Nazism and Religion: The Problem of “Positive Christianity”

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 . By contrast to recent revisionist accounts, the paper argues that “positive Christianity” had such a wide variety of interpretations that it cannot be considered as a cohesive construct.