The use of the phrase "Third Reich" was intended to connote a sense of connection with the past, particularly the German past. The first "reich" was the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted hundreds of years beginning with the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Charlemagne was a Frankish king, and the Franks were a Germanic people. His rule brought several German principalities and fiefdoms together, if only nominally. The Second Reich refers to the German Empire established in 1870 through the machinations of Otto von Bismarck and under the rule of the Prussian Hohenzollern rulers. This "reich" lasted until the end of World War I, when Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in the face of defeat. The first two "reichs" were thus moments of perceived or remembered German unity, and Hitler and his propagandists sought to assert legitimacy for the emerging totalitarian state by framing it as essentially the culmination of centuries of German history. This fit squarely within Hitler's highly radicalized, mythological view of history, which asserted that the German people, as racially superior "Aryans," were destined to rule Europe and the world. His dream that the Third Reich was destined to be a "thousand-year" Reich was dashed, as it came crashing down with German defeat in World War II.