Nazism and Religion

Using a case study of the Protestant churches in the British zone in occupied Germany after the Second World War, the article explores church responses to an often-neglected aspect of the Allies’ purge of post-Nazi Germany: their mass internment of German civilians. Whereas the literature is critical of church support for former Nazis and opposition to Allied measures, the article argues for differentiation. Church assistance for internees was even more extensive than previously recognized and erred on the side of assisting undeserving former Nazis, while also being somewhat selective and discerning. Much church activity was in opposition to the British, yet there was also a degree of cooperation and negotiation. The article argues that ecclesiastical criticism of civilian internment was not merely a symptom of a refusal to confront the past or an expression of nationalist ideology. Internment was a genuine object of criticism in its own right and a source of wider church objections to denazification. Ultimately, Allied internment policy, pressure from below, interconfessional rivalry, national solidarity and the lack of a German government all contributed to the Protestant churches becoming outspoken critics of the Allies and advocates for those members of the German people who found themselves in civilian internment camps.

The volume presents the memoirs of Mons. Gyula Magyary (1901–1988) who taught canon law in the Urbaniana University at Rome. During the winter of 1966–1967, Magyary recorded a tape with his recollections. The memoirs focus primarily on Magyary’s diplomatic and political mission which he undertook in the autumn of 1944 under the pseudonym Francis Moly, commissioned by the Anglo-American allied powers. In addition to this, the recollections illustrate further steps of Magyary’s fascinating biography, such as his connections with the Austrian antifascist legitimist opposition, his experiences gained under the Red Army’s move across Hungary, Magyary’s role in preserving the Pontifical Hungarian Institute in 1945, finally his pastoral visits to émigré Hungarians in the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged by Cardinal Mindszenty.

O referente trabalho aborda a questão judaica no medievo. O objetivo será identificar as incidências de antissemitismo proporcionado pela Igreja Católica durante a Idade Média; observar como esses cristãos construíam a imagem deturpada desses judeus e o que os levavam a fazer isso; que abordagem são feitas pela historiografia quanto ao assunto? O trabalho enfocará a construção da imagem do judeu forjada para o medievo e seus possíveis elementos de continuidade na contemporaneidade, através dessas relações de "Longa Duração".

This article redresses the interpretative lacunae of historians' conceptions of Nazi racism by overcoming their attempts to comprehend it from either a secular/scientific or a religious/theological perspective. Drawing on a variety of anthropological, philosophical, and political-theoretical works, the article illustrates how Nazi racial ideas were formulated not only in accordance with the latest discoveries in the field of human heredity, but also in correspondence to contemporary debates over secularization, value-free science, and biological determinism. It argues that the Nazi conception of race constituted a new form of religiosity, which did not draw on supernatural beliefs or theological narratives, but rather on vitalist-oriented metaphysics, shifting the object of faith from the transcendent realm of God to the immanent sphere of racial inward-ness. Redefining faith in vitalist-existentialist terms corresponded with the Nazi aspiration to overcome the fragmentation of modernity, overturn the nihilistic threat posed by materialist society, and carry out a spiritual renaissance built upon immanent-biological foundations.

In diesem Aufsatz werden die interpretativen Lücken innerhalb der unter Historikern gängigen Konzeptionen des nationalsozialistischen Rassismus beseitigt, indem deren Versuche, diesen entweder von einer säkularen/wissenschaftlichen oder einer religiös/theologischen Perspektive zu begreifen, überwunden werden. Mit Hilfe einer Vielfalt von anthropologischen, philosophischen und politisch-theoretischen Arbeiten illustriert der Aufsatz, wie nationalsozia-listische Ideen über Rasse nicht nur in Übereinstimmung mit den jüngsten Entdeckungen in den Forschungen zu menschlicher Vererbung, sondern auch in Bezug auf zeitgenössische Debatten über Säkularisierung, wertfreie Wissenschaft und biologischen Determinismus formu-liert wurden. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass die nationalsozialistische Konzeption von Rasse eine neue Form der Religiosität darstellte, die nicht auf einem Glauben an das Übernatürliche oder theologischen Narrativen beruhte, sondern vielmehr auf einer am Vitalismus orientierten Metaphysik: das Objekt des Glaubens wurde vom transzendenten Reich Gottes zur immanenten Sphäre rassischer Innerlichkeit verschoben. Diese Neudefinition von Glauben in vitalistisch-existentialistischen Begriffen korrespondierte mit dem Ziel der Nationalsozialisten, die Fragmentierung der Moderne zu überwinden, die durch die materialistische Gesellschaft bedingte Bedrohung durch den Nihilismus abzuwenden und eine, auf einer immanent-biologischen Fundierung beruhende, geistige Renaissance durchzuführen.

The Holocaust roughly spanned from January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945, that is when Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party became the Chancellor of Germany to the time the war in Europe officially ended. The Jews, who were blamed for Germany’s ills were supposed to be subjected to total annihilation through a propaganda campaign which ultimately  led to the destruction of the Jewish community on a very large scale. Schindler’s Ark (1982) by Thomas Keneally and The Book Thief (2005) by Marcus Zusak provide a narrative account of the Holocaust which led to the deaths of two thirds of European Jews and one third of the total Jews worldwide. This paper demonstrates the horrors in the reign of Adolf Hitler and how well the two novels retrace history. It entails to rediscover the ‘truths’ which are represented through fictional accounts of the events that took place during the genocide.

This paper examines the topic of Nazism and religion in a new way, by considering the official explanations that were offered to party members and the German public in the two commentaries on the Nazi Program. Through a detailed analysis of these commentaries and the origins of the program, it is argued that the official Nazi position on religion has to be understood principally as anti-Jewish. The paper proposes a redefinition of the terms of debate to “ethnotheism” or religion defined by race, and the perceived moral or spiritual characteristics that the Nazis believed to be inherent in race.

This paper forms a response to Manfred Gailus' call for 'micro-histories' to examine the heterogenous nature of religious response, and to his notion of the first year of Nazi rule as a 'Protestant experience' (1933 als protestantisches Erlebnis). It considers the Protestant response in Württemberg in 1933 through a detailed analysis of a theologically conservative Protestant newspaper and a pastors' prayer circle.
While considering perceptions of the period prior to 1933 (as a time of 'godlessness' and 'the abyss') it argues that to comprehend the enthusiasm for the Nazi state and 'moral-spiritual revival' in 1933 one has to also understand the pre-existing myth of a spiritual 'awakening' as a part of the supposed 'spirit of 1914' - a 'Church spirit of 1914' as it were. It concludes that by the end of 1933 many of these Protestant pastors found themselves bound in a 'clash of conservatisms' (of their conservative nationalism as against their conservative Christian faith).

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

Current debates on Nazism and religion are focused around the notion that the Nazis sought to promote a kind of Christian faith called “positive Christianity”. This article challenges such perspectives. It establishes that “positive Christianity” had an existing meaning in German society before the Nazi Party was formed — dogmatic Christian faith — and demonstrates that this was the same interpretation of religious faith that Hitler appeared to advocate in Mein Kampf. The paper argues that “positive Christianity” had such a wide variety of interpretations that it cannot be considered cohesive.

The consideration of movements and sub-cultures within particular societies has always formed an integral part of intellectual history. In studies of Nazism and religion in recent years, there has been a trend towards arguing a deliberate disjunction or separation of the Nazi Party from the longer German anti-Semitic völkisch movement (dating from the nineteenth century) from which Nazism itself arose––a perspective that is challenged in this essay. While there are excellent studies on the heterogeneous nature of Christian response to the Nazis, there has not been a comparable approach in examining how the Nazis viewed religion.  Yet this is certainly needed, as one of the consistent features of the völkisch movement was its diversity. Roger Griffin argued a “striking feature of the sub-culture…was just how prolific and variegated it was” such that “the only denominator common to all was the myth of national rebirth.”  It contained a colourful, varied and often bewildering range of religious beliefs.
The problem is that historians have tended to argue that the leaders of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) adhered either to paganism or to an “Aryanised” Christian faith. Certainly Uwe Puschner recorded that two major “religious concepts and camps” existed in the völkisch movement from around 1900, one advocating an “Aryanised” German-Christianity and the other a “revival of the pre-Christian religion of the ancient Germans.” Yet Puschner also argued that “völkisch schemes of religion” formed a spectrum, from attempts “to germanise Christianity up to the decisive rejection of Christianity and the constitution of new Germanic religions.” This meant “there were efforts to attempt to account for Christian religious convictions in the Germanic world of faith and fuse Christianity with (constructed) Germanic religious ideas, in which Jesus Christ was approximately equated with Baldur or Odin.”  These latter points indicate the capacity to view paganism and Christianity as part of the one continuum.
I argue that we can observe the same process in the early Nazi Party, although there has been a lack of consideration of such heterogeneity of religious response.

The anticommunist position of the Spanish bishops was unanimous during the Spanish Civil War. Their attitude toward Nazism, however, underwent a gradual evolution, from indifference (1936–37) to concern (1938–39). This change was due, in part, to the sympathy for Germany exhibited by the Spanish Falange and, above all, to the warnings of the Holy See. It did not, however, result in a unanimous and open criticism of the Nazis.The opposition of the bishops was primarily in response to papal documents and warnings from German bishops critical of Nazism’s stance against Christianity, leading the bishops to question the compatibility of totalitarian ideas and Catholicism to create the new state that Francisco Franco wanted to build in Spain.

Given the recent scholarly interest in the history of anti-communism, it is surprising that relatively little has been written on the ambitious transnational anti-communist campaign launched by the Vatican in the early 1930s. Drawing on new archival material, this article explores how the Vatican founded an organization known as the Secretariat on Atheism, which disseminated a form of anti-communism grounded in Catholic teachings. The Secretariat sought to buttress the position of the Roman Catholic church in international affairs and unite Catholic groups across Europe and the Americas, all the while maintaining its independence from other forms of anti-communism – particularly those espoused by Nazi and Fascist forces. However, the Secretariat was only partially successful in preserving its independence. For if the Vatican campaign avoided the antisemitic and nationalistic motifs that characterized Nazi-Fascist propaganda, the key protagonists of the movement cooperated with Nazi, Fascist and proto-Fascist forces on the ground. The Vatican campaign led to joint surveillance efforts, the toning down of the Pope's public denunciations of Nazi-Fascism, and the papal sanction of violence against purportedly communist enemies. Despite its potentially damning association with Nazi-Fascist forces, the Vatican anti-communist movement would outlive both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and leave a lasting mark on Cold War politics.

Jesus had warned over two millennia ago, that ‘If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand’ . Since his admonishments, the Church has suffered division, often resulting in physical violence. Indeed, the dilemma of unity had been manifest from the Church’s inception, plagued it during the patristic age with heresy and theological correction, and most profoundly illustrated in the schism of 1054 between East and West. Certainly, the great reformers operated in a climate of hierarchical and, most importantly of all, theological division.

Internal dilemma has marked theological progress, however, in the case of the Protestant Church in the Third Reich, as Helmut Thielicke observed, it was a distraction from the dangers outside the Church.  This distraction, or rather a theological inability, made the Church attendees impotent in the face of nationalistic militarism and the wide spread violence of World War Two. They were, as Begbie has realised, theologically ill-equipped and unprepared to come to terms with the immense power of Nazi ideology, and the profound issues it raised for the life and witness of the Church.

Pie XI apocalyptique : l'association des deux termes peut surprendre, mais comme elle surprend souvent lorsqu'on associe l'adjectif à un pape. Pourtant, puisque le Christ eut des discours eschatologiques et traverse l'Apocalypse comme vivant ou comme agneau, faut-il s'étonner que le disciple ne soit pas plus différent du maître ? D'ailleurs, seuls ceux qui ne lisent pas sérieusement les papes, ou qui euphémisent ce qu'ils lisent, ignorent l'apocalyptique papale contemporaine, alors qu'elle est abondante, de Pie IX à François, à tel point qu'il ne serait pas inintéressant de relire l'histoire de la papauté des xix e et xx e siècles selon ce critère. Aussi est-ce sans complexes aucuns que je suivrai Pie XI du 14 mars 1937 au 10 février 1939, partant de Mit brennender Sorge avant d'embrasser ensuite ce qui, ultérieurement, relève de l'apocalyptique.

Sophie becomes an atheist.  But when?  Scholars have suggested that she loses her faith after she is forced to send one of her children to her death.  But there is evidence that Sophie continues to believe even after she makes that decision.  In this essay, I show how Sophie loses her faith when she discovers that Hitler and the Nazis committed their atrocities against Jews on the basis of their version of Christianity.  She makes this discovery when talking to a young Nazi child.  To illuminate this scene, I analyze it in relation to Nazi books made especially for children.  My ultimate argument is this: Sophie becomes an atheist because she realizes that a version of Christianity made Hitler and the Nazis possible. For a more detailed analysis of my approach to Styron's novel, see my book The modernist God State.

Returning to the Journal of Contemporary History debate on The Holy Reich, this article argues that the notion of ‘positive Christianity’ as a Nazi ‘religious system’ has been largely invented. It offers a close analysis of significant public statements on National Socialism by three leading Nazis: Adolf Hitler, Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg. In doing so, it demonstrates that in historical context the three key ideas from Point 24 of the NSDAP programme that were meant to form the content of this ‘type of Christianity’ were not promoted as Christian. Instead, they formed a part of the Nazis’ racial ideology.

Otto Knab's fox fables belong to the most celebrated accounts of German resistance literature. Out of print for decades, this reprint makes the fables again accessible, together with a historical introduction.

Wipf and Stock: Library of Forbidden Books 2017

ENG: The article is a brief reflection about the narration used to describe the relations between Nazism and occultism in the texts of the contemporary pop culture after 1990. Recurrence of this narration suggests that it is a myth, understood in the Barthesian way as a dual semiological system. Hence, the question arises: Is the pop cultural fusion of nazism and occultism only a type of aestheticism? Or maybe “a depoliticized word”, which may have arisen in its receivers as a belief, that the origin of the National Socialism is inhuman or demonic thus the humanity does not take any responsibility for its crimes? The author restrains from concluding this matter unambiguously. Instead he presents the examples of narration about the relations of Nazism and occultism (e.g. the inseparable connection between science and the occultism in the Third Reich or non-human origin of  Nazism). In line with this, the model of such a myth in the spirit of Roland Barthes beliefs is being presented.

PL: Artykuł stanowi zarys refleksji nad sposobem budowy narracji o związkach nazizmu i okultyzmu w tekstach współczesnej kultury popularnej powstałych po 1990 roku. Powtarzalność tej narracji wskazuje, że stanowi ona mit w Barthes’owskim tego słowa rozumieniu – jako podwójnego systemu semiologicznego. Pojawia się zatem pytanie, czy popkulturowe splątanie nazizmu i okultyzmu jest tylko rodzajem turpistycznego estetyzmu, czy też „odpolitycznionym słowem”, które w swoich odbiorcach może zrodzić przekonanie o nieludzkim, demonicznym pochodzeniu narodowego socjalizmu, a zatem i braku ludzkiej odpowiedzialności za jego zbrodnie. Autor powstrzymuje się od jednoznacznego rozstrzygnięcia tej kwestii, przedstawia natomiast przykłady narracji o związkach nazizmu i okultyzmu (np. narracji o nierozerwalnym połączeniu nauki i okultyzmu w III Rzeszy lub o wprost pozaludzkim pochodzeniu nazizmu). Następnie zostaje przedstawiony model takiego mitu utrzymany w duchu poglądów Rolanda Barthes’a.

Among the many ‘founding myths’ of fascism such as those regarding its relationship to the First World War, one element stood out as key to both its quest for absolute dominion over the Italian peninsula and its historically based self-concept and representation: the idea of present-day Italy as incarnating the spirit and virtuousness of Roman (late Republican and early Imperial) antiquity, creating the image of a Terza Roma, of a ‘third’, fascist Rome. This ‘Romanness’ or, in Italian, romanità, is at the heart of the present paper, which offers a general analysis of some of the central characteristics of the fascist use of the myth and idea of Rome. It firstly situates romanità, one of the main myths on which Mussolini’s so-called fabbrica del consenso relied for more than twenty years, in the context of the study of fascism as a political religion. After this overall treatment of the most characteristic features of romanità, the myth of Rome is linked to recent scholarship on the modern nature of fascism (and nazism). This proposed ‘fascist modernism’, already briefly illustrated in the first part of the paper (fascist architecture and aesthetics), is traced in the activities and inner functioning of the Istituto di Studi Romani, a pivotal institution in the development of the myth and cult of Rome under fascism. Finally, it also uses the Istituto to highlight a feature that is often neglected in the study of the fascist use of Rome, namely the role of traditional, catholic -- as opposed to fascism as a political religion -- religion.

In recent years there has been a renaissance of studies into the diverse relationships between National Socialism and esoteric or occult religious trends, which appears to form a remarkable return to the work of George L Mosse. Yet within these debates there has been surprisingly little space devoted to the question of what specifically ‘counted’ as religion in the early Nazi milieu. This article seeks to address this problem through a detailed study of the views on religion in one of the major antisemitic groups in the 1920s, the German Socialist Party, which had a number of significant connections to the NSDAP. The German Socialist debates on religion have remained largely unexamined, and this article analyses the group’s response to the Nazis’ 25 Point Programme, the German Socialists’ own debates about religion, and their views on the most important völkisch authors who were seeking a ‘religious revival’. It demonstrates that views on religion in the early Nazi milieu were extremely diverse, but commonly adhered to notions of race and a racial spirituality that amounted to a kind of ‘ethnotheism’. It argues that concepts of religion in völkisch groups at the time, including the NSDAP, have to be principally understood as part of a particular and extreme ‘racist culture’.

This study analyzes how Sveriges Religiösa Reformförbund (Swedish Association of Religious Reform) constructed the concept of race during the interwar period. Taking political, societal and theological aspects into account, the association's construction of race shows how Christian actors could combine Christianity and fascism before and after the NSDAP seized power.

The fact that during the whole period of the Third Reich no monuments dedicated to Hitler were erected, has not been thoroughly reflected yet. Here it is explained with an explicit ban by the "Fuehrer" on the one hand and German memorial culture on the other.

Late last year I published an article that examined the official Nazi views on religion.  In this brief paper, I wished to simply deal with two further points––one relates to Feder’s Commentary and the other deals with the practical effect or impact of ‘ethnotheism’ as it derived from Point 24 of the Nazi Party Program.

Ausschnitt:
"In seiner Entscheidung vom 2. Februar 1961 befand das Oberlandesgericht Linz die Ehe zwischen Hildegard Luise Finsterer und ihrem verstorbenen ersten Ehemann Faik Đonlagić für den staatlichen Bereich rückwirkend als wirksam und die aus dieser entsprungene, am 27. Juni 1946 in Wien geborene Tochter Lejla (Đonlagić,
bis dahin Finsterer) als ehelich. Die beiden Eheleute hatten am 14. September 1945 in Salzburg in den Wirren der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit geheiratet, als noch so manche Unklarheit darüber bestand, welches Eherecht – das zivile des deutschen Ehegesetzes oder das konfessionelle der Ersten Republik – nun galt. 
Was wie ein Auszug aus einem Eherechts-Casebook klingt, war – zunächst selbst ein ungewöhnlicher Zufallsfund – infolge Anstoß für eine sukzessive (rechts-)geschichtliche, religionsrechtliche und genealogische Untersuchung. Diese brachte zum einen in den Archiven verborgene und relativ unbekannte Umstände über die Geschichte der ersten Kultusgemeinde der Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich, die Islamische Religionsgemeinde Wien (IRG-Wien), zutage. Zum anderen war es erforderlich, diese mit bekannten Gegebenheiten zur IRG-Wien in Beziehung zu setzen und einer rechtlichen Neubewertung zu unterziehen.
Indem wir an dieser Stelle die Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung vorstellen wollen, nehmen wir einleitend bereits vorweg, dass die Entstehungsgeschichte der IRG-Wien neu geschrieben, um 37 Jahre vorverlegt und rechtlich neu gedeutet werden muss. Wir behaupten damit nicht nur, dass es diese faktisch wie rechtlich lange vor dem Gesuch des „Moslemischen Sozialdienstes“ (bzw. seines Vorstandes) vom 26. Jänner 1971 auf Genehmigung einer islamischen Kultusgemeinde in Wien und deren Genehmigung als „erste Wiener Islamische Religionsgemeinde“ durch den Bescheid vom 2. Mail 1979 (Zl. 9076/7–9c/79) gab. Wir behaupten auch, dass das Gesuch von 1971 die (religionsrechtliche) Wiederherstellung der zuvor bereits bestehenden Gemeinde zum Hintergrund hatte und beabsichtigte. Ausgangspunkt und Schlüsselereignis zur Nachvollziehung dieser Thesen ist die erwähnte Entscheidung des OLG Linz."

Il presente file, titolo: Republicanismvs Geopoliticvs Fontes Origenes et Via, contiene testi e link di Massimo Morigi sull’estetizzazione della politica e sul ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’. Il ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’ è una dottrina politologica e filosofico-politica elaborata negli ultimi anni dall’ autore  in cui i sette paper copia-incollati nelle  pagine di questo file costituiscono l’elaborazione storico-filosofica che ha portato all’elaborazione finale del ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’,  di cui si potrà prendere visione cliccando nei link posti nella parte finale del file al termine dei sette paper copia-incollati nel file. In questi precedenti paper era stato messo a fuoco, fra le altre cose,  un nuovo tipo di repubblicanesimo profondamente debitore delle suggestioni dell’estetizzazione della politica, con le sue luci delle avanguardie artistiche e con le sue terribili ombre dei regimi totalitari, così come si era manifestata nel corso del Novecento (il numero della nota a piè di pagina che all’inizio di ogni nuovo paper non riparte da 1 ma aggiunge 1 all’ultimo numero di nota del precedente paper pur essendo dovuto ad un automatismo del copia-incolla è, se vogliamo, anche un accidente altamente simbolico del filo rosso, fra riflessioni sul repubblicanesimo e sulla estetizzazione della politica, che attraversa tutti questi interventi). Il ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’ raccoglie queste suggestioni ed intende innestarle nel tronco della tradizione realista della Geopolitica. Un realismo politico quello del ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’ che però, rinnovato dalla scuola costruttivista delle relazioni internazionali (Alexander Wendt), pone in primo piano una spazialità non solo geografica  ma anche di natura mentale, rappresentativa e culturale (in fondo la moderna noopolitik non è che una riscrittura postmoderna dell’estetizzazione della politica novecentesca)  e che, proprio perché strettamente vincolato in senso machiavelliano all’effettualità, rifiuta con irrisione tutte le ingenue, quando non interessate, visioni  liberal-neopositivistiche alla Popper e si riallaccia direttamente ai grandi pensatori dialettici Hegel e Marx (da questo punto di vista, il ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’ si distacca drasticamente da tutte le vulgate neomarxiste: in primo luogo perché integralmente dialettico, in secondo luogo perché non cerca surrogati salvifici alla classe operaia ma individua, sulla scia di Gianfranco La Grassa, negli agenti strategici interni ed internazionali gli autentici operatori dell’evoluzione delle società capitalistiche – ma a differenza della versione lagrassiana del marxismo, il ‘Repubblicanesimo geopolitico’ si tiene ben stretta, ed intende sviluppare, la visione dialettica hegelo-marxiana della realtà). Possiamo così affermare che generare una profonda dialettica fra realismo politico e le mai sopite pulsioni verso l’estetizzazione della politica (impresa alla quale fu dedicata la vita del più grande rappresentante della filosofia politica del Novecento, Hannah Arendt, alla quale però fece sempre velo la sua formazione kantiana) sia il compito che si prefigge il ‘Repubblicanesimo Geopolitico’. Un repubblicanesimo, quello geopolitico, che ha pertanto definitivamente abbandonato una visione della libertà intesa come non dominio che ha segnato – ed estenuato – le ormai  vecchie ed attardate  vulgate del neorepubblicaneismo e che è invece fermamente indirizzato alla realizzazione di una autentica, profonda ed intima Vita Activa.

Massimo Morigi – Ravenna, 8 ottobre 2014

In this article I inquire into the subjective relationship to cleanliness expressed in what I call the sanitation discourse. My intent is not to analyze the concept cleanliness in its philosophical context but, rather, its place in the psychological and/or anthropological realm, that is, the role of cleanliness in the daily life of the "man in the street" as well as the ideologue. As I show, this issue is captured in the image of Hitler as constructed by historical research into his biography as well as in the genre of nationalistic indoctrination represented by Mein Kampf. I further explore this figure's influence on the character of Travis Bickle, the protagonist of Martin Scorcese's film Taxi Driver (1976). I argue that these two characters aggressively manifest the dimension of the will to organize the chaos/filth/impurity in their lives (as they perceive it) on their way to a "final solution" for the "dirty" features of their lives. They enter into this project in order to extract a more beautiful, pristine reality from the pseudo-spirituality of the physical manifestations of the respective factors. By doing so, the characters internalize the socio-cultural sanitation discourse within their personalities, which ultimately weaves the characters into the dominant socio-cultural fabric.

""This introductory world religions text explores various religions under the broad categories of African Religions, the Yogic Traditions (including Buddhism), and the Abrahamic traditions. He presents an appreciative yet realistic approach, noting both the strengths and inherent problems of various world religions.

Globalization and high-speed communication put twenty-first century people in contact with adherents to a wide variety of world religions, but usually, valuable knowledge of these other traditions is limited at best. On the one hand, religious stereotypes abound, hampering a serious exploration of unfamiliar philosophies and practices. On the other hand, the popular idea that all religions lead to the same God or the same moral life fails to account for the distinctive origins and radically different teachings found across the world’s many religions. Understanding World Religions presents religion as a complex and intriguing matrix of history, philosophy, culture, beliefs, and practices. The book reflects the belief that a certain degree of objectivity and critique is inherent in the study of religion, and attempts to guide readers in responsible ways of carrying this out. Of particular importance is the books exploration of African religions, which have frequently been absent from major religion texts. These are viewed alongside Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
""

Opinion Piece: In recent years there has been a great deal of debate about the Nazis and religion. There has been a resurgence of study into the question of esoteric religion and the Nazis, as well as considerations of whether Darwinism (and not simply Social Darwinism) was a major influence on the National Socialists.
In the interests of full disclosure, my own perspective on this debate is that ultimately the leaders of the Nazi Party seem to have adhered to a kind of “Ethnotheism,” whereby religion was supposedly defined by “race” and the spiritual and moral characteristics that the Nazis believed were inherent in race.

In its simplest form, this meant that “Aryans” were characterised as moral and spiritual – as a part of their “racial” characteristics – while “the Jews” were defined as immoral and materialist.
This bears some very significant implications for the study of Nazi attitudes to religion, because such an “ethnotheist” approach did not dictate any given formfor religion, while adopting a common conceptual approach that argued all religious teachings had to be measured against a kind of “racial yardstick.”
But what did this mean for long-established religious festivals, like the Christian celebrations of Christmas or Easter? See: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/03/24/4431673.htm

Review of the book: http://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-19094

This article is about the case of Udo Hallau - a catholic member of the HJ and later honored as "modern martyr of Catholic Church"  - who was mistreated by the German Hitlerjugend and later died. The author tackles the case from different perspectives and makes use of a variety of sources to proof that even actions, which were not justified by the Nazi-government and might have had non-political reasons, are political crimes, because the character of the Nazi-state opened room to maneuver for acting without being asked to do so as long as it went inline with the ideology of "working towards the Fuehrer".

published in: Johannes Altenberend und Josef Holtkotte (Ed.): St. Jodokus: 1511-2011, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Franziskanerklosters und der Pfarrgemeinde St. Jodokus Bielefeld (Festschrift) Bielefeld 2011, Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 177-192.

During last week's Q & A debate between Cardinal George Pell and Richard Dawkins, it was interesting that both men had perspectives on Nazism that were at once opposed and yet entirely congruent.

Pell argued that Nazism and Stalinism were the "two great atheist movements of the last century." Dawkins responded that while Stalin was an atheist, Hitler was not. However, they both agreed that Hitler represented the "personification of social Darwinism" (Pell) or that certain of what he tried to achieve arose "out of Darwinian natural selection" (Dawkins).

Part of this to and fro was certainly the kind of argument that often arises in contemporary debates, often through a process one could think of as Nazification: one disputant involved in a debate on any given topic attempts to associate their opponent's views with the Nazis. It is the kind of thing that one could summarise in a sloganistic t-shirt: "I'm okay, you're a fascist" (with an arrow pointing to the far-right).

But how could there be such opposing views when it comes to Nazism and atheism? People may not generally realise it, but the divergence of opinion between Pell and Dawkins reflects deep divisions among historians themselves as to what the Nazis believed about religion.