The Nazi regime has often been called the "Third Reich", counting the Holy Roman Empire as the first and the 1871 German Empire as the second, and ignoring the Weimar Republic; this usage was sometimes contemporaneous, but mostly retrospective and applied by non-Germans.
He defined the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) as the "First Reich", and the German Empire (1871–1918) as the "Second Reich", while the "Third Reich" was an ideal state including all German peoples, including Austria. In the modern context the term refers to Nazi Germany.
