Political Religion: The Relevance of a Concept
Author(s): Philippe Burrin
Source: History and Memory , Fall 1997, Vol. 9, No. 1/2, Passing into History: Nazism
and the Holocaust beyond Memory — In Honor of Saul Friedlander on His Sixty-Fifth
Birthday (Fall 1997), pp. 321-349
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25681009
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Philippe Burrin
residues, or imitating facets, of traditional religious culture. In this
respect, a "political religion" dimension tends to increase in a political
group along with its propensity to form a kind of counter-society. But
it is only with the conquest and monopolization of power that it finds
its fullest expression, when coercion and intimidation are coupled with
the organization of enthusiasm.
II
From the outset Nazism elicited religious comparisons, especially with
Islam, because of its glorification of war.32 Nevertheless, the notion of
political religion was rarely accepted in the historiography, even thoug
a few researchers showed the contribution it could make.33
When considering Nazism's relation to religion, it is useful to define
its differences from communism and fascism because the notion of
political religion is of interest only insofar as it sheds light, not only o
a dimension existing in a number of political phenomena, but also on th
specific tinge it takes in each of them. This requires understanding the
way in which each phenomenon conceives of the religious dimension o
life and the religious institution, determining what it selects from the
religious culture and how it incorporates these residues and, finally,
paying attention to the syncretism resulting from the amalgam of thes
residues with elements originating from other sources.
Even communism, whose rejection of religion is radical and takes
the form of militant atheism, incorporated fragments of Christian culture.
These fragments however, were mainly selected from the universa
dimension of Christianity, whether in regard to ecclesiastic structure o
eschatology. Moreover, they exist in what can be called a coded form
and have to be decoded, since they are used in a discourse that claims t
be scientific and avoids all religious references. They are also counterbal
anced, at least potentially, by the rationalism and materialism on which
communism's world of values is based and which can provide the inspira
tion for a critique from within. Finally, ritualization emerged, historically
speaking, after the accession of communism to power and increased i
accordance with the intensifying confrontation with an obdurate society,
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Political Religion
in distinction to fascist phenomena, where it was prominent almost from
their inception as political movements.34
Fascism and Nazism indeed demonstrated a great proximity to the
religious, as revealed by their leaders' frequent invocations of God or
Providence, by Mussolini's religious practice and Hider's decision to
remain witxiin the Catholic church, along with their constant denuncia
tion of atheism, which evidendy involved the desire to distinguish
themselves from communism, and their insistence upon the religious
character of their movements and their ideology. Fascism, for instance,
used from the 1920s on the expressions "fascist religion," "political and
civilian religion," and "Italy's religion."35 The Nazi leaders also referred
to themselves in religious terms, even appealing to Christianity, a
"positive Christianity," in the 1920s. In Mein Kampfi Hider praised the
Catholic church, offering it as a model for his party; and in 1926, he
called the NSDAP's program the "founding text of our religion."36
This religious self-designation deserves to be emphasized, even if it
was accompanied by an overt rivalry with institutionalized religion and
a veiled rejection of the principal Christian dogmas?the God of love,
the equality of all men and the belief in the hereafter and the immortality
of the soul. Four elements can hence be distinguished: mistrust and even
hostility toward institutionalized religion, perceived as a rival and an
obstacle; a break with the dogmas of Christianity; the incorporation of
substantial fragments of Christian culture into discourse and practice; and
finally, a recognition of the beneficial character of a religious attitude to
the world, religion being understood not as a dogma or an institution
but rather as a universe of experience and sensibility.
The tactical reason for this proximity to the religious obviously lies
in the plebiscite nature of fascist regimes and their alliance with
conservative forces which made it necessary to deal gendy with the
churches and to make themselves more acceptable to a public imbued
with Christian culture. This is a typical problem for fascist-type regimes:
the need to rely upon a traditional base such as Christian culture in order
to bring about an anticlerical and anti-Christian change of values.
However, the ideological kinship with religion is no less obvious
and goes beyond the recognition of having the same enemies, first and
foremost communism. We know how Hider and Mussolini admired the
ecclesiastical institution, the organization that had enabled it to survive
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Philippe Burrin
for centuries, the rigidity of its dogmas, the effectiveness of its rituals and
symbols. But even stronger affinities can be discerned in their aspiration
to define a "political faith" that would not be inferior to religious faith
in its capacity to mobilize hearts and minds and in their glorification of
values and attitudes typical of the Christian religion such as obedience
and sacrifice. Detached from Christian dogma, these latter were to serve
the fascist regimes' ideology combined with values taken from the
military sphere of combat and force. It is therefore hardly surprising that
an appreciation for the religious as a universe of feelings and experience
is constandy projected in Hider's and Mussolini's discourse; it was an
integral part of the deep irrationalism of their world view.
Basically, this proximity is connected with the palingenetic vision of
fascist-type movements,37 the transposition of the Christian idea of
resurrection to a certain nation. Moreover, as Daniele Hervieu-Leger
stresses, there is a privileged attraction between the ethnic and the
religious because "both of them create a social bond on the basis of a
postulated genealogy: on the one hand, a naturalized genealogy (related
to blood and soil), and on the other, a symbolic genealogy (consisting
in a belief in a founding myth or narrative)."38 By referring to fascism
and Nazism, as opposed to communism, as radically intramundane
ecclesiae, Voegelin described precisely these phenomena in which the
absolutization of the nation?whether defined in terms of race or
culture?ended in overthrowing the idea of humanity and entliroriing the
law of the survival of the fittest.39
Nazism, however, differed from fascism in its much more complex
and profound relation to religion, as demonstrated by the unequaled
challenge that it presented for German Christians. That challenge was
not like the frontal assault made by communism, since there was not
enough time for that, nor was it like the modus vivendi agreed to by
fascism. The challenge of Nazism consisted in its enormous but deceptive
intimacy with Christianity, which only a minority of lucid minds
perceived as concealing an irreducible hostility.
In their critique of Nazism, these people made frequent and striking
use of Old Testament references, especially to the figure of Antichrist
and the Apocalypse.40 The Protestant theologian, Hans-Joachim Schoeps,
spoke of a return to Baal, the god of fertility and of vital forces, and
Moloch, the god of power, who had to be placated by human sacrifice,
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_Political Religion
both of whom, as symbols of a "popular community" founded on blood
and oriented to power, rejected the Tablets of the Law.41 Even a social
democrat like Franz Neumann felt the need to appeal to the Bible
(admittedly via Hobbes). He used the figure of Behemoth, the monster
of Jewish apocalyptic tradition, born of chaos and spreading terror on the
eve of the end of time, in his attempt to symbolize the reign of anarchy
and lawlessness that he saw the Nazi regime leading toward. He thereby
came close to defining what was so deeply excessive and destructive in
this phenomenon, without fully developing his intuition, as attested by
the difficulty he experienced in grasping the radical nature of Nazi anti
Semitism.42
Two components can be discerned in Nazism's attitude toward
religion. While attempting to inculcate a racist and anti-Semitic world
view as an exclusive and all-embracing faith,43 the Nazi leaders, especially
Hider, elaborated in public a kind of civil religion that may have been
superficial and manipulative but was certainly attractive: the invocation
of God's protection, the representation of Hider as a man of providence,
and of the German people as the bearers of a divine mission.44 In Italy
by contrast, the preponderance of the Catholic church and the presence
of the Vatican induced Mussolini to refrain from stressing this dimension
of civil religion in which fascism risked losing its identity. Hider,
however, saw an advantage in emphasizing it, precisely because of
Germany's denominational divisions.
Behind the ornaments of this civil religion, Nazism?in distinction
to fascism, let alone communism?aspired to found an ethno-religion
intended to fill the vacuum that the disappearance of Christianity would
eventually create and to serve as the basis for its political religion. It
should be emphasized that the idea of an ethno-religion follows the
tradition of the volkisch movement, with its twin ambition of political
renewal and religious reform, the latter taking the form of either
Germanic Christianity, that is purged of its Judaic elements, or Germanic
pantheism.45
At the time of writing Mein Kampf, Hider publicly rejected the role
of religious reformer. Aware of the fate of the small volkisch groups and
fearing to arouse the wrath of the churches, he gave priority to buUding
a political organization capable of victory. Nonetheless, his mentality and
sensibility like that of most of his lieutenants?Hess, Rosenberg,
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Philippe Burrin
Bormann, Himmler?continued to be marked by the vblkisch tradition.
In this respect Hider was very different from Mussolini, with his
skepticism and his instrumental vision, since he appreciated religion not
only for its social utility but also for its intrinsic value, adhering, as
revealed by statements he made in private, to a belief that blended the
two versions of the vblkisch religious reform?Germanic pantheism and
Germanic Christianity.
The divinity to which he referred was not the personal god of
Christians, but an impersonal god that had been present at the creation
of the world and determined the "eternal laws of nature"?the struggle
for life, the law of the survival of the fittest, the danger of racial
crossbreeding?laws that each people was free to observe or not, at its
own risk. For him, this divinity represented the unknown in a universe
where man, no longer created in the image of a Christian God, had lost
his individual dignity. Subject to the laws of nature like all living
creatures, all man had was a promise of immortality, which he assured
through his descendants and the survival of his race.46
Hider added elements of Germanic Christianity to this naturalist
pantheism, without much concern for coherence, and in particular the
idea of an Aryan Christ killed by the Jews. His familiarity with this
notion can explain his hope, until about 1937, that the churches would
progressively "dejudaize" their doctrine.47 At least it explains the ease
with which he "spoke Christian" and assumed roles bequeathed by
Christian tradition. Thus, on several occasions he presented himself as a
"prophet," and we know what solemnity he attributed to this role when,
on 30 January 1939, he announced to the Reichstag the possible
extermination of the Jews.
However his attitude to the churches evolved, what is important is
that, throughout his life, Hider remained devoted to the idea of a
religious reform of the Germans.48 And if he himself abstained from
preaching this in public, it was Himmler who undertook this task by
making the SS the force that was to add religious reform to political
renewal. Indeed, Hider occasionally kept his distance from the anti
Christianity of the SS and the development of its rituals, which were
largely copied from Christian rituals. But this can be principally explained
by his caution with regard to the churches, as well as by his antipathy
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Political Religion
toward any structure of an ecclesiastical nature, even within the Nazi
Party itself.
It is difficult to refrain from giving the name "religion" to the belief
of Hider and his lieutenants. The existence of this ethno-religion, insofar
as it served as an extremely favorable basis for recuperating and recycling
fragments of the traditional religious culture, only reinforced Nazism's
dimension of political religion, as shown by its glorification of the
political. The Israeli historian Uriel Tal has even spoken of a "consecra
tion of politics" when describing the way in which the Nazis raised this
sphere to the level of a superior and all-encompassing reality.49 This
mechanism of "consecration" applied equally to the notions of race and
blood, which it endowed with an aura of transcendence: the individual
had to let himself be absorbed into a community whose survival
promised him immortality.
This cultural and symbolic dimension?whether with regard to party
rituals or Hider's elevation to the level of a demigod?has been amply
studied.50 It is nevertheless important to emphasize the fact that Nazism
not only recycled symbols and disparate themes, but also whole patterns
of thought of a religious origin.
One such pattern, which can be called cosmological, fashioned a
tradition for Nazism in the sense referred to above?the Nazis them
selves attached the greatest value to creating a tradition.51 Fascism
created its own tradition by referring to a historical precedent, the
Roman Empire, and communism did so by retracing the class struggle
throughout history. For its part, Nazism appropriated a tradition for itself
by plagiarizing the biblical model: the creation, divine law, sin, fall and
redemption were all copied, and each element was perverted in order to
be recycled in Nazi ideology.52
This tradition, which obviously had neither the substance nor the
density of the biblical narrative, was articulated by the Nazi leaders and
in the educational plans of the SS.53 It asserted Nazism's kinship with a
race that had existed since the beginning of the world, the tribulations
of that race, its epochs of grandeur and decadence, measured by the
degree to which the purity of blood had been respected, and finally the
promise of redemption heralded by Hider, by "our Fiihrer who has
finally been granted to us, after two thousand years," as Himmler was
fond of saying.54 A vision that embraces the millennia, the idea of a final
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Philippe Burrin
reckoning with a Christianity that had perverted the Germanic race?all
this shows to what extent Nazism invented its tradition through a kind
of destructive mimesis of Christianity.
In comparison with the biblical model, what is worth noting is the
importance attributed to the cosmos. Hider and his men were utterly
fascinated by the history of the universe, and they satisfied their
fascination through speculative theories that they considered scientific
such as the "glaciation cosmogony" (Welteislehre), which explained the
origins and the development of the universe and established the
superiority of the Germanic race.55 The primacy of nature, the insignifi
cance of man, the sense of mystery shifted from creator to creation: this
amalgam of speculative scientism and biblical reminiscence reflect the
aspiration of certain occult and esoteric movements of the end of the
nineteenth century to unite science and religion.56
The second pattern derives from demonology. Totalitarian regimes
(but not only these?let us recall the French Revolution) believe in the
ubiquity of maleficent adversaries. It is often said that they persecute
groups or individuals for what they are rather than for what they do. But
this distinction, which is valid from the point of view of the persecuted,
has no meaning for the persecutors. In their view, the adversaries cannot
simply be but must inevitably act, if not in broad daylight, then at least
in the shadows, and any lack of evidence for such action is merely
additional proof of the menace they represent. It is for this reason that
these regimes, in their search for an "objective enemy," replace, as
Hannah Arendt said, "the suspected offense by the possible crime."57
Nor is it surprising that they believe in one form or another of universal
conspiracy.58
Arendt has also compared communism and Nazism, especially their
political police, to "secret societies established in broad daylight."59 This
may be more valid with regard to Nazism than Stalinism. On the one
hand, the figure of the adversary, who infiltrates in order to destroy and
who therefore has to be "recognized" and "exposed," possesses fantastic
traits derived from the diabolic imagery of Christianity, especially with
regard to the Jew. On the other hand, the SS seems to resemble a secret
society far more clearly than the NKVD, if only because it defined itself
as such: as a "sworn society" (eine beschwdrene Gemeinschaft), which
could only have, as in a mirror image, "sworn" enemies. When in 1943
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Himmler referred to the extermination of the Jews in a speech to the
highest ranks of the Nazi Party and spoke of taking "our secret with us
to our grave," what was he doing if not tightening the ranks of a secret
society whose acts were justified by a superior morality that could not
include ordinary Germans?60
A diird pattern can be dubbed apocalyptic. Klaus Vondung has
emphasized the place held by the theme of the apocalypse in German
culture throughout the last two centuries (a rarely evoked Sonderweg),
both on the left and, especially, on the right wing of German politics.61
This theme is particularly striking in Nazism: the vision of an era of
decadence and catastrophe, the final struggle between good and evil, the
promise of complete renewal. The apocalyptic theme is so evident that
it has long attracted the attention of historians, in particular those who
are interested in the notion of political religion.62 While Mussolini
regarded the world as a relendess struggle for power and domination
between peoples, and while communists linked the idea of a final
struggle with capitalism to the conviction that the movement of history
was on their side, the Nazis were simply fascinated by the apocalypse as
a cosmic, relendess, ultimate?and undecided?ordeal.
They adopted this pattern of thought from Christianity because it
symbolized their state of mind and their vision of themselves and their
struggle. However, in doing so, they remodeled it in a way that far
exceeded a mere process of secularization. Not only was there no longer
a God to vanquish the Antichrist, but, more critically, this was an
apocalypse without a guarantee that the righteous would be victorious
at the end of time. Indeed, in Nazism, and certainly for Hider, there was
a clear awareness of the possibility of ultimate defeat.63 Mein Kampf
provides a gloomy vision of a planet where life has been destroyed
following the victory of the Jews. The result of the combat could
therefore be disastrous: but is this not what the lurid Germanic mytholo
gy of the twilight of the gods and the conflagration of the world has
been preparing for?
Even if the Nazi leaders took pleasure in a vocabulary suggesting a
millenarian future, they were fundamentally attached to a cyclical
conception of time, which corresponded to their conviction that a
perpetual struggle would be necessary to maintain the purity of blood
and the greatness of the Volk against the constandy reborn powers of
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Philippe Burrin
decadence.64 The fact that Hider was keenly aware that he was growing
older and that he invoked this fact to justify increasing the pace of his
projects is well known and implies a romantic conception of the hero,
very far from the millenarian universe. He also manifested this awareness
to Albert Speer when he envisaged the disappearance of the "thousand
year Reich" and worried whether his monuments would be able to leave
behind beautiful ruins.65 There are numerous indications that Nazism was
a will for power undermined by a sense of its own fragility, or according
to J. P. Stern's elegant formulation: "the death wish at the center of the
will for power."66
At the intersection of these three patterns is anti-Semitism. Nazism
was engaged in an apocalyptic struggle with the Jew, the figure of evil
in which the whole of Christian demonology is condensed?falsehood,
seduction, power concealed behind a set of masks?a struggle that was
to determine the future once and for all. Here again, we can discern its
continuity with the vblkisch movement, with the idea of a struggle unto
death between a positive principle?the Aryan race?and a negative
principle?the Jew?whose elimination was a condition of both religious
reform as well as of political revival.67 Unlike fascism, Nazism saw in the
figure of the Jew an embodiment of the heterogeneity of the world:
everything that endangered the Aryan race and had to be eliminated in
order to ensure its future, including, once the Jew had disappeared,
Christianity, his posthumous poison. Other political religions provide no
equivalent to this attribution of a purely metaphysical value to a
particular group of human beings.
But if this is the case, could it not be said that Nazism, for all its
anti-Christianity, was in certain respects at least an authentic kind of
Christianity> This is a position adopted by historians such as Claus-E.
Barsch and Michael Ley. Ley, for instance, links the genocide to the
central importance attached to sacrifice in Christianity, unlike in the
other monotheistic religions. On the basis of the apocalyptic vision of the
Nazis, he suggests that the extermination of the Jews was equivalent to
a holy sacrifice which was to pave the way toward the "thousand-year
Reich." The notion of redemption through the death of the Jews implies
that Nazism was profoundly structured by Christianity.68
However, if Nazi anti-Semitism cannot be explained without the
long tradition of Christian anti-Judaism, and if the genocide cannot be
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Political Religion
understood without considering the purifying, restorative and expiatory
value it had in the Nazis' mental universe?all of these elements
originating in Christianity?it seems dubious to argue for such a strong
relationship between Christian sacrifice and Nazi genocide. On the one
hand, the argument contains a contradiction: if the Jew is the Antichrist,
he cannot be the victim of a sacrifice; he is the mortal enemy who has to
be exterminated.69 On the other hand, this would be to ignore the
plurality of Nazism's sources of inspiration, and in particular two sources
that merge with these fragments of Christian culture.
The first is the neo-Germanism of the volkisch movement, accompa
nied by an archaic type of morality, of which Hider gave us a striking
example when he invoked, as he did on several occasions, the law of
retaliation?an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?in order to justify the
extermination of the Jews.70 He had a no less archaic conception of war:
the enemy had to be destroyed, its population reduced to slavery, trans
ferred, exterminated. The second source is the biological naturalism that
served as the substructure for Nazi racism, a scientific racism, accorcling
to the Nazis, mcluding Hider, who held science in high esteem.71
Nazi syncretism thus brought together several elements designed to
achieve both political and religious reform: an apocalyptic anti-Semitism,
a radical racism and an archaic morality, to which we should add the
complex of resentment generated by the defeat of 1918. In this
syncretism, the Christian source of inspiration, in the sense of perverted
residues of that culture, seems to take pride of place. But we should not
underestimate the dynamism provided by the other sources. The
discourse of Nazi leaders concerning the genocide is laden with
apocalyptic prophetism, but it also includes the vocabulary of getting rid
of parasites and performing a surgical operation.72
In conclusion, it seems difficult to agree with Voegelin's approach,
accorciing to which Nazism was the offspring of humanism. Nazism was
the child of the secularization process through its glorification of the
political and its quasi-scientific vision of nature and the human species.
But at the same time, Nazism was the desire to reenchant a world
subjected to a process of rationalization that brings with it not only
science but also the values of reason, free enquiry and individualism.
Compared with the other phenomena of its type, Nazism took the
absolutization of the political to the extreme by basing its political
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Philippe Burrin
religion on an ethno-religion.73 Its rejection not only of the Enlighten
ment but also of the entire Judeo-Christian heritage led it, quite logical
ly, to commit the worst mass crimes of the modern era.
But was it really possible to reenchant a society in the clutches of
modernity? Beyond the issue of Nazism, which was engulfed by the
storm it unleashed, sweeping away along with it millions of innocent
people, the frailty of political religions should be considered. The type
of political, moral and spiritual unity that they aim to create can only be
thwarted by the massive movement toward rationalization of society, by
the institutional segmentation and the technical specialization that
continuously engender the splitting of social life into autonomous
spheres. Even on their own privileged level of beliefs, symbols and
rituals, the limits of political religions are soon evident, whether this is
because of the necessity to yield to the incessant adjustments modernity
demands, or because of their inability to give adequate answers to
ultimate questions, which is what traditional religions do, at least
providing consolation in the form of a promise of individual immortality.
This frailty, which became an obvious truth as the decades passed,
was already perceived by a contemporary. In 1939, in response to a
survey on the "return of tribal religions" (the term referred to commu
nism, fascism and Nazism), the French Hellenist Rene Guastalla
estimated that "this renewal of social myths seems likely to last only for
a very short period of time, if we measure it through the eyes of history."
The first reason was that "uiilike the natural myths of the past, today's
myths are myths of novelists, in the sense that each of them could name
its author." In other words, they are threatened by other stories and by
the refusal to believe, while "the natural myths were beyond discussion
for the members of a given political community, who had no interest in
their neighbors' myths." The second reason was that, for centuries, the
European had "litde by litde taken to the habit of being an individual,
of thinking about his own salvation?temporal or spiritual, it hardly
matters!?while myth can only exist in the unanimous agreement of
undifferentiated beings."74
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