Derek Hastings. Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 312 S. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-539024-7. Reviewed by Todd Weir Published on H-German (November, 2010) Commissioned by Benita Blessing (Oregon State University) Given the growing number of studies chart‐ gave the Center Party a scant 15.9 percent of their ing the complicity of segments of the Protestant votes in the Reichstag election of 1912. After the lay and clerical leadership with National Social‐ war, many Munich residents remained downright ism, it comes as no surprise that historians are hostile to the "political Catholicism" of the nation‐ also turning up skeletons in the closet of Ger‐ al Center Party and the local Bavarian People's many's Catholic community. What is surprising Party (BVP). The reason for this lay, in part, in about Derek Hastings's monograph is the time Catholic strength. With a Catholic monarch and frame he charts for Catholic complicity with the with a largely Catholic population, Bavaria had Nazi movement. Whereas the course of Protestant not suffered--in the words of a local journalist entanglement appears as an ascending line writing in 1922--from the "confessional nervous‐ through the fnal phase of the Weimar Republic, ness," "anxious feelings of inferiority," and "com‐ Hastings argues that Catholic involvement with bative party-consciousness" (p. 17) that the Kul‐ the Nazi movement was substantial and even crit‐ turkampf had engendered among Catholics up ical in the frst years of the movement, until rela‐ north. Munich supported a broad spectrum of tions soured in the run-up to and aftermath of the Catholic religious and political positions, includ‐ "Beer Hall Putsch" of October 1923. Thereafter ing "perhaps the most energetic and vehement both the NSDAP and the Catholic Church were forms of Catholic anti-ultramontanism in all of happy to sweep the memory of this interlude un‐ Germany" (p. 19). Particularly important for Hast‐ der the carpet. ings's story in Munich is its resident Ignaz von Hastings begins his study by alerting the read‐ Döllinger, the Catholic theologian who, in the er to the peculiarities of Catholic politics in 1860s, opposed the ultramontane course steered Bavaria, and particularly in its capital. Although by the Vatican. Döllinger was excommunicated in predominantly Catholic, the voters of Munich H-Net Reviews 1871 for his association with the breakaway "Old But under the radicalizing pressure of the Bavari‐ Catholic" movement. an revolution of 1919, some, like the publicists Di‐ Hastings then sketches out the network of etrich Eckart and Franz Schrönghamer, turned Catholic organizations and individuals that op‐ against the BVP and joined the NSDAP. By posed the Bavarian Center Party in Munich before mid-1919 Eckart and Schrönghamer had become the First World War. Most prominent were the key contributors to the Völkische Beobachter. It is Christian Social movement, which was influenced well known that this newspaper was owned by by the antisemitic posturing of Viennese mayor Rudolf von Sebottendorf, an active fgure in the Karl Lueger, and "Reform Catholicism." This latter post-Protestant and deeply anti-Catholic Thule movement was founded in 1900 and led initially Gesellschaft, which gathered esoterically minded by the priest Josef Müller, who combined anti‐ Pan-Germans. Yet Hastings convincingly shows semitism with elements of Döllinger's more liber‐ that with Sebottendorf's departure from Munich, al nationalism. Müller called "the evolution of Eckart and Schrönghamer were able to pursue an German Catholics into a closed political party … editorial policy that was friendly towards Catholi‐ the most serious national catastrophe imagin‐ cism, even as it was extremely hostile towards po‐ able!" (p. 31). For Müller the "political Catholi‐ litical Catholicism. cism" of the Center Party weakened both nation Between 1919 and 1922, an increasing num‐ and religion by dividing the former and sullying ber of Catholic priests, Catholic intellectuals, and the latter through political compromise. Catholic fraternity members became involved in Reform Catholics launched several important the Nazi movement. Hastings implies that the key journals, including Renaissance and Hochland. factor distinguishing the NSDAP from many Their political position, like that of Döllinger a völkisch groups in Bavaria was that the NSDAP generation earlier, found favor in circles close to was a de facto Catholic organization, while the the Bavarian court. The father of Heinrich Himm‐ others were de facto Protestant. He points out the ler, a tutor to the royal family and later a Gymna‐ lack of condemnation from Munich cardinal sium rector, was a representative fgure in these Michael von Faulhaber for the antisemitism of the circles. Crucially, Reform Catholicism found ad‐ movement. Indeed, Faulhaber gave succor to herents among Munich's Catholic university fra‐ Catholic antisemitism by his own suggestion at ternities. It offered students a doctrine that was at the 1922 Katholikentag that "racially pure once nationalistic, interconfessional, and Catholic. Catholics" were opposed to the "hereditarily taint‐ There was, in other words, a specific Bavarian ed" Republic of Weimar and "the Jewish press in Catholic tradition of "positive Christianity," a con‐ Berlin" (p. 104). cept that the National Socialists promoted so ef‐ When the National Socialist saboteur Albert fectively after 1918. Hastings dates the term "posi‐ Leo Schlageter was executed by the French occu‐ tive Christianity" back to 1903, when it appeared piers of the Rhineland in May 1923, he quickly be‐ in another Reform Catholic journal Das 20. came the object of a Nazi cult of veneration. Na‐ Jahrhundert. Unfortunately, however, Hastings tional Socialists staged a series of rallies and com‐ does not pinpoint the meaning of the term at that memorative events celebrating Schlageter that time, nor does he determine Reform Catholicism's emphasized his deeply held Catholic beliefs. This place in the genealogy of Nazi usage. is proof for Hastings of the "Catholic-Nazi synthe‐ After the war, many Catholic nationalists sis" of the summer of 1923. A number of Catholic looked to the BVP as a replacement for the now clergy, most prominently the abbot Alban largely defunct Reform Catholic organizations. Schachleiter and priests Josef Roth and Philipp 2 H-Net Reviews Haeuser, conducted religious services at these ral‐ an investigation of Catholicism per se, or of the lies. Hastings argues that this clerical support was Catholic Church as an institution, but of the role a key reason for the success of the NSDAP's sum‐ played by individual Catholics … within the Nazi mer membership drive that saw the party's num‐ movement" (p. 6). Yet, by leaving the church and ber rise from 20,000 to 55,000 members. its teachings out of the scope of the book, the au‐ Hastings offers two explanations for the sub‐ thor undermines his own liberal use of the terms sequent collapse of the Catholic-Nazi cooperation. "Catholic-oriented" or "Catholic-inflected" to de‐ First, emboldened by Benito Mussolini's success‐ scribe any utterance made by a Nazi who also ful "March on Rome," Hitler switched his tactics happened to be a practicing Catholic. Just what and entered into an alliance--the Kampfbund-- makes most of these utterances "Catholic"? This with Protestant and pagan völkisch groups in or‐ question largely remains unanswered. der to seize power. The frst Protestant pastors be‐ A second difficulty emerges from the decision gan to speak at Nazi events in September 1923. to examine Catholic Nazis in relative isolation The extreme anti-Catholicism of some members of from other political, social, and religious forces the Kampfbund, General Ludendorff in particular, and organizations. This means that Hastings's led to friction between the Catholic Church and study can only partially contribute towards the the NSDAP. On November 4, 1923, just four days liberation of German Catholicism from its histori‐ before the Beer Hall Putsch, Cardinal Faulhaber ographical "ghetto" by connecting it with wider expressed his sympathy for "our Israelite fellow German political and religious history, a desidera‐ citizens" in the atmosphere of mounting racism. tum identified some years ago by Oded Heilbron‐ This address set the stage for "confessionally ner.[1] By showing the pluralism of Bavarian based divisions" (p. 142) that emerged after the at‐ Catholic politics, Hastings deals a blow to the idea tempted coup, the failure of which many of a single Catholic milieu dominated by the Cen‐ putschists blamed on Faulhaber. ter Party. However, I would have liked to learn The second reason that Hastings gives for the more about the linkages that surely existed be‐ replacement of Catholic-Nazi tolerance with out‐ tween the anti-ultramontane Catholics and other right hostility was the rise of the messianic cult Munich-based non-Catholics, from Protestants to around Hitler, which developed notably after his the völkisch pagans. For example, Hastings identi‐ release from Landsberg prison in 1925. Drawing fies parallels between Kulturprotestantismus and on Eric Voegelin's theory of "political religion," Kulturkatholizismus, but does not examine the in‐ Hastings argues that National Socialism was itself teraction of these two streams of liberal theology. becoming a quasi-religion that could breech no Similarly, we want to know more about the im‐ competition from the churches. Although intrigu‐ portance of racial hygiene to the thought of men ing, the appearance of this thesis at the end of the such as Schrönghamer. Did their Catholicism study is a bit awkward. Such an assertion begs for make their scientific racism different from that of more substantiation. other radical nationalists? Here some comparison to the theological positions of the German Chris‐ Hastings's accomplishment is to have uncov‐ tians or other Protestant groups would have been ered a network of Catholic activists in the Nazi useful. movement.