A Strange Obsession with Nazi Christianity: A Critical Comment on Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich

Abstract

Christianity, as Richard Steigmann-Gall argues in his study on the Holy Reich, did not constitute a barrier to nazism. Quite the opposite, he says: for many of the leading nazis he explores in his book the battles waged against Germany's enemies constituted a war in the name of Christianity. He aims to prove this central thesis by text analysis of prominent nazi leaders as well as some selected fields of nazi action. However, his main line of argumentation is far from being persuasive. A strange obsession to depict National Socialism as emphatically as Christian as possible runs throughout the book. It seduces the author into a series of systematic blind spots about National Socialism as a whole. Time and again he tends to over-generalize his partial findings. He refuses to adopt important sources like the Goebbels diaries and relevant literature, especially if they provide evidence contrary to his central thesis. In the end, the whole of his line of reasoning goes awry. Although Steigmann-Gall provides an interesting, stimulating and provocative interpretation of religious dimensions of the Third Reich, it is necessary to remind the author of the essential fact that National Socialism, above all, waged a war in the name of the ‘Aryan-Germanic race’, and preached a new and predominantly non-Christian faith, but not Christianity, the ‘old faith’.