Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects."Semi-religious beliefs in a race of Aryan god-men, the needful extermination of inferiors, and an idealized millennial future of German world-domination obsessed Hitler, Himmler and many other high-ranking Nazi leaders." Goodrick-Clarke, 1985, 203 It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.
Nazism as a political religion Before 1980, the writers who alluded to the religious aspects of Nazism included Aurel Kolnai, Raymond Aron, Albert Camus,Camus, Albert (1951), L'Homme révolté , Gallimard, pp. 17f, 222, 227f. Romano Guardini, Denis de Rougemont, Eric Voegelin, George Mosse, Klaus Vondung and Friedrich Heer.Goodrick-Clarke 2004: vi. Voegelin's work on political religion was first published in German in 1938. Emilio Gentile and Roger Griffin, among others, have drawn on his concept.
Nazism and Christianity
The Nazi Party program of 1920 included a statement on religion which was numbered point 24. In this statement, the Nazi party demands freedom of religion (for all religious denominations that are not opposed to the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race); the paragraph proclaims the party's endorsement of Positive Christianity. Historians have described this statement as "a tactical measure, 'cleverly' left undefined in order to accommodate a broad range of meanings,"Steigmannn-Gall 2003: 14. and an "ambiguous phraseology."John S. Conway (1968), The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, p. 5 However, Richard Steigmann-Gall in The Holy Reich holds that, on closer examination, "Point 24 readily provides us with three key ideas in which the Nazis claimed that their movement was Christian": the movement's antisemitism, its social ethic under the phrase Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz (literally, "public benefit before private benefit") and its attempt to bridge the confessional divide between Catholicism and Protestantism in Germany.
This is a topic of some controversy. Conway holds that The Holy Reich has broken new ground in the examination of the relation between Nazism and Christianity,Review by John S. Conway, H-Net despite his view that "Nazism and Christianity were incompatible." Conway claims that Steigmann-Gall "is undeniably right to point out how much Nazism owed to German Christian" concepts and only considers his conclusion as "overdrawn".
Hitler admired Martin Luther, the leading figure of the Protestant Reformation. While Luther's antisemitism has been identified as an inspiration for Nazism, surfacing in 1930s works of propaganda, including an antisemitic children's book, others suggest that its role is less significant. For example, Hans J. Hillerbrand asserts that the focus on Luther's influence on Nazism's antisemitism ignores other factors in German history.Hillerbrand, Hans J. "Martin Luther," Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007. Hillerbrand writes: "His strident pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward the end of his life, have raised the question of whether Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism. Although many scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough emphasis on the larger peculiarities of German history."
The Nazis were aided by theologians, such as Dr. Ernst Bergmann. Bergmann, in his work, Die 25 Thesen der Deutschreligion (Twenty-five Points of the German Religion), expounded the theory that the Old Testament and portions of the New Testament of the Bible were inaccurate. He proposed that Jesus was of Aryan origin, and believed that Hitler was the new messiah.
After Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of World War II in Europe, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services published a report which was titled "The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches". Historians and theologians generally agree that the objective of the Nazi policy towards religion was to remove explicitly Jewish content from the Bible (i.e., the Old Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, and the Pauline Epistles), transforming the Christian faith into a new religion, completely cleansed from any Jewish element and conciliate it with Nazism, Völkisch ideology and Führerprinzip.Kathleen Harvill-Burton, Le nazisme comme religion. Quatre théologiens déchiffrent le code religieux nazi (1932-1945), 2006, Bernard Raymond, Une église à croix gammée, L'Age d'homme, Geneva, 1980
Alfred Rosenberg was influential in the development of Positive Christianity. In The Myth of the Twentieth Century, he wrote that:Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century Saint Paul was responsible for the destruction of the racial values which existed in Greek and Roman culture; the dogma of hell which was advanced in the Middle Ages destroyed the free Nordic spirit; original sin and grace are Oriental ideas which corrupt the purity and strength of Nordic blood; the Old Testament and the Jewish race are not an exception and one should return to the Nordic peoples' fables and legends; Jesus was not Jewish, because he had Nordic blood which he had inherited from his Amorite ancestors.
Nazism and occultism
Outside a purely academic discourse, public interest mainly concerns the relationship between Nazism and occultism, and the relationship between Nazism and Christianity. The interest in the first relationship is obvious from the modern popular theory of Nazi occultism. The persistent idea that the Nazis were directed by occult agencies has been dismissed by historians as modern cryptohistory.Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 218
There are many works that speculate about Nazism and occultism, the most prominent being The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and The Spear of Destiny (1972). From the perspective of academic history, however, most of these works are "cryptohistory".Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1985) Notable exceptions are Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (The man who gave Hitler the ideas) by Wilfried Daim (1957), Urania's children by Ellic Howe (1967) and The Occult Establishment by James Webb (1976).Urania's children and The Occult Establishment are mentioned explicitly by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1985: 225). Aside from these works, historians did not consider the question until the 1980s. Due to the popular literature on the topic, "Nazi 'black magic' was regarded as a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales."Goodrick-Clarke 2004: vi. In the 1980s, two Ph.D. theses were written about the topic. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke published The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985) based on his thesis, and the German librarian and historian Ulrich Hunger's thesis on rune-lore in Nazi Germany (Die Runenkunde im Dritten Reich) was published in the series Europäische Hochschulschriften (also 1985).
Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots... is not only considered "without exception"As mentioned, preface of the German Edition (2004), written by H. T. Hakl to be the pioneering work on Ariosophy, but also the "definitive book" on the topic. The term 'Ariosophy' refers to an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria of the 1900s to 1930s influenced by the Western esoteric tradition, thereby falling under Goodrick-Clarke's definition of occultism. Ideologically, it was remarkably similar to Nazism. According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Ariosophists wove occult ideas into the völkisch ideology that existed in Germany and Austria at the time.Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 5 Ariosophy shared the racial awareness of völkisch ideology,Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 4. but also drew upon a notion of root races, postulating locations such as Atlantis, Thule and Hyperborea as the original homeland of the Aryan race (and its "purest" branch, the Teutons or Germanic peoples). The Ariosophic writings described a glorious ancient Germanic past, in which an elitist priesthood "expounded occult-racist doctrines and ruled over a superior and racially pure society."Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 2. The downfall of this imaginary Golden Age was explained as the result of the interbreeding between the master race and the untermenschen (lesser races). The "abstruse ideas and weird cults [of Ariosophy] anticipated the political doctrines and institutions of the Third Reich",Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 1. but direct influences are sparse: with the exception of Karl Maria Wiligut,Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 177. no evidence has been found that prominent Ariosophists directly influenced Nazism.
Religious beliefs of leading Nazis Within a large movement like Nazism, it may not be especially shocking to discover that individuals could embrace different ideological systems that would seem to be polar opposites. The religious beliefs of even the leading Nazis diverged strongly.
The difficulty for historians lies in the task of evaluating not only the public but also the private statements of the Nazi politicians. Steigmann-Gall, who intended to do this in his study, points to such people as Erich Koch (who was not only Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Ukraine but also the elected praeses of the East Prussian provincial synod of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union)Steigmannn-Gall 2003: 1. and Bernhard Rustsee: Steigmann-Gall 2003: 122 as examples of Nazi politicians who also professed to be Christian in private.
Hitler's religious views
Hitler's religious beliefs have been a matter of debate; the wide consensus of historians considers him to have been irreligious, anti-Christian, anti-clerical and scientistic.Richard Overy; The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia; Allen Lane/Penguin; 2004, pp. 287: "During the War [Hitler] reflected that in the long run, ‘National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together. Both Stalin and Hitler wanted a neutered religion, subservient to the state, while the slow programme of scientific revelation destroyed the foundation of religious myth." Richard Overy: The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia; Allen Lane/Penguin; 2004, p. 281: "Hitler believed that all religions were now 'decadent'; in Europe it was the 'collapse of Christianity that we are now experiencing'. The reason for the crisis was science." Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; Penguin Press; New York 2009, p. 547: wrote that Hitler believed that in the long run, National Socialism and religion would not be able to co-exist and repeatedly stressed that Nazism was a secular ideology, founded on modern science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition". Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks'". Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, Fontana Press 1993, p. 412.: Bullock notes Hitler's use of the rhetoric of "Providence" but concludes that Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon all shared the same materialist outlook "based on the nineteenth century rationalists' certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity"