The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945.The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 By Richard Steigmann-Gall Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . 294 pages. $30. In this provocative book, SteigmannGall sets out to show that Nazism had a much closer relationship to Christianity than people think. He has done a prodigious amount of research and unearths documents and private statements to prove his point that the Nazi ideology was anticlerical an·ti·cler·i·cal adj. Opposed to the influence of the church or the clergy in political affairs. an rather than anti-Christian. The Holy Reich does not deal persuasively enough, however, with the provenance of the twisted theology (termed "positive Christianity Positive Christianity (German Positives Christentum) is a term adopted by Nazi leaders to refer to a model of Christianity consistent with Nazism. Adherents of Positive Christianity argued that traditional Christianity emphasized the passive rather than the active ") that the Nazis propagated. Does a religious doctrine that halls Jesus as the original anti-Semite and rejects the Old Testament on the grounds that it is "too Jewish" even qualify as Christianity? Still, Steigmann-Gall's effort is a welcome addition to the debate about the Nazis' genocidal worldview world·view n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung. 1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world. 2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group. and the wellsprings that contributed to it. |
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