The Holy Reich : Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945

Rating:
Summary: Nazis as "Positive Christians"
Review: In his book *The Holy Reich* Richard Steigmann-Gall argues persuasively that the Nazis did not reject Christianity, but reinterpreted it to fit their own ideology. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most Nazi leaders, including Hitler, were not keen on reviving paganism. Rather, they talked about something which at first glance seemed very appealing - "positive Christianity." Also referred to as "active" or "practical" Christianity, it emphasized deeds over doctrine.

The Nazis contrasted "positive Christianity" with "negative Christianity." The former evoked good feelings - and was quite adaptable. The latter, with its doctrines such as original sin, made people feel bad and did not adapt so easily. The Nazis particularly despised the dogma, ritual and internationalism of the Catholic Church. Those things they saw as evidence it had been "corrupted by Jews." In the early years of his regime, Hitler worked hard to establish a Protestant *Reich Church* (modeled after the Church of England) but eventually dropped the project because of resistance from Evangelicals who valued doctrine.

The "positive Christianity" of the Nazis gave them no firm ground for approaching Jesus. They actually went so far as to deny that Jesus was a Jew and to cast him as the model anti-Semite.

As a Catholic priest, the book gave me a lot to think about. Even though we live in a society very different from Germany of the 1930's, still we face some similar challenges, particularly regarding the worth of each human life. And we see similar efforts to recast Jesus without consideration of early Christian creeds.

Rating:
Summary: Nazis as "Positive Christians"
Review: In his book *The Holy Reich* Richard Steigmann-Gall argues persuasively that the Nazis did not reject Christianity, but reinterpreted it to fit their own ideology. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most Nazi leaders, including Hitler, were not keen on reviving paganism. Rather, they talked about something which at first glance seemed very appealing - "positive Christianity." Also referred to as "active" or "practical" Christianity, it emphasized deeds over doctrine.

The Nazis contrasted "positive Christianity" with "negative Christianity." The former evoked good feelings - and was quite adaptable. The latter, with its doctrines such as original sin, made people feel bad and did not adapt so easily. The Nazis particularly despised the dogma, ritual and internationalism of the Catholic Church. Those things they saw as evidence it had been "corrupted by Jews." In the early years of his regime, Hitler worked hard to establish a Protestant *Reich Church* (modeled after the Church of England) but eventually dropped the project because of resistance from Evangelicals who valued doctrine.

The "positive Christianity" of the Nazis gave them no firm ground for approaching Jesus. They actually went so far as to deny that Jesus was a Jew and to cast him as the model anti-Semite.

As a Catholic priest, the book gave me a lot to think about. Even though we live in a society very different from Germany of the 1930's, still we face some similar challenges, particularly regarding the worth of each human life. And we see similar efforts to recast Jesus without consideration of early Christian creeds.

Rating:
Summary: A Writer Who Presents The Facts
Review: In Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945" the author, Richard Steigmann-Gall, shows that the Nazi face of Christianity grew out of 19th Century Protestant liberalism's efforts to accomodate the growing modernism and secularism of Western Europe. But, more importantly it clearly shows that time and again it was the Catholic Church, whether it was the Vatican or on the Diocesan level, that consistantly stood in opposition to Naziism's anti-life programs like the T4 program (the purposeful killing of the mentally ill) and the eradication of Jews, Gypsies, and others. The same cannot be said for most of the Protestant churches in Germany. This is not to say that there were no Catholics involved in even the darkest deeds of National Socialism, but Richard Steigmann-Gall shows that many of the Catholics who embraced Naziism either abandoned their Catholic faith, became quasi-pagans, or converted to Protestantism.

Finally, a fair treatment of this dark period of history and the relationship of the Nazi regime and Christianity. We get to see how form Naziism's inception to its demise that the some churches and the regime went from embracing each other to almost outright hatred. Many surprises in this book that will shatter your preconceived notions about Christianity, Paganism, and Atheism in Nazi Germany. This is a must read for all Roman Catholics who need a good academic response to the calumny of writers like John Cornwell, James Carroll, or Garry Wills. This book should be in every Roman Catholic apologists library.

Rating:
Summary: A new view of Nazism
Review: Prof. Steigmann-Gall presents a convincing argument for the influence of Christianity on Nazism and anti-Semitism; contradicting the prevailing view that Nazism was an atheistic movement. I found this book to be well thought out and intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: A new view of Nazism
Review: Prof. Steigmann-Gall presents a convincing argument for the influence of Christianity on Nazism and anti-Semitism; contradicting the prevailing view that Nazism was an atheistic movement. I found this book to be well thought out and intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: Hitler's god?
Review: Richard Steigmann-Gall's new book offers an important re-evaluation of German history. For years scholars have argued that Nazism was fundamentally anti-Christian. In recent years we have become more aware of the moral failure of Christianity to oppose the Nazis, whether it is over the recent controversies over the Vatican and the Pope, or from the disproportionate support given the Nazis by rural Protestant believers, or from the complete failure of German chaplins to oppose war crimes while assigned to the Wehrmacht. Now Steigmann-Gall reminds us that the Nazis themselves were not uniformly, or even mainly, anti-Christian.

Steigmann-Gall starts off with telling us that one prominent Nazi war criminal, Erich Koch, was in 1932 the president of a provincial Protestant Church synod. Other Nazis were also Christian believers, such as William Kube and Walter Buch, the head of the Nazi Party Court, and Martin Boorman's father-in-law. More typically, many Nazis were believes in "positive Christianity," which was fiercely nationalist and anti-Jewish. Goebbels spoke of the struggle "between Christ and Marx," and Hitler spoke well of Jesus (supposedly an Aryan Christ) and The Ten Commandments to the end of his life. Goering had his children baptized, as well as Goebbels. These Nazi Christians disliked Catholicism-it was too powerful and internationalist a movement to be incorporated into Nazi doctrine-but at least until 1937 many Nazis were keen with working on organizing the Protestants into a more unified Church. Nor was this simply a sign of the Nazi lust for power. There were many elements within German Protestant doctrine that made a rapport with the Nazis plausible-a shared anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, nationalism and pseudo-socialist demagoguery. Steigmann-Gall, in his discussion of the struggle between the "German Christians" and the less Nazi "Confessing Church," makes good use of his knowledge of the chaos and confusion, the polyocracy of the Nazi state. He points out that many of the "German Christians" moves were made on their own initiative, not the Nazi Party's, that many Nazis, including Hitler, were opposed to their rashness and crudity, that much of the opposition to their hamhandedness came from loyal and viciously anti-Semitic Nazis from Franconia. He also reminds us of the fundamental loyalty of most of the Confessing Church. (No Protestant publicly protested the Euthanasia campaign and one Confessing Church member lauded that only 0.3% of clergymen were non-Aryan.)

There was a paganist element among the Nazis from the very beginning, and it continued right to the end. For much of the twenties and thirties this was personified by the figure of Alfred Rosenberg, whose sinister stare and vicious ideology blurred the fact, as Steigmann-Gall shows, that he was a stupendously ineffective politician and player in the Nazi regime. Indeed, refutations of his pompous "Myth of the Twentieth Century" were allowed to circulate freely in the thirties. Heinrich Himmler was also a powerful "pagan", and it is striking that both Hitler and Goebbels viewed his nostalgia for the Ancient German Past and his enthusiasm for Occultist and Asian religions as very silly. As time went on there would be bans on clergymen becoming Nazis, and restrictions on SS members holding Church Office. But these restrictions also applied to professional pagans. In the war years, Martin Boorman, the power beyond the throne asserted his own fierce anti-Christian views. These views seemed to be based, as Steigmann-Gall points out, not on any coherent Nazi anti-Christianity, but on spite towards his in-laws. Nor was he always successful in his struggles in the Nazi's chaotic bureaucracy. Goebbels prevented him from having Bishop Galen executed for denouncing euthanasia, and also prevented him from removing religious music from the air. Even Boorman could not remove churches altogether from his dark plans for the Warthegau. Himmler's deputy, Heydrich, was also a powerful pagan, but after his assassination his replacement, Kaltenbrunner, eased snooping of Christians noticeably. Steigmann-Gall makes some important points about Hitler's rage against Christainity. First off, Hitler was not an atheist, despised atheism and of course despised the Enlightenment Liberalism and Marxist Socialism that are the main sources for modern atheism. Secondly, one should be cautious about Hitler's "Table Talk." Richard Carrier has argued that it has been unscrupulously translated: while in English Hitler denounces Christianity as the greatest idiocy, in the actual German it is clear that Hitler's target is transubstantiation. Steigmann-Gall points out that Hitler had the habit of telling people what they wanted to hear, and his most venomous comments were made in front of Bormann and Himmler. Third, Steigmann-Gall also makes the suggestion that instead of seeing Hitler's anger at Christianity as a revelation of Nazism's basic antipathy, it should be seen as the bitter rage of a defeated megalomaniac, a rage Hitler also directed at the army, some of his closest associates, and indeed the German people themselves.

There is one major flaw with the book. "Positive Christians" spoke of getting rid of the Old Testament and described Jesus as an Aryan. While Anti-Semitism can be compatible with Christianity, these beliefs clearly aren't. Steigmann-Gall does not really deal with this point. It is not enough for him to show that many Liberal Protestants had a dim view of Judaism. The connections he does draw, between the liberal scholar von Harnack's sympathy with the anti-Jewish heretic "Marcion" are too small and too obscure to bear the weight Steigmann-Gall places on them. Liberal biblical scholarship clearly showed that Jesus was a Jew. How anyone could have thought otherwise is not something that Steigmann-Gall explains. Nevertheless, this is an important revision that simply goes beyond what leading Nazis happened to think. Instead of viewing Nazi anti-Semitism as a new "racial" variety we can see its continuity with other religious and conservative ideologies. Instead of viewing totalitarianism as fundamentally anti-Christian we can see it is as similar to other expressions of "post-Christian" moralisms. It is, as Steigmann Gall's says "much closer to us than we dare allow ourselves to believe."

Rating:
Summary: One Holy Mess
Review: Steigmann-Gall has written a totally inadequate, simplistic and confusing book on the relationship between the top Nazis and Christianity. By implying that the Nazis were mostly Protestants and renegade Catholics, he's laying the balme for the Final Solution squarely on the Christians and their beliefs.

The fact that most of the Nazis did talk about God, Providence and the like does not equate to a belief in organized Christianity, so the fact that some denounced the Churches does not mean that they had renounced Christian values.

The author is at a loss to discern that Christian values (aka morality) are mostly a function of socialization, and that there is no total identification between Christian values and beliefs (which is more eccelsiatics and dogmas, as preached by the Churches).

Thus Nazis could have Christian values yet loathed Christian beliefs should be no big deal at all to everyone except the author, what with his muddled thinking and incomplete, disjointed thesis never did more than scratched the surface of the subject under investigation, least of all bringing any new insights.

Rating:
Summary: Useful but not definitive book
Review: There have been many exaggerated interpretations of this book -- that it proves that the Nazis were not anti-Christian, that National Socialism was in some sense 'normal'. Part of the problem is that the publisher wanted the book to make a splash.

What the book is about is the confused and ambivalent attitude of the Nazis towards Christianity. Why should they not have been confused? Christianity was an obvious outgrowth of the Jewish people's experiences over a long period of time. The New Testament could be made to seem anti-Jewish and a de-judaized Christianity desirable -- Marcion tried this in the early Church -- but this is a position always hard to maintain for any long period of time. Christianity as it came to be established was both Jewish and anti-Jewish, and the Germans who became Nazis retained a good deal of the Christianity they had learned when young. Steigmann-Gall deserves credit for showing how much more involved in Christian conceptions and ideas the Nazis were than is usually thought.

But when all is said and done, the Nazi leadership reacted to Christianity as it came to evaluate its positive and negative effects on Nazi goals and programs. The Protestant Church had been very close to the Nazis before 1933 and largely remained so even up to 1945. The Catholic Church had been very hostile to the Nazis before 1933 but thanks to the Catholic fear of being considered un-German and un-patriotic the Catholics after 1933 became just as Nazified as the Protestants. And thanks to Pope Pius XII the Catholic Center Party, a foe of Hitler, was destroyed. Thus the Catholic Church's record seems even worse than that of the Protestants, having betrayed not only its Saviour but also its own original anti-Nazi stance. Protestants were natural Nazis, having been raised on Luther's hatred of Jews and Italians.

The best thing about this book, however, is that one can indeed see Christianity at its worst. Given what it has wrought over the centuries Christianity deserves to be seen at its worst.

Modern Germany vies with Scandinavia, France, and Britain as the most de-christianized part of modern Europe. Did the Nazi connection with Christianity have anything to do with this?