Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,

Vol. 8, No. 2, 205212, June 2007

Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe: An Introduction

MATTHEW FELDMAN* and MARIUS TURDA**

*University of Northampton **Oxford Brookes University
MatthewFeldman
1469-0764
Original
Taylor
8202007
matthew.feldman@northampton.ac.uk
000002007
& Article
Totalitarian
10.1080/14690760701321098
FTMP_A_232005.sgm
andFrancis
(print)/1743-9647
FrancisLtd and Political
Movements (online)Religions

In 1934 Frederick L. Schuman, financed by an American Academy of Political and

Social Sciences fellowship, set about conducting an ambitious field work project
in Germany: a study of the recent National Socialist revolution. His report
concluded, strikingly: For the present, the new German cult, with its parapherna-
lia of symbols, rituals, hymns, sacred writings, saints, and martyrs brings genuine
solace to the troubled middle-class soul.1 This insight, which would undoubtedly
have enjoyed the approval of the eminent German protestant theologian and Nazi
Party member, Emanuel Hirsch, was nevertheless intended as a scholarly expla-
nation of Nazisms transformation into an ersatz, or political, religion one
aiming to link this solace to the wider social and existential crises experienced by
so many Germans in the early 1930s.
The thesis that Nazism (in addition to other movements) synthesised political
extremism with religious millenarianism was already explored at length by the
German political philosopher Eric Voegelins near-contemporaneous Die Politis-
chen Religionen. In some seven decades since Voegelins classic, an enormous body
of scholarly literature has grown up around the nature of sacralised forms of secu-
lar politics, not just in respect of Nazism,2 but also in terms of the general utility
and relevance of the concept political religion,3 as well as this phrases relevance
to other movements and ideologies. Moreover, the particular diffusion of the
concept political religion during the last 10 or so years not least in the pages of
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, but also in the more recent writings of
scholars such as Hans Maier, Michael Burleigh and Claus-Ekkehard Brsch has
dramatically increased our understanding of twentieth-century totalitarian move-
ments. This has been a major achievement, particularly regarding how, and under
what conditions, secular political ideologies and their attendant political move-
ments can assume sacral that is, religious and/or faith-based qualities. Espe-
cially in the last decade, studies from this perspective have been extended to
Maoist China, post-Cold War North Korea and Stalinist Russia in terms of Marx-
ism, in addition to Nazism, Italian Fascism and various abortive fascist movements
in interwar Europe. However, as Emilio Gentiles recent Politics as Religion reminds
us, like Schuman and Voegelin, our contemporary understanding of the sacralisa-
tion of politics is due to a host of contemporaneous observers, like the little-known
Italian philosopher, Adriano Tilgher:

The period after the [First World] War witnessed one of the most startling
outbreaks of pure numinousness ever recalled in the history of the world.
We witness the birth of new deities [numines] with our own eyes. You
would need to be blind and deaf to all current realities if you were unable
ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/07/020205-08 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14690760701321098
206 M. Feldman and M. Turda

to realize that for very many of our contemporaries State, Fatherland,

Nation, Race and Class are objects not just of enthusiastic veneration but
also of mystical adoration [] The twentieth century promises to add a
few interesting chapters to the history of religious wars.4

Academic consideration of political religions, and particularly their relation-

ship with Christianity, has led some commentators to argue for a Christian basis
to fascist movements like German National Socialism. Foremost amongst this new
wave of critics to take religion seriously in terms of fascist ideology is Richard
Steigmann-Galls 1999 The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 19191945.
Taking the Nazis twenty-fourth point in their February 1920 Party Programme as
a point of departure for investigating their alleged positive Christianity,
Steigmann-Gall, a contributor to the present volume, has helped to re-open
the debate about fascism and religion.5 In a recent special issue of the Journal of
Contemporary History dedicated to Steigmann-Galls monograph exemplifying
the revival of interest in the multi-faceted interactions between politics and religion
in the modern world both Ernst Piper and Doris Bergen point out that the
Nazis need not have assumed a religious guise for their own flock to have been
practising Christians. For on the eve of the Second World War, writes Bergen:

The overwhelming majority of Germans remained baptized, tax-paying

members of the official Christian Churches throughout the 12 years of nazi
rule. In hindsight, it may seem impossible to reconcile the vicious hatreds
of nazism with Christianitys injunction to turn the other cheek or to
square the circle of nazi antisemitism with Christianitys obvious origins
in Judaism. But the vast majority of Germans over 95 per cent by last
count in 1939 evidently had no problem doing so. The fact alone speaks
to a coexistence of Christianity and National Socialism [and Germans]
voted with their feet and with their church-tax-paying pocked-books and
their participation in rituals such as baptism, to remain Christian.6

Even if, as is suggested by most contributors to JCHs special issue Nazism,

Christianity and Political Religion: A Debate, virtually all Nazi functionaries
were likely to agree with Martin Bormanns rejection of any presuppos]ition of] a
synthesis of National Socialism and Christianity, which he dismissed as an
impossibility, this was not the way it looked to much of the laity,7 for many
church-going Germans during the Third Reich, like their national counterparts
across interwar Europe, doubtless carried their party membership cards to local
Sunday services. However, if Steigmann-Galls thesis that Nazi leaders retained
certain residual Christian beliefs suggests that a larger exploration of the
Christian roots of European fascism, and especially Nazism, is called for, it also
raises the inverse question: to what extent did interwar Christians, especially
clerics, see national fascism movements as more than revolutionary parties with
secular goals, but as holy redeemers of the nation or race; or at the very least, as
Christian enough to do business with?
This returns us to Schumans commentary, which is of particular relevance
to the ensuing 15 studies published here. For not only did he note, like many
others at the time, the adoption of religious symbolism by an ostensibly secular
movement, Schuman also discerned a symbiosis taking place between religion and
politics as well. For some Nazis, and indeed some priests, fascism and Christianity
 Introduction 207

were neither antithetical nor even necessarily oppositional forms of spirituality. In

fact, the prospect of fusing the secular and the sacred exerted a profound appeal to
many clerics intent on solving the perceived crises of modernity. This sense was
redoubled by the imperative defence of Christianity against the godless rise of
communism, and the need to resolve the personal moral and existential dilemma
they faced as Christians when confronted with the growing hegemony of fascism.
As early as 1922, the Italian Catholic priest and leader of Partito Popolare Italiano,
Luigi Sturzo, used the term clerical fascist to describe those Italian clerics
actively involved with Fascism. Clerical fascism was thus, from its inception, a
term already situated at the interstices between fascism and Christianity.
Yet if the relationship between the various Christian confessions and right-
wing movements has long been recognised as a major factor in the history of
interwar Europe, it is striking how little has been done to test the conceptual feasi-
bility of Sturzos clerical fascism. In part, this is due to a predominant focus on
right-wing intellectual and political elites fascinated by religion and/or having a
religious education, instead of more closely investigating those religious leaders
and priests involved in radical political activism. Yet as these studies suggest, for
some, typically younger, priests and a wide swath of the churchgoing laity this
led to an active collaboration with political religions in the form of interwar
European fascism. More troublingly, it produced many instances of proactive
clerical collaboration with fascist movements, which in some cases meant clerics
not just conniving at, but participating in, fascist violence and even genocide (as
in wartime Croatia). In short, Christianity and interwar fascism were not incom-
mensurate worldviews in practice, at least in the minds of a surprising number of
nationalist priests across Europe.
Indeed, in terms of the stance that many adopted toward fascist political reli-
gions, it seems that a composite, or syncretic, Weltanschauung was adopted by some
church members laity and clergy alike in all the major Christian denominations,
sometimes in significant numbers. There is also evidence that in the case of some
interwar fascist movements some of their leading ideologues and most faithful
devotees displayed a reciprocal readiness to assert the compatibility of secular
nationalism with traditional religion. It is precisely the degree of cross-over, or
hybridisation, of these two ostensibly antagonistic faith systems one long-estab-
lished and monotheistic, the other secular and revolutionary that Clerical
Fascism in Interwar Europe sets out to examine. Together, these analyses exam-
ine the frequently complex, and often paradoxical, relationships that arose
between Christian confessions in Europe (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) and
13 national permutations of fascism (whether in the form of abortive movements
in the political system of an established regime or wartime Axis Satellite).
Most of the texts published here were originally presented at an international
conference of the same name, held in April 2006 at Oxford Brookes University;
several others were specially commissioned for this collection. A conceptual
framework within which to locate these case studies is first offered by Rogers
Griffins overview, The Holy Storm, which originally opened the conference
itself and which like all the essays incorporated into this volume has been
considerably expanded upon for publication. Following Griffins taxonomic and
contextual considerations, the 13 case-studies presented thereafter test this frame-
work, which is augmented by John Pollards concluding reflections, which
further assess both the conceptual difficulty and methodological pitfalls facing
any exploration of clerical fascism.
208 M. Feldman and M. Turda

In the attempt to alleviate this terms inherent epistemological weaknesses to

date, some conceptual points of reference were suggested to authors in the interest
of providing a common focus for the array of highly diverse national case studies
presented here. In particular, contributors were asked to consider the following
questions: To what does clerical fascism refer the clergy, laity or both? What is
the relationship between clerical fascism and concepts like generic fascism,
political religions and religious politics? How do historical processes like
modernisation and secularisation bear upon clerical fascism? What was the
impact of universal confessions like Catholicism on national permutations of
clerical fascism? and finally, how did antisemitism and racism influence the
development of clerical fascism?
Yet in approaching these broad areas of enquiry, contributors were not asked to
endorse the heuristic value of the term clerical fascism. Indeed, several do not,
either in terms of individual fascist priests or collective fascist movements. While
a number of authors find the concept relevant to their case studies, only a few are
willing to label a given church organisation clerical fascist. Yet what emerges
from some of the ensuing analyses is a deeply ambivalent attitude to fascism by
European clerics, who in many instances simply saw fascism as the least of all
evils. Only in extreme cases would clerics go so far as to believe, to quote the
Legionary journalist I. P. Prudendi, that God is a fascist!8
The considerable range of contributors responses to the issues raised by the
study of Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe is due in no small measure to the
fact that this is the first time the term has been given extended academic scrutiny,
and the first time that a deliberate attempt has been made to apply it to as wide a
geographical and confessional foundation as possible. To this end, texts include
confessions as diverse as British Anglican Protestantism and Roman Catholicism
in Italy to Croatian Catholicism and Serbian Orthodoxy in Yugoslavia. Similarly,
countries surveyed range from Sweden in northern Europe to Greece in the south,
and from Ukraine in the east to Ireland in the west. In addition to testing the
applicability of the concept clerical fascism to states in interwar Europe, this
collection also endeavours to illuminate wider questions relating to the study of
fascism: the degree of compatibility between clerical fascism and fascism; the
questionable relevance of political religion in this contexts; and the theoretically
secular nature of fascist ideology itself.
In order to best carry out this agenda, the editors felt that a confessional grouping
would provide for the most effective analysis of clerical fascism, thus avoiding
contested geographical divisions for the countries in question, as well as similar
disputes over what constitutes a empowered, as opposed to an abortive fascist
movement (as exemplified by wartime Hungary). As a result, the first section
surveys the relationship of Orthodox churches to fascism, including Greece,
western Ukraine, Romania and Serbia. This is followed by three Protestant coun-
tries Sweden, Germany and Britain with the latter two, more markedly multi-
confessional, countries presenting less straightforward instances of the compara-
tively newer Protestant denominations of Christianity. The third section focuses
on the oldest and most diffused confession across Europe, Catholicism, containing
texts on Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Ireland. Although
another volume could be devoted to the dozen or so European countries not
included here, the present collection of essays can claim to have covered a signifi-
cant sample of the fascistclerical relationships that arose in the interwar period,
choosing to include discussions of cases rarely encountered in Anglophone history
 Introduction 209

(Greece, Hungary, the western Ukraine), rather than episodes already familiar in
Anglophone secondary literature (Spain, Slovakia and France).
The first glimpse of clerical fascism in interwar Europe is given in the section
Orthodox/Greek-Orthodox Christianity and Fascism, which opens with Aristo-
tle Kallis discussion of Greek interwar politics in Fascism and Religion: The
Metaxas Regime in Greece and the Third Hellenic Civilisation. As with similar
Orthodox Christian countries such as Serbia and Romania, the processes of politi-
cal liberalisation and social modernisation in Greece created propitious condi-
tions for fascist ideas to emerge. However, although religion was a central facet of
Ioannis Metaxas regenerative project for the nation, his notion of religion heavily
depended on restoring and continuing the established churchs role in Greek soci-
ety, rather than attempting to introduce religious politics into the heart of his
regime. As Kallis clearly demonstrates, Metaxas himself attempted to base his
regime on the traditional authority of established entities (the nation, religion
and the church), a novel layer of personal charismatisation (the leader cult) and
an emerging ethos of totalitarianism.
In terms of Orthodoxy in central and southeast Europe, one notices that
Croatias experience of fascism was not the only entanglement between radical
politics and Christianity, not even within the federal state of Yugoslavia, for Serbia
also exhibited numerous features characteristic of ultra-nationalism and fascism,
as Maria Falina suggests in Between Clerical Fascism and Political Orthodoxy:
Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Interwar Serbia. Assessing the pivotal
role played by nationalism in the politicisation of religion, Falina considers polit-
ical Orthodoxism a more appropriate term for describing the relationship
between Orthodoxy and fascism than clerical fascism. In a similarly sceptical
vein, Valentin S a ndulescus Sacralised Politics in Action: the February 1937
ab
e[v
re]

Burial of the Romanian Iron Guard leaders Ion Mo ta and Vasile Marin inspects
cet]d
[li

the Orthodox rituals used by the Legionary movement in Romania, as illustrated

by the funeral held for two high-ranking functionaries. Even if one were to agree
that this illustrated a form of sacralised politics, advocating the creation of a new
man and a new country one fully embraced by Romanian Legionaries the fact
that they attempted to transcend the canonical boundaries of the Orthodox
Church leads S a ndulescu to refrain from defining them as clerical fascists.9
ab
e[v
re]

In contrast, it was the Greek Orthodox Church that dominated much of the evolv-
ing nationalism in interwar western Ukraine, argues Anton Shekhovtsov. By Cross
and Sword: Clerical Fascism in Interwar Western Ukraine finds that the fascist
style of certain political parties, and the fascistisation of the political milieu,
ignited the transformation of nationalist clericalism into clerical fascism. Echoing
Schumans remark about the troubled soul of the nation, Shekhovtsov insists that
it was the Christian churches inability to answer the general European crisis expe-
rienced by millions during the interwar period that gave rise to radical forms of
Christianity. What emerges from his analysis is the sense that the perceived crisis
of the modern world that constituted a main factor not only in the successes of
Italian Fascism and German Nazism, but also in the problematic cases of friendship
and even fusion between fascism and particular understandings of Christianity.
This fusion of fascism with clerical ideology is also the main focus of the three
studies comprising the section Protestant Christianity and Fascism, which
commences with Tom Linehans On The Side of Christ: Fascist Clerics in 1930s
Britain. It appears that, even though BUF clerics (both Catholic and Protestant)
did not tend to see fascism as a substitute for their own Christian beliefs, many of
210 M. Feldman and M. Turda

them hoped to reconcile the Christian faith with fascist praxis (an example of
collusion rather than synthesis, to adopt the terminology proposed by Roger
Griffin). In similar vein, the Swedish case study next explored by Lena Berggren,
entitled Completing the Lutheran Reformation: Ultra-nationalism, Christianity
and the Possibility of Clerical Fascism in Interwar Sweden, investigates the rela-
tionship between Protestant Christianity (in this case evangelical Lutheranism)
and nationalism. Berggren focuses upon forms of fascism that materialised around
radical theologians within Lutheran churches that generally favoured the ascen-
dancy of Nazism in Germany. Similar to Germany, many Swedish fascists
perceived the evangelical Nordic Faith to be not only profoundly Christian, but
the pure, true and original form of Christianity, one revealing the natural teach-
ings of God.
Furthermore, viewing Christianity and fascism as sharing common assump-
tions about the regeneration of society and the nation is an approach able to
provide fruitful insights into central Europe as well. In the case of Nazi Germany,
as Richard Steigmann-Gall demonstrates, the argument for a link between the
Deutsche Christen and the Nazi attempts to re-shape the German Weltanschauung
has been misinterpreted by a number of scholars. In The Nazis Positive
Christianity: a Variety of Clerical Fascism?, he argues that the Nazis did take
an active interest in religious activities and church organisations, thus demon-
strating that a clerical fascist variety of Nazism may be a viable interpretative
tool, so long as the concept is provided the kind of terminological precision it has
so far lacked.
Likewise, the relationship between Catholicism and fascism has generated
much controversy, as is demonstrated by the seven texts forming the final section
in this volume, Catholic Christianity and Fascism. However, as Jorge Dagnino
clearly demonstrates in Catholic Modernities in Fascist Italy: The Intellectuals of
Azione Cattolica, discussion of clerical fascism should be repositioned: if one
views Fascism not simply as anti-modern, but as an alternative form of moder-
nity, then the relationship between religion and Fascism takes on a different
dimension: the new nationalist morality, family ethic and ultimately rejuvenated
nation advocated by Fascism was favourably received by many Catholic clerics.
That such a shared call for a better and healthier country was answered by many
Catholics is convincingly shown by the case of Belgium. According to Bruno De
Wevers Catholicism and Fascism in Belgium, the history of Lon Degrelle and
the Rexist movement suggests that much of the Catholic agenda was embraced by
Belgian fascists. It was, therefore, by reaching a compromise between the revolu-
tionary zeal of some members within the church, and fascisms ambition to
become a political religion, that a national form of clerical fascism ultimately
appeared in Belgium.
It was this compromise between the Roman Catholic Church and the state that
also provided the institutional framework for Antnio de Oliveira Salazars
Estado Novo. As Antnio Costa Pinto argues in Political Catholicism, Crisis of
Democracy, and Salazars New State in Portugal, the Catholic Church may have
opposed the fascistisation of the regime, while simultaneously attempting to
Catholicise it. This authoritarian Catholic social doctrine also resembled
the corporatist system tested by Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria. Dollfuss regime is
otherwise the only regime included here to have previously been described as
clerical fascist.10 However, as shown in Robert Pyrahs discussion of the theatre
and its relationship to the question of national identity in the 1930s, Enacting
 Introduction 211

Encyclicals? Cultural Politics and Clerical Fascism in Austria, 1933-8, Catholi-

cism and religious belief were not subordinated to ethnic rituals and myths in
Austria like they were in Germany or Italy. Conversely, the Austrian nation was
presented as coterminous with Catholicism, thus impregnating the Austrian
authoritarian regimes with a mission to safeguard the countrys Catholic heritage
and national identity.
A final question persists, nevertheless. Are clerical movements that developed
fascist tendencies to be considered clerical fascist? Are they much different, if at
all, from fascist movements that attracted Catholic support, as in the case of Italy,
Slovakia, Belgium or Spain? Such questions dominate Mark Biondichs discussion
of the notorious Croatian case in his Radical Catholicism and Fascism in Croatia,
19181945, Croatia being a country usually invoked as an extreme variant of
clerical fascism. Indeed, the relationship between Catholicism and fascism char-
acterised much of the domestic policies pursued by the independent state of
Croatia in the 1940s, but according to Biondich the two existed in a polarised
rather than amiable relationship.
Another insight into the role played by fascism in the context of interwar Chris-
tianity in Central Europe is given by Bla Bods analysis of the relationship
between the Catholic Church and the right-wing, antisemitic elements within the
Hungarian political elite following the establishment of the Hungarian republic in
1918. Do not Lead us into (Fascist) temptation: the Catholic Church in Interwar
Hungary not only demonstrates that militias during the White Terror incorpo-
rated religious messages, but also that they were divided along religious lines:
Catholic, Protestant and even Muslim. Furthermore, as in Croatia, the majority of
fascist groups, including the Arrow Cross, were favourably disposed towards the
Catholic Church. However, even though many Hungarian fascists had strong ties
to organised politics, they cannot be described, for Bod as clerical fascists.
Similar military and political conflicts existed in Ireland, where a sizeable
number of the fascist supporters had been active participants in the Irish revolu-
tion of 191622, and the subsequent Civil War of 192223 which together brought
into being an independent nation, the Irish Free State. As Mike Cronin shows
inCatholicising Fascism, Fascistising Catholicism? The Blueshirts and the
Jesuits in 1930s Ireland, it was by fostering a form of ultra-nationalism that
Irelands fascist movement, the Blueshirts, gained acceptance. Although many
Irish Catholics sympathised with the Blueshirts, neither the church hierarchy, nor
the various Catholic orders, publicly supported the fascist movement.
Ironically, the very scepticism accompanying many of the arguments for cleri-
cal fascism voiced in this volume demonstrates the rich possibilities of a more
specific theoretical and methodological employment of the term. Moreover, it is
symptomatic of the problems that arise when the concept of political religion is
haphazardly applied to cases that do not display the particular conjuncture of
religion with secularisation which Gentile and others consider so vital for its
emergence. In this regard, Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe presents some
significant challenges to those indiscriminately adopting Gentiles religions of
politics in the study of Christianitys multifaceted relationship with political
creeds of various shades. The texts here also highlight the idiosyncracies of partic-
ular national cases, thus sounding a cautionary tone behind further attempts to
generalise about clerical fascism in either the national or European dimension.
That said, contextualising clerical fascism within an interdisciplinary and plural-
istic framework, it is sincerely hoped that this volume will contribute to new
212 M. Feldman and M. Turda

vistas for academic research and international collaboration in the vexed, and
vexing, study of European Christianity and interwar politics.

Notes
1. Frederick L. Schuman, The Political Theory of German Fascism, The American Political Science
Review, 28/2 (1934), p.232.
2. For a useful survey of recent historiography on Nazism and (political) religion, see Neil Gregor,
Nazism A Political Religion? Rethinking the Voluntarist Turn, in Neil Gregor, ed., Nazism, War
and Genocide (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005).
3. See, for example, Hans Maier, ed., Totalitarianism and Political Religions: Concepts for the Comparison
of Dictatorships, Vol. I (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005).
4. Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). p.11.
5. See, for example, Milan Babiks Nazism as a Secular Religion, History and Theory, 45/3 (2006),
pp.37596.
6. Doris L. Bergen, Nazism and Christianity: Partners and Rivals? A Response to Richard Steig-
mann-Gall, The Holy Reich. Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 19191945, Journal of Contemporary
History, 42/1 (2007), p.29.
7. Quoted in Ernst Piper, Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, in ibid., p.51.
8. I. P. Prundeni, Dumnezeu e fascist, Porunca vremii (20 July 1937). See also Biserica Imbrescu
Ilies, Biserica si Miscarea legionara (Bucharest: Cartea Romneasc, 1940), the infamous book
]sced[li ]sced[li avbe]r[

written by a Legionary priest.

9. This contrasts with Roger Eatwells argument that only the Iron Guard deserves to be dubbed
clerical fascist; see his Reflections on Fascism and Religion, Totalitarian Movements and Political
Religions, 4/3 (2003), p.148.
10. Klaus-Jrg Siegfried, Klerikalfaschismus: Zur Entstehung und sozialen Funktion des Dollfuregimes in
sterreich Ein Beitrag zur Faschismusdiskussion (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1979).