Review of "The Holy Reich" ...

posted at Amazon:

Was Hitler a Christian?

According to Richard Stegman-Glass, the answer seems to be (a) when? and (b) what do you mean by Christian?


Stegman-Glass' honest and objective unravelling of those points makes for a fascinating examination of a religious culture that was not monolithic, but which offered, particularly in the form of "Liberal Christianity" something which could be used by any group with its own particular ideological agenda.

Over the course of his work, Steigman-Gall shows the movement of National Socialism from an attempt to incorporate a form of Protestant Christianity into the National Socialist movement to a decision to abandon Protestantism and Christianity altogether. Steigman-Gall begins with a description of the religious identity of National Socialism that is compatible with a thread of German Protestantism, but a thread that ultimately can't pull all of Protestantism into the National Socialist orbit.

Steigman-Gall's methodology is to look exhaustively at the personalities and groups that provided the interface between the Nazis and Christianity. The names and acronyms fly fast and furious, which is why I eventually started a list of names and the page numbers of their appearance so that I could keep straight who the DC, DBG, BK were, and what side they were on.

According to Steigman-Gall, the Nazis positioned themselves religiously under the rubric of "Positive Christianity." Under Steigman-Gall's description, "Positive Christianity" was a Protestant German project. The leaders of the attempt to unify the division of Germany into often antagonistic Catholic and Protestant "confessions" under the heading of "Positive Christianity" were themselves Protestants who did not find a conflict between their Christianity and their German nationalism. Catholic contribution to this movement is essentially missing in that Catholic members of the National Socialist party were either "nominal Catholics," such as Hitler and Goebbels (See "The Holy Reich", p. xv) or openly apostate, such as Himmler. The "Catholic" Himmler expressed his hatred of the temporal power of the Catholic Church and stated his belief that "to be Protestant was to be German and to be German was to be Protestant." (Id., at p. 234 - 235.) Protestant Nazis were prone to "display far less anticlericalism toward their church than did Catholics who regarded their confession its temporal message as innately antithetical to their politics." (Id., at p. 27, 125.) Herman Goring remained a practicing Lutheran throughout his Nazi career. (Id., at p. 120.)

Positive Christianity had its roots in a theological movement that identified the nation and the race - the Volk and the state - as God-ordained. This movement was called the "theology of the orders of Creation ("Schopfungsglaube") and was advocated by influential Lutheran theologians. (The Holy Reich, p. 34 - 36.) The "orders of creation" theology was a reason that eventually there was no Protestant active protest against the euthanasia of the disabled, despite the fact that there was such an active protest by Catholic clerics. Another movement that suggested a possible marriage of National Socialism and Protestant Christianity was "liberal Christianity." Liberal Protestant theologians, including Adolf von Harnack, engaged in a hostile anti-semitic rhetoric which reached the point of arguing for the removal of the Old Testament from the Christian canon. (Ironically, this position has also been expressed by the New Atheist debater Christopher Hitchens.) With such scholarly cover, Nazis eventually appropriated Christ as the original anti-semite and socialist by appealing to Christ's scourging of the money-lenders from the Temple as the laudable original act of anti-semitism.

Throughout his book, Steigman-Gall points out the disparately unfavorable treatment of Catholicism as compared to Protestantism. For example, in Mein Kampf, Hitler opined that Protestantism was a better defender of the "interests of Germanism" because of Protestantism's roots in German nationalism. Hitler was willing to recognize Martin Luther as a "volkish hero equaled only by Richard Wagner and Frederick the Great." (The Holy Reich, p. 63.) Hitler's attitude toward Catholicism was more ambiguous, but many in the National Socialist movement unambiguously equated Catholicism with Judaism as a "supranational power" that the Nazis were fighting against. (Id. P. 64.) Hitler was recorded in private moments as expressing his belief that Catholic allegiance to Rome was inimical to the independence of true German character; Nazi leaders publically expressed their belief that "ultramontanism" - Catholic allegiance to an authority "over the mountains", i.e., the Pope - was a threat to German national interests. (Id., at p. 65 - 66, 70.) As Nazi entrenchment in power continued after the so-called "Seizure of Power" ("machtergreifung") in 1933, Nazi antipathy to the ultramontane nature of the Catholic Church became more open. ( Id., at 119.) In 1934, Catholic civil servants were expelled from the government. (Id., at p. 120.)

Nazis attempted to court Protestants into joining a "national church" which would become the "established church" of Germany. However, despite the willingness of Protestant churches to accept much of the Nazi program, many Protestants found that attempt by Nazi sympathizers in the "German Church" to remove the Old Testament was a "bridge to far." This attempt led to the formation of the Pastor's Emergency League by Wilhelm Niemoller and others. (The Holy Reich, p. 164.) The Pastors' Emergency League eventually became the "Confessing Church", which gradually took a more oppositional stance toward the Nazis. Eventually, Hitler gave up on the idea of integrating Protestantism into the Nazi state, although he expressed his disappointment to Niemoller by saying "inwardly stood closer to the Protestant Church" and that he had expected a different attitude from Protestant pastors than from Catholics. (Id., at p. 168.)

After the turn from Protestantism, Hitler and the National Socialists began a movement against Christianity. (The Holy Reich, p. 259.) The chief architect of this movement was Martin Borman. Under Bormann, there was a mass exodus of Nazis from the churches and expulsion of clergy - which meant Protestant clergy - from the Nazi party. (Id.) With respect to Hitler, Stegman-Gall concludes that "even though he never converted to paganism, Hitler nonetheless became increasingly opposed to Christian institutions, and on the face of it, to the Christian religion as well." Interestingly, Stegman-Gall notes that Hitler never turned against "Jesus," or at least his conception of Jesus as the "original anti-semite." In this regard, Hitler remained to a form of liberal Christianity that permitted Christ to be removed from history.

I was motivated to read "The Holy Reich" after hearing Christopher Hitchens describe Fascism as a form of "right wing Catholicism." I was honestly surprised to find the depth of the interaction of a form of Christianity - liberal Protestantism - with the National Socialist agenda. The more I read, though, the more I realized that it should have been obvious that religion is a project with many strains, and that liberal Protestantism, with its willingness to deconstruct the text in favor of some all-inclusive social theory, i.e., "Christ, the Marxist," or "Christ, the Feminist" or, in Hitler's case, "Christ, the anti-semitic warrior," would be conducive to the Nazi project.

Reality, and, therefore, history, is more complex than the Manichean comic book approach of a Christopher Hitchens. So, was Hitler a Christian? Well, it depends. He was not a Christian in any orthodox sense of the word in that his Christianity involved Jesus the Jew being the first anti-semite. He may have viewed himself as a Christian at some point in his career, but that was a waning attachment by the end of his life.

As a Catholic I approached this book with some trepidation, particularly in light of the picture showing Hitler leaving what appears to be a Catholic church. Obviously, publishers have to sell books and playing on the prejudice of those who want Hitler to be a Catholic, or a Christian, serves that end. To the extent that members of the "religion poisons everything" crowd actually read this book, hopefully they will be induced to think about the complexity of history as it is really played out.

I also recommend Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism, which makes many of the same points concerning the earliest phase of National Socialist party.