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8 - The Holy Reich

Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2013

Richard Steigmann-Gall
Affiliation:
Kent State University, Ohio
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Summary

… whoever kills you will think he is offering a service to God.

John 16: 2

Looking to the Holocaust as the ultimate expression of Nazi practice, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman suggests that Nazism should not be viewed as the failure of civilization, but rather its product: “We suspect (even if we refuse to admit it) that the Holocaust could merely have uncovered another face of the same modern society whose other, more familiar, face we so admire. And that the two faces are perfectly comfortably attached to the same body. What we perhaps fear most, is that each of the two faces can no more exist without the other than can the two sides of a coin.” Bauman continues by adding that “often we stop just at the threshold of the awesome truth … that every ingredient of the Holocaust – all those things that rendered it possible – was normal.” This study has attempted to interrogate the role of Christian belief as one ingredient of that normalcy. Christianity, in the final analysis, did not constitute a barrier to Nazism. Quite the opposite: For many of the subjects of this study, the battles waged against Germany's enemies constituted a war in the name of Christianity. The dualism Bauman alludes to was itself predicated on a dualistic understanding of human behavior hegemonic in Western, Christian civilizations.

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Chapter
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The Holy Reich
Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945
, pp. 261 - 267
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • The Holy Reich
  • Richard Steigmann-Gall, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Holy Reich
  • Online publication: 05 June 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818103.010
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  • The Holy Reich
  • Richard Steigmann-Gall, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Holy Reich
  • Online publication: 05 June 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818103.010
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Holy Reich
  • Richard Steigmann-Gall, Kent State University, Ohio
  • Book: The Holy Reich
  • Online publication: 05 June 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818103.010
Available formats
×