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The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. By Richard Steigmann-Gall. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xvi, 294.)
As Richard Steigmann-Gall points out,"the insistence that Nazism was an antiChristian movement has been one of the most enduring truisms of the past fifty years" (p. 266). In The Holy Reich, Steigmann-Gall seeks to correct that view. National Socialism had many connections to Christianity, as Steigmann-Gall demonstrates. There were personal ties-Nazi leaders who considered themselves good Christians and were active in their churches, including some, like Wilhelm Kube and Erich Koch, who held high offices in the Protestant Church. There were institutional links too, from Hitler's early attempts to unify German Protestants into a national, Nazified church, to women's organizations that used the rhetoric, methods, and even personnel of church groups to serve the Nazi state and its goals. Most important in Steigmann-Gall's analysis, there was ideological common ground. Members of the Nazi elite-even "paganists" like Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler-used biblical allusions in their private and public pronouncements; retained an affection for Jesus and found a place for him in their world views; and supported a Christian social ethic of sacrifice, service, and charity. We cannot understand the Nazi movement, Steigmann-Gall concludes, without admitting its close, if ambiguous, relationship to Christianity.
Steigmann-Gall's first chapter analyzes the Nazi concept of "positive Christianity" and introduces some of its key proponents within the Party, particularly in the...