The Nazis – Pagans or a Heretic’s Heirs?

(The following story will appear in the September 2006 issue of The Atlantic Times)

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

From the orthodox Christian perspective, National Socialism was not Christian. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred theologian, considered Hitler a tool of the Antichrist. Bishop Eivind Berggrav of Oslo went further. He said that in Nazi-dominated Europe the totalitarian state had turned itself into the Antichrist. Now a study by U.S. historian Richard Steigmann-Gall asserts that leading Nazis considered themselves Christians – albeit “Christians” with flawed beliefs, theologians would argue. Conversely, anthropologist Karla Poewe stresses the contribution of new religions to the emergence of Nazi ideology – religions that are still around

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To Karla Poewe, a Canadian anthropologist born in formerly German Königsberg, “National Socialism was a national revolutionary movement determined to rid Germany of Jewish Christianity.” Richard Steigmann-Gall, a young U.S. historian with a Ph.D. from Canada, suggests that by embracing ideologies such as anti-Semitism, “the Nazis represented a departure from previous Christian practices. However, this did not make them un-Christian.”

Thus intellectual battle lines are drawn. On the one side there is a native German deeply troubled by the legacy of her homeland’s descent into shame the consequences of which she experienced as a child toward the end of World War II. In her remarkable study, New Religions and the Nazis, she develops a trajectory of neo-paganism. It began in the early 20th century and reached a pinnacle in the Third Reich under the leadership of Nazi chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, SS Reichführer Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler’s deputy Martin Bormann. And it is still around. Poewe writes, “Most academics assume that German pagan faiths, expressed in countless new religions, by diverse leaders and adherents both inside and outside the official church, were too small in number to make an impact on National Socialism. This book dispels that myth.”

Steigmann-Gall’s volume, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 1919-1945, which is based on his doctoral dissertation, contests the belief that “however much Christian clergy welcomed the movement or however much Nazi ideology may have borrowed from Christian traditions, Nazis could not be described as a Christian movement.” He pleads against “detaching Christianity from the crimes of its adherents,” for in so doing “we create a Christianity above history, a Christianity whose teachings need not ultimately be investigated.”

This drew a sharp rebuke from Calgary University historian Irving Hexham: “When it comes to judging beliefs, Steigmann-Gall appears to be almost completely ignorant about actual Christian teachings.” Hexham has a point. For example, Steigmann-Gall quotes theologian Richard Rubenstein thus: “The world of the death camps and the society it engenders reveals the progressively intensifying night side of Judeo-Christian civilization. Civilization means slavery, wars, exploitation, and death camps. It also means medical hygiene, elevated religious ideas, beautiful art and exquisite music.”

Adds Steigmann-Gall: “Christianity, in other words, may be the source of the same darkness it abhors.”

Yet he fails to show where in Christian Scripture this “source of darkness” might be located. None of the great misdeeds in the history of the Christian West – he cites the Crusades, the Inquisition, Apartheid and the Holocaust -- could be traced to the Bible or traditional Christian doctrine. Hence probably the most pertinent Christian explanation for these ills can be found in Helmut Thielicke’s exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer. “A fatality of guilt [Schuldverhängnis] is brooding over the world, over its continents and seas,” wrote this Lutheran theologian and member of the resistance against Hitler at the end of World War II. To understand this requires familiarity with the Christian doctrine of original sin, which evidently eludes Steigmann-Gall.

He himself describes how Nazi leaders endeavored to uncouple Christianity from its Jewish roots. He cites Hitler calling Jesus “our greatest Aryan leader.” And like Poewe he quotes from the Führer’s Table Talks: “Nothing will prevent me from eradicating totally, root and branch, all Christianity in Germany… One is either Christian or German.”

Church history should have taught Steigmann-Gall that the inseparability between Christianity and Judaism has been decided once and for all in the second century A.D. when the Church excommunicated the heretic Marcion who tried to purge the Bible of the Old Testament. In other words, by almost 1,900-year old doctrinal standards, anyone proclaiming a “Jew-free” Christianity is simply not a Christian, and that applies to many of the characters in Steigmann-Gall’s as well as Poewe’s books.

What makes Steigmann-Gall’s work so problematic is his unscholarly use of quotations in what appears to be his single-minded pursuit of an agenda. For example, in order to show that Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels was a man in whose worldview “Christ held a central place,” Steigmann-Gall quotes Goebbels thus: “I converse with Christ. I believed I had overcome him, but I have only overcome idolatrous priests and false servants. Christ is harsh and relentless.”

“These words are taken from Goebbels’ 1923 novel Michael,” Hexham pointed out to The Atlantic Times. Thus Steigmann-Gall turns the utterances of a fictional character into a faith statement by the author – an astonishing methodology for a doctoral work. But it gets worse. While he is certainly correct in his assessment that many German clergymen had succumbed to the Nazi temptation, a transgression for which the Evangelical (Protestant) Church of Germany repented in its moving Stuttgart Schuldbekenntnis (Confession of Guilt) of 10 October 1945, Steigmann-Gall then accuses one of the most courageous anti-Nazi church leaders of that period of quietism.

Claiming – incorrectly -- that “not one public protest against euthanasia was ever launched by a Protestant churchman,” Steigmann-Gall then prints excerpts from a letter by Württemberg’s Lutheran bishop Theophil Wurm to interior minister Wilhelm Frick. In that letter, Wurm, a former chaplain in a state asylum, wrote on church chancellery stationary: “Naturally, the thought has crossed the minds of those who have seen such regrettable people: Wouldn't it be better to put an end to such an existence?'"

Steigmann-Gall presents this as the bishop’s “opinion.” Yet it was plainly a rhetorical question to which Wurm provides in the very next sentence the only answer a faithful Christian could possibly give: "It is an entirely different thing to take measures leading to this end by human intervention. For the decision when the life of a suffering person will end, is solely up to almighty God, by whose unfathomable counsel the life an entirely healthy human being, who could have been useful to society, is suddenly taken away, while a sick person stays alive."

Such flaws suggesting intellectual trickery are all the more regrettable as they tarnish Steigmann-Gall’s credibility. Thus they detract from insights that contain valuable lessons for the future. He does, for instance, identify fittingly theological liberalism as the backdoor by which secular fads, follies, and prejudices have entered Christian doctrine. Writes Steigmann-Gall: “Not only did racialist anti-Semitism find a warmer reception among liberal Protestants than among confessional Lutherans, in many ways racialist anti-Semitism was born of the theological crisis that liberal Protestantism represented.”

This danger is still present. According to the Rev. Albrecht Immanuel Herzog, executive director of a Lutheran Mission society in Bavaria, “Steigmann-Gall’s observations on that point are correct. Confessionalism does shield Christianity to some extent against the invasion of alien worldviews.” Philip G. Davis of the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada writes that by the same aperture new forms of paganism have penetrated mainline churches poisoning doctrine. Davis cites the feminist Goddess spirituality with its feminist liturgies to “Sophia” as examples of neo-pagan movements with “a clear anti-Christian thrust.”

Much in the vain of Karla Poewe, Davis describes the Third Reich as “an example of neo-paganism in power.” He writes, “Comparing Goddess culture with Nazism would be a slander except that there are real historical links between them. The Nazi party was originally founded by an occult organization called the Thule Society. Members of Thule… were steeped in the mystical lore of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy.” Davis reminds his readers that the Nazis’ forerunners blended their teachings with German nationalism and racism.”

Poewe warns of New Right think tanks rooted in Thule thought and of signs that not only the neo-pagan deities but also those of the European New Age movement are “Nazi brown.” She agrees that the “European New Right is small, its pagan base generic,” but much like her fellow Canadian Davis she cautions against complacency.

Davis tells his readers, “Sadly, the churches have often fared poorly in defending themselves against neo-pagan inroads… It is astonishing to learn how thoroughly Nazi neo-paganism infected so many churches; astonishing, that is, until we remember how easily neo-pagan New Age thinking such as Goddess spirituality penetrates churches today.”

Having given her readers a comprehensive history of neo-paganism’s major contributions to the rise of National Socialism, Karla Poewe concludes: “While the constitutions of western liberal democracies preserve the freedom of new religions, I am not sure whether new religions, including New Age and neo-paganism, preserve western liberal democracies. In Weimar they did not.”

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Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German foreign correspondent, Lutheran lay theologian and sociologist of religion, is scholar-in-residence at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO.

Comments

[thebizofknowledge]

I stumbled upon this site as I was in the process of doing some online research. Many troubling questions by this author who is disturbed by her heritage. Do I sense another twist of history?

[Orycteropus Afer]

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis of some of the different schools of thought concerning Nazism. As one who attempts to find and guide others to good Lutheran blogging, I'm happy to include you among the recipients of the Golden Aardvark Aaward:

http://aardvarkalley.blogspot.com/2006/09/golden-harvest.html

[Joe Keysor]

I am glad to see some constructive refutation of Steigmann-Gall. His entire thesis is based on a complete ignorance of biblical teaching. Significantly, he found no teachings from Christ and the apostles to support his thesis.