Samuel Koehne. German Studies Review. Volume 37, Issue 3, October 2014.
In his work Inside Nazi Germany Detlev Peukert argues the necessity of understanding how “ordinary people” responded to life under the National Socialists. Yet a concomitant of this is a need to understand the public texts of National Socialism, those works that were most prominent and accepted as significant at the time or which were promoted by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) as officially representing their views. Peukert rightly notes that many works deal with “the mental world of the leading Nazis” and in the field of religion, most studies have generally attempted to discover what the leading Nazis thought or believed, or alternatively have focused on the response of religious groups.
This essay focuses on the link between the two and analyzes Nazi texts that were offered to the German public as the official explications of their worldview. Any attempt to understand “the contradictory and complex experiences of ‘ordinary people'” makes it necessary to better understand what was presented to them as “National Socialism” and what ideological messages they had to rely on before the Nazi Party was in any position to turn its theory into praxis (that is, before 1933). As a result, this comparative study offers something fundamentally new, in considering how religion was portrayed in the two official NSDAP Program Commentaries. The first Program Commentary was published in 1923 and was written by Alfred Rosenberg, while the second Program Commentary was published in 1927 and was written by Gottfried Feder. In the vigorous debates around Nazism and religion, it is surprising to find that no one has considered these commentaries in relation to one another, even though they were published to explain what the party stood for.
Conceptual Issues and Ethnotheism
A continuing issue is that any analysis of Nazism and religion has to encompass everything from “Aryan” Christian belief to paganism. Put another way, it requires a discussion of a religious spectrum that ranges from Hanns Kerrl, who continued to call himself Christian and advocate a synthesis of Nazism and Christianity, through to Martin Bormann, who advised the regional governors: “National Socialist and Christian concepts are irreconcilable.”
As a result, studies have tended to fall into three major camps: that Nazism stood for a neopagan or esoteric form of faith, that it formed a political religion, or that it stood for a type of Christian belief. I am arguing instead for a new conceptual approach: “ethnotheism,” or religion defined by race and the supposed moral or spiritual characteristics that the Nazis believed were inherent in race. As I propose, “ethnotheism” both encapsulates the major emphases in the official explanations of the Program and helps to explain the very breadth of religious belief that can be found amongst leading Nazis. In practice the Nazis might not have agreed on a common form of religious faith, but their official position was that any religious teaching had to measure up to the “moral feelings of the Germanic race,” as was outlined in their program.
The subject of religion was dealt with in Point 24 of the NSDAP Program (pro- claimed February 24, 1920). It began “[w]e demand freedom for all religious confes- sions in the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or offend the ethical and moral feelings of the Germanic race,” going on to argue: “The Party as such stands for a positive Christianity, without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination.” Richard Steigmann-Gall draws on this latter point to argue that the Nazis stood for a “type of Christianity,” a “positive Christianity” of a peculiar form.
Yet an analysis of the predecessor to the Nazi Program, the Grundsatz or Foundational Principle of the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP, which became the NSDAP), and the commentaries shows that the main line of continuity was “Germanic” morality, in the sense of moral principles that dictate one’s actions and one’s perception of right and wrong. This means that the official stance on religion was principally a negative statement that opposed religious doctrines which offended this supposedly “racial” moral sense. Further, the official commentaries demonstrate that religion was fundamentally conceived of as divisive rather than cohesive, forming a fracture in German society (like class conflict) that had to be healed through a racial form of nationalism.
This causes a substantial shift of focus. It means that the Nazis could balance between paganism and Christianity, as in fact leading Nazis did. The larger point of consideration was how religious beliefs per se measured up against a racial yardstick, the “moral feelings of the Germanic race.” This could certainly include a version of Christianity that was revised in line with such morals (though only such a version). The idea of “ethnotheism” links to existing trends in the historiography, and certainly fits with Claudia Koonz’s notion of the “ethnic conscience,” though specifically relating to religion. Moreover, it ties to concepts outlined by Susannah Heschel and Manfred Gailus. For instance, Gailus referred to an “ethnoreligious or German faith profession” amongst the Nazis. What he meant by this was that “‘Aryan-Nordic’ or ‘German’ blood races” were “sacralized and deified”-whereas I intend “ethnotheism” to mean that religion was measured against a notion of “Germanic” morality and hence (taken to its ultimate ends) was seen as a derivative of racial character. This is much closer to Heschel’s argument that “racism itself can be seen as a form of incarnational theology, centrally concerned with moral and spiritual issues, but insisting that the spiritual is incarnate in the physical.”
Official Explanations of the Program
The Nazi Program itself was written by Anton Drexler and Adolf Hitler, and drew on earlier statements of the DAP, itself founded by Drexler and Karl Harrer. Hitler proclaimed the program to be the “dogmatic, creed-like formulation” of Nazism but he largely left the Party “archideologues” Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg to explain it. Both Rosenberg and Feder were early leading members of the Party and from 1926 Feder became the official program commentator. Anyone at the time wishing to further understand Nazism was able to turn to his Official Commentary, which was available in German from 1927 and was published as Volume 1 of the National Socialist Library.
Yet line honors for the first explication go to Rosenberg in 1923. There has been some contention over the official nature of Rosenberg’s most famous publication, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, but such issues do not arise with his commentary. To begin with, it was the only commentary on the program. It was first published by Deutscher Volksverlag but later by the Nazis’ official publisher. The foreword in 1923 stated it was intended as a “clarification” and to correct false reports of the NSDAP. In later editions, it was proudly declared to have been “thoroughly checked by Adolf Hitler” and was described as the “first publication of the NSDAP.” Even the title—Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP (The Nature, Foundational Principles and Goals of the NSDAP)—seems to have derived from a speech given by Hitler.
At some point after 1935 Hitler clearly requested that his name be removed. By 1937 it was promoted as “the first publication of the NSDAP” and the “first official party publication of the NSDAP,” continuing to be published with these claims until 1943. Given the scarcity of resources in wartime, this maintained its official status. Both commentaries were presented as public statements and were made with propaganda intent. Yet they may also be taken as an expression of Nazi beliefs and in fact had to be taken as such by readers of the time. The early dates of publication and the fact that these authors were leading figures in the early party lends further weight to their interpretations.
It still might be queried why we should examine either commentary, given that both Rosenberg and Feder later fell out of favor within the Nazi leadership. The simple answer is that to ignore their work on this basis is to read history backwards. Rosenberg published his commentary three years after the NSDAP as such was founded, while Feder published his work two years after it was refounded (having been banned following the 1923 Munich Putsch). Contextually, it is clear that each commentary was intended to create certainty about what it was the Nazi Party stood for. They were published as defining statements, both to explain the Nazi program to a general audience and to clarify party policies for rank and file members of the NSDAP.
By 1923 this was certainly necessary, as the party was in a state of flux and growth. This meant that the Nazis were spending a good deal of time explaining their pro- gram-particularly at the foundation of a new NSDAP branch or when proselytizing for the party. As the first published explanation of the program, Rosenberg’s work was strongly promoted through the Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. In January 1923, a prominent advertisement on the second page exhorted “party members” not only to own his commentary but to promote it “in the interests of the movement,” including getting their local bookshops to stock it. In the next issue, the first item in the column “From the Movement” reads: “National Socialist German Workers’ Party. All local branches are requested to order the book by Alfred Rosenberg: Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der NSDAP and to promote it everywhere.” Later advertisements for Rosenberg’s commentary argued it was a “duty” for “our Party members and friends” to know what Nazism stood for, especially “the explanation of our program.” The first issue of the Völkischer Beobachter supplement The National Socialist for 1923 published Rosenberg’s entire introduction, noting it was “of infinite importance, that our party comrades are always capable of giving an adequate explanation about the individual points of the National Socialist program to anyone.” Subsequent issues published verbatim sections from his commentary, under such headings as “From Our Program.” It also appears to have been discussed by local branches of the NSDAP.
Nor is Feder any less essential to understanding official Nazi views, given the status of his work. Despite his eventual lack of influence on policy, he was prominent in the early years and personally knew the Program’s authors. There has even been a consistent question as to whether he was one of the authors. He was appointed as official commentator at a major Nazi conference in Bamberg in February 1926, which was “a milestone in the development of the NSDAP.”
At this point the question of party aims and goals was very significant, given power struggles and ideological differences that existed in the Nazi Party, including between Gregor Strasser and Adolf Hitler. Issues had arisen between the north Ger- man leaders of the Nazi Party and those in the south. A major point of dispute was the desire of the former to “reshape the party’s programme” or even to replace it. Gottfried Feder played a leading role in this party conflict. A strong opponent of the new and expanded draft program prepared by Joseph Goebbels and Gregor Strasser, Feder “prompted [Hitler] into action” and was ultimately victorious in ensuring that the Nazi program remained unaltered. The meeting at Bamberg both demonstrated and cemented Hitler’s dominance of the party, and Feder’s appointment as official commentator was a very public endorsement. Both this position and his subsequent commentary carried the imprimatur of the NSDAP.
Feder quickly followed up on his triumph, and shortly after the Bamberg conference he gave “a detailed, basic breakdown [of] the programmatic basis of National Socialism” at a conference in Essen, which included many leading figures of the NSDAP. Oron James Hale recorded that Feder’s commentary was “widely circulated” and after the Nazis came into power it was clearly understood to be the “official, authorized program of the Party,” as Hajo Holborn put it when he created a bibliography of Nazi works in 1934. As indicated by the conflict in 1926 there were alternative visions of the program within the Nazi leadership, but this itself meant that official explanations were required.
The commentaries were (and remained) the public face of Nazism when it came to the program. Yet they have received little attention in recent works on Nazism and religion. Steigmann-Gall does not consider them at any length; Derek Hastings argues Rosenberg’s commentary was “problematic and deeply idiosyncratic” when it came to religion, though the evidence demonstrates the opposite. One of the major figures that Hastings examines, Franz Schrönghamer-Heimdal, attempted to delineate “private expressions” on religion by Rosenberg and Dietrich Eckart from the Nazi Party itself. Yet even he wrote in favor of “the Party Program (Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich) explicated by Rosenberg.”
The phrase “positive Christianity” has become a key one in debates about the Nazis and religion. While the Program was widely known, there was a continuing vagueness about this term and varying interpretations were possible. It has been argued that the very vagueness of the concept assisted immeasurably in appealing to different religious groups and that its inclusion was strategic, a tactic to ensure cooperation with the Nazi regime by the Christian churches. There is some merit to this argument, as Point 24 provided a very broad church. What is more, positive Christianity already meant “according to Protestant terminology of the time, conservative, fundamentalist and nationalistic Protestantism.” Given this, was it the main theme of Point 24? Arguably not, and this remains the only part that is difficult to trace.
The article otherwise is an amalgam of various statements. Point 24 contained a phrase on fighting the “Jewish materialist spirit within and without us”-probably derived from Dietrich Eckart’s “Jewishness within and without us.” Its slogan “The general interest before self interest” (Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz) came from the German Socialist Party (Deutschsozialistische Partei, DSP) and its 1919 program, which argued the “old principle Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz” was to be reflected in a German common law. It is interesting that they mentioned this specifically with respect to law, given that a phrase with the same meaning (“Gemeiner Nutz geht vor sonderlichem Nutz”) could be found already by 1864 in a book of German legal sayings.
However, both freedom of religion and offending against morality can be traced to the DAP Grundsatz. One of the earliest considerations dated the Grundsatz to January 5, 1919. This appears to be incorrect, given the stated need for a “Grundgesetz” to be drafted by May 13, 1919. In any case, Hitler claimed to have been given the “Guiding Principles” to read in September 1919, at the second party meeting he attended. Hastings erroneously dates the “Grundsätze” to a DAP meeting on February 5, 1920, but the promotional leaflet written by Anton Drexler that was read out at this meeting and which was to be “printed and distributed” was not the Grundsatz. It was the pamphlet actually printed and distributed in February 1920, Warum mußte die Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei kommen? Was will sie? (Why did the German Workers’ Party have to arise? What does it seek to do?). This is directly confirmed in the police report on the event.
The Grundsatz began by declaring “the DAP is a political party,” and in the draft version two sections appear under “Religion,” the first of which had been struck through. The DAP Grundsatz demonstrates that before any notion of positive Christianity the stated policy of the party was a political stance of noninterference in religious matters, except as they were matters of state or threatened the existence of the people or nation (Volk) and its “morality and ethics.”
Such ideas already existed in the völkisch movement, and the section bears more than a passing resemblance to Article 4 of the “Program of the German Social (Anti-semitic) Party” as it was published in the Antisemites’ Catechism of 1893: “Church: Greatest possible freeing of the Christian church from the guardianship of the state, complete freedom of faith and conscience, toleration of all beliefs, so long as they do not offend against the law and morality.” There are several points from this original statement of the DAP that are striking: a core emphasis on morality and ethics, a stated willingness to interfere with religious doctrines or teachings, a belief that the Party dealt with material or worldly concerns (not religious or spiritual ones), and a conspicuous absence of any reference to positive Christianity. Indeed, Christianity did not appear at any point in the Grundsatz.
The first paragraph of Point 24 still had the same emphasis. What the Nazis appear to have meant by the “freedom of religious confessions” was “religious doctrines” rather than the specific denominations: that is, “confession” in the sense of a set of beliefs (Augsburg Confession) as opposed to “confession” in the sense of a church institution. The differing use of the German terms konfessionell and Bekenntnis in the phrase “without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination” might seem to argue against such an interpretation, but both commentaries confirm that the Nazis had a stated aim of opposing doctrines that offended Germanic morality.
The Racial Yardstick: Measuring Religious Teachings
Those who turned to Rosenberg’s commentary could not be in any doubt that Nazism was a racial ideology. Rosenberg opened with an attack on Marxism and capitalism as representing “materialism,” fusing these on the grounds that both were “mammonistic” and ultimately driven by and benefiting Jews, so that in the final assessment Marxism was “a racial struggle.” He then outlined the foundations of National Socialism as a belief in history “racially” conceived.
In his 1923 edition, Europe’s history was described as one of “racial national energies,” though völkisch “instinct” had unfortunately been placed in the “service of an international religious idea.” Later editions borrowed more heavily from one of the most influential völkisch works, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (first published 1899). The commentary stated that races depicted “natural law,” and defying this law “created the racial chaos” that had destroyed “the great Aryan cultures of India, Persia, Greece and Rome.” In such a context, the notion of German morality was clear: “Morality is completely racially conditioned, and not abstract Catholic, Protestant or Muslim.”
This was maintained in the official publication on National Socialism and Race in the National Socialist Library, which noted that although race was implied in various points of the Program, Point 24 was the only one where “the word race is explicitly used.” It went on to explain that “a particular feeling of ethics and morality is bound together with the specific race,” drawing a sharp distinction between the “Germanic” and “oriental” races and their concepts of what was moral.
Such racially determined “morality” formed Rosenberg’s major concern, as it did the core of Point 24: “It is therefore the duty of every individual German and hence the German state to care for this racially specific custom and morality.” As stated, it allowed the state to determine “to what extent and in which places” religious teachings contrary to “moral feeling” would be allowed. This was intended in the first instance as an anti-Jewish measure. Rosenberg argued more broadly that the “moral principles” of religious communities could not “run contrary to German moral and social feeling,” but provided only one example: “Jewry.”
This focus of the Grundsatz was also maintained in Feder’s commentary. Dis- cussing the program requirements in detail, Feder listed a series of individual points that were specifically designed “for practical advertising” of the Party in the drive for members, and which argued for:
27. Complete freedom of religion and conscience.
28. Special protection of the Christian creeds.
29. Suppression and obstruction of doctrines (Glaubenslehren) which are contrary to the German moral sense and whose content is of a character destructive to the state and Volk.
Aside from freedom of religion, two important points arise. First, the Nazi Party promised “special protection of the Christian creeds”—Glaubensbekenntnisse, literally “confessions of faith.” This is akin to the notion of support for positive Christianity in its traditional sense: doctrinal faith and adherence to the Christian creeds (such as the Apostles’ Creed). Secondly, the Nazi Party promised to suppress doctrines or dogmas that opposed German morality. This was exactly the sense in which it had appeared in the Grundsatz and meant that it was the stated policy of the Nazi Party to measure the actual content of faith. This represents a remarkable degree of consistency from the Grundsatz of 1919 to the Official Commentary of 1927.
This is no surprise, given Feder’s early involvement in the Nazi Party. It also bears significant implications, as it means that the Nazi Party was officially contemplating limiting and suppressing doctrines or religious teachings, if they offended the German “moral sense”—itself viewed as racially derived. While this clearly was directed to the beliefs of Judaism in the first instance, it had a much broader potential application and was a very dangerous statement indeed: the content of religious faith was to be measured against a “racially conditioned” yardstick.
In The Holy Reich, it was argued that Point 24 “gave ontological priority to the ‘customs and moral sentiments’ of the Volk” but that this “was not meant as a way to exclude a particular variety of Christianity: no variety was explicitly privileged or maligned.” However “religious teachings” or “doctrines” were not about varieties of faith, but the actual content of faith. This was more than “anticlericalism,” this was anti-Christian. To be precise, it was anti-Christian to the extent that Christian doc- trines did not measure up to the “ethical and moral feelings of the Germanic race.” Clearly many of the teachings of orthodox Christianity did not.
Certainly the general rejection of the Old Testament by Nazis can be understood in this light, and the conflict between Nazi ideology and orthodox Christianity was already recognized by 1921. The Völkischer Beobachter reported statements from Christians who argued “every antisemitism is in the final assessment also anti- Christian” because the Old Testament was “divine revelation” and could not be rejected. Rosenberg also wrote a response to an ecumenical statement that “unanimously declared that antisemitism is ‘1. Illogical, 2. Unethical, 3. Undermining the foundations of Christianity.'” That said, groups like the German Christians (often relying on liberal theological trends) vigorously took up the task of “purging” Christian faith, including creating an “Institute for Research into and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” in 1939.
The Ecumenicism of National Socialism
Given that from the earliest platform there was a key and continuing emphasis on assessing religious beliefs, what of the other Grundsatz section: noninterference in religion and the supposedly separate spheres of politics and religion? In Rosenberg’s explanation freedom of religion was depicted openly as pragmatic, ensuring that “a politically neutral spiritual experience” did not become politicized “through suppression.” Feder later confirmed this, arguing that “it must be our principle not to drag ‘religious’ questions into general political statements of our cultural policy.” He held that those who made statements like “Christianity had only done harm” possessed “no human and political tact.”
Given this, it is interesting to consider what Steigmann-Gall describes as “a new syncretism that would bridge Germany’s confessional divide.” He argues “the Nazis undoubtedly put the nation above confession,” but believes they sought to achieve unity through a “nonconfessional” position that could “emphasize those qualities in Christianity that could end sectarianism.” Rosenberg certainly criticized the divisiveness brought about in Germany by confessional positions and believed that most Germans adhered to an antisemitic form of Christianity. Yet his larger concern was that Germany was splintering on confessional lines. As a result, he argued that the Nazis wished to remain above all this by refusing to align with any particular confession.
For the Party (as he depicted it) this was principally about the desire for no inter- mixture of politics and religion: “Exactly like the politics of class struggle … a blending of politics and confession is the attempt-fought with all means-to dismember the living body of the Volk.” Particularly targeting the Catholic Centre Party, he further believed it was a “crime” for political parties to promote the interests of a particular confession.
This was the same perspective as Hitler, who published Mein Kampf in the period between the two commentaries (in two volumes, 1925-1926). Ian Kershaw argued that one of the main consequences of Bamberg for the Nazi Party was that it led to “the growth of a new type of political organization-one subjected to the will of the Leader, who stood over and above the party, the embodiment in his own person of the ‘idea’ of National Socialism.” As he expressed his views in Mein Kampf, Hitler also maintained the original emphases of the Grundsatz, including the idea the NSDAP was a “purely political party.” He argued strongly against religion being mixed into politics, rejecting “decisively … any position on questions which either lie outside the frame of [the Nazis’] political work” or which were “irrelevant for it.” He described their task as “not a religious reformation, but a political reorganization of our people” and opposed political groups which used religion as “an instrument of their party interests.”
This was written with political acumen, in the understanding that drawing religious issues into the völkisch movement “tore it apart” and that the Nazis should not seek to do “what even a Bismarck could not do,” referring to the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf. One point that he seemed to be overturning in Mein Kampf was interference in religious teaching: “For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable.” Yet he preceded this with the caveat that political parties would not interfere “so long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morality and ethics of our own race.”
In his commentary, Feder argued confessional interference in politics led to “atrocities” and maintained the broader notion of noninterference: “complete freedom of religion and conscience.” What was meant to bridge the confessions was National Socialism, not a common religious belief. Rosenberg ended his consideration of Point 24 with exactly this point: “The idea that alone is capable of uniting all classes and confessions in the German Volk is the new and yet ancient völkisch worldview… This worldview today is called National Socialism.” Racial nationalism was also the solution to class struggle: “For National Socialism there are neither ‘proletarians’ nor the ‘bourgeoisie’ … only Germans as comrades of blood and destiny.”
The role of syncretism-across classes and confessions-was to be achieved by ultranationalism rather than religious faith. Hitler’s ideal was that the Party should unite members of different religious persuasions through racial struggle and antisemitism:
In the ranks of the movement, the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another.
This was in line with Rosenberg’s description in 1923 that a common point was the “ruthless struggle” against the “bacillus” of “the Jew.”
Interestingly, Rosenberg had already outlined such notions in an article on the Catholic Congress in Munich in 1922, in which he compared class and confessional divisions and stated that the Catholic saints were “ancient Germanic gods” that had been renamed. He argued that only the “völkisch worldview” could unite all Germans-just as they had been united “shoulder to shoulder” in the Great War.
The Nazi focus on World War I was certainly indicative of the belief that national- ism could (and had) united all of Germany. They desired the society proclaimed by Kaiser Wilhelm II: “I no longer recognize any parties or any confessions; today we are all German brothers and only German brothers.” But they wanted this in both a cohesive and exclusive sense (only German brothers). Anton Drexler directly pro-claimed this view, arguing Wilhelm’s statement “I no longer recognize any parties, I recognize only Germans” had been “his and the Reich’s greatest calamity” because the Kaiser “had also regarded the Asians standing around him and at the head of the parties as Germans,” using “Asians” to mean Jews. The Nazis were promoting their own movement and ultranationalist ideology as providing the sole basis for unification and community in Germany: an ecumenicism of National Socialism.
There was still an apparently open statement of support for some form of Christianity, but of what sort? As he advocated measuring religious doctrines against “racially conditioned” morality, Rosenberg drew a fairly clear line of support for a Christianity derived from such ethnotheism. His whole work was particularist, a point he made clear through his discussion of the universality of “humankind” as an impossible dream. He argued against the “‘eternal development of humankind,’ be it to humanitarianism, be it to the Christianization of all peoples.” This led him to a religious relativism. He argued “neither the morals nor religions” of the various “races and peoples” could be brought to a common point: “what we denote as good, others see as evil, what we call God, appears to others as the Devil.” It was in this sense that he proclaimed the protection of “Germanic Christian life” as part of the Nazis’ task as a “genuine Volk movement.”
The major aspect that Rosenberg supported was antisemitism, writing that European history proved “that [Europe] had found a religious form” in “an extreme anti-Jewish Christianity, which in spite of confessional differences became and remains the basis for the religious life of by far the greatest majority of the German Volk.” This at least gave a definite statement on “positive Christianity” as “extreme anti-Jewish Christianity,” itself fitting the supposed racial morality.
Yet the key remained “racial” morality, which eventually and infamously led Rosen- berg to suggest joining Norse mythology to selected sections of the New Testament, so that “the Nordic sagas and fairytales will take the place of the Old Testament stories of pimps and cattle dealers.” Rosenberg’s commentary actually became less supportive of Christian influence over time. In 1923 he argued “The racial and spiritual differences in the German Volk demand other outward forms to the best resolution of their strengths, complete autonomy in the field of religion (Christian schools, divided equally by confession)”-the section in italics was missing from later editions.
There was also a lack of clarity across the two commentaries. Those seeking to find support for Christianity could certainly find such in Feder’s commentary, in a broad sense. There was the stated support for “the Christian creeds,” but Feder also argued in a negative fashion that Christianity was responsible for “atrocities,” listing the Inquisition and the medieval witch trials. He stated that this should not stop people from accepting the “inner spiritual kernel of Christianity,” weighing up the “great achievements, self-sacrifice and courageous faith” that “had their roots in Christianity.”
The commentary then went on to offer the possibility that Christianity might be replaced at some point: “This is not the place to discuss all the problems, all the hopes and desires as to whether the German nation may at some time discover some new form for its religious beliefs and experiences.” Feder stated that these were “things of secular importance” that went beyond the program of National Socialism. This meant that there was a stated adherence to Christianity while there were “hopes and desires” for new forms of “knowledge of God and experience of God.”
What these hopes might be were addressed in the passage immediately following: “Die Partei als solche verbittet es sich jedenfalls, mit Wotanskultbestrebungen identifiziert zu werden, wie es von Seite der politisierenden Klerisei geschieht, wobei noch dahingestellt sein muß, ob derartige Bestrebungen in belangreichem Umfang bestehen.” (The Party as such will not allow itself to be identified in any case with the aspirations of the Wotan cult, as is occurring on the part of the politicizing clergy, moreover it still remains to be seen whether these kind of aspirations persist to a significant extent.) Though the NSDAP was distanced from this, the Official Commentary still left the door open to the possibility of a Wotan cult, depending upon how popular it became.
This might well have been an attempt to ensure that the Nazis were not associated with anti-Christian trends. Yet it appears that Feder was simultaneously managing the expectations of those who believed that a new Germanic form of faith would arise. This included figures like Ernst Freiherr von Wolzogen, who was a prominent advocate for neopaganism (having written a Guide to German Faith) and also a strong supporter of the Nazis. In part, Feder’s comment was political because the Nazi Party had to straddle two camps of support. It was drawing on the völkisch movement, which had its own history of neopaganism and anti-Christian elements, while trying to garner support from the German population at large, which was at least nominally Christian.
Both commentaries ended with descriptions of the swastika flag as a common Aryan sign and pagan symbol. Rosenberg argued that the swastika “as an Aryan symbol of renewal” would appear on “all the various flags of the Germanic peoples,” while Feder concluded: “Eternally young, radiant and bright rises before us the sun wheel, the swastika, the symbol of reawakening life.”
When it comes to positive Christianity Rosenberg described an “extreme anti-Jewish Christianity” but Feder’s commentary included everything from support for established Christian creeds to the possibility of a “new form” of faith. Yet from the Grundsatz to the commentaries, official Nazi statements were entirely consistent on German “morality” and restricting religious teachings. There has been a good deal of concern to define “positive Christianity” and find its source. Yet as it was explained in the official commentaries, Point 24 did not revolve around this concept.
From its inception this point was attempting to limit religious teachings. It was against the Jews, and expressed a similar sentiment to Point 11 of the German Socialist Party Program: “Testing of the laws and religion of the Jews.” This same DSP point argued that “research and proven facts today allow of no more doubt, that the Jewish question is a racial question which has nothing to do with religious confessions,” but held that Jews were able to keep their “blood pure” through their religion.
Certainly Gottfried Feder included Point 24 in the suite of anti-Jewish sections when he came to discuss the “Jewish Question” in 1933. He thought that the Nazi position had been “unmistakably stated” in a number of points, citing 4-8, which stripped Jews of citizenship (only allowed to those of “German blood”), removed them from public office, and argued for the expulsion of “non-Germans.” He also cited points 18 and 23 as particularly “against the Jews,” whereby “traders, usurers, profiteers” were to be “punished with death, without consideration for confession and race” and where the press was to be purged.
Interestingly, although much of the program was anti-Jewish, the word “Jew” only appeared at two points (4 and 24). As Feder argued, this was because Point 24 gave “the spiritual foundation of the entire position of National Socialism towards the Jews”:
freedom for all religious confessions in the state, so long as they do not endanger its existence or offend the ethical and moral feelings of the Germanic race.
The Party as such stands for positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the principle: The general interest before self interest.
It was abundantly apparent that Jews were viewed as a racial group, that “every people has its especial constructions, its particular character,” and that the expulsion of the Jews from Germany was considered necessary: “All other attempts to solve the Jewish question have failed, because the particular characteristics of the Jews, which in addition make them a state within a state, an enemy state, are conditioned by blood and therefore are irredeemable.” Like Hitler, he further described “the Jew” as a “parasite in our national body.”
Both of these were already points in the Official Commentary, where he had detailed the necessity of understanding “the bases of racial teaching” in order to grasp that Jews were not “German citizens of the Jewish faith” but “a racially foreign, strongly segregated Volk with the pronounced characteristics of a parasite.” Feder thought it was obvious that Point 24 was an antisemitic point, as did others who examined the program. In 1931 Ulrich von Hasselbach, writing on the Grundsatz and its influence on Point 24, noted “clearly antisemitic tones ring through.”
Conclusion
The official commentaries were clear that the most important aspects of Nazi policy on religion were protecting the “Germanic race” and its “moral and ethical feelings.” These latter formed the racial yardstick against which the actual content of any given religious belief was to be measured. Indeed, they illustrate the larger point that Nazism was promoted as adhering to a kind of ethnotheism. This leads to two interesting con- sequences. First, doctrines and religious teachings (including the concept of divinely revealed texts) effectively became peripheral. The key was how any given teaching measured up on a yardstick of “racially conditioned” morality. Secondly, Judaism became a kind of nonreligion-as did any belief viewed as “Judaized”—because Jews supposedly lacked moral or spiritual capacity owing to their racial characteristics.
Hitler had certainly expressed himself in such terms. In August 1920 he publicly argued that the “inner spiritual experience” was lacking in “the Jew” while it was an essential aspect of the “Nordic races,” and by February 1922, this statement appeared in notes for a speech: “What is the Jew’s religion? / An expression of his type of racial character.” He considerably expanded on this in Mein Kampf, where he argued that the Jews were materialists, meaning that their only forms of religion were stolen, purely worldly and a deception (in contrast to “idealist” Aryans). Hitler went so far as to argue of “the Jew” that “idealism … is not present in him and never was present” and was emphatic that: “The Jew has always been a people with definite racial characteristics and never a religion.”
In fact, section four of his February speech forms the basis for this part of Mein Kampf. They follow the same order, making points about Schopenhauer calling “the Jew” a “great master in lying,” about Jews as “parasites” in other peoples and that “The beginning of the lie” (speech) or “the first great lie” (Mein Kampf) is a denial that Jews form a separate nation, but are instead “German.” Both contain a statement regarding religion being used to form a “secret band of race” for Jews or (in Mein Kampf) “Jewish religious doctrine consists primarily in prescriptions for keeping the blood of Jewry pure.”
If Hitler believed religion was an expression of “racial character,” then it makes a good deal more sense of his statement that Jews lacked the capacity for religion: “Due to his own original particular nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason than because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him.” He believed “religion in the Aryan sense” required “survival after death in some form.” He went on to argue further the materialist nature of “the Jew”: “His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine.”
This too was in line with older traditions. Indeed, Jesus’ perceived capacity for idealism was even deemed to be evidence that he was not Jewish. This is witnessed in one of Theodor Fritsch’s seven main theses in his attack on “the false God” Yahweh. Fritsch, like other German antisemites, differentiated between the Israelites and the Jews, claiming they were “two racially distinct peoples”—a point Hitler also argued in the early years. Fritsch claimed that Jesus was of the “non-Jewish tribe of the Galileans” and that “his teaching, as an overwhelming idealism, forms the harshest opposition, yes the exact opposite to the Jewish teaching of egoism.”
If religion was meant to express “racial character,” then conversely Nazism would only accept those aspects of religion that met such racial-spiritual concerns as Germanic morality, whether this meant a radically revised Christian faith (Germanized and de-Judaized), paganism, or some combination of the two akin to that which Rosenberg proposed. Such a racial yardstick could even include “approved” sections of the Old Testament. Both Hitler and Feder were comfortable drawing on the book of Genesis, probably because Chamberlain had claimed that much of it was borrowed from “old Aryan conceptions,” including the idea of creation. As it was originally expressed and as it was portrayed officially in the commentaries, the Nazi Party was primarily concerned with ensuring that religion should not offend racially defined “morality and ethics”: the yardstick by which belief was to be measured. Christianity was not a common religious position for all leading Nazis, but it appears that ethnotheism was.