SMGQ-0348 Das Reich als Aufgabe by Friedrich Schmidt

This book is in very fine condition and the dust cover is in good condition with typical wear.

This is an original softcover example of Das Reich als Aufgabe, published by the SS Publishing House Nordland Verlag in December 1940, a second edition (101,000 – 600,000). The striking eagle design on the original dust jacket by Oswald Weise is from the Nazi Party Day Grounds in Nuremberg.

Author Friedrich Schmidt, originally a teacher, was an early Nazi Party member (number 4864!) and a member of the SS (number 276.600) and by 1939 he was a SS-Brigadeführer. He was Deputy Gauleiter of Lodz in Poland in 1939, then became SS District Chief of Lublin until February 1940 when he returned to Germany and was promoted to Hauptbefehlsleiter der NSDAP (Main Command Leader, a very high Nazi paramilitary rank, right below Gauleiter and Reichsleiter). In February 1942 he fought at the front in the Waffen-SS and in 1944 he became an American POW in France.

Author Schmidt claimed that “Providence gave us the possibility to create the Third Reich” and that German citizens should consider it a responsibility and a duty to maintain the new Nation.

The title of this book, Das Reich als Aufgabe, translates as “The Nation as a Duty” and chapters touch on the responsibility of future generations to uphold all that the National Socialists had achieved after their struggles in the early 1930s, the importance of Germany in Europe, to lead or to follow, believing in the future of Germany, the spiritual and racial improvements of the New Europe, etc.