Were the National Socialists a Völkisch Party? Paganism, Christianity, and the Nazi christmas

A trend in studies about National Socialism and religion in recent years argues for a deliberate distinction between the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and the antisemitic völkisch movement of nineteenth-century Germany. This article challenges that contention. Several researchers have published comprehensive studies on the heterogeneous nature of Christian responses to the Nazis, but a comparable approach looking at how the Nazis viewed religion has not yet been undertaken. A study of the latter type is certainly necessary, given that one of the consistent features of the völkisch movement was its diversity. As Roger Griffin has argued, a “striking feature of the sub-culture . . . was just how prolific and variegated it was . . . [T]he only denominator common to all was the myth of national rebirth.” In short, the völkisch movement contained a colorful, varied, and often bewildering range of religious beliefs.

New research on Nazism and Christianity

Notes and presentation on research into the official Nazi views on religion, and a consideration of 'ordinary' Christian response to the rise of the Nazis in Germany.

Reassessing the Holy Reich: leading Nazis' views on confession, community and 'Jewish' materialism

 Returning to the Journal of Contemporary History debate on The Holy Reich, this article argues that the notion of 'positive Christianity' as  Nazi 'religious system' has been largely invented. It offers a close analysis of significant public statements on National socialism by three leading Nazis: Adolf Hitler, Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg.

Nazism, political religion and 'ordinary' Germans

This paper examines the topic of Nazism and religion by taking one of the dominant schools of thought––that Nazism was a ‘political religion’––and dealing directly with an issue that is often encountered when teaching the history of the Nazi Party. A common question raised by students is this: what could be known about the Nazis when they came to power? While formulated in different ways and sometimes with a different chronological focus the core of this question is one of historicism. It may be abundantly clear to us now what the Nazis stood for, how racist and antisemitic they were, but what could be known by people then, and how did they view the Nazis? Given my sense that many teachers encounter this questions I believe it may be a useful prism through which to view Nazism and religion. The paper does so through using a case-study of the 'Temple Society' (Tempelgesellschaft), examining how members of this Christian community understood Nazism on the cusp of 1933.

Religion in the early Nazi milieu: towards a greater understanding of ‘racist culture’

In recent years there has been a renaissance of studies into the diverse relationships between National Socialism and esoteric or occult religious trends, which appears to form a remarkable return to the work of George L Mosse. Yet within these debates there has been surprisingly little space devoted to the question of what specifically ‘counted’ as religion in the early Nazi milieu. This article seeks to address this problem through a detailed study of the views on religion in one of the major antisemitic groups in the 1920s, the German Socialist Party, which had a number of significant connections to the NSDAP. The German Socialist debates on religion have remained largely unexamined, and this article analyses the group’s response to the Nazis’ 25 Point Programme, the German Socialists’ own debates about religion, and their views on the most important völkisch authors who were seeking a ‘religious revival’. It demonstrates that views on religion in the early Nazi milieu were extremely diverse, but commonly adhered to notions of race and a racial spirituality that amounted to a kind of ‘ethnotheism’. It argues that concepts of religion in völkisch groups at the time, including the NSDAP, have to be principally understood as part of a particular and extreme ‘racist culture’.