Christianity and the Nazi Movement Response

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Richard Steigmann-Gall

Christianity and the Nazi Movement:A Response

When I first began to research on the topic of nazi conceptions of Christianity,I understood the revisionist potential of my findings. The archives broughtforth some surprising discoveries, which I knew would probably be taken as

controversial by many, and which would elicit strong counterarguments.Reviews in the scholarly and popular press have so far ranged from laudatory— with many applauding the book as a corrective to long-held conventions —to disdainful, with the majority to date falling much closer to the former endof the continuum. Positive reviews can be found both in secular and Christianperiodicals, some of them written by self-described Christians of both liberaland conservative orientations. There has also been a lively debate on variousinternet websites, many of which attempt to use the book, either negatively orpositively, to forward a particular cultural, social or political agenda, and

some of which seriously misrepresent my own arguments while making theirs.Colleagues and friends both in and out of the historical profession had antici-pated that some of the reactions both within the academic community and atlarge would be less dispassionate than others. And indeed, much of the discus-sion which the book has generated reveals a clear emotional attachment to thesubject — among those who praise the book, certainly, but also among thosewho condemn it.

On that continuum of critical response to my work, it is safe to say that thefour critics I have been asked to respond to in this symposium easily represent

the new extreme of the negative end. To varying degrees they challenge bothmy arguments and my findings. They take issue with my methodology, point-ing to what they believe are fundamental mistakes, egregious errors, and fatalshortcomings. They accuse me of tendentiousness and a lack of originality, of a refusal to explore countervailing evidence or to acknowledge work prior tomy own. It is suggested that in my effort to turn a blind eye to inconvenientrealities, I selectively pick through the quote mines of history. By turns variousaspects of my book are described as ‘afflicted’, ‘crass’, ‘astonishing’, ‘conde-scending’, ‘deficient’ and ‘ridiculous’. What they see as lapses are speculativelyexplained — by one of them with a foray into psychoanalysis — as deliberateoversight, wilful ignorance, or unhealthy fixation. Reading these criticisms, itmight appear that the condemnations are simply insurmountable. However,what appear to be comprehensive and authoritative critiques of my book aretoo often, upon closer inspection, a series of misinterpretations, efforts to erectstraw men, and, with disturbing frequency, distortions and fabrications. In

Journal of Contemporary History Copyright © 2007 SAGEPublications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhiand Singapore, Vol 42(2), 185–211. ISSN 0022–0094.DOI: 10.1177/0022009407075560


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their attempts to paint my work as tendentious, these authors frequently givefree rein to their own tendentiousness. Claiming that I overlook countervailingevidence, they repeatedly overlook evidence in my book when it hinders their

ability to critique me. Gailus in particular accuses me of extrapolating and dis-torting; yet his lengthy accounts of my scholarly wrongdoings are laden withextrapolations, caricatures, and misrepresentations of fact and argument sorepetitive and unbridled that one begins to wonder whether the ‘strangeobsession’ he speaks of is not a case of Freudian projection.

Some of my respondents take greater care than others to explain what theybelieve my book does and does not do. Given that the reader has now received

four different interpretations of The Holy Reich (Stowers’ piece, whilethematically vital to the issues approached by these critics, does not in itself analyse my work), it is important to remind the reader of precisely what mybook attempts to do, how it goes about it, and, most vitally, what it does anddoes not argue. In a phrase, Holy Reich attempts to revise our understandingof the nazi movement as intrinsically anti-Christian. It does this by examiningthe views of leading nazis, defined both in terms of their overall position in themovement’s hierarchy and by their positions as designated party authorities inmatters of ideological oversight and articulation, or public and party education

and indoctrination. In other words, those nazis I explore were, in one way oranother, designated as part of an ideological elite or milieu within the move-ment: at the very least, as arbiters of which idea or concept counted asNational Socialist and which not.

I found, based on evidence obtained through archival materials, printed pri-mary sources, and secondary sources, that the nazi movement as such, either asa party seeking power or as a government in power, could not be called anti-Christian. Based primarily on private and often secret documents, closelymatched with public pronunciations, I demonstrate with abundant empirical

evidence that a wide swath of the party believed themselves and their move-ment to be Christian. They demonstrated this through both their words andtheir actions, as individuals and as decision-makers in the nazi party and laterthe nazi state. The individuals who exhibited a commitment to the Christianreligion I describe as ‘positive Christians’, based on their adherence to the‘positive Christianity’ which the party referenced in Point 24 of its officialprogramme — which, it should be pointed out, was never revoked. Even whilemany of these ‘positive Christians’ could be highly anticlerical, and stronglyantagonistic in particular to the Catholic Church and its traditions, they main-tained that through personal belief as well as through government policy, themovement was guided by Christian principles — most obviously in its anti-Semitism, but also in its anti-marxism, anti-liberalism, and erection of apeople’s community exalting an ‘ethical socialism’ while excluding thosedeemed racially unfit.

Since I interrogate precisely what these nazis meant when they claimed their

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movement was a Christian one, I also gauge their truth claims against theviews of leading churchmen and theologians of the day. Not to discoverwhether there were Christians who supported nazism; an exhaustive literature

has already established the breadth and depth of this support, among bothProtestants and Catholics in Germany. Rather, to discover if, and if so whatkind of, clergy and theologians accepted the claims of the nazis to be Christian.In the process of this investigation, I contend that while no one variety of Christianity can be seen as the theological antecedent of positive Christianity(Holy Reich, hereafter HR, 262–3), the cornerstones of positive Christianity —the belief that Jesus was not a Jew and the call for the removal of the OldTestament as two of the most central — also found expression withinGermany’s kulturprotestantisch milieu. In other words, Christian nazis did

not just ‘distort’ or ‘infect’ Christian ideas to suit their party; such ideas hadexisted in varieties of Christianity which — and this is vital — were articulatedby acknowledged theologians and Christian intellectuals before nazism evercame into existence.

Standing opposed to the positive Christians were the so-called ‘neo-pagans’of the nazi party (I refer to them as ‘paganists’ in my book), who have beenmuch more closely scrutinized in historical scholarship and about whom agreat deal is already known. I confirm the conventional view that their pres-ence in the party was very real, and among their members included some

extremely powerful men. However, I make two arguments in particular whichstray from accepted convention: first, the paganist cohort did not achieve thereligious dominance or at least hegemony they lusted after. While this goesagainst much church historiography, I indicate in my book that other scholarshave made this argument as well. Second, and more originally, I contend thatas a set of ideas and precepts, the content of paganism was highly ambivalenttoward and quite partial in its rejection of Christianity. Having said that, I alsomake it clear that their presence in the party elite, and their intraparty rivalrywith ‘positive Christians’ throughout the Third Reich, precludes nazism as a

whole from being considered a Christian movement.Finally, in the last and longest chapter of Holy Reich, I demonstrate howanticlericalism took greater hold within the nazi worldview as well as in statepractice, and that opposition not just to the institutions but also to the tradi-tions of Christianity grew as the Third Reich neared its close. Through theexample of intraparty factionalism, I demonstrate the ways in which manyChristians in the party elite lost their positions of power. At the same time,their ability not only to practise their faith as individuals, but additionally topropagate positive Christianity as a religion for the movement, was, in spite of paganist challenges, for the most part upheld. I also demonstrate how positiveChristians in many cases were able to retain their positions of power withinthe party and state. For their part, whatever momentary strategic advantagesthey may have gained, paganists were never able to exploit the growing anti-clericalism of the state or Hitler’s growing disenchantment with the Christianreligion itself. In fact, the views and policies of the nazi state could be very

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hostile to both paganist organizations and individual paganists within the naziparty. At the same time, some who had previously expressed a commitment toChristianity increasingly expressed a rejection of it, even as they continued

to uphold Jesus and his message, and adhere to other signifiers of Christiancommitment.

Given what my book does and doesn’t argue, the careful reader will alreadyfind ways in which Holy Reich has been misrepresented in the preceding criti-cisms. I will address these criticisms in two ways: by exploring the larger pointsthat arise repeatedly between one reviewer and the next, and by addressingmore isolated criticisms author by author. I will conclude by consideringanother critique recently published in another venue.

We can begin with political religion theory. I am accused of fatally overlook-ing, through either wilfulness or ignorance, the debates on nazism as a politi-cal religion. It is no accident that Manfred Gailus and Ernst Piper, bothGerman scholars, reproach me for leaving this theory out of my analysis —even if Piper does not subscribe to it himself — whereas the North Americanscholar Irving Hexham, even though an advocate of political religion theory, ismuch less reproachful; and fellow North American Doris Bergen gives nomention to it at all. As Hexham himself suggests, there is much less English-

speaking scholarship on nazism as a political religion than there is in Germany,notwithstanding the notable exceptions of Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich: A New History and George Mosse’s The Nationalization of the Masses,neither of which, while considered major works, has spurred a significantmonographic trend.1 For the record, I find myself in complete agreement withStowers’ deconstruction of political religion — for its inability to truly definewhat a religion is, among other problems. In its current scholarly application,political religion theory is primarily concerned with demonstrating hownazism could be considered a replacement faith for Christianity. My goal in

exploring nazi conceptions of Christianity was quite different — namely, toreconsider the relationship between politics and established religion. In thissense, I contend that nazism, in the view of many of its adherents, could be


I would like to thank Richard Evans for his invitation to participate in this symposium on my

book. It is a rare and privileged opportunity when a historian’s work — especially that of a junior

one — becomes the subject of this kind of attention. It was not a difficult decision when he asked

me if I would like to contribute. My thanks as well to Doris Bergen, Manfred Gailus, Irving

Hexham, Ernst Piper and Stanley Stowers for their lively and challenging comments.

1 Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York 2000); George Mosse, TheNationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from theNapoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York 1975). Recent English-language contribu-tions have been isolated cases: see David Redles, Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation (New York 2005) and Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis(London 2005). See as well Jane Caplan, ‘Politics, Religion and Ideology: A Comment on

Wolfgang Hardtwig’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 28 (2001), 3–36.


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qualified as religious without itself being a religion. I also demonstrate howHitler, as the ultimate arbiter and articulator of nazi ideology, actively rejectedrepeated attempts to transform his movement into a religion.

I do not engage political religion in Holy Reich because it does not addressmy problematic — not, as Gailus and Piper would have the reader believe,because doing so would undermine my claims to originality. (Bärsch’s 1998book explores many of the same nazis I do and uses much the same sourcematerial, but I explore a much greater range of nazis’ opinion. Bärsch also pro-ceeds from fundamentally different conceptualizations, and his argument thatthe nazis made the nation ‘divine’ differs markedly from my own findings.Piper will hopefully forgive me if my manuscript was already with the pub-lisher by the time Rißmann’s book appeared — perhaps the same reason my

book gets no mention in his new Rosenberg biography.) My critics can restassured that I know the political religion literature, and in fact have con-tributed to it in two articles — one in a volume edited by Hartmut Lehmannand Michael Geyer published by Wallstein Verlag.2 That neither Gailus norPiper seem aware of this piece is particularly puzzling, given their sharplyworded criticism that I ignore whole historiographies, let alone individualauthors. This oversight is particularly extraordinary in Gailus’ case in light of his exacting efforts to cite practically the entire political religion corpus; thefact that, in her contribution to a special issue of Geschichte und Gesellschaft

which Gailus edited, Bergen cites the conference paper I gave in Göttingen in2001 that formed the basis of my Wallstein article; and the fact that Lehmannis Gailus’ collaborator, he having co-edited a volume with Lehmann just aftermy piece in Geyer’s and Lehmann’s volume appeared. Was he not familiarwith this article?

I will not recapitulate either Stowers’ deconstruction of political religiontheory or my own, since these are available in full already. I will, however,make two points of particular salience for this symposium. First, the evidenceis irrefutable that, whereas a recognized minority of nazis had wished in one

way or another to turn their movement into a political religion — or what inGailus’ sense could be termed political religion — their efforts were consist-ently refuted by a more effective cohort of nazis who, whether ‘positiveChristian’ or of some other religious persuasion, were actively opposed to suchplans. For some nazis, this ran contrary to their own vision of nazism as a‘religious politics’. For others, it was a matter of calculation. For still others,the vision of nazism as a political religion was deemed laughable and contraryto the very meaning of the movement. There is simply far too much archivalevidence, analysed by Reinhard Bollmus, Robert Cecil, and myself amongothers, that demonstrates how often Rosenberg in particular lost internecine


2 Richard Steigmann-Gall, ‘Was National Socialism a Political Religion or a Religious Politics?’in Michael Geyer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), Religion und Nation, Nation und Religion:Beiträge zu einer unbewältigten Geschichte (Göttingen 2004), 386–408; Richard Steigmann-Gall,‘Nazism and the Revival of Political Religion Theory’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 5 (2004), 376–96.


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battles over implementation of his religious agenda (Hexham implies thatBollmus’ findings are too old to be relevant; in fact, his book is now in itssecond edition).3

Second, things like ‘commemorations of the dead’, ‘cult cycle’, and ‘sacredactions’, as Gailus describes them, do not constitute the ‘actual area of NSreligiosity’. These may all be rituals, in the same sense that every politicalmovement articulates for itself a set of rituals and practices around which itformulates a sense of identity and solidarity. One could point to several con-temporary instances of politicians engaging in rituals or other acts which touchthe emotional, non-rationalistic impulses of the audience. The question is, arethese moments symptomatic of a religion and/or ‘religiosity’? When FrançoisMitterrand laid a rose at the tomb of Jean Juares upon becoming the new

President of France in 1981, was he engaging in cult behaviour? When GeorgeW. Bush walked solemnly to his podium in the middle of the convention hallto give his acceptance speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention,replete with spotlights and impassioned audience, was he articulating the creedof a new faith? Without citing any examples, or explaining how commemora-tion of the dead among other public acts can be considered rivalrous toChristian tradition, Gailus simply asserts the conventional truism that suchbehaviour, of necessity, had to be un- or anti-Christian. I do not dispute thatthere were some nazis who wanted very much to found a new cult and tried to

create a set of rituals to embody it. But the most compelling evidence we haveof their failure is the utter rejection of such efforts by Hitler, Goebbels, andGoering, among others.

That is not to say there was no such thing as nazi ceremony or ritual. Heretoo, the nazis staged highly choreographed spectacles such as Speer’s famousCathedral of Light. The question that needs to be asked is not whetherthe nazis tried to win new supporters using such methods; aside from highlydubious testimonials from those claiming to have ‘skeptically’ attended a rallyonly to be ‘born again’ by the charismatic Führer, there is no empirical evi-

dence of any numerically significant ‘conversion experiences’. Instead, thequestion is whether the nazis regarded such ceremony as being religious. Thereis no reliable evidence that Hitler believed he was creating a religion throughthe use of such choreography — not that this has stopped innumerable com-mentators from claiming so. If Hitler occasionally made references to ‘convert-ing’ his audience to nazism, of getting the idea of night rallies from his Catholicyouth, or of his followers being Christ-like in their determination — all pointsI raise in my book — that hardly means he viewed himself as a new messiah.In fact, as I demonstrate repeatedly, on such occasions Hitler actually con-tended that he was following Christ’s example, not attempting to replaceChrist as a new object of worship. That Hitler borrowed from Christian ritual


3 Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner: Studien zum Machtkampf imnationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem (Stuttgart 1970; 2nd edn 2006); Robert Cecil, The Mythof the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (London 1972).


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to embellish nazi theatricality does not mean he sought to replace the Christianfaith. A vital distinction between form and content, style and substance, iselided when political religion theory is applied to the nazi movement.

Gailus and Piper essentially ignore evidence that Hitler, Goebbels, and otherhigh-ranking nazis esteemed Jesus as only the most obvious signifier of theChristian faith, instead (in Gailus’ case) admitting only to a few isolated casesof ‘dual-faith’ nazis like Hans Schemm and otherwise explaining away evi-dence of Christian commitment by choosing to argue that whatever Christianreligiosity existed in the nazi elite was simply residual, the lingering trace of atypically Wilhelmine ‘bourgeois/petty bourgeois family background’ in whichthese nazis were raised. Gailus suggests they had little choice but to start life asChristians, but that this atrophied with adulthood. There are far too many

false assumptions for this line of argument to sustain itself. For one, theKaiserreich (Imperial Germany) in this conception is essentially cast as a pre-modern society, in which individual agency in religious choice is apparentlysurrendered to a state-mandated social sanction enforcing church attendanceand belief. Even the most caricatured Sonderweg (Special Path) thesis wouldnot go so far as to depict Imperial German society in such anachronistic terms.Second, there were innumerable instances in the Kaiserreich of hostility toChristianity at a variety of levels — political, cultural, social, institutional, andintellectual. To make his argument Gailus must overlook centuries of German,

not to mention European intellectual history, never mind the obvious ways inwhich whole segments of German society rejected either church or religionitself at precisely this period. The fact that the republic which rose from theashes of the empire was such a hotbed of cultural change not only points toGailus’ failure to recognize Germany’s cultural and religious ‘marketplace’ andthe ways in which Germans could alter their views; he also removes a veryimportant factor which, among others, brought nazism into being in the firstplace. As I contend, it was the question of the place of religion in Germansociety that, among other factors, helped determine popular reaction to

nazism. As a last point, the view that one’s class status necessarily informsone’s religious beliefs is highly deterministic; only the most unreformedsecularization theorist would any longer make such an assertion.

This point turns us to a second charge made repeatedly by my critics: that I failto properly understand Germany’s confessional divide. Doris Bergen contendsthat I ‘misconstrue’ the confessional differences that existed in Germany, andthat I pay ‘scant attention to developments on the Catholic side’ and even letCatholicism ‘off the hook’. Gailus goes further, suggesting that I ‘exculpate’Catholicism and am a victim of the Catholic Church’s ‘in-house’ apologetics. Ican think of not a single in-house Catholic apologist who would view as excul-patory my argument that Catholic bishops were hesitant about ‘turning theirbacks on a movement [nazism] that fought Marxism, liberalism, and the“Jewish danger”’ (HR, 67). As this passage indicates, I am aware that nazism



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and politicized Catholicism could have found common cause in anti-Semitism,anti-Marxism, and anti-liberalism. I am also aware of the huge amount ofliterature detailing the various ways in which Catholics in Germany and else-

where have propagated Jew-hatred and antipathy to parliamentary dem-ocracy, and the roaring debate this has generated (HR, 4–5).

It is not an issue of my ‘protecting’ Catholicism; given that my primary aimin the book is to explore nazi attitudes toward Christianity, not the other wayaround, I found compelling and overwhelming evidence of nazi antagonism toCatholicism. Whether and to what degree German Catholicism lent itsendorsement to nazism is not the point. I do not take issue with the contentionthat some segments of Germany’s Catholic milieu found the message of nazismamenable — though it should be pointed out that Gailus’ description of

Bavaria as ‘purely Catholic’ is a sophomoric mistake, all the more troublinggiven the amount of research showing that the Protestant region of Franconiawas arguably the nazis’ true stronghold in Bavaria.4 Rather, the question iswhat were the nazis’ views. And here I found a striking degree of uniformity:whether they were nominally Protestant or Catholic, Christian or paganist,members of the nazi elite consistently expressed antagonism towards not justthe Catholic Church, but also the Catholic religion. It was, in their view, notsufficiently nationalist; indeed, given its institutional structure, Catholicismwas lambasted as one of the three internationals seeking to undermine German

nationhood. It was also insufficiently racist. That members of the Germanepiscopacy were known to be highly nationalist and anti-Semitic did notchange nazi minds. If I make reference to the ideological engagement ofpositive Christianity with the doctrinal positions of liberal Protestantism(Kulturprotestantismus) or confessional Lutheranism, the reader can restassured that it is because I found no evidence of Catholicism embracing theidea that race was one of God’s orders of creation; that the Old Testamentought to be removed from the Christian canon; or that confessional schoolsshould be phased out — all views articulated at one point or another by the

NSDAP’s ‘positive Christians’ as well as within Germany’s Protestant milieux.As to Bergen’s point about ‘nuance’: the evidence I bring to bear on nazipreference for Protestantism over Catholicism, as well as the active hostilitytowards the Catholic Church and its traditions, is insurmountable.

My treatment of Protestantism is, in the main, judged to be less problematic.For all his unyielding criticism, Gailus occasionally permits himself a note of agreement, stating in his closing remarks that he agrees ‘entirely’ with myassessment of the presence and effectiveness of ‘National Socialist Christians’— a bewildering conclusion after such a long indictment of my misdeeds.


4 Rainer Hambrecht, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Mittel- und Oberfranken (1925–1933)(Nuremberg 1976); Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik, 1918–1933: dieVerschränkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in derWeimarer Republik (Düsseldorf 1996). On Bavaria’s Protestants during the Third Reich, see BjörnMensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus: Gechichte einer Vertrickung am Beispiel derEvangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Bayern (Göttingen 1998).


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Bergen is somewhat less charitable, suggesting that I ‘condescend’ to her in hertreatment of German Christian religiosity. She also makes detailed referencesto the broad literature that already exists on Protestants in the Third Reich,

repeatedly suggesting that my analysis is not nearly so novel as I claim. As withtheir comments on my treatment of Catholicism, again I must point out thatBergen and Gailus misconstrue the goal of my book. It is not my task toexplore the variety of ways in which Protestants reacted to the nazi movement;there has been a colossal amount of work already done on this, work which Iexplore and acknowledge in the book’s introduction. I add perhaps a fewnuances and additional details of my own to this already immense historiogra-phy. My main goal when exploring the Protestant side of the nazi–Protestantrelationship in chapter five is to reveal how Protestants gauged the nazis’

claims. To allege that the nazis looked favourably on Protestantism and con-sidered it the ‘natural’ religion of the Germans, and not explore this aspect of nazi policy, would have been a substantial oversight. This chapter shows thata large segment of institutional Protestantism welcomed the assistance that thenazi state gave them, whereas other segments, most obviously centred aroundNiemöller and the Confessing Church, criticized not nazism itself so much asnazi endorsements of their opponents. I say ‘assistance’ because the strugglesbetween the German Christians and the Confessing Church were not simply aproxy war between nazism and Christianity, but an ‘in-house’ conflict, one

that the NSDAP largely stayed out of and which ultimately led to the naziendorsement of the German Christians being withdrawn. Having said that,this chapter is only secondarily concerned with the Church Struggle itself as anintra-Protestant fight between the German Christians and the ConfessingChurch. There already exists a huge literature that explores this issue, and Imight point out that while I disagree with some of the arguments of otherhistorians, I make no particular claim to originality on the disputes betweenthese two groups.

While I explore moments of Protestant resistance to nazi church policy, given

the pivotal role this played in altering that policy by 1937, it is true that I do notexplore the Alltag (daily life), as it were, of Christian resistance. Pace Bergen, itcould certainly be argued that a dialogic relationship between representatives of the nazi party and the Christian churches helped shape nazi attitudes towardChristianity. Ideologically ramified as they were, however, the nazis showedlittle appreciation for the Catholic Church’s history of anti-Semitism, anti-Marxism and anti-liberalism. Their intention to create their own reality meantthat the nazis were quite capable of neglecting reality when it interfered withtheir predetermined worldview. Which makes their willingness to engage withthe Protestant churches up until 1937 — including the planning of churchelections four years after the extinction of every other vestige of democracy inGermany — all the more remarkable in its implications.

Staying with Protestantism for the moment, it is necessary to address Gailus’many criticisms of my analysis of Protestantism, particularly concerning chap-ter five. Given his scolding approach of providing a laundry list of my alleged



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inaccuracies and mistakes, I have little choice but to address them point bypoint. First of all, I do not dispute Harnack’s credentials as a non-nazi or hisrefusal to approve nazi anti-Semitism (HR, 41). On the other hand, Harnack’s

engagement with Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the late years of theKaiserreich, as well as his own rejection of the Old Testament as ‘Jewishcarnal law’ at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, are entirely germane to acentral point of mine: ‘positive Christian’ calls for the removal of the OldTestament cannot be taken as intrinsically anti-Christian. As much as Gailusmight wish it were so, this is not simply a case of my rummaging through thequote mines of history, looking for some Christian or other who can be blamedfor yet another aspect of nazi ideology; as I point out, ‘National SocialistChristians’ made explicit references to Harnack when explaining their own

theological positions (HR, 74, 151). Gailus suggests that a more fruitful line of inquiry would be to interrogate the brand of Lutheranism associated withStöcker — apparently overlooking those many instances in the book where Ido just that (HR, 36, 38–9, 42, 43–4, 48, 69, 78–80, 181, 204, 262–3). Gailus’unambiguous statement that German Christians were ‘extremely untheologi-cal’ can be made only by overlooking the very important Theologians UnderHitler by Robert Ericksen, one of the most prominent monographs exploringthis question.5 To answer Gailus’ question as to ‘why should there have beenresistance motivated by Christian principles’ if National Socialism were ‘as

Christian as the author, here and there, purports to suggest’, one would haveto recount the very many instances in the history of Christendom whenChristians were at odds — or, more to the point, at war — with each other,regardless of the many exhortations to love and peace found in their sharedreligion. I am very inclined to agree with Bergen’s point that we need to avoidideal definitions in such discussions.

Gailus professes that ‘error-spotting’ does not appeal to him: I can under-stand why, given the defective way he goes about it. I do not claim thatDibelius’ speech on ‘Potsdam Day’ took place in Berlin (HR, 69); I am accused

of mischaracterizing the German Christian meeting of November 1933 inBerlin as a ‘controversy’ when apparently the accurate descriptor is ‘scandal’(my reference to that event is not on p. 73 but p. 75. Apparently Gailus istaking me to task for saying ‘at’ instead of ‘after’, while overlooking the factthat on p. 164 I refer to the ‘outrage that ensued’). Gailus claims Prince EitelFriedrich did not join the NSDAP in 1930, but apparently does not himself know the actual date; failing to note that Ziegler turned to the study of folk-lore after leaving the Protestant faith in no way contradicts my characteriza-tion of his prior activities or his association with Rosenberg. Gailus criticizesmy interpretation of church membership figures for 1933 as ‘rash’, and yetconcedes that one way to protect oneself in the totalitarian nazi state was tojoin (or rejoin) a Christian denomination.


5 Robert Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emmanuel Hirsch (New Haven, CT 1985). Gailus’ otherwise extensive bibliographical footnotes fail to citeEricksen’s book.


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Gailus’ ire reaches a climax when discussing a passage about the esteemfor Chamberlain felt by what I term ‘members of the Confessing Church’. Heflatly states that I have no support for this claim, that I ‘fill in the blanks

entirely speculatively’, and then triumphantly announces: ‘These are illustra-tions of the slapdash approach to sources and quotations, the overused practiceof indirect quotation and the constant tendency to exaggerate interpretations of evidence to fit in with his basic thesis.’ However, instead of a detective finallydiscovering the smoking gun, what we get is the pot calling the kettle black.After complaining that I ‘fill in the blanks’, he concedes that I accurately refer-ence my source, Richard Gutteridge. Not satisfied with this, he claims tounearth more slipshod scholarship (Gutteridge’s at this point), finally establish-ing that the original reference was actually an editorial note without attribution

in the periodical Junge Kirche. Gailus makes the point that I should not haverelied on Gutteridge’s own description in this case since it ended up beingspeculative — a point well-taken, except that he then proceeds to speculate. Inall ‘likelihood’ the author is Fritz Söhlmann, Gailus avers. Then he engages inconjecture a second time; having filled in the blanks of who the author mightbe, he speculates that his candidate would be ‘difficult to identify’ as a memberof the Confessing Church because of his prior association with Germany’sChristian-national youth movement. First, Söhlmann was actually a member of the Young German Order. Second, as Gailus may know, the Confessing Church

accommodated a broad range of political opinion, much of it surprisinglysupportive of nazism.6 Third, the journal Junge Kirche was strongly associatedwith the Confessing Church and its theological leanings. Fourth, no one lessthan Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a professional relationship with Söhlmann. Fifth,Söhlmann was the editor of Treysa 1945, a report of the July 1945 ConfessingChurch synod.7 At a bare minimum the evidence quite firmly points toSöhlmann’s strong sympathy for the Confessing Church.8 Gailus repeatedlyattempts to demonstrate the carelessness of my scholarship; it appears he doesnot feel the need to lead by example.

On some points of detail Gailus has me: first, I concede that ‘street brawl’does not accurately describe the context of Horst Wessel’s death, since Gailusrightly points out that the event in question did not take place on a street.Second, in the process of describing a revealing letter of complaint about HansSchemm sent to the Bavarian governor Franz Ritter von Epp, I did not point


6 See, for example, Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler(New York 1992); Wolfgang Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen: Bekennende Kirche und die

Juden (Berlin 1987).

7 Fritz Söhlmann (ed.), Treysa 1945: Die Konferenz der evangelischen Kirchenführer 27.-31.August 1945. Mit einem Bericht über die Synode der Bekennenden Kirche in Berlin-Spandau 29.-31. Juli 1945 und über die unmittelbar vorangegangenen Tagungen des Reichsbruderrates und dasLutherischen Rates (Lüneburg 1946).

8 Susanne Benöhr, ‘“... ohne Zweifel ist der Staat berechtigt, hier neue Wege zu gehen”: Die“Judenfrage” aus der Sicht von Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gerhard Liebholz und Carl Schmitt’, unpub-

lished ms. My thanks to Dr Benöhr-Laqueur for providing me with a copy of her paper.


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out that the complainant misidentified a date on the Christian calendar:I concede my failure to correct the complainant’s mistake. I accept thecorrections of detail regarding the church-political events of autumn 1933 — it

was the Prussian synod, not the national synod, that passed the AryanParagraph, and the November meeting of the German Christians was a GreaterBerlin Region assembly, not a national assembly. It is notable that while Gailusinfers that such mistakes are symptomatic of larger problems, not one ofthese errors is claimed in any way to have wider analytical repercussions:indeed, Gailus ‘agrees entirely’ with my assessment of the ‘National SocialistChristian’ milieu.

A third pressing issue which my critics raise repeatedly is my use of sources.Gailus and Piper accuse me of avoiding vast swaths of printed primary sources,and of being slipshod with those I do use. Hexham accuses me of negligence,sloppiness and oversight, and reproaches my use of translated primary sources.Bergen makes the mildest criticism of the four, suggesting I veer into tenden-tiousness but not otherwise questioning my basic training as an historian.Particularly notable are the repeated, strident assertions that I mishandle theevidence regarding Rosenberg. Much is also made of my sources on Goebbelsand Hitler.

Once again, Gailus leads the charge, accusing me of credulity when using the‘“What Hitler really said” literature’. To make this point, Gailus must misleadthe reader. As it happens, I explore the very issue of reliability when using suchsources, including the Tischgespräche (HR, 28–9, 253). In my evaluation of which could be taken as reliable and which not, I follow the analysis of HenryAshby Turner, whose edited volume of the Otto Wagener memoirs contains anincisive methodological introduction.9 I agree entirely with Gailus’ pointabout ‘slippery ground’, pointing out that the source used over and over againby historians to ‘prove’ that Hitler was an anti-Christian is Rauschning’s

extremely dubious Hitler Speaks. Ian Kershaw agrees with Turner thatRauschning is so unreliable that he should not be used; some German scholarsgo even further, accusing Rauschning of fraudulence. Gailus and Hexham bothfault me for using Speer’s self-exculpatory Inside the Third Reich, once againchoosing to ignore my own evaluation of Speer’s reliability: ‘Speer’s book hasbeen critiqued for myth making, but this critique has been limited to Speer’sjustification of his own role in the nazi State. None of the authors who con-vincingly point to the fallacies found in Speer’s memoirs dispute the picture hepaints of other nazis, and none specifically refer to the portrayal of Hitler’sreligious views as spurious’ (HR, 257). Gailus suggests the memoirs of FelixKersten are similarly tainted, but without citing any scholarly interrogation of


9 Otto Wagener, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant , edited by Henry Ashby Turner (New Haven,CT 1985), ix–xxvi.


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Kersten’s book.10 After criticizing me for using Speer, Hexham allows himself to rely heavily upon the unreliable ‘memoir’ by Kurt Lüdecke titled I KnewHitler. Hexham thinks that by grudgingly acknowledging Arthur Smith’s

deconstruction of Lüdecke’s book he has inoculated himself from criticism.Quite the contrary; Smith’s article is damning. And it is not alone; over 30years ago Dietrich Orlow called Lüdecke’s book ‘highly unreliable’ and urgedthat it be used with ‘extreme caution’.11 Roland Layton’s 1979 article, ‘KurtLudecke and I Knew Hitler: An Evaluation’, a guarded defence of the veracityof Lüdecke’s claims, must nonetheless concede: ‘it can hardly be denied thatmuch is exaggerated.’12

Gailus accuses me of leaving aside huge collections of Hitler’s and Goebbels’printed primary material, implying once more that I do so to avoid evidence

contrary to my theory. Not only do I exhaustively probe through the singlemost important printed primary source, Hitler’s Mein Kampf , I go through agreat deal of additional printed primary material on Hitler, including theDomarus, Jäckel-Kuhn, Maser, Nicolaisen, Tyrell and Wagener volumes. Ialso use the Tischgespräche, but not before addressing the question of itsreliability. Between these sources and the substantial archival research under-taken at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, the FederalArchives at the time located in Potsdam and Berlin-Zehlendorf, and four otherarchives central to the study of National Socialism, I stand by my claim to

have authoritatively established Hitler’s religious views. I agree that oneshould always strive to be exhaustive when possible; but Gailus cites not asingle instance where the compendia I did not use would have undermined myanalysis based on the very substantial material I do use.

The same point applies to Goebbels. Gailus simply asserts without furtherexplanation that the Goebbels references I employ are ‘weak and dubious’,then reproaches me for not using the 1996 edition of Fröhlich’s diarymaterials. It must be said that I use two other volumes edited by Fröhlich, thestandard 1987 collection and the newer 1998 collection. He believes that he

‘catches’ me once more by quoting at length from a December 1941 entry inGoebbels’ diary. But I point out myself that two years earlier, by December1939, Goebbels’ diary entries were already revealing anti-Christian sentiment(HR, 252). Again, Gailus provides not a single instance where using Fröhlich’s1996 collection would have challenged my findings. Gailus then proceeds tomisleadingly take my words out of context: ‘According to Steigmann-GallGoebbels showed “no diminution of his religious convictions” after the seizureof power.’ The most cursory reading of that passage (HR, 124) shows thisstatement is made for the period immediately following the Seizure of Power,


10 Ian Kershaw, by contrast, uses the memoir without critical comment in the second volume of his recent two-volume biography of Hitler: Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York2001), 1027, 1033.

11 Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, PA 1969), 323.

12 Roland V. Layton, Jr, ‘Kurt Ludecke [sic] and I Knew Hitler: An Evaluation’, Central European History, 12 (1979): 372–86.


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not simply ‘after the seizure of power’, which without further comment couldbe taken to mean the entire Third Reich. Gailus decontextualizes a secondtime: ‘Elsewhere, he repeats that Goebbels showed “little change in his

religious attitudes” in the later years of the regime’ (emphasis mine). Here toohe misleads, adding ‘later years of the regime’ when I point out through thesources which follow that this statement holds for 1937 (5 years into a 12-yearregime) in the case of Christianity, and 1941 in the case of Goebbels’ anti-paganism.

Hexham devotes most of his critique to questioning my methodology, chal-lenging my use of source material and defending Rosenberg from evidence of his political impotence. Whereas Gailus attempts a summary execution of mywork, Hexham prefers death by a thousand cuts. Mistakes, false arguments

and overstatements of my analysis saturate his piece. Hexham misleadinglytransforms my declaration that I intend a ‘close reading’ of my sources into thegroundless assertion that I claim that earlier scholars failed to interpret nazismcorrectly because they did not read archival and published works carefully.If there are instances where I point out errors or oversights on behalf ofother scholars, I do not extrapolate from this and impugn their methods of investigation. In his effort to turn the tables, Hexham frequently impugnsmy methods, criticizing me, among other things, for my use of translatedprimary sources; to drive his point home, when citing these sources himself

he pointedly adds lengthy footnotes containing the original German text. If Iuse Manheim’s translation of Mein Kampf instead of the original German, asjust the most obvious example, then so too do scores of English-languagescholars of the Third Reich. I cannot here provide Hexham with an exhaustivelist, but among a few of the more recent examples are the works of MichaelBurleigh, Claudia Koonz, Saul Friedländer, Alan Steinweis and PaulWeindling.13 The list of scholars who use translations of other printed primarysources could go on and on.

Another error of Hexham’s is to suggest that I underestimate Rosenberg

because I do not take ideology seriously. It is difficult to determine againstwhom he is arguing when he states ‘it is safe to say that many scholars now seeideology as an important element in motivating individual National Socialists.’This is a sentence which could have come out of my own book. Whether or notBollmus diminishes the role of ideology in the nazi regime hardly disproves thelarger point Bollmus makes, and which my own research confirms; namely,that Rosenberg consistently lost his polycratic battles for supremacy inreligious questions. Based on quotes from public NSDAP ceremonies, Hexhamwould have us believe that Rosenberg’s beliefs were hegemonic in the naziparty and held sway over Hitler, even as he lost all the internecine struggles he


13 Burleigh, Third Reich, op. cit.; Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA 2003);Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York1997); Alan Steinweis, Art, Ideology & Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill, NC 1996); Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge 1989).


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entered into and was subjected to scorn and ridicule within the nazi elite.Hexham would do well to examine other spheres of Rosenberg’s life where hesimilarly lost to those who held real sway. Alexander Dallin demonstrated

with overwhelming empiricism how another of Rosenberg’s ideological petprojects lost out heavily: his vision of a series of tributary Slavic nation-statessurrounding a core Russian rump in the occupied Soviet Union was contemp-tuously disregarded by Hitler’s much more powerful satraps — even if, orperhaps precisely because, men like Erich Koch were nominally under Rosen-berg in his capacity as Minister for the Occupied East.14 The kinds of disrespectwhich his associates heaped upon him, both as an administrator and as anintellectual, make it abundantly clear that Rosenberg was not a man with alarge following. That he did have a cohort of fellow paganists who took him

seriously I myself point out; but to extrapolate from this and argue thatRosenberg’s religious ideas influenced Hitler or were hegemonic in the nazimovement or party is utterly without foundation.

Hexham nit picks on points of detail, for example, belabouring the questionof which edition of Rosenberg’s Mythus I have in fact used. He says I ‘repeat-edly claim’ to be using the 1930 edition, then informs me that I have actuallyused the 1935 edition. I do not ‘repeatedly claim’ to use any particular edition;I indicate the original publication date and place of Rosenberg’s book in rele-vant footnotes and again in the bibliography. I make no mention of an edition

one way or another. Hexham insists that I must be using the 1935 edition; infact I use the 1942 edition. If he is suggesting that my reference should havebeen to the date of the edition, not the original date of the publication of Mythus, I accept his suggestion. However, his argument that Rosenbergdefends himself against resurrecting a dead religion only in a later editionbecause he had to defend his work against hostile criticism since it first cameout in 1930 — in other words, Rosenberg had to backtrack — hardly dis-proves my larger point about Rosenberg’s weak position vis-a-vis his col-leagues or his defensiveness about his paganistic ideas. Hexham helps himself

to a reading of Speer — after criticizing my use of Speer’s book! And the pointhe makes is wrong: as with the above discussion concerning Speer’s Cathedralof Light or Hitler’s own comment on night rallies as nazi choreography, thereis not the slightest proof that the building of monumentalist architecturewas in keeping with Rosenberg’s paganism. Hexham’s conclusion includes apoint about Mark Twain which, while amusing, is a false parallel: Twain’srelationship to the Book of Mormon was not analogous to Hitler’s relationshipto Mythus.

Where Hexham is at his most untenable and even puzzling is in his lengthydefense of Rosenberg as someone more than a fringe ideologue. Page after pageof Hexham’s article is devoted to demonstrating not just the relevance of Rosenberg’s writings, but the need to take seriously the comparable writing of


14 Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York,1957).


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cult religious writers of the contemporary era with whom Rosenberg is com-pared. Hexham insists that Rosenberg’s high sales numbers for his Mythus area reflection of the genuine popularity of his religious ideas in nazi Germany —

overlooking Hitler’s own dismissal of those numbers (HR, 257). We shouldnot, Hexham warns, underestimate Rosenberg’s dangerous ideas simplybecause they strike us today as ridiculous or badly written ‘drivel.’ A strangeplea indeed, given that I engage in a lengthy analysis of Mythus (HR, 91ff). AsI state myself: ‘. . . the views found in the book are worth our consideration’(HR, 94). I take Rosenberg’s religious ideas seriously because he articulatedthe religious views of a group of nazis who, whether dilettantes or not, consti-tuted a discernable religious milieu within National Socialism. However, whatHexham simply cannot allow himself to see is that it was other nazis, not this

author, who found him ridiculous. The many instances in Holy Reich in whichI repeatedly demonstrate Hitler’s disdain for Rosenberg’s religious ideas aresimply ignored by Hexham. Rosenberg had a long-standing institutional inter-est in exaggerating his own importance: it is hardly surprising if Hitler occa-sionally played along. The private correspondence from Hitler which Hexhamquotes demonstrates that he is actually praising Rosenberg’s loyalty, not hisinfluence; the passage demonstrates Hitler’s sympathy and reciprocation foryears of Rosenberg’s commitment and loyalty. It does not demonstrate Hitler’sfealty to Rosenberg’s mysticism, only his maladroit reassurance that his ser-

vices are appreciated. Hexham tries to explain away postwar testimony of Rosenberg’s irrelevance by fellow nazis, claiming that, owing to its ‘genocidalideas, few were prepared to admit to having read the book’ — a conclusionhard to take seriously given the number of unrepentant nazis at Nuremberg,who showed no remorse for their loyalty to nazi ideology or its genocidal con-sequences. The fact which Hexham refuses to face is that I do not dismissMythus as unreadable — Hitler did.

Note how more than once Hexham feels he must work against what he per-ceives as my efforts to ‘discredit’ Rosenberg. Does Hexham feel some need to

save Rosenberg and his fellow paganists? It appears so, given the way in whichhe resorts to the most narrow criticisms.15 I wonder which dictionary Hexhamused to get ‘world-view authority’ from ‘Weltanschauungsprokurist’; and doesusing ‘executive secretary’ instead of ‘administrative clerk’ really change thelarger point Bracher is making in the lengthy quote that follows? Noticehow Hexham chooses to ignore Bracher’s conclusion that Rosenberg ‘did notsucceeded in becoming either a leading power-political figure or founder of a


15 Hexham has revealed such a tendency elsewhere, for instance in an exchange with an inter-viewer for an online publication called ‘Sociology of Science’, concerning critical comments on the

book New Religions and the Nazis by his wife Karla Poewe (http://www.sociologyesoscience.com/ ChrNazi.html, retrieved 17 August 2006). At one point the interviewer emails Poewe for her

thoughts, only to have Hexham respond instead, attacking my book as unreliable — again over the

canard of using translated source material — and concluding somewhat worryingly: ‘What is your

interest in Hauer and the Nazis? Why is it so important for you and your colleagues to distance the

Nazis from German neo-pagans like Hauer?’


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religion’! I agree with Bracher that Rosenberg spent his entire career ‘justify-ing’ nazi ideology, but Hexham gives us no proof as to how many people werereally listening, certainly not among the elites of the NSDAP, where it would

have mattered in this context. Trotting out a list of Zeitgenossen (eyewitnesses)to prove Rosenberg really was important, including the very dubious memoirsof Lüdecke and Otto Strasser,16 and an allegedly ‘expert’ list of American visi-tors to Germany totally unconnected to Hitler’s inner sanctum, demonstratesthat Hexham is pleading rather than proving his case.

Aside from saving Rosenberg from his own marginality, Hexham concernshimself with what kind of alternative analysis might be derived from oneparticular source: Goebbels’ novel Michael . Given restrictions of space Icannot go head to head with Hexham on each example he raises. However,

looking at one instance in particular displays the distorted and faulty nature of his analysis. Hexham contends that a quote I use to express Goebbels’ view onChristianity ‘reads as though it is a direct statement made by Goebbels’ whenin fact it is the words of Goebbels’ protagonist in the novel, Michael Vormann.Unfortunately for Hexham, I indicate on the very same page that this quotecomes from a novel . Elsewhere, when comparing Michael with Dinter’s Sinagainst the Blood , I state: ‘Goebbels created a fictional protagonist, MichaelVormann, through whom he voiced his views’ (HR, 31). Hexham wants tohave it both ways: on the one hand, his lengthy excursus informs me that

novels are not the most reliable insight into their authors’ thinking; but he thenallows himself to analyse Michael for precisely such insight! As Helmut Heiberpoints out in the liner notes to the English translation of Michael , Goebbelsalmost certainly adapted this novel from his own diaries of the early 1920s;even without this ‘endorsement’, however, even the most desultory reading of Michael demonstrates that it is laden with coarse and authentically nazi views— most obviously a raging antisemitism, but also hostility to parliamentarydemocracy and his own ‘socialist’ vision of ‘National Socialism.’

The larger problem with Hexham’s contention that Vormann ‘liberates’

himself from Christianity is that he simply never demonstrates this. Vormann/ Goebbels is being anticlerical, as I point out in my own analysis (HR, 21), buthis reference to Christ makes it plain he is referring to Christianity, howeverrevolutionary his reading of it. Hexham attempts a translation of ‘Wiederkomme ich zu Christus’, coming up with ‘Once again I return to the issue of Christ.’ The English-language version I use, by Joachim Neugroschel, is muchmore felicitously translated as ‘I find Christ again’. A more verbatim trans-lation, ‘Again I come to Christ’, still bears little resemblance to Hexham’smuch more convoluted and misleading ‘return to the issue of Christ’. Hexhamcontinues to translate conveniently but poorly. A pivotal passage in this


16 Like Rauschning, Otto Strasser was concerned with currying favour among the Allies, towhom he had defected: his resultant self-exculpatory ‘memoirs’ are described by Kershaw as ‘a

biased and often unreliable source . . . the fanciful anti-Hitler propaganda of an outright political

enemy’: Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1939–1956: Hubris (New York, 1999), 241, 352, 683.


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lengthy Michael quote would seem to clinch his case: ‘Yet millions await anew religion.’ However, the original German which Hexham provides reads‘Millionen warten darauf, und ihre Sehnsucht bleibt unerfüllt’. ‘Sehnsucht’ is

not the German word for ‘religion’, but for ‘longing’. Against Hexham’sremarkable display of artistic licence we have Neugroschel’s much more felici-tous translation: ‘Millions of people are waiting for this new formation, andtheir yearnings remain unfulfilled’ (quoted in HR, 21). If this is Hexham’s ideaof how to use original-language source material, I’ll stick with the publishedtranslations.

Staying for a moment with this pivotal passage from Michael , Hexhamcharges me with ‘leaving out the final passage about a new God’. He is refer-ring to the passage in Michael that reads: ‘But we should allow the broad

masses to worship their idols until we can give them a new God.’ Although itis true that I do not make reference to this passage, elsewhere in my analysis Ipoint to Goebbels’ sometimes contradictory views on religion during theKampfzeit , or ‘Time of Struggle’ (HR, 53–54). But, having accused me of leav-ing out evidence which disproves my thesis, Hexham proceeds to leave out thevery next sentence: ‘I take the Bible, and all evening long I read the simplestand greatest sermon that has ever been given to mankind: The Sermon on theMount!’ (Original German: ‘Ich nehme die Bibel und lese einen ganzen Abenddie einfachste, größte Predigt, die her Menschheit je gehalten wurde: die

Bergpredigt!’17

) Only by leaving out inconvenient passages, incorrectly trans-lating others, and taking Goebbels’ quotes out of context can Hexham makehis absurd case that Michael demonstrates not Christian, but ‘neo-pagan’thinking. This is only the most obvious case of Hexham’s slapdash approachto sources and quotations and a repeated tendency to distort evidence to fit inwith his preconceived notions. Hexham does have me on one point, however:I gave the wrong page number when citing one of the epigraphs from Mythusthat begin chapter three.

Piper’s analysis on my book rivals Gailus’ for being the most caustic — but itis easily the most perfunctory of all four. Before the first sentence ends he hasalready made a mistake, wrongly stating that I argue ‘National Socialism wasa Christian movement’. I challenge Piper to produce evidence that I say thisanywhere in my book. Unfortunately Piper’s piece does little to engage myarguments from there, simply synopsizing the more relevant passages of hisown biography of Alfred Rosenberg rather than addressing either my sourcesor my findings. In the process, he certainly says much that I agree with — asPiper should have immediately recognized. My discussion of responses toRosenberg’s Mythus similarly points out, for instance, that Catholic opinion of


17 Joseph Goebbels, Michael: Ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblättern (Munich 1929; 7thedn, 1935), 145.


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his book was very negative (HR, 127–8); I agree entirely that in MythusRosenberg rejects both the Protestant and Catholic establishments (HR,98–100), and point out myself how ‘so much of Christianity’ was rejected in it

(HR, 98); that Himmler and Rosenberg were allies is something I refer to morethan once (HR, 129, 131); like Piper, I place Wächtler among those onRosenberg’s side (HR, 241); I use Goebbels’ quote of 1939, and include thenext sentence of his diary: ‘He [Hitler] regards Christianity as a symptom of decay’ (HR, 252); I discuss at length and in much the same terms the signifi-cance of Rosenberg leaving the Protestant church in 1933 (HR, 165); Pipercasts the Gottgläubiger (believers in God) in terms very similar to my own(HR, 219); I entirely agree with his assessment of the failures of the paganist‘German Faith Movement’ (HR, 149–53). The list could go on. However,

Piper makes mistakes as well. He wrongly asserts that Martin Bormann was a‘powerful ally’ of Rosenberg’s, disregarding the substantial evidence that theywere in fact rivals (HR, 247–8). He characterizes Dinter’s religion as anti-Christian, incorrectly suggesting that the only proof to the contrary is Dinter’sadmiration of Christ. As I demonstrate, Dinter’s own description of hisChristian feelings points to more than this (HR, 19–20, 24, 27, 30–1, 58).

Incredibly, Piper suggests that only a few isolated individuals like JohannesStark and Hanns Kerrl sought a ‘reconciliation’ between nazism and Christian-ity, and that they were ‘of necessity outsiders’. To make this claim Piper had to

studiously avoid reading the first two chapters of my book, in which I demon-strate what kinds of powerful nazis — including Wächtler’s predecessor HansSchemm, the party’s supreme judge Walter Buch, and a host of Gauleiterincluding Wilhelm Kube and Erich Koch — far from seeking a ‘reconciliation’between nazism and Christianity, were of the firm conviction that the twoformed a synthesis. Amazingly, nowhere in Piper’s 831-page biography of Rosenberg do the religious views of these men once receive even the mostcursory treatment.18 In the 12-page chapter in his book on ‘Religion undPolitik’ during the Kampfzeit , Piper chooses to focus solely on Hitler’s and

Rosenberg’s dealings with Ludendorff and Dinter, wrongly casting thoseepisodes as symptomatic of a pan-nazi opposition to all things Christian.If Piper begins by creating a straw man, he ends by caricaturing my state-

ments: against my ‘ridiculous’ claim that Bouhler’s PPK is a commonly over-looked office, Piper cites a single reference which is not even a monographictreatment of the PPK. While Bouhler is known among historians for his role inthe infamous T-4 killings, I stand by my assertion that his role as rival toRosenberg in the oversight of nazi ideology, let alone his place in the party’sinternal religious struggles, is much less commented on. Piper tries to prove myignorance by accusing me of being unaware that the publisher Hoheneichen,which published Rosenberg’s Mythus, was owned by nazis’ Eher Verlag.He believes he is correcting my information, when in fact I state that ‘it waspublished as a private work, never becoming an official guide to nazi thinking


18 Ernst Piper, Alfred Rosenberg: Hitlers Chefideologe (Munich 2005).


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. . . It never received the official stamp of the NSDAP, nor did the party’sofficial publisher publish it’ (HR, 92; emphasis mine). The sloppiness of Piper’saccusations grows from there. I am accused of spelling Alfred Bäumler’s last

name ‘three different ways’, when in fact I consistently spell it one way, excepton a single occasion when I quote another scholar (which happens to be thespelling Piper employs). He furthermore claims that I ‘fail to do justice to thepart played’ by Bäumler. Since he doesn’t indicate what he means by this, I canonly assume he believes I understate Bäumler’s importance in the Third Reich.If so, Piper again read past my book: ‘Along with Heidegger, Bäumler was themost notable philosopher to back the nazi regime with his intellectual prestige. . . Bäumler maintained and indeed strengthened his links with the nazis wellinto the Third Reich . . . as Hans Sluga puts it, “Bäumler was . . . more than any

other German philosopher, the typical fascist intellectual”’ (HR, 105). Onecould argue these attempts to make mountains out of molehills would havesome value, were it not for the fact that each of them is so obviously wrong.

I would like to address some of the problems I see in Bergen’s otherwisemuch more temperate piece. She suggests I treat ‘somewhat condescendingly’her book Twisted Cross, and expresses surprise that I believe I am revisingher own view. I believe that as an analysis primarily of nazi attitudes toChristianity, my book in many ways serves as a natural complement to, amongother works, her own probing analysis of Christian attitudes to nazism.

However, the point of departure for the two of us concerns whether or not theChristianity these ‘National Socialist Christians’ and ‘Christian NationalSocialists’ both subscribed to can really be called Christian. Naturally it wouldbe an enormous burden to demonstrate just what ‘real Christianity’ is, even asa number of prior historians have, without sanction, left undefined the conceptof ‘infected Christianity’. I agree completely with Bergen’s larger point thathistorians do well to remember the tension between the ‘external/historical’and the ‘internal/ideal’. I would cautiously agree with her assertion that ‘GermanChristians did not fit most standard theological criteria for Christians’ — a

formulation which is nuanced enough to allow for the complexity of the ques-tion — or that ‘most people would describe’ the German Christians sheexplores ‘as un-Christian’. However, what she fails to point out is that shedescribed them this way: ‘ultimately non-Christian . . . no church at all.’19 Itseems to me she puts her case quite plainly: the German Christians — whetherlaymen, pastors or theologians — did not properly understand their religion.

If Gailus faults me for wanting too much, Bergen claims I have not doneenough. For all her charges of tendentiousness and ‘collecting of quotes’, sheclaims that had I only played the ‘ace’ of church membership statistics, I wouldhave ‘nailed’ my case. I must remind her that I address precisely this questionwhen explaining why I translate the German Konfession as ‘confession’ insteadof ‘denomination’: ‘In Germany, where to this day religion nominally remains


19 Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (ChapelHill, NC 1996), 192.


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an obligatory state affair and not voluntaristic, there are no denominations inthe strict sense of the word. Its use in the German context incorrectly suggestsan American-style religious “marketplace” and attendant separation of church

and state’ (HR, xv). Nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context, especially given the very circuitous route one hadto take before one could officially leave one’s church — unless there weresudden, propitious drops or increases, as was the case in 1933. Church attend-ance, by contrast, would have been a much more revealing gauge, if muchmore difficult to ascertain.

It is most peculiar that Bergen would make such an argument, given that mygoal is to explore nazi attitudes to Christianity, not the other way around.Would I have nailed my case by simply pointing out that Hitler, Goebbels, and

Goering always remained members of their churches? That Goebbels had hischildren baptized? That in 1935 Goering wedded his second wife Emmy in aLutheran service? I make all these points in my book, but could not contendthat by themselves they prove much about a larger ideological relationship.Indeed, Hitler’s ongoing membership in the Catholic Church stands very muchat odds with his private comments about Catholicism and its traditions. Bergenherself points to the highly incomplete picture such statistics provide when sheasserts that ‘a growing exodus from the church in the Imperial and Weimareras, coupled with the loss of credibility after the debacle of the Great War,

convinced many church leaders that Christianity was losing ground’. To herclaim that Protestant theologians grudgingly felt obliged to stay with the timesby endorsing nazism, I would point out that for every Protestant whoexpressed misgivings privately, there was another who believed nazism meanta return to Christianity. Furthermore — and this is at the centre of my work —this was not just a case of Protestants giving their blessings to nazism fromafar; many nazis were themselves believing Protestants.

At the conclusion of her article Bergen charges me with leaving out ‘thecrucial element of tension in nazi–Christian relations. Without conceding at

least some nazi hostility, however, the dynamic generated by Christian defen-siveness cannot be understood.’ This is speculatively attributed to ‘an effort tomake his evidence fit neatly’. First, I point to repeated instances of hostilitybetween nazism and institutional Christianity, both Catholic and, as the ThirdReich wears on, increasingly Protestant. It was the consistent resistance of theDahlemites against the plans for a Reichskirche that, after all, made Hitler turnsharply against institutional Protestantism in 1937 (HR, 183–8). That Bergenclaims I ‘left out’ such evidence is a mystery. Second, I point repeatedly to themany instances of hostility to Christianity among the paganist cohort, fromRosenberg, Himmler, and all the other paganists of the party. I also makereference to the hostility with which these attacks were met in Christian circles.

Bergen ends her piece with a list of my indiscretions. She claims I pay insuf-ficient attention to the key issue of anti-Semitism; while I very much agreethat analysing the potential of religiously inspired anti-Semitism among themurderers/perpetrators remains a scholarly desideratum, I do explore anti-



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Semitism in my book very extensively (HR, 3–4, 8–10, 13, 20, 24, 27, 29–41,43–4, 49, 51–4, 60, 105, 107, 117–18, 125–6, 136, 141, 176–7, 182, 185–6,195, 235, 248, 254–5, 258, 260, 262–3, 265, 267). She claims I fall ‘into the

trap of confessional competition’; this is false. I do not seek to uncover who is‘more guilty’, Protestant or Catholic, but whom the nazis esteemed more. I donot say ‘nazism was at times identical to Christianity’; I explore those naziswho did — and those who said ‘no’. Even if I claim that paganist hostility toChristianity was fraught with ambiguity and ambivalence, such anti-Christianswere clearly antagonistic enough for me to preclude ever claiming that nazismand Christianity were, even in the worst of instances, ‘always able to coexistharmoniously’ — a particularly puzzling assertion given that she elsewherefaults me for not finding enough in common between nazism and Catholicism.

She urges us to remember that ‘some nazis were openly and actively anti-church: remember the uproar over Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the TwentiethCentury’: I do. She reminds us that nazis restricted some church activities (HR,chapter 5, passim). She suggests we not forget that Hitler’s plans for the futurecapital of ‘Germania’ left no room for churches (HR, 247). Finally, she informsus that Hitler believed he was God. By her tone here, Bergen seems to believeshe has played her ace. The evidence demonstrates beyond doubt that this is aclaim that Hitler never once made. Occasionally megalomaniacs of worldhistory are known to believe they are literally divine: the leader of China’s

Taiping Rebellion, for instance, thought he was Christ’s younger brother.20

Bergen relishes an opportunity to make fun of Hitler — and who doesn’t? Butwhile Hitler believed that God had a special plan for him, that he representedGod’s will on earth, and that those who went against him went against God,he did not believe he was divine.

Aside from the pieces included in this symposium, there are — so far — threeother published review articles that attempt a longer exploration of my book.

One is by George Williamson, a very favourable historiographical essay incor-porating many works in addition to my own, which appears in ChurchHistory.21 Another is by Milan Babík in History and Theory, on the theoreticalunderpinnings of Holy Reich, and how the concept of ‘secular religion’ mightstill be seen as relevant to it.22 The other is Mark Ruff’s piece on ‘NaziReligionspolitik’ in Catholic Historical Review, which, while strictly speakinga comparison of two works, my own and Himmlers Glaubenskrieger byWolfgang Dierker, spends less time on Dierker’s work than on mine.23 There is


20 Jonathan Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan(New York 1996).

21 George Williamson, ‘A Religious Sonderweg? Reflections on the Sacred and the Secular in theHistoriography of Modern Germany’, in Church History, 75 (2006), 139–56.

22 Milan Babík, ‘Nazism as a Secular Religion’, History and Theory, 45 (2006), 375–96.

23 Mark Edward Ruff, ‘The Nazis’ Religionspolitik: An Assessment of Recent Literature’, TheCatholic Historical Review, 92 (2006), 252–66. That CHR should have devoted an article to my


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much in Ruff’s piece to commend, including a sophisticated discussion ofsecularization theory and the ways in which my work can be seen as part of alarger rethinking of ‘canonicity’ among scholars like Hugh McLeod, Jeffrey

Cox, and others over the last decade or more, even as his own interpretationclearly upholds a traditional model. Ruff thoughtfully explores the ways inwhich Dierker’s work both resembles and departs from my own. He insight-fully discusses the question of nazism’s ideological incoherence, even if he failsto demonstrate his assertion that I am an intentionalist. While I take ideologyseriously — something functionalists, it should be pointed out, are on occasionknown to do — I also deal centrally with the contingencies of internecine partywarfare, and the role it played in the party’s decision-making on religion andthe churches.

However, while the tone of his piece is certainly much more even-handedand dispassionate than Gailus’, Hexham’s, or Piper’s, Ruff unfortunately re-iterates many of their fallacies. As one example, he accuses me of making‘absolute pronouncements’ for suggesting a scrutiny of Christianity’s dark pastof sacralized violence, given the commitment to Christianity among some nazisand their profession that their anti-Semitism could be explained in Christianterms. Meanwhile, Dierker apparently ‘refrains from absolute pronounce-ments’, even when he ‘takes it as a given’ in absolute terms that the nazisharboured no Christians in their ranks (Ruff, 255). As another example, Ruff

suggests that it is credulous to take seriously the nazis’ public statements onreligion, given their mendacity on other issues. To make this charge Ruff apparently overlooked the systematic comparisons I undertake throughout mybook between what nazis uttered publicly and what they said privately. To hispoint that Hitler made false promises to the Catholic Church — he apparentlymissed the many occasions in which I demonstrate Hitler’s public stanceregarding Catholicism contrasted sharply with privately-expressed antago-nism. He faults me for not engaging in a ‘more careful analysis of the contextin which they were articulated to determine whether the statements affirming

Christianity were made in a setting that was both religious and public orwhether the anti-Christian invective was overwhelmingly private’ (Ruff, 259);a reading of the first four chapters of Holy Reich reveals that I do preciselythis. Those I label ‘positive Christians’, while certainly aware of the politicaladvantage of appearing Christian for political purposes, affirmed their identi-ties as Christian behind closed doors as well. By contrast, whole sections of mybook explore the ways in which anti-Christian paganists in the party refused toappear as Christians for the sake of public consumption. If the partyschechthin displayed a contradictory attitude towards Christianity, nonethe-less one can chart distinct religious tendencies within the party at least until


book is somewhat unusual, given that it had already published a review by Doris Bergen (91

[2005], 841–3), essentially a condensation of her contribution to this symposium, albeit more posi-

tive. Ruff claims in his essay to be examining my Wallstein piece on political religion as well; in

fact, this gets perfunctory treatment.


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1937 (and for many nazis, beyond), as well as a turn to increasingly anti-Christian sentiment in general as the war neared its close. Ruff’s inability toacknowledge that I treat both sides of an intra-nazi debate on religion leads

him to the false assertion that I try to debunk ‘a myth of resistance to hostile paganists’ that arose after the second world war (Ruff, 266, emphasis added).In fact, the myth I speak of in the conclusion of my book is one of Christianresistance to nazism, not paganism. Not only do I point out instances of Christian resistance to paganism from the churches, but also the battlebetween Christians and paganists within the nazi movement itself.

Ruff makes several more points concerning method and sources. Forinstance, he claims that Dierker’s work is more meticulous, since he visited 23archives against my 7. Ruff seems to take a quantitative rather than qualitative

approach when inferring from this that Dierker’s findings are therefore morereliable. What Ruff fails to appreciate is that the subjects of my historicalanalysis are just as defined as Dierker’s. Whereas Dierker pores over the insti-tutional history of one SD office, I explore the conceptions of Christianityfound among the elites of the nazi party. The archives I consulted, huge collec-tions that they are, constitute far and away the most important for thispurpose. Many of those views are found in printed primary sources as well, of course, some of which Ruff somewhat condescendingly refers to as ‘ephemera’,even as elsewhere he takes me to task for not having utilized the leading piece

of ‘grey literature’ which is truly beyond the pale of reliability, Rauschning’sHitler Speaks. While on the subject of sources, Ruff mistakenly argues that Iimpugn the reliability of Hitler’s Table Talk, when in fact I refer to the con-troversies surrounding this source but ultimately presume its authenticity. Ruff seems to follow Hexham’s lead in his imprecise critiquing, claiming I ignorethe monologues of Heinrich Heim and intimating that I do so to help furthermy arguments. In fact, the standard version of Table Talk which I use incor-porates Heim’s version of the monologues as well as Picker’s — as the intro-duction to Table Talk reveals.24 Ruff proceeds to highlight a quote Dierker uses

to demonstrate Hitler’s hatred of Christianity in 1941 (Ruff, 258), apparentlynot realizing that I use a quote very similar to this in my own analysis (HR,254). Like Hexham, he pointedly adds a footnote providing the originalGerman. Ruff also allows himself to quote from Speer’s biography, presum-ably another example of ‘ephemera’ (Ruff, 257). He uses this particularexample to argue that I attempt but fail to ‘explain away’ anti-Christianmoments in nazism — once more overlooking whole swaths of the book whenI explore anti-Christian sentiment at length. Dierker presumably has noexplaining away to do, for the simple reason that he chose to examine an officewhere he would find no Christian sentiment.

Aside from addressing methods and use of sources, Ruff also makes somelarger analytical points regarding my work. Unfortunately, these are some of


24 Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944: His Private Conversations, trans. Norman Cameron andR.H. Stevens, introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper (London 1953), vii–xxxvi.


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the most problematic parts of his article. First, he compounds his undemon-strated assertion that I am an intentionalist by making an erroneous claim thatI need to engage in a functionalist ‘day-to-day treatment by state and party of

the churches and Christianity’ (Ruff, 260) — indicating that he had given onlythe most cursory glance at depictions of the vagaries of nazi decision-makingin precisely such terms (HR, 156–89, 236–54). Ruff errs once more when hesuggests that the nazis ‘did little to advance the cause of those committedChristians who embraced nazism, including most notably the ardently pro-nazi German Christians.’ In an attempt to demonstrate this point, he quotesDierker to the effect that Himmler ordered all Christian clergy out of the SS by1934 (Ruff, 263). Once more, Ruff displays a rather desultory comprehensionof my analysis: first, I point out at length the many forms of support which the

NSDAP gave the German Christians in the church elections of 1933; Ruff’sclaim that there was no such support is simply false (HR, 159–64). Second, Iclearly and repeatedly place Himmler, as head of the SS, among those pagan-ists in the party who were the most anti-Christian and therefore anti-church.At the same time, I clearly demonstrate how Himmler’s anticlericalism wastempered by moments of surprising ambiguity regarding the Christian religionitself — including esteem for Martin Luther, the Virgin Mary, and Christ.Himmler also talked repeatedly and with surprising tolerance on the persistentpresence of lay Christians within the SS membership (HR, 131–3, 233–5).

Ruff’s greatest analytical fallacy, however, is to insist that the anti-Christianzealotry of Dierker’s SD men was typical of nazism. When describing theirvoracious hatred of Christianity and the churches, he takes a faintly intention-alist approach by speaking of these SD men as the ‘true believers’ of the naziWeltanschauung (Ruff, 263). I have no problem with the category of the nazi‘true believer’ — as I point out in my book, distinctions need to be madebetween those whose commitment to nazi ideology was beyond question, andthose in the lower ranks of the NSDAP, which was known to include a smat-tering of members of the Confessing Church, after all (HR, 163–4, 223,

227–8). Having said that, it strains credulity beyond the breaking point forRuff to describe an office staffed overwhelmingly with disgruntled Catholicex-priests, clearly on a vendetta against their one-time spiritual home, asnazism’s ‘true believers’. Ruff undermines his own argument about their statusas the avatars of nazi ideology by elaborating on the entirely non-ideologicalsources of their resentment — failed academics and students who did not orcould not pursue their academic aspirations; Mittelständler (petty bourgeois)with an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the more highly-regarded Gestapo; hot-heads with something to prove ‘chafing’ at the unwillingness of their superiorsto let them even the score for their failed private lives (Ruff, 261). Against theselowly individuals Ruff would apparently have us believe that ErnstKaltenbrunner, owing to his dismantling of this band of vengeful ex-priests,somehow counts as ‘less nazi’ than they. Ruff directly challenges me by sug-gesting that these defrocked clergymen ‘lead us to question just how centralthese beliefs [positive Christianity] were, in fact, to the Nazi ideology’ (Ruff,



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263) — a line of argument which, if followed to its logical conclusion, meansthat not just the head of the RSHA, but apparently Reichsmarschall Goering,several Reichsleiter and Gauleiter, as well as Hitler’s mentor in Munich, must

perforce have been ‘less nazi’ when compared to the occupants of DepartmentIVB of the SD. To top off this scenario, Ruff then revives the completelyunproven but in some circles popular truism that the nazis were going to tar-get the Christians of Europe after the genocide of the Jews: ‘those who hadbeen active in the Religious Opponents division of the SD [Department IVB]were directly supervised by those co-ordinating the deportations of the Jews tothe East, an ominous precedent should these hard-liners have gained furtherpower at the close of the war’ (Ruff, 264).

I should point out again that Ruff is not nearly as cantankerous as Gailus or

Piper. Still, for all his mildness of tone, he helps himself to some wry jabs: mywork apparently ‘bears the burden of unusually high praise’, implying that ithas received as much attention as it has not on its strengths, but because of its‘eulogists’ as Gailus puts it. By the end of his article Ruff makes it clear that hebelieves this i

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Christianity and the Nazi Movement Response