Abstract
Over the last ten years, the concept of political religion has gained recognition as an instrument to capture certain characteristics of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, it is still under dispute. There is skepticism about the adequacy of the term, in particular with respect to the application of the term ‘religion’ to political and ideological phenomena. And there are historians and political scientists who doubt that the concept has any analytical value. In Germany, and with respect to National Socialism, these skeptics can be found, in particular, among the so-called ‘structuralists’ or ‘functionalists’, historians like Hans Mommsen or Martin Broszat, who attach greater importance to political structures and the mechanisms of power, than to individual persons or to ideological motivations and intentions.1
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Notes
See, for instance, Hans Mommsen, ‘Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion’, Hans Maier and Michael Schäfer (eds), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen: Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs 2 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997), pp. 173–81.
Stanley G. Payne, ‘On the Heuristic Value of the Concept of Political Religion and its Application’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 6:2 (September 2005), p. 163.
Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformation, Science, Witch-Hunts and the End of Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 4–5; cf. Payne (note 2).
Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Die politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus: Die religiöse Dimension der NS-Ideologie in den Schriften von Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg und Adolf Hitler (Munich: Fink, 1998); id., ‘The Religious Dimension in the Works of Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler’, Glenn Hughes, Stephen A. McKnight and Geoffrey L. Price (eds), Politics, Order and History: Essays on the Work of Eric Voegelin (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 104–24; id., ‘Der Topos der Politischen Religion aus der Perspektive der Religionspolitologie’, Michael Ley, Heinrich Neisser and Gilbert Weiss (eds), Politische Religion? Politik, Religion und Anthropologie im Werk von Eric Voegelin (Munich: Fink, 2003), pp. 176–97, esp. pp. 191, 196.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 349th–351st edn (Munich: Eher, 1938), p. 396; id., Speech at Nuremberg, 5 November 1934, quoted from Reichtagung in Nürnberg 1934 (Berlin, 1934).
Hans Buchheim, ‘Despotie, Ersatzreligion, Religionsersatz’, Hans Maier (ed.), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen: Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996), pp. 260–63.
Juan J. Linz, ‘The Religious Use of Politics and/or the Political Use of Religion: Ersatz Ideology Versus Ersatz Religion’, in Totalitarianism and Political Religions: Concepts for the Comparison of Dictatorships, ed. Hans Maier, trans. Jodi Bruhn (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 112.
For the sacralization of politics, see Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
Eric Voegelin, ‘The Political Religions’, Manfred Henningsen (ed.), The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin 5: Modernity Without Restraint (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2000), p. 32.
Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20: Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, 17th–20th edn (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1934), p. 86 (my translation).
Heinrich Böll, ‘Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen’, Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit: Satiren (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979), pp. 106–37.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958), p. 458.
Sigmund Neumann, Permanent Revolution: The Total State in a World at War 3 (New York: Harper, 1942), p. 229.
Carl J. Friedrich, ‘The Unique Character of Totalitarian Society’, Totalitarianism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 52.
Helmut Heiber (ed.), Das Tagebuch von Joseph Goebbels 1925–26, 2nd edn (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960), p. 85.
Hans Mommsen, ‘Der Nationalsozialismus: Kumulative Radikalisierung und Selbstzerstörung des Regimes’, Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon 16 (Mannheim: Meyer, 1976), pp. 785–90. Meanwhile, there has been an approximation between the interpretations of ‘intentionalists’ and ‘structuralists’, see
Hans Mommsen, ‘Forschunhgskontroversen zum Nationalsozialismus’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 57, Nr. 14–15 (2007), pp. 14–21.
Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004).
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© 2008 Klaus Vondung
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Vondung, K. (2008). What Insights Do We Gain from Interpreting National Socialism as a Political Religion?. In: Griffin, R., Mallett, R., Tortorice, J. (eds) The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230241633_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230241633_6
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