarily define unfamiliar concepts explicitly, and readers who want to completely understand what he is talking about may need to do some external research. He extensively uses the term “globalists,” for example, and while this likely evokes some sort of an image for most readers — and one that will crystallize as they work their way through this book — a full definition requires recourse to third-party sources.

A minor but nonetheless annoying downside that emerges in the second half of the book is some rather sloppy editing, which typically manifests itself in a particular name being spelled one way initially and a different way a little further on in the text. This never actually reduces the clarity of the book, but one would think a big publisher like Harper Collins could do better.

Marrs’ chapter on Religion is somewhat lightweight and a bit of a disappointment. In it, the author puts almost as much effort into decrying liberal attacks on organized religion, rather than on the overtly cynical ends to which the political and social institutions he builds a case against throughout his book have increasingly used many American churches (i.e., as a means of disseminating “values” calculated to erode personal freedoms). Marr’s own voice comes through in this chapter more so than many of the others, and it is conflicted.

In the end, however, these blemishes are minor compared to the great work Marrs has done in The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America,and his message is not greatly diminished by them. And even if someone is not inclined to agree with Marrs’ conclusions — that the social, political, and economic institutions of the United States have been suborned by de facto or actual Nazis — the information he provides to support them is interesting in and of itself, and it will be a rare reader who does not walk away knowing much more than they did before.