A Very Damning Truth: Walter Grundmann, Adolf Schlatter, and Susannah Heschel’sThe Aryan Jesus

Barmen, the Ecumenical Movement, and the Jews: The Missing Thesis

Reviewed by: Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust Donald L. Niewyk Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, edited by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. 223 pp. $22.00 (p). The German churches, once hailed for their “struggle” against control by the Nazi state, today are more commonly vilified for their capitulation to Nazi policies, including the persecution of racial minorities and political dissenters. The eight essays in this anthology document the intrusion of racial antisemitism into key Protestant and [End Page 147] Catholic institutions during the Third Reich, and they make it clear that this dogma was built upon traditional anti-Jewish sentiments that long predated Hitler. For the most part the authors summarize arguments that they have advanced previously at greater length. Hence this volume will prove valuable chiefly to readers approaching the subject for the first time, including undergraduates in religious history courses. The synthesis of National Socialism and Christianity advanced by the predom inantly Protestant “German Christian Movement” epitomizes church susceptibility to notions of blood racism. Doris L. Bergen shows that the Movement adopted an explicitly völkisch ideology in its efforts to establish a new, racially pure Volkskirche. Its members, styling themselves “the Storm Troopers of Christ” and asserting that Jesus was an Aryan, could neither dominate the entire structure of the Evangelical Church nor even maintain internal unity. And yet, Bergen argues, they were anything but marginal, since the state assured their control of most regional churches and theological faculties. Robert P. Ericksen explores the careers of three influential Protestant theologians who legitimized Nazism to the faithful. Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Gerhard Kittel may have differed among themselves about the place of the Old Testament in Christian thought, but all worked tirelessly to reconcile the churches with the Nazi state on the basis of an anti-Jewish theology. That was also the goal of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, founded at Eisenach in 1939 by the Thuringian Church and directed by Jena theologian Walter Grundmann. Susannah Heschel’s analysis of the Institute’s propaganda demonstrates a sustained attack on Jews and Judaism that far exceeded the demands of self defense and political opportunism. In fact, it may have been influenced by the need to establish the uniqueness of Jesus on a racial basis at a time when some theologians were beginning to acknowledge that his teachings were anything but unique. As for the Confessing Church, that segment of German Protestantism that opposed extreme racism, Shelly Baranowski maintains that it was, at best, ambivalent about the Jews. Traditional antisemitism combined with cultural pessimism to soften its responses to state policies and mute any open condemnation of racial persecution. Baranowski implies that Hitler’s desire for a harmonious Germany might have caused him to back off in the face of opposition from the churches, but there are reasons to doubt that this would have been true in the case of the deportations of the German Jews. In what many readers will find the most controversial essay in the anthology, Kenneth C. Barnes extends elements of this condemnation of the Confessing Church to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Although Barnes acknowledges Bonhoeffer’s eventual break with the cautious policies of the Church, he judges his words and actions “small, tentative, restrained, and ambivalent” (p. 128). No examination of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany can ignore relations with the Vatican, and Günter Lewy reasserts his well-known indictment of Pius XII for indifference and passivity during the Holocaust. Lewy argues that the Pope’s attitude both reflected and reinforced the Church’s traditional hostility toward the Jews, and that [End Page 148] in Germany ordinary Catholics, accustomed to that hostility, would not have understood a defense of the Jews by their spiritual leaders even if one had been forthcoming, partic ularly once the war began. An appreciation of the power of nationalism among German Catholics likewise informs Michael B. Lukens’ exploration of churchmen who sought a positive accommodation with the Nazi regime because they shared elements of its ideology and wanted to avoid internal divisions and apostasy. His exemplar, the Church historian Joseph Lortz, was...

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XClI, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 306-311 Christian Wiese. Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutschland: Ein Schrei ins Leere? Preface by Susannah Heschel. New York: Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1999. Pp. xxv + 507. Wolfgang E. Heinrichs. Das Judenbild im Protestantismus des Deutschen Kaiserreichs: Ein Beitrag zur Mentalitätsgeschichte des deutschen Bürger-tums in der Krise der Moderne. Köln: Rhineland-Verlag, 2000. Pp. xiii +851. Despite the works of Leonore Siegel-Wenschkewitz, Christhard Hoffman, Walter Homolka, Karl Hoheisel, and Ulrich Kusche, it could be claimed that scholarship on Protestantism and its relationship to Judaism in the period of the Kaiserreich has lagged. To be sure, studies on Stoecker and the origins of the German Christians have certainly given us a better picture of antisemitic individuals and movements on the periphery. The pointed observations of George Foot Moore regarding unfair presentations of pharisaic Judaism have been expanded and sharpened by E. P. Sanders, Charlotte Klein, and others. Nevertheless, in comparison with the enormous attention given to the German Church's role in the Holocaust, the historical debate over the Kaissereich as a preparatory stage for Nazism, and interest in Jewish-Christian relations, there has been no fundamental advance over the picture offered by Uriel Tal's Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich 1870-1914, written a quartercentury ago—until now. The works reviewed here, along with Susannah Heschel's Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (1998), offer a picture of Protestant-Jewish relations at once more hostile and more imbricated than Tal's. Christian Wiese's work can rightly claim to be the first analysis of German Lutheran Protestantism's contest and collaboration with the world of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Wilhelmine Germany. Wolfgang Heinrichs, a minister in the Freie evangelischer Bund, has compiled an erudite, encyclopedic catalogue of the views held by German Protestants about Jews and Judaism. The subtitle of Heinrich's book accurately describes the scholarly focus. Drawing on a distinction borrowed from Volker Seilin, Heinrichs sets out to illuminate a fluid mentalité, not an already arrived at and ready to be propagated ideology. Central to Heinrichs' conclusion is the assertion that Jews played a significant role in the German Protestant crisis of modernity. This interpretation of the ebb and flow of antisemitism in the Imperial period as a function of a series of crises is not new—it can be found in the works of Werner Jochman, Hans Rosenberg , Reinhard Rürup, and others. But Heinrichs, to my knowledge, is the first to apply this thesis to the field of religion. Heinrichs combines this GERMAN PROTESTANT VIEWS OF JUDAISM—LEVENSON 307 sensitivity to the malleable nature of the Judenbilder (on this point, his work could be compared to that of Bryan Cheyette in English Jewry), with a pronounced and acknowledged debt to Fritz Stern and other scholars who have focused on the cultural pessimists and their hostility to modernity. The longest section of the book is devoted to the organs of the Church and theological faculties. I found the discussion of the important journal Freunde der Christlichen Welt (CW) particularly helpful. This important liberal journal became the sounding board of the framers of Kulturprotestantismus , a view that evangelical Christianity ought to pervade and inform all facets of national life, yet stay clear of the clericalism and governmental compulsion that liberal Protestants associated with Catholics and their more conservative Protestant opponents. I found Heinrichs' discussions of Martin Rade, Otto Baumgarten, and Friedrich Naumann particularly illuminating . All three opposed antisemitism. Rade, the editor of CW, criticized the Russian Church and all Christianity for its anti-Jewish violence; Baumgarten was a very active member in the Abwehrverein-, Naumann opened his "Christlich-sozialen Bewegung" to Jews, earning the opprobrium of the Christian right. Yet Rade spoke of Jews as the bearers of "negative influences," and attacked antisémites principally because it was the response of "natürlichen Menschen" not "Christians." Baumgarten agreed with Wagner's view that Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's creative oeuvre was compromised by his ultimately "Jewish" qualities (p. 458). Naumann called on the more cultivated members of the Jewish community ". . . Beweis...

German church life in Russia has always been characterised by its extreme diaspora situation both denominationally and ethnically. Outside the Lutheran Baltic provinces Estonia, Livonia and Courland I .--: there was no real structure to German churches in Russia, and there was always an element 'of uncertainty inherent in church life. The only significant exception to this. was the Mennonites ----' but even within the German community they formed an isolated ethnic and religious group. Attempts to bring about organisational unity among the churches in the colonists' villages were always suggested to the churches froni outside, i.e. by the state. Before the reign of Catherine 11 (1762-96), attempts to settle the fettileVolga steppe had failed. In 1762 and 1763 Catherine published manifestos in Europe inviting people to settle in Russia. Free land (30~80 hectares }:ler family), deferred taxation, interest-free loans for purchases; and self-administration were included in the offer. Religious liberty was also guaranteed 2, and this was an important factor in .all the phases of immigration. There is no doubt that the first settlers along the Volga had the most 'Idifficult start in Russia. Many came from Hessen and the Rhineland, areas devastated, in Frederick II's Seven-Year War (1756-63). Since Catherine had specifically invited all professions to settle in Russia, only some sixty per cent of the immigrants were farmers or farm labourers; about forty per cent were craftsmen or belonged to other stations including a considerable percentage of unfortunates (discharged soldiers and officers, impoverished gentry, escaped , convicts), and others (adventurers, artists, ·musicians, hairdressers). 3 Once in Russia, however, they were all compelled to lead a rural

International Review of MissionVolume 89, Issue 354 p. 467-483 FROM REVERSE MISSION TO COMMON MISSION… WE HOPE IMMIGRANT PROTESTANT CHURCHES AND THE “PROGRAMME FOR COOPERATION BETWEEN GERMAN AND IMMIGRANT CONGREGATIONS” OF THE UNITED EVANGELICAL MISSION Claudia Währisch-Oblau, Claudia Währisch-OblauSearch for more papers by this author Claudia Währisch-Oblau, Claudia Währisch-OblauSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.2000.tb00234.xCitations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume89, Issue354July 2000Pages 467-483 RelatedInformation

The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, by Susannah Heschel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 339 pp. $29.95. A malevolent virus, which tragically afflicts Christianity, somehow impels Christians to defame Jews and Judaism. This evil is termed anti-Judaism when its focus is stricdy religious, and it is callea antisemirism when its conscious or unconscious motivation is racism. While the two strands may be distinct in theory, they were surely intertwined in Hitler's Germany. This entangling of anti-Judaism and antisemirism during the Third Reich becomes clear in The Aryan Jesus by Susannah Heschel, the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. The Aryan Jesus is an analysis of the Third Reich's Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. Inaugurated on May 6, 1939, the Institute, which was located in Eisenach, Thuringia (eastern Germany), received support from seven regional associations of Protestant churches with the approval of the Reich's Ministry of Education. (These same seven ecclesiastical associations banned baptized Jews from their churches in 1941.) By 1942, the Institute claimed 600,000 members throughout greater Germany. Dedicated to the goal of eliminating Judaism from Christian belief, the Institute's scholars and pastors presented Jesus as a Gentile and St. Paul as a Jew who misrepresented Jesus and his message. Further, the Institute published both a New Testament and a hymnal from which they eliminated Jewish concepts and influences, and they also brought it about that some Protestant churches removed the Old Testament from their worship. In all of this, the instructors and church officials affiliated with the Institute saw themselves realizing Martin Luther's rejection of Jews and Judaism. It was because of this vision that they inaugurated the Institute during a ceremony at the Wartburg Casde, into which Martin Luther had moved on May 4, 1521 in order to translate the New Testament into German. The lives and ideas of the numerous biblical scholars and theologians who participated in the Institute come to light in The Aryan Jesus. Among them is Walter Grundmann (1906-74), the Institute's academic director during its six years of existence. Born into a Lutheran family in Chemnitz (eastern Germany), Grundmann grew up during the First World War and its tumultuous aftermath in Germany. Along with many religiously and politically conservative Germans, he held that the French Revolution had disrupted God's intended order for society, the state, and the church. Hence, he rejected liberalism and the Weimar Republic, on the one hand, and communism and the Soviet Union, on the other. Searching for a way to overcome the international conspiracy by Jews against a Christian society, he became a member of the Nazi Party on December 1, 1930, thereby emulating his dissertation director, Gerhard Kittel. Grundmann was awarded his doctorate at the University of Tubingen in 1931, served in 1932 as a vicar in the Church of Saxony, and became an assistant to the bishop of the Church of Saxony in 1933. In this role, he founded the pro-Nazi journal Christenkreuz und Hakenkreuz (Cross and Swastika). Moreover, he wrote numerous publications on the Bible and the early church that led in 1936 to his appointment as professor of New Testament at the University of Jena. …

German Churches and the Holocaust: Betrayal ed. by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel

This is not Susannah Heschel's first foray into the history of the outrageous synthesis of Protestant Christianity and National Socialism—she has written brilliant articles and edited books on the Nazification of German theologians, the attempt to dejudaize the New Testament, catechisms, hymnals, liturgical books, and church life in general and the preposterous quest for a Jesus acceptable to Aryanizing trends in contemporary theological thought—but, for the depth of its research, the scope of its ambition, and the clarity and vigor of the author's prose, The Aryan Jesus certainly is her chef d'oeuvre to date. On the cover of this book is a photograph that graphically illustrates the perverse success of this synthesis, as well as the theme of the book. The photograph, taken in 1935, is of the Altar of the Antoniterkirche in Cologne. Surmounted by a crucifix, the altar is profanely draped with an altar cloth with the Nazi swastika emblazoned on it and surrounded by wreaths lovingly bedecked with banners decorated with the Nazi Hakenkreuz. One can hardly imagine a more scandalous symbol of the capitulation of the now openly anti-Semitic churches to Nazi ideology, nor of the pathetic desire of pastors, theologians, and parishioners to be cherished by Hitler—an unrequited love, in the end—and integrated into the Führer's sickening “new world order.”

Reviewed by: Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation Robert Kolb Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation. By James M. Estes. Rev. ed. [Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Essays and Studies, 12.] (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2007. Pp. 243. $21.50. ISBN 978-0-772-72034-4.) Martin Luther’s call for reform built a team that introduced the Reformation in the Wittenberg way to parishes and territorial churches in various parts of central and northern Europe. Perhaps the most influential member of that team who was never a student in Wittenberg and never resident there was Johannes Brenz, a Swabian, who found Luther’s presentation captivating at the provincial meeting of his Augustinian Eremites in Heidelberg in 1518, where he presented his “theologia crucis.” He became a reformer in the imperial city Schwäbisch Hall, was driven into hiding by imperial troops occupying that area after the Smalcald War, and then assumed formal leadership of the church in the duchy of Württemberg when the effort of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to eradicate the Lutherans weakened in 1553. As an exegete, Brenz shaped the biblical interpretation and preaching of his own time and subsequent generations across a broader Protestant spectrum. He also exercised considerable influence in questions of the organization of the evangelical territorial churches, both in theoretical planning and active participation in the reformations of several German principalities. This is the subject of Estes’s study. Originally published in 1982, the book appears in revised form, with an updated bibliography and insights from further study of Estes and other scholars in the intervening quarter-century. The original work pioneered English-language research into Brenz’s life and work and was among the earliest modern examinations of his impact in any language. Estes carefully sets Brenz’s thinking of ecclesiastical polity in the setting of late- medieval developments of princely power over local church affairs. The course of German church governance had not been different in the late Middle Ages from its parallels in France, England, or the Iberian states, although no Pragmatic Sanction distanced the German churches quite as far from Rome as had the French. These medieval developments laid a firm basis for Brenz’s designs for church governance, first in Hall and then in Württemberg; Estes traces the process of this development of plans for the [End Page 386] administration of church life with perceptive insights into the influences on Brenz, also from fellow reformers, and his impact. He did not always get his way with the governments for which he worked, especially in the enforcement of good morals. Particularly significant was Brenz’s relatively “liberal” stance on questions of toleration of Anabaptists; his position won the praise of Sebastian Castellio. Brenz also shared Luther’s sharp rejection of armed resistance to higher political authority, the emperor, by lesser magistrates and held to his position more stubbornly and longer than Luther. Because his own duke, Christoph, was dependent on Habsburg power in the period of the Interims and maintained a neutral position after the Smalcald War between the brothers Emperor Charles and King Ferdinand, on the one side, and the evangelical princes around Elector Moritz of Saxony, Brenz was not pressured into abandoning his stance that reflected his deep respect for the empire and for political authority. This volume was initially a significant and helpful contribution to understanding an important element in the dynamics of reform in sixteenth-century Germany. Readers experience the master’s hand in reading the revision. Its elucidation and analysis of Brenz’s construction and execution of his understanding of ecclesiastical polity make this book a valuable exposition of an important aspect of the Lutheran Reformation. Robert Kolb Concordia Seminary, St. Louis Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

Reviewed by: Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936–1939 John S. Conway Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936–1939. Edited and translated by Richard Bonney. [Studies in the History of Religious and Political Pluralism, Vol. 4.] (Bern: Peter Lang. 2009. Pp. x, 578. $86.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-039-11904-2.) Some of the most incisive and forceful descriptions and analyses of the Nazi campaign against the German churches and indeed against Christianity were contained in 135 Kulturkampf Newsletters written between January 1936 and the end of August 1939, which appeared at almost weekly intervals. Published first in Paris, they also appeared in a German edition, a British edition in 1937, and a U.S. edition in 1939. They have now been republished in an almost complete edition translated by Richard Bonney. As a contemporary source, these newsletters were extremely well informed and provided a valuable chronology of the Nazi persecution of the churches. They served as one of the first decided commentaries outlining the essential opposition and incompatibility between the Nazi Weltanschauung and Christian faith. This repeated theme is supplemented by detailed documentation of the Nazis’ overt harassment of dissident priests and pastors, the suppression of the churches’ publications, and the closure of schools and organizations. In addition, extracts are given from the speeches and writings of prominent Nazis, outlining their deliberate hostility, which were all seen as part of a wider campaign not merely to control but eventually to eradicate Christianity from Germany. Fittingly, the final issue condemned the Nazi ideology, with its “divinization” of Hitler and its appeal to racial consciousness as the basis for a new state religion. These newsletters also provide evidence of the attempts made by the churches to combat this ideological campaign. The sermons of Bishop Clement von Galen of Münster were quoted with approval, as was the Papal Encyclical of March 1937. Increasingly attention was paid in 1937 and 1938 to the campaign against the Protestant churches and to the valiant responses of the Confessing Church. In April 1938 a whole issue was devoted to the show trial of Pastor Martin Niemöller. His sentencing to a concentration camp, despite his legal acquittal, was seen as another example of Nazi plans for repression of all church opposition. Further, another recurrent theme of these newsletters is the folly of those gullible churchmen who believed they could be good Catholics or Protestants and good Nazis at the same time. Here, these illusions were resolutely [End Page 388] attacked. In April 1938, for example, the sad case of Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna and his craven submission to Hitler after the Anschluss was rightly castigated as an unforgivable betrayal of true Catholic interests, which foolishly ignored what had happened in Germany over the previous few years. There are, however, problems with Bonney’s edition. Curiously, he does not provide answers in his introduction to such important questions as the identity of the author or authors, the sources and provenance of the detailed and often local information provided, the intended audience, the size of the imprint, or the origins of the funding needed for this multilingual enterprise. Nor does he try to assess the impact these newsletters had at the time or explain why they ended so abruptly. He makes no attempt to place them in the wider context of exile German resistance efforts or literature. Surprisingly enough, no one came forward during the war or afterward to claim responsibility for these newsletters. Thus there is still an unresolved mystery. A fuller attempt to find answers can be found in Heinz Hürten’s edition of the German version, which appeared in 1988, but even Hürten admits puzzlement as to the authorship question. Nevertheless, the republication in English of these intrepid letters and commentaries adds to our picture of the German church struggle and stands as a warning against connivance with anti-Christian ideologies, which still needs to be heard. John S. Conway University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Emeritus) Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University of America Press

The overwhelming majority of German church people had enthusiastically welcomed the Nazi rise to power, seeing in Adolf Hitler the protector of Germany's national interests and their savior against Bolshevism. But many more years were to elapse before church people began to realize that what was required was much farther-reaching than merely an acknowledgment of the deficiencies of their humanitarian feelings. In the years immediately after 1945, despite the accumulating evidence of the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people, there was virtually no reflection by Christian theologians on the contribution of Christian negative stereotypes about Judaism, which had so much assisted, or at least failed to prevent, the Nazi agitation and propaganda. In the nearly forty years since the overthrow of Nazism, possibly the most significant development in the Christian churches has been the recognition that the events of the Holocaust, and in Israel since 1945, are of concern not just to the Jewish people but to Christians as well.

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in early 1933 precipitated an ecclesial and theological crisis in the life of the German churches. Karl Barth responded to the crisis in his treatise Theological Existence Today, calling the German church to steadfast faithfulness in the face of increasing pressure to compromise the central commitments of its faith. This essay provides an exposition of Barth’s treatise, exploring his understanding of theological existence, and evaluating his rather infamous assertion that he would “carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as if nothing had happened”. It finds that Barth called his peers to ‘responsible’ theology, the practice of which required a particular ethos and specific methodological commitments. Such responsibility was critical if the church was to retain both its integrity as the people of God, and its ministry, during this crisis.

Susannah Heschel has now written two books about Jesus, one on the “Aryan Jesus” and one on the “Jewish Jesus.” The recent one, published in 2008, focuses on the German Protestant Church and Protestant theologians during the Nazi period. Heschel describes their efforts, consistent with Nazi ideology, to “dejudaize” Christianity. The former book, published in 1998, focuses on Abraham Geiger, a German Jewish theologian of the nineteenth century.1 Heschel describes his challenge to the dominant Christian viewpoint of his day, his effort to view Christianity through a Jewish lens. Each book makes an important contribution on its own. Taken together, they make an especially important set of claims. Heschel’s work is consistent with the concerns of Geiger, as she probes the boundaries of Christianity and Judaism. It is also consistent with the work of her father, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who studied and taught in the Jewish and Christian milieu of Berlin in the 1930s and finished his career in the Jewish and Christian milieu of New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary in the 1960s and early 1970s. Like them, she studies the nexus between Judaism and Christianity. Her work also points to another nexus, that between science and prejudice.

Conceptualizing Christianity and Christian Nazis after the Nuremberg Trials Michael Lackey (bio) In the 2008 study The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel does a first-rate analysis of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life, the Nazi-era think tank of the German Christian movement, which had a cozy relationship with the theology faculty at the University of Jena. Striking is the degree to which the institute’s Christian theology aligned with the Nazis’ political objectives, as Heschel so skillfully demonstrates. Through brief biographical sketches of institute leaders and members, careful analyses of the institute’s official program and conference proceedings, and insightful discussions of key publications and doctoral dissertations, Heschel gives readers a comprehensive and nuanced sense of the institute and its mission. And her conclusions are staggering. Put succinctly, the institute members were doing in the realm of the religious what the Nazis were doing in the realm of the political, which took the form of linking “the theological anti-Judaism that had long pervaded German Protestantism with the racist antisemitism promoted by the Nazis” (166). Despite the superior quality of Heschel’s research, striking is her failure to cite point 24 of the Nazi Party Program, which reads: “The party as such represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without tying itself to a particular confession. It fights the spirit of Jewish materialism within us and without us” (qtd. in Steigmann-Gall, 14).1 Notice how the Nazis define their Christian agenda in opposition to Jewish materialism. The implication is this: the Nazis’ version of Christianity can only be realized insofar as it purges itself internally and externally of all that is Jewish (“Sie [the Party] bekämpft den jüdisch-materialistischen Geist in und außer uns”), a formulation that is similar [End Page 101] to the institute’s official mission statement, which is contained in the Godesberg Declaration. As Heschel claims, the centerpiece of the declaration is articulated through a question and answer: “‘Is Christianity derived from Judaism and is it its continuation and completion, or does Christianity stand in opposition to Judaism? We answer this question: Christianity is the unbridgeable religious opposition to Judaism’” (81). So that the institute’s theology reinforces the Nazis’ political agenda, the framers of the document define their objectives in a way that unmistakably echoes point 24: “‘The National Socialist worldview fights with all relentlessness against the political and spiritual influence of the Jewish race on our völkisch life’” (86). That these objectives in official programs are stunningly similar poses a significant challenge to one of the central claims of The Aryan Jesus, for according to Heschel, “Institute-sponsored research, by describing Jesus’s goal as the eradication of Judaism, effectively reframed Nazism as the very fulfillment of Christianity” (17). The implication is that the Nazis’ anti-Jewish agenda was not Christian in nature, which is why the institute’s Christian anti-Semitism is a reframing of Nazism. But given that the Nazi Party Program was penned in 1920 and that the Godesberg Declaration was written in 1939, it would make more sense to say that the institute was merely adopting the Nazis’ official version of Christianity rather than reframing Nazism as the fulfillment of Christianity. Indeed, many prominent Nazis argued that National Socialism was a decidedly Christian party well before the founding of the institute, as Richard Steigmann-Gall, Robert Michael, and I have demonstrated. How, then, are we to explain Heschel’s misstep? The answer, I contend, is certainly not shoddy scholarship. Her study of the institute is a model of intellectual precision and scholarly rigor. Rather, it has something to do with a conceptual framework regarding Christianity and the Nazis that has dominated since the Nuremberg Trials, specifically the trial of Julius Streicher, who likened himself at the trial to Martin Luther. In the following pages, I examine the conceptual framework that has led lawyers, judges, theologians, and scholars to dismiss the Nazis’ claims to be Christian as irrelevant or to overlook them altogether. To illustrate my point, I draw a clear line of connection between the approaches used at the Streicher Nuremberg Trial and in Heschel’s book...

��� In the 2008 study The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel does a Wrstrate analysis of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish InXuence on German Church Life, the Nazi-era think tank of the German Christian movement, which had a cozy relationship with the theology faculty at the University of Jena. Striking is the degree to which the institute’s Christian theology aligned with the Nazis’ political objectives, as Heschel so skillfully demonstrates. Through brief biographical sketches of institute leaders and members, careful analyses of the institute’s ofWcial program and conference proceedings, and insightful discussions of key publications and doctoral dissertations, Heschel gives readers a comprehensive and nuanced sense of the institute and its mission. And her conclusions are staggering. Put succinctly, the institute members were doing in the realm of the religious what the Nazis were doing in the realm of the political, which took the form of linking “the theological anti-Judaism that had long pervaded German Protestantism with the racist antisemitism promoted by the Nazis” (166). Despite the superior quality of Heschel’s research, striking is her failure to cite point 24 of the Nazi Party Program, which reads: “The party as such represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without tying itself to a particular confession. It Wghts the spirit of Jewish materialism within us and without us” (qtd. in Steigmann-Gall, 14). 1 Notice how the Nazis deWne their Christian agenda in opposition to Jewish materialism. The implication is this: the Nazis’ version of Christianity can only be realized insofar as it purges itself internally and externally of all that is Jewish (“Sie [the Party] bekampft den judischmaterialistischen Geist in und auser uns”), a formulation that is similar