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Christianity and the Nazi Movement: A ResponseAuthor(s): Richard Steigmann-GallReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 2007), pp. 185-211Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036441 .

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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright @ 2007 SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore, Vol 42(2), 185-211 I. ISSN 0022-0094. DOI: 10.1 177/0022009407075560

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 brought forth 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 end of the continuum. Positive reviews can be found both in secular and Christian periodicals, some of them written by self-described Christians of both liberal and conservative orientations. There has also been a lively debate on various internet websites, many of which attempt to use the book, either negatively or positively, 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 at large would be less dispassionate than others. And indeed, much of the discussion which the book has generated reveals a clear emotional attachment to the subject - among those who praise the book, certainly, but also among those who condemn it.

On that continuum of critical response to my work, it is safe to say that the four 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 both my arguments and my findings. They take issue with my methodology, pointing to what they believe are fundamental mistakes, egregious errors, and fatal shortcomings. They accuse me of tendentiousness and a lack of originality, of a refusal to explore countervailing evidence or to acknowledge work prior to my own. It is suggested that in my effort to turn a blind eye to inconvenient realities, I selectively pick through the quote mines of history. By turns various aspects of my book are described as 'afflicted', 'crass', 'astonishing', 'conde- scending', 'deficient' and 'ridiculous'. What they see as lapses are speculatively explained - by one of them with a foray into psychoanalysis - as deliberate oversight, wilful ignorance, or unhealthy fixation. Reading these criticisms, it might appear that the condemnations are simply insurmountable. However, what appear to be comprehensive and authoritative critiques of my book are too often, upon closer inspection, a series of misinterpretations, efforts to erect straw men, and, with disturbing frequency, distortions and fabrications. In



186 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 42 No 2

their attempts to paint my work as tendentious, these authors frequently give free rein to their own tendentiousness. Claiming that I overlook countervailing evidence, 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 with extrapolations, caricatures, and misrepresentations of fact and argument so repetitive and unbridled that one begins to wonder whether the 'strange obsession' he speaks of is not a case of Freudian projection.

Some of my respondents take greater care than others to explain what they believe my book does and does not do. Given that the reader has now received four different interpretations of The Holy Reich (Stowers' piece, while thematically 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 my book attempts to do, how it goes about it, and, most vitally, what it does and does not argue. In a phrase, Holy Reich attempts to revise our understanding of the nazi movement as intrinsically anti-Christian. It does this by examining the views of leading nazis, defined both in terms of their overall position in the movement's hierarchy and by their positions as designated party authorities in matters of ideological oversight and articulation, or public and party education and indoctrination. In other words, those nazis I explore were, in one way or another, designated as part of an ideological elite or milieu within the movement: at the very least, as arbiters of which idea or concept counted as National Socialist and which not.

I found, based on evidence obtained through archival materials, printed primary sources, and secondary sources, that the nazi movement as such, either as a party seeking power or as a government in power, could not be called anti- Christian. Based primarily on private and often secret documents, closely matched with public pronunciations, I demonstrate with abundant empirical evidence that a wide swath of the party believed themselves and their movement to be Christian. They demonstrated this through both their words and their actions, as individuals and as decision-makers in the nazi party and later the nazi state. The individuals who exhibited a commitment to the Christian religion I describe as 'positive Christians', based on their adherence to the 'positive Christianity' which the party referenced in Point 24 of its official programme - which, it should be pointed out, was never revoked. Even while many of these 'positive Christians' could be highly anticlerical, and strongly antagonistic in particular to the Catholic Church and its traditions, they maintained that through personal belief as well as through government policy, the movement was guided by Christian principles - most obviously in its anti- Semitism, but also in its anti-marxism, anti-liberalism, and erection of a people's community exalting an 'ethical socialism' while excluding those deemed racially unfit.

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



Steigmann-Gall: Christianity and the Nazi Movement 187

movement was a Christian one, I also gauge their truth claims against the views of leading churchmen and theologians of the day. Not to discover whether there were Christians who supported nazism; an exhaustive literature has already established the breadth and depth of this support, among both Protestants and Catholics in Germany. Rather, to discover if, and if so what kind 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 Old Testament as two of the most central - also found expression within Germany's kulturprotestantisch milieu. In other words, Christian nazis did not just 'distort' or 'infect' Christian ideas to suit their party; such ideas had existed in varieties of Christianity which - and this is vital - were articulated by acknowledged theologians and Christian intellectuals before nazism ever came 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 been much more closely scrutinized in historical scholarship and about whom a great deal is already known. I confirm the conventional view that their presence in the party was very real, and among their members included some extremely powerful men. However, I make two arguments in particular which stray from accepted convention: first, the paganist cohort did not achieve the religious dominance or at least hegemony they lusted after. While this goes against much church historiography, I indicate in my book that other scholars have made this argument as well. Second, and more originally, I contend that as a set of ideas and precepts, the content of paganism was highly ambivalent toward and quite partial in its rejection of Christianity. Having said that, I also make it clear that their presence in the party elite, and their intraparty rivalry with '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 how anticlericalism took greater hold within the nazi worldview as well as in state practice, and that opposition not just to the institutions but also to the traditions of Christianity grew as the Third Reich neared its close. Through the example of intraparty factionalism, I demonstrate the ways in which many Christians 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 to propagate positive Christianity as a religion for the movement, was, in spite of paganist challenges, for the most part upheld. I also demonstrate how positive Christians in many cases were able to retain their positions of power within the party and state. For their part, whatever momentary strategic advantages they may have gained, paganists were never able to exploit the growing anticlericalism of the state or Hitler's growing disenchantment with the Christian religion itself. In fact, the views and policies of the nazi state could be very




hostile to both paganist organizations and individual paganists within the nazi party. At the same time, some who had previously expressed a commitment to Christianity increasingly expressed a rejection of it, even as they continued to uphold Jesus and his message, and adhere to other signifiers of Christian commitment.

Given what my book does and doesn't argue, the careful reader will already find ways in which Holy Reich has been misrepresented in the preceding criticisms. I will address these criticisms in two ways: by exploring the larger points that arise repeatedly between one reviewer and the next, and by addressing more isolated criticisms author by author. I will conclude by considering another critique recently published in another venue.

We can begin with political religion theory. I am accused of fatally overlooking, through either wilfulness or ignorance, the debates on nazism as a political religion. It is no accident that Manfred Gailus and Ernst Piper, both German scholars, reproach me for leaving this theory out of my analysis - even if Piper does not subscribe to it himself - whereas the North American scholar Irving Hexham, even though an advocate of political religion theory, is much less reproachful; and fellow North American Doris Bergen gives no mention 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 significant monographic trend.' For the record, I find myself in complete agreement with Stowers' deconstruction of political religion - for its inability to truly define what a religion is, among other problems. In its current scholarly application, political religion theory is primarily concerned with demonstrating how nazism could be considered a replacement faith for Christianity. My goal in exploring nazi conceptions of Christianity was quite different - namely, to reconsider the relationship between politics and established religion. In this sense, 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, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the

Napoleonic 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.




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

I do not engage political religion in Holy Reich because it does not address my problematic - not, as Gailus and Piper would have the reader believe, because doing so would undermine my claims to originality. (Birsch's 1998 book explores many of the same nazis I do and uses much the same source material, but I explore a much greater range of nazis' opinion. Birsch also proceeds from fundamentally different conceptualizations, and his argument that the nazis made the nation 'divine' differs markedly from my own findings. Piper will hopefully forgive me if my manuscript was already with the publisher by the time RiLfmann's book appeared - perhaps the same reason my book gets no mention in his new Rosenberg biography.) My critics can rest assured 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 Lehmann and Michael Geyer published by Wallstein Verlag.2 That neither Gailus nor Piper seem aware of this piece is particularly puzzling, given their sharply worded criticism that I ignore whole historiographies, let alone individual authors. This oversight is particularly extraordinary in Gailus' case in light of his exacting efforts to cite practically the entire political religion corpus; the fact that, in her contribution to a special issue of Geschichte und Gesellschaft which Gailus edited, Bergen cites the conference paper I gave in Gottingen in 2001 that formed the basis of my Wallstein article; and the fact that Lehmann is Gailus' collaborator, he having co-edited a volume with Lehmann just after my piece in Geyer's and Lehmann's volume appeared. Was he not familiar with this article?

I will not recapitulate either Stowers' deconstruction of political religion theory or my own, since these are available in full already. I will, however, make two points of particular salience for this symposium. First, the evidence is 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 in Gailus' sense could be termed political religion - their efforts were consistently refuted by a more effective cohort of nazis who, whether 'positive Christian' or of some other religious persuasion, were actively opposed to such plans. 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 contrary to the very meaning of the movement. There is simply far too much archival evidence, analysed by Reinhard Bollmus, Robert Cecil, and myself among others, 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: Beitriige zu einer unbewdiltigten Geschichte (G6ttingen 2004), 386-408; Richard Steigmann-Gall, 'Nazism and the Revival of Political Religion Theory', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 5 (2004), 376-96.




battles over implementation of his religious agenda (Hexham implies that Bollmus' findings are too old to be relevant; in fact, his book is now in its second edition).3

Second, things like 'commemorations of the dead', 'cult cycle', and 'sacred actions', as Gailus describes them, do not constitute the 'actual area of NS religiosity'. These may all be rituals, in the same sense that every political movement articulates for itself a set of rituals and practices around which it formulates a sense of identity and solidarity. One could point to several contemporary instances of politicians engaging in rituals or other acts which touch the emotional, non-rationalistic impulses of the audience. The question is, are these moments symptomatic of a religion and/or 'religiosity'? When Franqois Mitterrand 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 George W. Bush walked solemnly to his podium in the middle of the convention hall to give his acceptance speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention, replete with spotlights and impassioned audience, was he articulating the creed of a new faith? Without citing any examples, or explaining how commemora- tion of the dead among other public acts can be considered rivalrous to Christian tradition, Gailus simply asserts the conventional truism that such behaviour, of necessity, had to be un- or anti-Christian. I do not dispute that there 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 have of their failure is the utter rejection of such efforts by Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering, among others.

That is not to say there was no such thing as nazi ceremony or ritual. Here too, the nazis staged highly choreographed spectacles such as Speer's famous Cathedral of Light. The question that needs to be asked is not whether the nazis tried to win new supporters using such methods; aside from highly dubious testimonials from those claiming to have 'skeptically' attended a rally only to be 'born again' by the charismatic Fiihrer, there is no empirical evidence of any numerically significant 'conversion experiences'. Instead, the question is whether the nazis regarded such ceremony as being religious. There is no reliable evidence that Hitler believed he was creating a religion through the 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 Catholic youth, or of his followers being Christ-like in their determination - all points I 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 replace Christ as a new object of worship. That Hitler borrowed from Christian ritual

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




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

Gailus and Piper essentially ignore evidence that Hitler, Goebbels, and other high-ranking nazis esteemed Jesus as only the most obvious signifier of the Christian faith, instead (in Gailus' case) admitting only to a few isolated cases of 'dual-faith' nazis like Hans Schemm and otherwise explaining away evidence of Christian commitment by choosing to argue that whatever Christian religiosity existed in the nazi elite was simply residual, the lingering trace of a typically Wilhelmine 'bourgeois/petty bourgeois family background' in which these nazis were raised. Gailus suggests they had little choice but to start life as Christians, but that this atrophied with adulthood. There are far too many false assumptions for this line of argument to sustain itself. For one, the Kaiserreich (Imperial Germany) in this conception is essentially cast as a pre- modern society, in which individual agency in religious choice is apparently surrendered to a state-mandated social sanction enforcing church attendance and belief. Even the most caricatured Sonderweg (Special Path) thesis would not go so far as to depict Imperial German society in such anachronistic terms. Second, there were innumerable instances in the Kaiserreich of hostility to Christianity at a variety of levels - political, cultural, social, institutional, and intellectual. To make his argument Gailus must overlook centuries of German, not to mention European intellectual history, never mind the obvious ways in which whole segments of German society rejected either church or religion itself at precisely this period. The fact that the republic which rose from the ashes of the empire was such a hotbed of cultural change not only points to Gailus' failure to recognize Germany's cultural and religious 'marketplace' and the ways in which Germans could alter their views; he also removes a very important factor which, among others, brought nazism into being in the first place. As I contend, it was the question of the place of religion in German society that, among other factors, helped determine popular reaction to nazism. As a last point, the view that one's class status necessarily informs one's religious beliefs is highly deterministic; only the most unreformed secularization theorist would any longer make such an assertion.

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




and politicized Catholicism could have found common cause in anti-Semitism, anti-Marxism, and anti-liberalism. I am also aware of the huge amount of literature detailing the various ways in which Catholics in Germany and elsewhere have propagated Jew-hatred and antipathy to parliamentary democracy, and the roaring debate this has generated (HR, 4-5).

It is not an issue of my 'protecting' Catholicism; given that my primary aim in the book is to explore nazi attitudes toward Christianity, not the other way around, I found compelling and overwhelming evidence of nazi antagonism to Catholicism. Whether and to what degree German Catholicism lent its endorsement to nazism is not the point. I do not take issue with the contention that some segments of Germany's Catholic milieu found the message of nazism amenable - though it should be pointed out that Gailus' description of Bavaria as 'purely Catholic' is a sophomoric mistake, all the more troubling given the amount of research showing that the Protestant region of Franconia was arguably the nazis' true stronghold in Bavaria.4 Rather, the question is what 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 just the Catholic Church, but also the Catholic religion. It was, in their view, not sufficiently nationalist; indeed, given its institutional structure, Catholicism was lambasted as one of the three internationals seeking to undermine German nationhood. It was also insufficiently racist. That members of the German episcopacy were known to be highly nationalist and anti-Semitic did not change nazi minds. If I make reference to the ideological engagement of positive Christianity with the doctrinal positions of liberal Protestantism (Kulturprotestantismus) or confessional Lutheranism, the reader can rest assured that it is because I found no evidence of Catholicism embracing the idea that race was one of God's orders of creation; that the Old Testament ought to be removed from the Christian canon; or that confessional schools should 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 nazi preference for Protestantism over Catholicism, as well as the active hostility towards 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 my assessment 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: die

Verschrdinkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Dilsseldorf 1996). On Bavaria's Protestants during the Third Reich, see Bj6rn Mensing, Pfarrer und Nationalsozialismus: Gechichte einer Vertrickung am Beispiel der

Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Bayern (G6ttingen 1998).




Bergen is somewhat less charitable, suggesting that I 'condescend' to her in her treatment of German Christian religiosity. She also makes detailed references to 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 with their comments on my treatment of Catholicism, again I must point out that Bergen and Gailus misconstrue the goal of my book. It is not my task to explore 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 I explore and acknowledge in the book's introduction. I add perhaps a few nuances and additional details of my own to this already immense historiography. My main goal when exploring the Protestant side of the nazi-Protestant relationship in chapter five is to reveal how Protestants gauged the nazis' claims. To allege that the nazis looked favourably on Protestantism and considered it the 'natural' religion of the Germans, and not explore this aspect of nazi policy, would have been a substantial oversight. This chapter shows that a large segment of institutional Protestantism welcomed the assistance that the nazi state gave them, whereas other segments, most obviously centred around Niemoller and the Confessing Church, criticized not nazism itself so much as nazi endorsements of their opponents. I say 'assistance' because the struggles between the German Christians and the Confessing Church were not simply a proxy war between nazism and Christianity, but an 'in-house' conflict, one that the NSDAP largely stayed out of and which ultimately led to the nazi endorsement of the German Christians being withdrawn. Having said that, this chapter is only secondarily concerned with the Church Struggle itself as an intra-Protestant fight between the German Christians and the Confessing Church. There already exists a huge literature that explores this issue, and I might point out that while I disagree with some of the arguments of other historians, I make no particular claim to originality on the disputes between these 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 not explore the Alltag (daily life), as it were, of Christian resistance. Pace Bergen, it could certainly be argued that a dialogic relationship between representatives of the nazi party and the Christian churches helped shape nazi attitudes toward Christianity. Ideologically ramified as they were, however, the nazis showed little appreciation for the Catholic Church's history of anti-Semitism, anti- Marxism and anti-liberalism. Their intention to create their own reality meant that the nazis were quite capable of neglecting reality when it interfered with their predetermined worldview. Which makes their willingness to engage with the Protestant churches up until 1937 - including the planning of church elections four years after the extinction of every other vestige of democracy in Germany - 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 chapter five. Given his scolding approach of providing a laundry list of my alleged




inaccuracies and mistakes, I have little choice but to address them point by point. First of all, I do not dispute Harnack's credentials as a non-nazi or his refusal to approve nazi anti-Semitism (HR, 41). On the other hand, Harnack's engagement with Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the late years of the Kaiserreich, as well as his own rejection of the Old Testament as 'Jewish carnal law' at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, are entirely germane to a central point of mine: 'positive Christian' calls for the removal of the Old Testament cannot be taken as intrinsically anti-Christian. As much as Gailus might wish it were so, this is not simply a case of my rummaging through the quote mines of history, looking for some Christian or other who can be blamed for yet another aspect of nazi ideology; as I point out, 'National Socialist Christians' 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 with

St6cker - apparently overlooking those many instances in the book where I do 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 Under Hitler by Robert Ericksen, one of the most prominent monographs exploring this question.' To answer Gailus' question as to 'why should there have been resistance motivated by Christian principles' if National Socialism were 'as Christian as the author, here and there, purports to suggest', one would have to recount the very many instances in the history of Christendom when Christians 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 shared religion. I am very inclined to agree with Bergen's point that we need to avoid ideal definitions in such discussions.

Gailus professes that 'error-spotting' does not appeal to him: I can understand why, given the defective way he goes about it. I do not claim that Dibelius' speech on 'Potsdam Day' took place in Berlin (HR, 69); I am accused of mischaracterizing the German Christian meeting of November 1933 in Berlin 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 is taking me to task for saying 'at' instead of 'after', while overlooking the fact that on p. 164 I refer to the 'outrage that ensued'). Gailus claims Prince Eitel Friedrich 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 criticizes my interpretation of church membership figures for 1933 as 'rash', and yet concedes that one way to protect oneself in the totalitarian nazi state was to join (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 cite Ericksen's book.




Gailus' ire reaches a climax when discussing a passage about the esteem for Chamberlain felt by what I term 'members of the Confessing Church'. He flatly 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 practice of indirect quotation and the constant tendency to exaggerate interpretations of evidence to fit in with his basic thesis.' However, instead of a detective finally discovering 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 reference my source, Richard Gutteridge. Not satisfied with this, he claims to unearth 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 have relied on Gutteridge's own description in this case since it ended up being speculative - a point well-taken, except that he then proceeds to speculate. In all 'likelihood' the author is Fritz S6hlmann, Gailus avers. Then he engages in conjecture a second time; having filled in the blanks of who the author might be, he speculates that his candidate would be 'difficult to identify' as a member of the Confessing Church because of his prior association with Germany's Christian-national youth movement. First, S6hlmann 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 surprisingly supportive of nazism.6 Third, the journal Junge Kirche was strongly associated with the Confessing Church and its theological leanings. Fourth, no one less than Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a professional relationship with S6hlmann. Fifth, S6hlmann was the editor of Treysa 1945, a report of the July 1945 Confessing Church synod.7 At a bare minimum the evidence quite firmly points to S6hlmann's strong sympathy for the Confessing Church.8 Gailus repeatedly attempts to demonstrate the carelessness of my scholarship; it appears he does not 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 Gailus rightly 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 Hans Schemm 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 S6hlmann (ed.), Treysa 1945: Die Konferenz der evangelischen Kirchenfiihrer 27.-31. August 1945. Mit einem Bericht iiber die Synode der Bekennenden Kirche in Berlin-Spandau 29.- 31. Juli 1945 und iiber die unmittelbar vorangegangenen Tagungen des Reichsbruderrates und das Lutherischen Rates (Luneburg 1946). 8 Susanne Ben6hr, '"... 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 Ben6hr-Laqueur for providing me with a copy of her paper.




out that the complainant misidentified a date on the Christian calendar: I concede my failure to correct the complainant's mistake. I accept the corrections of detail regarding the church-political events of autumn 1933 - it was the Prussian synod, not the national synod, that passed the Aryan Paragraph, and the November meeting of the German Christians was a Greater Berlin Region assembly, not a national assembly. It is notable that while Gailus infers that such mistakes are symptomatic of larger problems, not one of these errors is claimed in any way to have wider analytical repercussions: indeed, Gailus 'agrees entirely' with my assessment of the 'National Socialist Christian' 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 tendentiousness but not otherwise questioning my basic training as an historian. Particularly notable are the repeated, strident assertions that I mishandle the evidence regarding Rosenberg. Much is also made of my sources on Goebbels and 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 mislead the reader. As it happens, I explore the very issue of reliability when using such sources, including the Tischgespriiche (HR, 28-9, 253). In my evaluation of which could be taken as reliable and which not, I follow the analysis of Henry Ashby Turner, whose edited volume of the Otto Wagener memoirs contains an incisive methodological introduction.9 I agree entirely with Gailus' point about 'slippery ground', pointing out that the source used over and over again by historians to 'prove' that Hitler was an anti-Christian is Rauschning's extremely dubious Hitler Speaks. Ian Kershaw agrees with Turner that Rauschning is so unreliable that he should not be used; some German scholars go even further, accusing Rauschning of fraudulence. Gailus and Hexham both fault me for using Speer's self-exculpatory Inside the Third Reich, once again choosing to ignore my own evaluation of Speer's reliability: 'Speer's book has been critiqued for myth making, but this critique has been limited to Speer's justification 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 he paints of other nazis, and none specifically refer to the portrayal of Hitler's religious views as spurious' (HR, 257). Gailus suggests the memoirs of Felix Kersten 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.




Kersten's book.10 After criticizing me for using Speer, Hexham allows himself to rely heavily upon the unreliable 'memoir' by Kurt Liidecke titled I Knew Hitler. Hexham thinks that by grudgingly acknowledging Arthur Smith's deconstruction of Liidecke's book he has inoculated himself from criticism. Quite the contrary; Smith's article is damning. And it is not alone; over 30 years ago Dietrich Orlow called Liidecke's book 'highly unreliable' and urged that it be used with 'extreme caution'." Roland Layton's 1979 article, 'Kurt Ludecke and I Knew Hitler: An Evaluation', a guarded defence of the veracity of Liidecke's claims, must nonetheless concede: 'it can hardly be denied that much 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 single most important printed primary source, Hitler's Mein Kampf, I go through a great deal of additional printed primary material on Hitler, including the Domarus, Jdickel-Kuhn, Maser, Nicolaisen, Tyrell and Wagener volumes. I also use the Tischgespriiche, but not before addressing the question of its reliability. Between these sources and the substantial archival research under- taken at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, the Federal Archives at the time located in Potsdam and Berlin-Zehlendorf, and four other archives central to the study of National Socialism, I stand by my claim to have authoritatively established Hitler's religious views. I agree that one should always strive to be exhaustive when possible; but Gailus cites not a single instance where the compendia I did not use would have undermined my analysis based on the very substantial material I do use.

The same point applies to Goebbels. Gailus simply asserts without further explanation that the Goebbels references I employ are 'weak and dubious', then reproaches me for not using the 1996 edition of Fr6hlich's diary materials. It must be said that I use two other volumes edited by Fr6hlich, the standard 1987 collection and the newer 1998 collection. He believes that he 'catches' me once more by quoting at length from a December 1941 entry in Goebbels' diary. But I point out myself that two years earlier, by December 1939, Goebbels' diary entries were already revealing anti-Christian sentiment (HR, 252). Again, Gailus provides not a single instance where using Fr6hlich's 1996 collection would have challenged my findings. Gailus then proceeds to misleadingly take my words out of context: 'According to Steigmann-Gall Goebbels showed "no diminution of his religious convictions" after the seizure of power.' The most cursory reading of that passage (HR, 124) shows this statement 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 York 2001), 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.




not simply 'after the seizure of power', which without further comment could be taken to mean the entire Third Reich. Gailus decontextualizes a second time: 'Elsewhere, he repeats that Goebbels showed "little change in his religious attitudes" in the later years of the regime' (emphasis mine). Here too he misleads, adding 'later years of the regime' when I point out through the sources which follow that this statement holds for 1937 (5 years into a 12-year regime) in the case of Christianity, and 1941 in the case of Goebbels' anti- paganism.

Hexham devotes most of his critique to questioning my methodology, challenging my use of source material and defending Rosenberg from evidence of his political impotence. Whereas Gailus attempts a summary execution of my work, Hexham prefers death by a thousand cuts. Mistakes, false arguments and overstatements of my analysis saturate his piece. Hexham misleadingly transforms my declaration that I intend a 'close reading' of my sources into the groundless assertion that I claim that earlier scholars failed to interpret nazism correctly because they did not read archival and published works carefully. If there are instances where I point out errors or oversights on behalf of other scholars, I do not extrapolate from this and impugn their methods of investigation. In his effort to turn the tables, Hexham frequently impugns my methods, criticizing me, among other things, for my use of translated primary sources; to drive his point home, when citing these sources himself he pointedly adds lengthy footnotes containing the original German text. If I use Manheim's translation of Mein Kampf instead of the original German, as just the most obvious example, then so too do scores of English-language scholars of the Third Reich. I cannot here provide Hexham with an exhaustive list, but among a few of the more recent examples are the works of Michael Burleigh, Claudia Koonz, Saul Friedlander, Alan Steinweis and Paul Weindling.13 The list of scholars who use translations of other printed primary sources 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 against whom he is arguing when he states 'it is safe to say that many scholars now see ideology as an important element in motivating individual National Socialists.' This is a sentence which could have come out of my own book. Whether or not Bollmus diminishes the role of ideology in the nazi regime hardly disproves the larger point Bollmus makes, and which my own research confirms; namely, that Rosenberg consistently lost his polycratic battles for supremacy in religious questions. Based on quotes from public NSDAP ceremonies, Hexham would have us believe that Rosenberg's beliefs were hegemonic in the nazi party 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 Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (New York 1997); 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).




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 he similarly lost to those who held real sway. Alexander Dallin demonstrated with overwhelming empiricism how another of Rosenberg's ideological pet projects lost out heavily: his vision of a series of tributary Slavic nation-states surrounding a core Russian rump in the occupied Soviet Union was contemp- tuously disregarded by Hitler's much more powerful satraps - even if, or perhaps precisely because, men like Erich Koch were nominally under Rosen- berg in his capacity as Minister for the Occupied East.14 The kinds of disrespect which his associates heaped upon him, both as an administrator and as an intellectual, make it abundantly clear that Rosenberg was not a man with a large 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 that Rosenberg's religious ideas influenced Hitler or were hegemonic in the nazi movement or party is utterly without foundation.

Hexham nit picks on points of detail, for example, belabouring the question of which edition of Rosenberg's Mythus I have in fact used. He says I 'repeatedly claim' to be using the 1930 edition, then informs me that I have actually used 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 relevant 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; in fact I use the 1942 edition. If he is suggesting that my reference should have been to the date of the edition, not the original date of the publication of Mythus, I accept his suggestion. However, his argument that Rosenberg defends himself against resurrecting a dead religion only in a later edition because he had to defend his work against hostile criticism since it first came out in 1930 - in other words, Rosenberg had to backtrack - hardly disproves my larger point about Rosenberg's weak position vis-a-vis his colleagues 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 point he makes is wrong: as with the above discussion concerning Speer's Cathedral of Light or Hitler's own comment on night rallies as nazi choreography, there is not the slightest proof that the building of monumentalist architecture was in keeping with Rosenberg's paganism. Hexham's conclusion includes a point about Mark Twain which, while amusing, is a false parallel: Twain's relationship to the Book of Mormon was not analogous to Hitler's relationship to Mythus.

Where Hexham is at his most untenable and even puzzling is in his lengthy defense of Rosenberg as someone more than a fringe ideologue. Page after page of 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).




cult religious writers of the contemporary era with whom Rosenberg is compared. Hexham insists that Rosenberg's high sales numbers for his Mythus are a reflection of the genuine popularity of his religious ideas in nazi Germany -

overlooking Hitler's own dismissal of those numbers (HR, 257). We should not, Hexham warns, underestimate Rosenberg's dangerous ideas simply because they strike us today as ridiculous or badly written 'drivel.' A strange plea indeed, given that I engage in a lengthy analysis of Mythus (HR, 91ff). As I state myself: '.. . the views found in the book are worth our consideration' (HR, 94). I take Rosenberg's religious ideas seriously because he articulated the religious views of a group of nazis who, whether dilettantes or not, consti- tuted a discernable religious milieu within National Socialism. However, what Hexham 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 which I repeatedly demonstrate Hitler's disdain for Rosenberg's religious ideas are simply ignored by Hexham. Rosenberg had a long-standing institutional interest in exaggerating his own importance: it is hardly surprising if Hitler occasionally played along. The private correspondence from Hitler which Hexham quotes demonstrates that he is actually praising Rosenberg's loyalty, not his influence; the passage demonstrates Hitler's sympathy and reciprocation for years of Rosenberg's commitment and loyalty. It does not demonstrate Hitler's fealty 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 'genocidal ideas, few were prepared to admit to having read the book' - a conclusion hard 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 dismiss Mythus 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 which he resorts to the most narrow criticisms.0 I wonder which dictionary Hexham used to get 'world-view authority' from 'Weltanschauungsprokurist'; and does using 'executive secretary' instead of 'administrative clerk' really change the larger point Bracher is making in the lengthy quote that follows? Notice how Hexham chooses to ignore Bracher's conclusion that Rosenberg 'did not succeeded 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 interviewer 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?'




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 were really 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 memoirs of Liidecke and Otto Strasser,'6 and an allegedly 'expert' list of American visi- tors to Germany totally unconnected to Hitler's inner sanctum, demonstrates that Hexham is pleading rather than proving his case.

Aside from saving Rosenberg from his own marginality, Hexham concerns himself with what kind of alternative analysis might be derived from one particular source: Goebbels' novel Michael. Given restrictions of space I cannot 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 on Christianity 'reads as though it is a direct statement made by Goebbels' when in 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 quote comes from a novel. Elsewhere, when comparing Michael with Dinter's Sin against the Blood, I state: 'Goebbels created a fictional protagonist, Michael Vormann, through whom he voiced his views' (HR, 31). Hexham wants to have 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 then allows himself to analyse Michael for precisely such insight! As Helmut Heiber points out in the liner notes to the English translation of Michael, Goebbels almost 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 parliamentary democracy 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), but his reference to Christ makes it plain he is referring to Christianity, however revolutionary his reading of it. Hexham attempts a translation of 'Wieder komme 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 much more felicitously translated as 'I find Christ again'. A more verbatim translation, 'Again I come to Christ', still bears little resemblance to Hexham's much more convoluted and misleading 'return to the issue of Christ'. Hexham continues to translate conveniently but poorly. A pivotal passage in this

16 Like Rauschning, Otto Strasser was concerned with currying favour among the Allies, to whom 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.



202 Joumal of Contemporary History Vol 42 No 2

lengthy Michael quote would seem to clinch his case: 'Yet millions await a new religion.' However, the original German which Hexham provides reads 'Millionen warten darauf, und ihre Sehnsucht bleibt unerfiillt'. 'Sehnsucht' is not the German word for 'religion', but for 'longing'. Against Hexham's remarkable display of artistic licence we have Neugroschel's much more felici- tous translation: 'Millions of people are waiting for this new formation, and their yearnings remain unfulfilled' (quoted in HR, 21). If this is Hexham's idea of how to use original-language source material, I'll stick with the published translations.

Staying for a moment with this pivotal passage from Michael, Hexham charges me with 'leaving out the final passage about a new God'. He is referring 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 it is true that I do not make reference to this passage, elsewhere in my analysis I point to Goebbels' sometimes contradictory views on religion during the Kampfzeit, or 'Time of Struggle' (HR, 53-54). But, having accused me of leaving out evidence which disproves my thesis, Hexham proceeds to leave out the very next sentence: 'I take the Bible, and all evening long I read the simplest and greatest sermon that has ever been given to mankind: The Sermon on the Mount!' (Original German: 'Ich nehme die Bibel und lese einen ganzen Abend die einfachste, gr6f8te 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 make his absurd case that Michael demonstrates not Christian, but 'neo-pagan' thinking. This is only the most obvious case of Hexham's slapdash approach to sources and quotations and a repeated tendency to distort evidence to fit in with his preconceived notions. Hexham does have me on one point, however: I gave the wrong page number when citing one of the epigraphs from Mythus that begin chapter three.

Piper's analysis on my book rivals Gailus' for being the most caustic - but it is easily the most perfunctory of all four. Before the first sentence ends he has already made a mistake, wrongly stating that I argue 'National Socialism was a Christian movement'. I challenge Piper to produce evidence that I say this anywhere in my book. Unfortunately Piper's piece does little to engage my arguments from there, simply synopsizing the more relevant passages of his own biography of Alfred Rosenberg rather than addressing either my sources or my findings. In the process, he certainly says much that I agree with - as Piper should have immediately recognized. My discussion of responses to Rosenberg's Mythus similarly points out, for instance, that Catholic opinion of

17 Joseph Goebbels, Michael: Ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchbliittern (Munich 1929; 7th edn, 1935), 145.




his book was very negative (HR, 127-8); I agree entirely that in Mythus Rosenberg 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 more than once (HR, 129, 131); like Piper, I place Wichtler among those on Rosenberg's side (HR, 241); I use Goebbels' quote of 1939, and include the next 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); Piper casts the Gottgliiubiger (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 they were 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's admiration of Christ. As I demonstrate, Dinter's own description of his Christian feelings points to more than this (HR, 19-20, 24, 27, 30-1, 58).

Incredibly, Piper suggests that only a few isolated individuals like Johannes Stark 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 demonstrate what kinds of powerful nazis - including Wdichtler's predecessor Hans Schemm, the party's supreme judge Walter Buch, and a host of Gauleiter including Wilhelm Kube and Erich Koch - far from seeking a 'reconciliation' between nazism and Christianity, were of the firm conviction that the two formed a synthesis. Amazingly, nowhere in Piper's 831-page biography of Rosenberg do the religious views of these men once receive even the most cursory treatment.18 In the 12-page chapter in his book on 'Religion und Politik' during the Kampfzeit, Piper chooses to focus solely on Hitler's and Rosenberg's dealings with Ludendorff and Dinter, wrongly casting those episodes as symptomatic of a pan-nazi opposition to all things Christian.

If Piper begins by creating a straw man, he ends by caricaturing my statements: against my 'ridiculous' claim that Bouhler's PPK is a commonly overlooked office, Piper cites a single reference which is not even a monographic treatment of the PPK. While Bouhler is known among historians for his role in the infamous T-4 killings, I stand by my assertion that his role as rival to Rosenberg in the oversight of nazi ideology, let alone his place in the party's internal religious struggles, is much less commented on. Piper tries to prove my ignorance 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 was published as a private work, never becoming an official guide to nazi thinking

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




6 . . It never received the official stamp of the NSDAP, nor did the party's official publisher publish it' (HR, 92; emphasis mine). The sloppiness of Piper's accusations grows from there. I am accused of spelling Alfred Biumler's last name 'three different ways', when in fact I consistently spell it one way, except on a single occasion when I quote another scholar (which happens to be the spelling Piper employs). He furthermore claims that I 'fail to do justice to the part played' by Biumler. Since he doesn't indicate what he means by this, I can only assume he believes I understate Bdiumler's importance in the Third Reich. If so, Piper again read past my book: 'Along with Heidegger, Biumler was the most notable philosopher to back the nazi regime with his intellectual prestige ... Biumler maintained and indeed strengthened his links with the nazis well into the Third Reich ... as Hans Sluga puts it, "Biumler was ... more than any other German philosopher, the typical fascist intellectual"' (HR, 105). One could argue these attempts to make mountains out of molehills would have some 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 otherwise much more temperate piece. She suggests I treat 'somewhat condescendingly' her book Twisted Cross, and expresses surprise that I believe I am revising her own view. I believe that as an analysis primarily of nazi attitudes to Christianity, my book in many ways serves as a natural complement to, among other works, her own probing analysis of Christian attitudes to nazism. However, the point of departure for the two of us concerns whether or not the Christianity these 'National Socialist Christians' and 'Christian National Socialists' both subscribed to can really be called Christian. Naturally it would be an enormous burden to demonstrate just what 'real Christianity' is, even as a number of prior historians have, without sanction, left undefined the concept of 'infected Christianity'. I agree completely with Bergen's larger point that historians do well to remember the tension between the 'external/historical' and the 'internal/ideal'. I would cautiously agree with her assertion that 'German Christians did not fit most standard theological criteria for Christians' - a formulation which is nuanced enough to allow for the complexity of the question - or that 'most people would describe' the German Christians she explores 'as un-Christian'. However, what she fails to point out is that she described them this way: 'ultimately non-Christian ... no church at all.'" It seems to me she puts her case quite plainly: the German Christians - whether laymen, pastors or theologians - did not properly understand their religion.

If Gailus faults me for wanting too much, Bergen claims I have not done enough. For all her charges of tendentiousness and 'collecting of quotes', she claims that had I only played the 'ace' of church membership statistics, I would have 'nailed' my case. I must remind her that I address precisely this question when explaining why I translate the German Konfession as 'confession' instead of 'denomination': 'In Germany, where to this day religion nominally remains

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




an obligatory state affair and not voluntaristic, there are no denominations in the strict sense of the word. Its use in the German context incorrectly suggests an 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 had to take before one could officially leave one's church - unless there were sudden, propitious drops or increases, as was the case in 1933. Church attendance, by contrast, would have been a much more revealing gauge, if much more difficult to ascertain.

It is most peculiar that Bergen would make such an argument, given that my goal 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 his children baptized? That in 1935 Goering wedded his second wife Emmy in a Lutheran service? I make all these points in my book, but could not contend that by themselves they prove much about a larger ideological relationship. Indeed, Hitler's ongoing membership in the Catholic Church stands very much at odds with his private comments about Catholicism and its traditions. Bergen herself points to the highly incomplete picture such statistics provide when she asserts that 'a growing exodus from the church in the Imperial and Weimar eras, coupled with the loss of credibility after the debacle of the Great War, convinced many church leaders that Christianity was losing ground'. To her claim that Protestant theologians grudgingly felt obliged to stay with the times by endorsing nazism, I would point out that for every Protestant who expressed misgivings privately, there was another who believed nazism meant a 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 from afar; many nazis were themselves believing Protestants.

At the conclusion of her article Bergen charges me with leaving out 'the crucial element of tension in nazi-Christian relations. Without conceding at least some nazi hostility, however, the dynamic generated by Christian defensiveness cannot be understood.' This is speculatively attributed to 'an effort to make his evidence fit neatly'. First, I point to repeated instances of hostility between nazism and institutional Christianity, both Catholic and, as the Third Reich wears on, increasingly Protestant. It was the consistent resistance of the Dahlemites against the plans for a Reichskirche that, after all, made Hitler turn sharply against institutional Protestantism in 1937 (HR, 183-8). That Bergen claims I 'left out' such evidence is a mystery. Second, I point repeatedly to the many instances of hostility to Christianity among the paganist cohort, from Rosenberg, Himmler, and all the other paganists of the party. I also make reference 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 agree that analysing the potential of religiously inspired anti-Semitism among the murderers/perpetrators remains a scholarly desideratum, I do explore anti-




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 do not say 'nazism was at times identical to Christianity'; I explore those nazis who did - and those who said 'no'. Even if I claim that paganist hostility to Christianity was fraught with ambiguity and ambivalence, such anti-Christians were clearly antagonistic enough for me to preclude ever claiming that nazism and Christianity were, even in the worst of instances, 'always able to coexist harmoniously' - a particularly puzzling assertion given that she elsewhere faults 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 Twentieth Century': 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 future capital of 'Germania' left no room for churches (HR, 247). Finally, she informs us that Hitler believed he was God. By her tone here, Bergen seems to believe she has played her ace. The evidence demonstrates beyond doubt that this is a claim that Hitler never once made. Occasionally megalomaniacs of world history 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? But while Hitler believed that God had a special plan for him, that he represented God'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 - three other 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 Church History.21 Another is by Milan Babik in History and Theory, on the theoretical underpinnings of Holy Reich, and how the concept of 'secular religion' might still be seen as relevant to it.22 The other is Mark Ruff's piece on 'Nazi Religionspolitik' in Catholic Historical Review, which, while strictly speaking a comparison of two works, my own and Himmlers Glaubenskrieger by Wolfgang 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 the

Historiography of Modern Germany', in Church History, 75 (2006), 139-56. 22 Milan Babik, 'Nazism as a Secular Religion', History and Theory, 45 (2006), 375-96. 23 Mark Edward Ruff, 'The Nazis' Religionspolitik: An Assessment of Recent Literature', The Catholic Historical Review, 92 (2006), 252-66. That CHR should have devoted an article to my




much in Ruff's piece to commend, including a sophisticated discussion of secularization theory and the ways in which my work can be seen as part of a larger rethinking of 'canonicity' among scholars like Hugh McLeod, Jeffrey Cox, and others over the last decade or more, even as his own interpretation clearly upholds a traditional model. Ruff thoughtfully explores the ways in which Dierker's work both resembles and departs from my own. He insight- fully discusses the question of nazism's ideological incoherence, even if he fails to demonstrate his assertion that I am an intentionalist. While I take ideology seriously - something functionalists, it should be pointed out, are on occasion known to do - I also deal centrally with the contingencies of internecine party warfare, and the role it played in the party's decision-making on religion and the churches.

However, while the tone of his piece is certainly much more even-handed and 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 past of sacralized violence, given the commitment to Christianity among some nazis and their profession that their anti-Semitism could be explained in Christian terms. Meanwhile, Dierker apparently 'refrains from absolute pronouncements', even when he 'takes it as a given' in absolute terms that the nazis harboured no Christians in their ranks (Ruff, 255). As another example, Ruff suggests that it is credulous to take seriously the nazis' public statements on religion, given their mendacity on other issues. To make this charge Ruff apparently overlooked the systematic comparisons I undertake throughout my book between what nazis uttered publicly and what they said privately. To his point that Hitler made false promises to the Catholic Church - he apparently missed the many occasions in which I demonstrate Hitler's public stance regarding Catholicism contrasted sharply with privately-expressed antagonism. He faults me for not engaging in a 'more careful analysis of the context in which they were articulated to determine whether the statements affirming Christianity were made in a setting that was both religious and public or whether the anti-Christian invective was overwhelmingly private' (Ruff, 259); a reading of the first four chapters of Holy Reich reveals that I do precisely this. Those I label 'positive Christians', while certainly aware of the political advantage of appearing Christian for political purposes, affirmed their identi- ties as Christian behind closed doors as well. By contrast, whole sections of my book explore the ways in which anti-Christian paganists in the party refused to appear as Christians for the sake of public consumption. If the party schechthin displayed a contradictory attitude towards Christianity, nonetheless 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 positive. Ruff claims in his essay to be examining my Wallstein piece on political religion as well; in fact, this gets perfunctory treatment.




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 to acknowledge 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 Christian resistance to nazism, not paganism. Not only do I point out instances of Christian resistance to paganism from the churches, but also the battle between Christians and paganists within the nazi movement itself.

Ruff makes several more points concerning method and sources. For instance, he claims that Dierker's work is more meticulous, since he visited 23 archives against my 7. Ruff seems to take a quantitative rather than qualitative approach when inferring from this that Dierker's findings are therefore more reliable. What Ruff fails to appreciate is that the subjects of my historical analysis are just as defined as Dierker's. Whereas Dierker pores over the institutional history of one SD office, I explore the conceptions of Christianity found among the elites of the nazi party. The archives I consulted, huge collections that they are, constitute far and away the most important for this purpose. 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's Hitler Speaks. While on the subject of sources, Ruff mistakenly argues that I impugn 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 ignore the monologues of Heinrich Heim and intimating that I do so to help further my 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 introduction to Table Talk reveals.24 Ruff proceeds to highlight a quote Dierker uses to demonstrate Hitler's hatred of Christianity in 1941 (Ruff, 258), apparently not 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 original German. Ruff also allows himself to quote from Speer's biography, presumably another example of 'ephemera' (Ruff, 257). He uses this particular example to argue that I attempt but fail to 'explain away' anti-Christian moments in nazism - once more overlooking whole swaths of the book when I explore anti-Christian sentiment at length. Dierker presumably has no explaining away to do, for the simple reason that he chose to examine an office where he would find no Christian sentiment.

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

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




the most problematic parts of his article. First, he compounds his undemon- strated assertion that I am an intentionalist by making an erroneous claim that I 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 only the most cursory glance at depictions of the vagaries of nazi decision-making in precisely such terms (HR, 156-89, 236-54). Ruff errs once more when he suggests that the nazis 'did little to advance the cause of those committed Christians who embraced nazism, including most notably the ardently pro- nazi German Christians.' In an attempt to demonstrate this point, he quotes Dierker to the effect that Himmler ordered all Christian clergy out of the SS by 1934 (Ruff, 263). Once more, Ruff displays a rather desultory comprehension of 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's claim that there was no such support is simply false (HR, 159-64). Second, I clearly and repeatedly place Himmler, as head of the SS, among those paganists in the party who were the most anti-Christian and therefore anti-church. At the same time, I clearly demonstrate how Himmler's anticlericalism was tempered by moments of surprising ambiguity regarding the Christian religion itself - including esteem for Martin Luther, the Virgin Mary, and Christ. Himmler also talked repeatedly and with surprising tolerance on the persistent presence of lay Christians within the SS membership (HR, 131-3, 233-5).

Ruff's greatest analytical fallacy, however, is to insist that the anti-Christian zealotry of Dierker's SD men was typical of nazism. When describing their voracious hatred of Christianity and the churches, he takes a faintly intentionalist approach by speaking of these SD men as the 'true believers' of the nazi Weltanschauung (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 made between those whose commitment to nazi ideology was beyond question, and those 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 for Ruff to describe an office staffed overwhelmingly with disgruntled Catholic ex-priests, clearly on a vendetta against their one-time spiritual home, as nazism's 'true believers'. Ruff undermines his own argument about their status as the avatars of nazi ideology by elaborating on the entirely non-ideological sources of their resentment - failed academics and students who did not or could not pursue their academic aspirations; Mittelstdndler (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 superiors to let them even the score for their failed private lives (Ruff, 261). Against these lowly individuals Ruff would apparently have us believe that Ernst Kaltenbrunner, owing to his dismantling of this band of vengeful ex-priests, somehow counts as 'less nazi' than they. Ruff directly challenges me by suggesting that these defrocked clergymen 'lead us to question just how central these beliefs [positive Christianity] were, in fact, to the Nazi ideology' (Ruff,




263) - a line of argument which, if followed to its logical conclusion, means that 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 Department IVB of the SD. To top off this scenario, Ruff then revives the completely unproven 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 had been active in the Religious Opponents division of the SD [Department IVB] were directly supervised by those co-ordinating the deportations of the Jews to the East, an ominous precedent should these hard-liners have gained further power 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: my work apparently 'bears the burden of unusually high praise', implying that it has 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 he believes this is a burden too heavy for the book to carry. By concentrating as he does on what he regards to be the excessive praise by others for my book, instead of looking at the actual arguments I make, Ruff concludes his article by attempting to accuse me of sensationalism. The ways in which Ruff mirrors the type of approach utilized by Hexham are striking: fallacious methodological criticisms, extrapolations based on fragmentary and minute evidence, distortions and omissions of my analysis, and bypassing the larger ideological issue of Christianity and nazi anti-Semitism in the name of 'meticulousness'. Not entirely surprising, perhaps, since Ruff points out that he had access to Hexham's article - before it was published - when writing his own (Ruff, 254).

I thank Richard Evans and the editors of the Journal of Contemporary History for the opportunity to respond to these interesting and very bracing critiques. And I thank my critics for their commentary. However, with disturbing frequency, these critiques contain fundamental mistakes, glaring errors, and credulous distortions. When such an inventory of scholarly malfeasance is proven correct, it can be said the author under scrutiny brought it upon himself. When it is proven incorrect, as is so often the case here, it results in a hatchet job. Since Gailus gives himself free rein to judge my motives, let me speculate on motive as well. I believe obvious and easily avoided errors, mis- characterizations of my argument, and overzealous attempts to sink my entire thesis with whatever minutiae come to hand (Bergen's piece being the notable exception) speak to a need for my book to be wrong. Such shortcomings are particularly inexcusable in Gailus' case, who in the process of labelling me sloppy and slapdash hoists himself with his own petard. What motivates this need is something I can only speculate on - though in Hexham's instance we seem to be dealing with something of an open book. Whereas Gailus and Piper




hold their cards closer to their chests, there is a palpable emotional tension just under the surface. Bergen begins her piece by agreeing that 'the insistence that nazism was an anti-Christian movement has been one of the most enduring truisms of the past fifty years'. Given the ways in which these critics generate more heat than light, frequently shooting themselves in the foot in the process, it seems that advocates of this truism are not ready to question their beliefs just yet.

Richard Steigmann-Gall is an associate professor of History and Director of the Jewish

Studies Program at Kent State University, Ohio. His book, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2003, and has been translated into

Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Greek. He will contribute the chapter on 'Religion and the Churches' to the forthcoming Oxford

Short History of Germany: The Third Reich.



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