Rating: 
Summary: Useful but not definitive book
Review: There have been many exaggerated interpretations of this book -- that it proves that the Nazis were not anti-Christian, that National Socialism was in some sense 'normal'. Part of the problem is that the publisher wanted the book to make a splash.
What the book is about is the confused and ambivalent attitude of the Nazis towards Christianity. Why should they not have been confused? Christianity was an obvious outgrowth of the Jewish people's experiences over a long period of time. The New Testament could be made to seem anti-Jewish and a de-judaized Christianity desirable -- Marcion tried this in the early Church -- but this is a position always hard to maintain for any long period of time. Christianity as it came to be established was both Jewish and anti-Jewish, and the Germans who became Nazis retained a good deal of the Christianity they had learned when young. Steigmann-Gall deserves credit for showing how much more involved in Christian conceptions and ideas the Nazis were than is usually thought.
But when all is said and done, the Nazi leadership reacted to Christianity as it came to evaluate its positive and negative effects on Nazi goals and programs. The Protestant Church had been very close to the Nazis before 1933 and largely remained so even up to 1945. The Catholic Church had been very hostile to the Nazis before 1933 but thanks to the Catholic fear of being considered un-German and un-patriotic the Catholics after 1933 became just as Nazified as the Protestants. And thanks to Pope Pius XII the Catholic Center Party, a foe of Hitler, was destroyed. Thus the Catholic Church's record seems even worse than that of the Protestants, having betrayed not only its Saviour but also its own original anti-Nazi stance. Protestants were natural Nazis, having been raised on Luther's hatred of Jews and Italians.
The best thing about this book, however, is that one can indeed see Christianity at its worst. Given what it has wrought over the centuries Christianity deserves to be seen at its worst.
Modern Germany vies with Scandinavia, France, and Britain as the most de-christianized part of modern Europe. Did the Nazi connection with Christianity have anything to do with this?
Rating: 
Summary: The Truth Shall Set You Free
Review: This work completely shocked me. I was expecting to read about Hitler the atheist, and instead got a completely different interpretation of Hitler and his henchmen. Steigman-Gall wants us to believe that the Nazis were inspired by Jesus' message as delivered by the New Testament -- and he has me completely convinced. He's got an awful lot of evidence to back his arguments, much of it from familiar sources like Mein Kampf, but also alot of new stuff. It is shocking. Not only were these men talking about being Christian, they're practicing Christians. I also ended up learning about Nazis I had hardly heard of before, but who were important leaders none the less. It's really unbelievable that we've never heard about all this before. At one level it shouldn't be surprising, since "The Popes against the Jews" and other books I've read lately about the churches already showed just where antisemitism came from. We already knew about such connections. But you never hear about the Nazis themselves. As Steigman-gall says, it's always assumed that the Nazis hated Christianity, even if there were many, many Christians who liked, and even loved, Nazism. He shows that in reality it cut both ways, that the Nazis liked Christianity, and even believed that their party itself was a kind of Christian party. I can't believe we're only hearing about this now!
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