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Introduction to the special issue of

Totalitarian Movements and Political

Religions: Political Religions as a

characteristic of the 20th

century.MARINA CATTARUZZAaProfessor of Contemporary History, University of Berne

Version of record first published: 25 Jan 2007

To cite this article:MARINA CATTARUZZA (2005): Introduction to the special issue of Totalitarian

Movements and Political Religions: Political Religions as a characteristic of the 20th

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 6, No. 1, 118, June 2005

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/1743-9647 Online/05/010001-18 2005 Taylor & Francis Group LtdDOI: 10.1080/14690760500102244

Introduction to the special issue of Totalitarian

Movements and Political Religions: Political Religions asa Characteristic of the 20thCentury.*

MARINA CATTARUZZA

Professor of Contemporary History, University of BerneTaylorandFrancisLtdFTMP110207.sgm10.1080/14690760500102244Totalitarian Movementsand PoliticalReligions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)OriginalArticle2005Taylor&FrancisGroupLtd61000000Summer2005MarinaCattaruzzaUniversityof BernMarina Cattaruzza,Universitt Bern,UnitoblerHistorisches InstitutLnggassstr49CH-3000, [email protected]

ABSTRACT This introduction delivers a short overview of the main issues relating toEmilio Gentiles approach to Political Religions. I will particularly focus on the follow-ing points: a) the relationship between secularisation, modernity and resacralisation b)the main phases in the historical development of concepts relating to political religions c)the use of political religions as an analytical tool for totalitarian regimes d) the longing

for eternity as a feature of political religions. Besides this, the introduction offers apresentational overview of the contents of the volume, and of the scholarly objectivesintended by individual contributors.

The worst cruelties and tyrannies in political history always result whenreligion and politics are thus unwholesomely compounded and absolutesignificance is claimed for the relative values of a particular socialgroup.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1935)

The present issue of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religionscollects the contri-butions of the symposium at the University of Berne held on the occasion of thepresentation of the 2003 Sigrist-Prize to Emilio Gentile for his scholarly achieve-ment in the field of Political Religions as a Characteristic of the 20 thCentury. Itseemed appropriate to combine the awarding ceremony with a symposium on the

topic of political religion as a category of interdisciplinary historical research.The aim was to use this opportunity to reconsider the epistemological potential ofthis category in the field of human sciences and its application to the principalphenomen a of totalitarianism in the 20thcentury.

The symposium was intended to be interdisciplinary; contributors belonged tohistorical, philosophical, sociological disciplines, to German Studies and to thepolitical sciences. However, we did not want to repeat once again the unproduc-tive discussion on the appropriateness (or not) of political religions as amethod of defining totalitarianisms and other phenomena of the contemporaryepoch.1Rather, we intended to compare and discuss results obtained in different

disciplines, using political religions as an epistemological instrument, andreflecting on the relationship between politics and religion in the 20thcentury.

*I thank Alison Sauer for translation of German quotations and revision of the text.

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2 M. Cattaruzza

The symposium was divided into three sections: in the first section, EmilioGentile himself delivered a broad historical analysis of the concepts of politicaland civil religion.2It was followed by a contribution from Roger Griffin, whichrepresented a veritable laudatio to the achievements of Emilio Gentile in thefield: in an autobiographical manner, Griffin explained why he himself

converted to the category and became an enthusiastic scholar of politicalreligion studies.The second section was devoted to the reciprocal relationship between religion,

politics and modernity: Hermann Lbbe gave a speech on Religion and Politicsin the Process of Modernisation, with examples from the most recent religionwars and the different ways of coping with them in Europe and the United States.At the centre of this contribution stood the new politicisation of religion, which

began in the 1980s and which is still prevalent today, bringing with it unpredict-able consequences for world history. Renato Moro also dealt with the topic ofPoliticisation of Religion as a reaction to the sacralisation of politics: the Catholic

Church itself imitated sacralised politics and transported in its ceremonies newpolitical (sometimes political-totalitarian) meanings.3

The third section finally focused on the issue of totalitarianisms as politicalreligions: Klaus Vondung4 delivered a contribution on religious aspects inNational Socialism, discussing the achievements and the limits of the applicationof political religion to the national socialist phenomenon. Klaus Riegel dealtwith Marxism-Leninism as a political religion, stressing the characteristic of theBolshevist party as a community of virtuosi5 (which is, according to MaxWebers analysis, a sect), aiming at inner-worldly salvation through an asceticway of life. Under Stalin, the party became a bureaucratized, hierarchically orga-nised institution of grace, with institutionalized salvation and an office ofcharisma: an Anstaltgnade.6

The contributions of the symposium are integrated in this volume by an itemon Fascist Aesthetics by Ulrich Schmid,7in which the author, referring prima-rily to George Mosse,8considers aesthetics as the very core of fascism: art is themedium through which a new reality is created: The look, the design and therituals of fascism are not its secondary attributes but its very essence.9

The concept of the symposium proved to be feasible: in the different contribu-tions, political religions were applied to different fields of research, always withthe intention of utilising the category in a literal and not in a purely metaphoricalmeaning. In the following, I will try to focus on some topics which are in my opin-

ion crucially related to political religions, and which prominently emerged in thecourse of the symposium.a.)

a.) Secularisation, Resacralisation and Modernity

It is by now an accepted assumption10that political religions are phenomena ofthe modern era, developing only after the construction of a political sphereindependent from religion and after religion had been turned into a privatematter, relegated to a private dimension.11Max Weber already emphasized in Die

protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus that, as a consequence of the

Reformation and Calvinism, the Catholic Church ceased to represent an absolutecosmos of meanings, capable of explaining the world and of giving a solution tothe problem of salvation (Heilskirche).12 In his short but masterful essay Dasganze Haus und die alteuropischekonomik,13Otto Brunner depicted the holistic

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Introduction to the special issue of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3

world of the big estates in Central Europe of the Ancien Rgime, where the orderon earth still mirrored the cosmic order of God:

Above the cosmos, however, stands the nous as the highest, the unify-ing principle, the unmoved mover, the koiranos, as Aristotle says, not

unintentionally using a Homeric word. God is the necessary source ofmovement, shaping matter and giving it form. God is the form of theworld, the life-giving entelecheia of the whole. The identity of the basicprinciples of construction makes it possible to see the microcosm, theimage of macrocosm, in man.14

The dissolution of the archaic order, perpetuated in the Christian era and substan-tially based on the social stratum of peasantry, was, according to Brunner, at firstprovoked by the centralistic state reforms in the 18thcentury and by the develop-ment and diffusion of market mechanisms. Such occurrences had not only buried

the konomik as science of the oikos (house) but also the analogy betweenmicrocosm and macrocosm; in the place of the patriarchal, static order, a modern,open society progressively arose.15

Such an epochal rupture in the history of mankind affected religion, politicsand their mutual relationship as well. Religious practices became an aspect ofindividuality,16a mode of expressing political allegiance, a criteria for joining anetwork, a feature of belonging to a specific cultural milieu.17 Religion furtherperformed a great variety of tasks and functions; it lost its former exclusivemission of attributing sense to human existence. Social existence no longerdepended on religious allegiance; and, more importantly, religious experience

became independent of traditional religious practices. Freemasonry and spiritismare early examples of this search for salvation outside the religious sphereproper.18

According to Max Weber, the process of secularisation followed two paths: a.)on the one hand, Reformation brought about an Entsinnlichung of religiouspractices, which became more abstract and ascetic;19 b.) on the other hand, theongoing process of rationalisation produced an Entzauberung der Welt and a lossof its original coherence.20

Despite Webers prognosis, secularisation was not a linear process: already atthe end of the 19thcentury, new cultural trends affirmed the priority of instinct,intuition, myths and unconscious forces over the Apollonian intellectual equi-

librium,21or more often over a tiresome reality, characterized as decadence.22After the Death of God,23the search for religious experience no longer took anexclusive place inside the frame of public, organized religions. The sacred

became progressively independent from its original location and could affectand pervade any inner-worldly, abstract entity, such as race, class, nation, liberty,

but also sex and other social transcendencies (for example, the myth of fusionwith nature, the myth of perfect health, etc.),24 the so-called Ersatzreligionen(substitute religions). Therefore, an untypical resacralisation was the conse-quence of the process of secularisation itself. Even Max Weber, the theoriser ofEntzauberung, noted as early as 1890: The old gods, deprived of their mystique

and thus in the form of impersonal powers, rise from their graves, struggle forpower over our livesand begin again their eternal battle among themselves.25

It is surely correct to state that, on the one hand, mankind apparently seems tohave an original, anthropological longing for attribution of absolute meaning, tran-

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4 M. Cattaruzza

scending the immediate perception of reality; that is, a longing for the experienceof the sacred. On the other hand, it was modernity which first created in Europethe preconditions for a.) the eclipse of Christian religions from the centre of collec-tive human existence; and for b.) the erratic and ubiquitous pilgrimage of thesacred outside of its traditional, institutional location. Therefore, some political

scientists prefer to speak of dechristianisation instead of secularisation.26b.)

b.) Totalitarianism as political religion: a concept and its history

Modernity is the dimension in which a transformation of religion as well as that ofpolitics may occur (and has occurred): totalitarianism, in this respect, representsone radical possibility of modernity.27 In his introduction to the collection ofessays on Expectation of Salvation and Terror, Hermann Lbbe listed thefollowing religious features of totalitarian regimes: the redeemer role of the totali-tarian Fhrer; the assignment of the role of prophet and apostle to precursors

and propagandists of the political gospel; the interpretation of revolutionsaccording to an eschatological meaning; the sentencing of heretics; the cult ofmartyrs and relics; the ritual repetition of redemptive facts in a totalitarian calen-dar (Festkalender); the increasing ability to endure suffering given the immediateexpectation of Gods realm, and the techniques of intellectually and emotionallycoping with its failure to appear.28Referring to Fascism as the prototype of totali-tarian religions, Emilio Gentile develops a functionalist model, characterised bythe coexistence of the following constituencies: the primacy of faith and myth asmobilising forces; the hypostatisation of myth as the only form of collective polit-ical consciousness; the necessity of a charismatic leader as pivot of the totalitarianstate and interpreter of national consciousness; the imposition of ethicalcommandments, and the development of a political liturgy.29

According to Mathias Behrens, political religion is characterised by the identi-fication of politics and religion: political religion intends to be at the same time auniversal interpretation of the world and a universal state. Political religionsmay be universal religions (like Marxism) as well as Volksreligionen (NationalSocialism). Contrary to Christianity, in political religions, the Fhrer, the party,the law of history, and so on, do not take the place of the church, but of Godhimself. This fact proves the inner-worldly character of political religions.30

It is by now nearly a commonplace to date the usage of the category politicalreligions to label totalitarian movements back to the 1930s, when Eric Voegelins

book, Die politischen Religionen, was printed in 1938, and one year later RaymondArons review Lre des tyrannies dElie Halvy appeared in the Revue de Mta-

physique et de Morale.31In 1944, Aron published Lavenir des religions sculiresin LaFrance libre.32After that, no debate arose on political religions, despite the factthat several important studies on the topic (among them the path-breaking workof Klaus Vondung on the cultic aspects of National Socialism) appeared in the1960s and 70s. A new period of research and debate began in 1990, when EmilioGentile published his seminal article on Fascism as a Political Religion in the

Journal of Contemporary History.33

But, as emphasised by Gentile himself, the definition of political religions as

applied to totalitarian movements is almost as old as the phenomenon itself: Ital-ian Fascism was defined as a political religion by its early opponents. Most ofthose using the term, interestingly enough, belonged to the Catholic or ProtestantChurches. In Le religioni della politica,34Gentile delivers impressive evidence of

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an hitherto almost forgotten debate inside the Catholic35and Protestant Churches,aimed at understanding and fighting the new totalitarian phenomenon, whichpretended to take over typical functions of the Christian religions in order todethrone the Churches as authorities of mediation between the inner and the tran-scendent worlds and to exercise complete control over man, including his spiritual

life. In such reflections on totalitarianism, Soviet Communism and NationalSocialism were seen as similar, whereas Italian Fascism was assumed to be lesstotalitarian, probably because of its reconciliation with the Catholic Church in1929. However, some early critics of Fascism, like the founder of the CatholicParty, Luigi Sturzo,36remained sceptical and stressed the totalitarian character ofFascism from the very beginning. Totalitarian regimes and movements weredefined as the worship of state, paganism, new paganism, idolatry. Among thecritics was the Franciscan Erhard Schlund, who, witnessing the eccentricities of thevlkisch movement in Germany, ruminated as early as 1924:

The war of Christianity against Teutonic paganism was not over whenBonifatius felled the sacred oak. Even after the general victory ofChristianity and the Christianisation of the German tribes, the battlecontinued as a guerilla war in the souls and in the beliefs and religiouscustoms, even in certain individuals and there were always men whopreferred Wotan to Christ. Today, it seems as though this century-oldskirmish will again become an open battle.37

The Communist movement in Hungary, giving life to the short-lived Republic ofCouncils of Bla Kun after World War One, was described as a veritable politicalreligion by the Minister for Minority Affairs, Oskar Jaszi:

Now for the first time, in circumstances most agreeable, the demonicspark lurking behind Marxism has set fire. Indeed, like every true massmovement, it ignited firstly with powers of religious character. []Constantly we could witness excited discussions in the streets and coffeehouses, in theatres and lectures, in which people with feverish eyes andfierce gesticulation prophesied and discussed the nearing of a new worldorder. [] The days of Capitalism are counted, the world revolution isloudly nearing, Lenin will soon unify the labor force of all of Europe inone single revolutionary union. [] In the brains of these people the newdeity was alive: the belief in the unavoidable dialectic of said economicdevelopment which will bring to fall the evil Capitalism and with theirresistibility of the laws of nature divine laws will bring to life thenew society, dreamed of by all prophets, the land of peace, equality,

brotherhood the Communist society.38

Under the impression of the Bavarian Republic of Councils, Fritz Gerlich, aCatholic journalist who joined the Social Democratic Party,39wrote a volume onDer Kommunismus als Lehre vom Tausendjhrigen Reich40 in the same year (1919)with instructive parts on Orthodox Marxism as Chiliasm, Marxism and theDoctrine of the New Pentecostal Miracle and Chiliastic Marxism in Practice.

He repeatedly defined Marxism as an inner-worldly religion of salvation (eineauf das Diesseits gerichtete Erlsungsreligion).41

It is amazing to observe in retrospect that this debate on political religions which for the Catholic side represented the continuation of the previous polemic

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6 M. Cattaruzza

against modernism had already reached a very high level of differentiation, andthat the churchmen employed highly articulated analyses to account for thedifferent aspects of the new pagan, state-centred religions. Cultic manifestations,symbols, doctrine, liturgics and dogmas of faith were acknowledged in theirmutual relationships, but also in their autonomous meanings, with a precision

which some later scholars should have emulated. On the eve of World War Two,Christian opponents saw themselves on the verge of an apocalyptic clash: thefinal struggle between Christ and the Anti-Christ, a veritable religious war.42

In this context, it may be interesting to observe that even scientists and histori-ans who do not put political religions at the core of their research also madeuninhibited use of frequent comparisons with religious phenomenology in theiranalyses of National Socialism, although they clearly favoured structuralist andeconomic explications. The Dual State by Ernst Fraenkel, written in the late1930s, focussed primarily on the structure of the state, the authority of law(destruction of the Rechtsstaat), and the interests of the economy. Despite this

emphasis, Fraenkel devoted several pages of his volume to the persecution ofheretics (those opposed or indifferent) through the National Socialist state,referring to the puritan revolution as an antecedent of modern totalitarianism.Fraenkel defined the National Socialist state as a quasi church, a theocracywithout God, a church solely glorifying itself.43 In his ground-breaking studyBehemoth on the system of power in National Socialism, Franz Neumann alsoanalyses the phenomenon of the charismatic power of the Fhrer as a genuinereligious phenomenon, occurring when people are overcome by circumstanceswith which they cannot cope. Charismatic power is described by Neumann asworship of man by man, based on anguish and fascination, on the faith in amysterium tremendum: The inexplicable generates reverence, fear and terror.Man trembles before the demon or before Gods wrath. But his attitude isambivalent he is afraid and fascinated at the same time. He experiencesmoments of utter rapture in which he identifies himself with the divine.44

However, according to Neumann, charismatic power is a sheer tool of domina-tion, masterly and consciously made use of by Hitler himself.

More intriguing is the interpretation of Hitlerism as a political religion deliv-ered by Friedrich Meinecke in Die deutsche Katastrophe.45Meinecke saw Hitler asthe founder of a new religion. The tolerance of National Socialism towardsChristianity was, according to the old historian, only a tactical feature. In reality,Hitler intended to found a new religion after victory in World War Two: It

would fit his boundless need for admiration well, to crown his role as prophetwith the role of founder of a new religion.46Meinecke came to the conclusionthat individual conscience as an authority of judgement on good and evil wasthe very target of Hitlers hate. Hitlers secularisation was a completely new sortof secularisation, stressed Meinecke. In fact:

Here the last link between the previous secularisations and dogmaticChristianity was severed, i.e. the acknowledgement of the humanconscience as the harbinger of divine and eternal law, especially of themoral law of brotherly love; that would also mean the acknowledgementof human dignity in everyone we meet, even should he belong to acompletely foreign race.47

In the passages of his work, exploring Germanys cultural and moral crisis,Meinecke arrives at his own interpretation of inner-worldly religion. As one

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crucial source of the Katastrophe, he considers the tendency of Germans, after thefounding of the Second Reich, to look for absolute values inside inner-worldlyphenomena (from which they expected salvation): the German spirit (Geist)nourished the illusion of having ascended to a metaphysical sphere; but instead,

by error and perversion, it attributed metaphysical qualities to an earthly dimen-

sion (i.e. the power of the German state).48It seems to me that such conclusions fitwell into a conceptual genealogy of political religions, and I regard it as a greatachievement of Meinecke to have so clearly linked secularisation,49the search foran inner-worldly absolute (Unbedingtes), to the rise of National Socialism.Even Hannah Arendt, who strongly favoured totalitarianism to political reli-gions and who was sceptical of Voegelins theory, wrote in Elements and Originsof Totalitarianism that intellectuals supported Bolshevism eagerly because theSoviet revolution was a religion and not just a mere political or social conflict.50

Ernst Noltes great analysis of fascism,51 written in the 1960s, could also berelated to this stream of interpretation. Apparently, there is no contiguity between

Nolte and the other historians and sociologists who recognize in National Social-ism aspects of a political religion. Nolte in fact founds his analysis of Fascism ona struggle against transcendence; that is, something deeply opposing religiousexperience in its various shapes.

Otherwise, the struggle against transcendence carried on in National Socialismresults, according to Nolte, in an unprecedented bloody struggle to restore thelaws of nature.52 Nolte quotes Hitlers references to the divine laws ofexistence, and emphasises that his struggle was directed against the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of world salvation.53In an exciting reflection on Noltes thesis,George Mosse underlines his aim to arrive at a comprehensive view of the fascistmovement and to link it to the age on which it exerted such a profound influence.He judges the book to be based upon the most meticulous scholarship, addingthat many of the analyses of the individual movements would be exciting evenapart from the conceptual framework.54In successive passages, Mosse copes withthe core of Noltes analysis, the concept of transcendence:

Fascism was a new religion (not ashamed to use traditional religioussymbols) and it gave to its followers their own feeling of transcendence, to

be sure, not transcendence in Noltes definition, but this very definitioncan lead to a failure to understand the movement on its own terms, themeaning it contained for its followers. Fascism did hold that man will reach

an absolute whole through the release of his creative instincts, that he willrecapture his own personality. But its world-view also restrained the flightinto transcendence, for it opposed the messianic tradition.55Thus arguesMosse in a strictly historicist mood.56On the dilemma of transcendencein Fascism, Mosse states that Fascism indeed excludes the experience ofuniversally valid ideas; it sets a definite limit to the flight of the mindand such limits consist of mans rootedness in his nation or in his race.

But, provocatively adds Mosse, it can surely be argued that bourgeois theoreti-cal transcendence did the same; here the limit was set not by the instinct of race

or nationalism but by the human faculty of reason.57

It seems to me a consistent conclusion that before political religion became aconcept in the investigation of various political phenomena of the modern era,witnesses of the new political movements after World War One and social and

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8 M. Cattaruzza

cultural scientists as well, mostly in an unreflected and immediate manner attributed features and manifestations to totalitarian movements in fact derivingfrom a properly religious sphere.c.)

c.) The dimension of time in political religion: some comparativeobservations

All scholars of political religions emphasise the claim of political religions topermanency. This stress occurs despite the fact that a lack of permanence is oneof their main features.58As Emilio Gentile has rightly stressed, the failure of total-itarianisms is strongly related to the impossibility of holding masses in a perma-nent condition of mobilisation and neglect of private concerns.59In other words,the failure of totalitarianisms is interconnected with their failure to shape thenew man, who himself represents a non-negotiable goal of all totalitarianisms,a new man, deprived of all individual and private features and reduced to his

national, social or racial determinants.Despite such failure, every religion aims at transcending the sphere of finitetime, and political religion also tries to achieve immortality through projectioninto eternity. This goal may be achieved in different ways. The bond between theliving and the dead played a crucial role in totalitarian regimes, although itcannot be considered to be one of their exclusive features. All totalitarian regimeshonoured their fallen heroes, and made them witnesses and prophets of the newgospel. Even before the March on Rome, funerals of fallen Fascist comradesreached a highly ritualised symbolism. At the centre of the ceremony stood a rollcall of the names of the fallen, to which the crowd bellowed Present! Mussolinihimself stated in the 1940 edition of the Dictionary of Politicsthat the cult of fallenheroes in Fascism substituted the cult of Saints in Catholic worship: the roll callgave expression to the acknowledgement that transcendental forces exist beyondphysical life.60The fallen were worshipped in their eternal communion with theliving. Michael Burleigh, one of the historians of National Socialism more sensi-tive to issues of representations, perceptions and Weltanschauung,61 sharplyoutlined in his recent synopsis Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, that NationalSocialism was a mere naturalistic religion, aiming at granting eternity through theendless chain of generations of good blood.62In National Socialism, the cult offallen heroes also played a central role.63Women were even symbolically marriedto them.64According to Sabine Behrenbeck, in National Socialism the ceremonies

honouring fallen soldiers ensured the passage into hero-status for the martyred.They were transferred to a new spiritual existence (geistige Existenz), shared bythe survivors who then could project themselves and their ordinary lives into themythical order of the dead heroes.65 In Soviet Russia, similar ceremonies wereperformed to honour the martyrs of revolution, who ascended to a CommunistOlympus where Marx, Engels, the fallen of the Paris Commune and so on, wereinstalled. But the epitome of the will to transcend mortality in Communism issurely the embalming of Lenins corpse and its placement in a tomb on RedSquare.66Already in 1961, Michael Cherniavsky stressed the analogies betweenthe symbolic meaning of Lenins corpse and the medieval theory of the kings

two bodies.67

Following the interpretation of Kantorowicz,68

Cherniavsky notedthat, like Christ, the ruler in the Christian world possesses a dual nature: weak,fallible and mortal as all men, he shares at the same time Gods divine nature. Thedual nature of kingship represents the theological basis for the continuity of

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power. But in the Russian tradition, the dual nature of the ruler includes the holy-human and the divine: The tension could not be resolved or, if one prefers, the

balance was maintained in the myth of the prince in whose nature the twoaspects, princely and human, were equally deified. Therefore, in Czarist Russiathis tension between the sacred and profane nature of power, which in the west-

ern world ultimately led to the secularisation of the political sphere, could notarise.69Lenin became the embodiment of the new universal principle, called toredeem the world: politics were not intended to shape a political community, butto conform to the universal principle of salvation.70

Even more crucial than rites demonstrating immortality is in my opinion theperception of (historical) time in totalitarian political religions,71 namely, thecertainty of facing a new epoch, a sort of Endzeit, which has already beenannounced by apocalyptic occurrences. With Italian Fascism, the new epoch wasto be characterised by the restitution of the Roman Empire and by the dominationof Fascist Italy over the Mediterranean in a new, timeless era. Emilio Gentile has

defined this junction between past and future impressively put into scene byFascism as Rome as the paradigmatic archetype.72 National Socialism wasprojected on the construction of a racial Reich in Eastern Europe, based on thedomination of the Nordic race, the extermination of the Jews and the enslaving ofthe Slavic population. In Soviet Communism, the end of history consisted in aworld revolution and the ultimate victory of Communism. Lenin, as the newMessiah, would thus open the period of redemption for humanity.73As historyconsisted of class-struggles, the end of class-struggle would provoke the end ofhistory.74

The perception of time is strongly affected by apocalyptic emotions: affliction,darkness and death introduce the new, golden age: the First World War was awatershed for totalitarianisms and at the same time the dawning of a new era. AsEmilio Gentile convincingly demonstrated, the war itself was preceded by apoca-lyptic expectations, and was itself experienced as an apocalypse.75Imperialism,the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written by Lenin in 1916, was pervaded by deep(although, with regard to the Czarist censure, refrained), revolutionary expecta-tions, and by the faith that the war was the antecedent of revolution (as it thenactually happened). The introduction to the 1920 edition states succinctly: Impe-rialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. This has proved to betrue throughout the world since 1917.76Lenins analysis of Imperialism stronglyaffected Stalins judgement of the Second World War, and strengthened his belief

that the war was to bring about an extension of Soviet domination in Europe(which occurred as well). As rightly noted, Communism was an optimistic ideol-ogy, firmly convinced of its final victory. The possibility of total destruction ofmankind, envisaged by Hitler in the conclusion of Mein Kampf,77 was alien toSoviet Communism.

Finally, a third important aspect, strongly related to the apocalyptic upheavalsof war and revolution, refers to the etymological meaning of apocalypse itself,which may be translated as revelation or disclosure. Such meaning finds avivid expression in the allegory of the Last Judgement. The apocalypse revealsthe essence of the real world, which has to this point remained secret, asconditus:

the development of mankind towards a Communist revolution, the final strugglebetween the Aryan and the Jewish race,78the creation of a new civilisation basedon worship of the state, and on totalitarian mobilisation of individuals for state andpower.79

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10 M. Cattaruzza

d.) Totalitarianisms as political religions: achievements and limits of aconceptual category

In an illuminating article some time ago,80 Philippe Burrin, despite his scepti-cism regarding the use of the concept of political religions itself, drew some

important conclusions on the advantage and potential applications of theconcept to the analysis of modern politics. Burrin argued namely that this cate-gory makes it possible to investigate the sphere of imagination, representations,mental pictures and emotions related to political phenomena and the issue ofpower. This allows us to take older archetypical structures, only apparentlyremoved in modernity, quite seriously. However, according to Burrin, theconcept lacks a certain sharpness and presents a basic ambiguity: on the onehand, it is possible to express the meanings covered by political religionsthrough more univocal and clearer concepts such as charisma, political cults andsymbols, political faith and beliefs, political and social representations. On the

other hand, the concept conceals the fact that the phenomena taken into consid-eration belong to the political and not the religious sphere: The idea of a trans-fer of the sacral is either tautology or concealment of ignorance: as if the sacralwas a certain substance and not a product of elevation or exaltation by man in aspecific context.81

Burrins contribution is an encouragement to combine historical research withhistorical anthropology, to investigate older mental and cultural structures surviv-ing (mostly unnoticed) in the modern era. In his opinion however, the use of suchtermini as millenarism contains the risk of anachronisms and projection ofmodern political phenomena into the past. At the core of Burrins criticism lies his

judgement of individualism as a characteristic of modern society: people becameaccustomed to being individuals, making it impossible for modern myths created

by writers and intellectuals to fulfil the same functions as the old, naturalmyths.82

Regardless of such understandable warnings for methodological cautiousness,the longing for salvation, chiliastic expectations and apocalyptic visions are, inmy opinion, modes of referring to and interacting with reality in the 20 thcentury.Totalitarianism organises and connects such attitudes disseminated in modernsociety, composing them into a kind of new politics.83

Both intellectuals and the middle-classes in German, French and Italian societyshared the expectation in new politics as early as the beginning of the 20 th

century. During and after World War One, new politics became the instrumentof regenerating society: bringing shape back to formless and degenerated demo-cracy, style to mass society,84unity where there was only diffusion, atomisationand loneliness. In Germany, Hugo von Hofmannsthal gave a speech in 1927 onconservative revolution, stating that it was a tendency to search for belongingand not freedom, for wholeness and not complexity.85Both Fascism and NationalSocialism in this context may be understood as attempts of binding and domesti-cating modernity,86of abolishing linear time, as Roger Griffin stated, followingMircea Eliade.87

It is difficult to say how, or if, Communism fully fits into this frame. The

Bolsheviks surely shared the elitist convictions of Mosca, Pareto and other author-itarian thinkers of the fin de siecle.88 In Noltes old (and clever) perception, evenMarx shares the cultural pessimism of thinkers such as Max Weber andFriedrich Nietzsche.89 But as previously noted, Marxism was an optimistic

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ideology, capable of interpreting dialectic90signs of decadence and crisis asproof of the dawning of a new era. However, Marxism was capable of relating toreality with a strongly and uncontestedly consistent holistic approach: it did not,in fact, foresee any distinction between philosophy, action and revolution.91

Having arrived at this point, it is time to ask how the present volume fits into

the general discussion of the topic, and whether it offers any suggestions forfurther sensible usage of political religion as an analytical tool in investigationsof modernity.

Focussing on method and concepts in their contributions, both Gentile andGriffin persuasively call for a broad approach in the field of research, to enlightenthe various (and sometimes overlapping) relations of politics and religion inmodern society, while taking charge of new (sometimes similar) functions. Despitehis precise conceptualisation of the different types of secular religions, Gentileasserts that the core phenomenon of his interest is the sacralisation of politics asa feature of modernity, the attribution of a transcendental meaning to the varying

political entities. This ascription may occur in totalitarian regimes as well as indemocratic or authoritarian states. In this perspective, political religions is butone manifestation of sacralisation of politics. Griffins proposal focuses stronglyon the heuristic value of political religion for research on totalitarianism. Referringto Gentiles approach, he emphasises the advantage of a deliberate act of holisticthinking on totalitarianism, in which such concepts as palingenetic ideology,political religion and anthropological revolution can find their place whilealso drawing upon each other. The goal of such a conceptual cluster should beto cast some (more) light on the function of political religion in creating a new typeof community to replace the atomistic society that had emerged under liberalcapitalism and that particularly in inter-war Europe was widely experienced aswoefully inadequate to serve the material and existential needs of the majority ofits citizens.92

As noted before, Hermann Lbbe93and Renato Moro tackle the weighty topicof the metamorphosis of traditional religion in modern time. By reconstructingrecent religious wars in Europe and outside the old continent, Lbbe, instead ofcontinuously vituperating Huntingtons formula of the clash of civilisations inthe name of an almost sterile and extenuated political correctness, stresses theimportance of the awareness that religion may still be a first cause of conflict.94

According to Lbbe, we are witnessing a process of new politicisation of religionin the struggle against western civilisation, fought by Islamic fundamentalism

and terrorism. Besides, ethnic struggles in the Balkans, as well as in India and inother theatres of the world often draw their main legitimisation from religion.According to Lbbe, the religious struggles of the present, represent a new combi-nation of the sacred and the profane after secularisation.

Renato Moro delivers very stimulating examples of the politicisation of religionin the 19th and 20th century, referring primarily to the Catholic Church. Heconvincingly demonstrates that Catholicism was affected by such phenomena asnationalism and Italian Fascism, and that Catholic associations, culture andceremonies (even Catholic language and codes) were strongly influenced by thepolitical rites for mass society under totalitarian regimes. He postulates therefore

an osmotic, mutual relationship between politics and religion in a time of theprimacy of politics.Klaus-Georg Riegel and Klaus Vondung deliver two very convincing analyses

of Soviet Communism and National Socialism as political religions. In both

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contributions, analogies between political and traditional religions are elaboratedsystematically on different levels: in addition to the more obvious cultic aspects,the authors stress the presence of dogmatic principles of faith, eschatologicalexpectations, precepts of morality as an instrument of salvation and absolutecommitment to the Church in both phenomena. Religious zeal is nourished by

the certitude of the approximant theodicy: in Bolshevism, Riegel states, the Partycadres with their strict moral codes and revolutionary enthusiasm prefigure thenew man, thus overcoming world-imperfection. As stressed by Vondung, inNational Socialism the failed Putsch of 8thNovember 1923 was subsequentlycelebrated as an annunciation of a new age. The apocalyptic dualism betweenthe Nordic race and World Jewry is a non-negotiable dogma of NationalSocialist religion, understood by Vondung as the source of a pervading climateof opinion which made Holocaust possible in the first place.

The contribution on Fascist Aesthetics by Ulrich Schmid focuses primarily onthe voluntaristic character of fascism and the subversive role of art in unmoulding

reality and reversing linear time:Fascism wanted to establish an utopian model resembling a heroic past.Future and past were amalgamated into a timeless present. This confla-tion of chronology explains why many fascist theories went back tomythological roots and wanted to reinstate these cultural models in aradiant present which at the same time anticipated the future.95

In conclusion, we can say that political religions have not yet exhausted theirheuristic potential, and research on the issue is still being conducted in manifolddirections. I would like to conclude this introduction with two methodologicalremarks. In my opinion, historical research on political religions in some casesstill suffers from a kind of Hegelian sickness. Religious manifestations in thesphere of politics are analysed and depicted as something barely occurring. Astronger analytical effort might perhaps cast some more light on how the sacrali-sation of politics develops, on historical subjects in the context of creating rituals,cults and sacred writings, and on intentions96 and reciprocal relations betweenofficials and the liturgical mass. In this context, it is worth stressing thatMosse declared himself a Hegelian.97Emilio Gentile confronts this issue in hisdifferentiated conclusions to theSacralisation of Politics,where he underlines theintentional character of Fascist lay religion: Once in power, Fascism instituted a

lay religion by sacralising the state and spreading a political cult of the massesthat aimed at creating a virile and virtuous citizenry, dedicated body and soul tothe nation.98 But he also honestly admits that the problem of the sincerity offaith, of manipulation from above, of the dialectic between rulers and masses, isstill far from having been solved.99

My second remark concerns interdisciplinarity. Research on political religions,resacralisation, reenchantment and so on, can only be carried on within the frame-work of interdisciplinary cooperation. However, it seems to me that research onthe issue is mostly conducted with the main emphasis on the object itself, therebyneglecting relevant methodological implications. We should therefore reflect

more on the methodological tools supplied by different disciplines as well as ontheir respective potentials and synergetic achievements in similar areas. Thedialogue between history and the science of religions100should be intensified, inorder to further distinguish the religious aspects of political manifestations, and

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to look for precise analogies between comparable phenomena occurring in bothcontexts. This necessity was stressed by Renato Moro as early as 1995, and evenearlier by the late Niccol Zapponi.101As a matter of fact, as Burrin noticed someyears ago, religions and (totalitarian) politics in the age of secularisation sharethe same desire to achieve homogeneity and unity, and to supply the individual

and the collective with an identity; both are faced with the problem of death 102and its overcoming. It is therefore predictable that the complex and conflicting(but in some way also mimetic) relationship between the sacred and politicswill become a field of research not to be neglected in studies of modernity.

Acknowledgements

Marina Cattaruzza would like to thank the Hans-Sigrist-Foundation of theUniversity of Berne, and the associated Philosophical-Historical Faculty for theirgenerous funding of the international symposium on Political Religions as a

Characteristic of the 20th

Century, from which this special issue of TotalitarianMovements and Political Religionswas originated. She would also like to expressher gratitude to Robert Mallett and Glyn Lavers who contributed so much to thegood success of this enterprise.

Notes

1. As an example of the terminological debate on political religions, surrogate religions, anti-religions, inner-worldly religions, political movements similar to religions, quasi-religionsand non-religions see the otherwise very stimulating collection by Hermann Lbbe (ed.),Heilserwartung und Terror. Politische Religionen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Dsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag,

1995). Problems of definition are also at the core of Hans Maier (ed.), Totalitarismus und politischeReligionen. Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs(Paderborn/Mnchen/Wien/Zrich: Schningh, 1995),particularly pp. 129232.

2. On the same issue, see also Emilio Gentile, Le religioni della politica. Fra democrazie e totalitarismi,(Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2001).

3. See Renato Moro, Religion and Politics in the Time of Secularisation: Sacralisation of Politics andPoliticisation of Religion, in this volume.

4. See Klaus Vondung, National Socialism as a Political Religion: Potentials and Limits of anAnalytical Concept, in this volume.

5. Klaus Riegel primarily follows the classical reference on the topic: Max Weber, Die protestantischeEthik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, Gtersloh: Gtersloher Verlagshaus 1991 (1905). Eric Voegelinalso delivered a very stimulating analysis on the virtuosi and their role in Gnostic traditions, see

Eric Voegelin, Gnostic Politics (1952), now in Eric Voegelin, Published Essays 19401952 (TheCollected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10), (Columbia/London: University of Missouri Press, 2000),pp. 223240. In this essay, Voegelin refers to the Puritans as revolutionary saints, governmentof saints and community of saints.

6. See Klaus-Georg Riegel, Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion, in this volume.7. The article is a slightly different version of a speech given by Ulrich Schmid at the workshop

International Fascism, held at the Historical Institute of the University of Berne in December2003, which also belonged to the programme of the Sigrist-Prize award.

8. See George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements inGermany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991[1975]).

9. Ulrich Schmid, Style Versus Ideology: Towards a Conceptualisation of Fascist Aesthetics, in thisvolume.

10. As generally known, Voegelin instead considered political religions as the last manifestation ofa Gnostic attitude towards world and reality dating back to the pagan era (and even to ancientEgypt) and to the heretical movements of Christianity. See for example, Eric Voegelin, Die politischenReligionen(Mnchen: Fink, 1996 [1938]). Find a useful overview of Voegelins conception of Gnosis

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now in Hans Otto Seitschek, Exkurs: Eric Voegelins Konzept der Gnosis, in Hans Maier (ed.),Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen, vol. III: Deutungsgeschichte und Theorie (Paderborn/Mnchen/Wien/Zrich: Schningh, 2003), pp. 237245.

11. See Gentile, Religioni della politica.12. Cf. Weber, Protestantische Ethik, pp. 126, 157.13. Otto Brunner, Das ganze Haus und die alteuropische konomik in Neue Wege der Verfas-

sungs- und Sozialgeschichte(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1968, [1956]), pp. 103127.14. Ibid., p. 114.15. It is interesting to note that Brunner also marginally referred to the liberal market theory as to a sort

of sub-theological thinking (ibid., p. 127): The economic liberalism did not stop after developingone rational theory in which its lasting scientific accomplishment lies. Its dogma of the harmony ofinterests reveals itself as sub-theological thinking, as a secularized plan of salvation.

16. On this issue, see for example Donald Capps, Religion and Psychological Well-Being, in Phil-ipp E. Hammond (ed.), The Sacred in a Secular Age(Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University ofCalifornia Press, 1985), pp. 237256.

17. On this issue see Rudolf Schlgl, Rationalisierung als Entsinnlichung religiser Praxis? Zursozialen und medialen Form von Religion in der Neuzeit, in Peter Blickle and Rudolf Schlgl(eds.), Skularisation in der europischen Skularisierung(Tbingen, forthcoming). Many thanks toRudolf Schlgl for having allowed me to read and quote the manuscript before publication.

18. See ibid.19. Cf. Weber, Protestantische Ethik, pp. 133, 123.20. Cf. ibid., pp. 188189, 341, 344.21. See Friedrich Nietzsche, DieGeburt der Tragdie. Schriften zur Literatur und Philosophie der Griechen,

(Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1994).22. A classical reference on this topic is Georges Sorel, Rflexions sur la violence (Paris: Libraire de

Pages libres, 1908). A broad analysis of the paradigmatic meaning of Sorels thesis for theEuropean crisis at the turn of the century can be found in Zeev Sternhell, Naissance de lidologiefasciste(Paris: Libraire Arthme Fayard, 1989).

23. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Die frhliche Wissenschaft (Smtliche Werke, Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 3),(Mnchen: DTV, 1988); see also Eric Voegelin, Der Gottesmord. Zur Genese und Gestalt der modernenpolitischen Gnosis(Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1999), and Luciano Pellicani,Modernizzazione e

secolarizzazione (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1997), pp. 99115.24. Cf. Gentile, Religioni della politica, pp. 2223.25. Max Weber, Vom inneren Beruf zur Wissenschaft, in: id., Soziologie, Universalgeschichtliche Analysen,

Politik, Stuttgart: Alfred Krner Verlag 1992, pp. 311339, here p. 330; authors emphasis.26. Cf. Mathias Hildebrandt, Manfred Brocker and Hartmut Behr, Einleitung: Skularisierung

und Resakralisierung in westlichen Gesellschaften. Ideengeschichtliche und theoretische Perspektiven(Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001), pp. 928, particularly p. 10.

27. See e.g. Zygmunt Bauman, Dialektik der Ordnung. Die Moderne und der Holocaust, Hamburg:Europische Verlagsanstalt 1992; see also Karl Dietrich Bracher, The Age of Ideologies. A History ofPolitical Thought in the Twentieth Century, New York: St. Martins 1984.

28. Cf. Lbbe, Heilserwartung und Terror, p. 10. Despite such impressive analytical achievement onpolitical religions, Lbbe refuses the use of the concept, proposing instead the concept of

anti-religions. See also Lbbe, Religion and Politics in the Process of Modernisation, in thisvolume. On the problem of coping with the delayed parousiasee also the illuminating observa-tions of Riegel: The delayed prophecy of the Second Coming (parousia) causes an explosive situ-ation of deferred gratification. The heretic virtuoso stands for the immediate fulfillment of themessianic promises, as opposed to the representatives of the hierocratic domination who had toexplain to their subjects that those alive at present would not be able to see salvation during life-time, but would see it after death, when the dead would awaken. The hierocracy is forced todevelop their own interpretations of the history and the future of the revolutionary cause. Therise of a professional priesthood [] with salaries, promotions, professional duties, and adistinctive way of life, indicates that the ideological specialists of propaganda and state securityhave noticed the heretic challenges. Klaus-Georg Riegel, Rituals of Confession within Commu-nities of Virtuosi: An Interpretation of the Stalinist Criticism and Self-criticism in the Perspective

of Max Webers Sociology of Religion, in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1/3(2000), pp. 1642, here p. 25.29. Cf. Emilio Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on

the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism, in Totalitarian Movements and PoliticalReligions, 1/1 (2000), pp. 1855, here p. 40.

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30. See Mathias Behrens, Politische Religion eine Religion? Bemerkungen zum Religionsbegriff,in Hans Maier and Michael Schfer (eds.), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen. Konzepte desDiktaturvergleichs(Paderborn/Mnchen/Wien/Zrich: Schningh, 1997), pp. 249269, primarilyp. 259. Behrens also rejects the use of the term for non-transcendent religious phenomena.

31. Cf. also the authoritative contribution of Hans Maier, Totalitarismus und PolitischeReligionen. Zwei Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs, in Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen,

pp. 23350. An anticipation of this topic was published by Aron as early as 1936 in a volumeedited by Elie Halvy; see also Philippe Burrin, Political Religion: The Relevance of a Concept,inHistory and Memory, vol. 9, Numbers 1/2, Fall 1977, p. 343.

32. See Raymond Aron, Lavenir des religions sculires, in: id., Lage des Empire et lavenir de la France,Paris: ditions Dfense de la France 1946, pp. 287318. On Arons contribution to the debate seeBrigitte Gess, Die Totalitarismuskonzeption von Raymond Aron und Hannah Arendt, in: Maier, Totalita-rismus und Politische Religionen, pp. 264274, primarily pp. 264267.

33. See on this point, also for further bibliographical references, Emilio Gentile, Civil and PoliticalReligion: A Concept and its Critics. A Critical Surveyin this volume.

34. Cf. Gentile, Religioni della politica, pp. 103162.35. For first indications on the debate inside the Catholic Church see the imposing review by Renato

Moro, Religione e politica nellet della secolarizzazione: riflessioni su di un recente volume diEmilio Gentile, in Storia contemporanea, XXVI, 1995/2, pp. 255325, here pp. 260261.

36. On the analysis of Fascism by Luigi Sturzo cf. Jens Petersen, Die Geschichte des Totalitarismusbegriffsin Italien, in Maier (ed.), Totalitarismus und politische Religionen, pp. 1537; and Michael Schfer,Luigi Sturzo als Totalitarismustheoretiker, in ibid., pp. 3747.

37. Quoted from Armin Mohler, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 19181932. Ein Handbuch,(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994 [1949]), p. 138.

38. Oskar Jszi, Magyariens Schuld, Ungarns Shne. Revolution und Gegenrevolution in Ungarn(Mnchen: Verlag fr Kulturpolitik, 1923), pp. 6970.

39. On Fritz Gerlich, who died in Dachau in 1934, see Erwein von Aretin, Fritz Michael Gerlich. Prophetund Mrtyrer :sein Kraftquell(Mnchen: Schnell & Steiner, 1983 [1949]).

40. Fritz Gerlich, Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom Tausendjhrigen Reich (Mnchen: Verlag HugoBruckmann, 1920).

41. Ibid., p. 50.

42. See numerous examples in Gentile, Religioni della politica, pp. 154162.43. Cf. Ernst Fraenkel, Der Doppelstaat, Frankfurt/Kln: Europische Verlagsanstalt 1974 (1940),

pp. 7887.44. Franz Neumann, Behemoth. Struktur und Praxis des Nationalsozialismus 19331944, Kln/Frankfurt

am Main: Europische Verlagsanstalt 1977 (1944), pp. 114130, here p. 129. Neumann relates to theanalysis of religious phenomena carried on by Rudolf Otto.

45. Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe. Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen, Wiesbaden:E. Brockhaus Verlag 1946.

46. Ibid., p. 122.47. Ibid., p. 124.48. Cf. ibid., p. 83.49. Cf. ibid., p. 62: Religion did not prosper either in the technical age. It was evicted from the center

of life where it had belonged to the periphery and there either betrayed as an outmoded and unnec-essary aspect of days gone by, or kept in use as a useful convention and police method for keepingthe peace among the lower masses and accordingly respected. What was left of religion propereither fled into the souls of the individual or into communities and groups of those remaining silentin the land.

50. Cf. Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprnge totaler Herrschaft. Antisemitismus, Imperialismus, totaleHerrschaft(Mnchen/Zrich: Piper, 2003 [1951]), pp. 719720.

51. See Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: die Action franaise, der italienische Faschismus, derNationalsozialismus(Mnchen: Piper, 1963).

52. On National Socialism as integral naturalism see Michael Burleigh, Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.Eine Gesamtdarstellung(Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2000), pp. 299300.

53. Cf. Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche(Mnchen/Zrich, 1984), pp. 504506.

54. George L. Mosse, Review of E. Nolte on Three Faces of Fascism, inJournal of the History of Ideas,October-December 1966, pp. 621625.55. Ibid., p. 623.56. With the term historicist mood I refer to the use of the classical category of Verstehen,

suggested by Mosse in his review.

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57. Ibid., p. 623. On the link between National Socialism and bourgeois culture in Mosses conceptionsee Karel Plessini, The Nazi as the Ideal Bourgeois. Respectability and Nazism in the Work ofGeorge L. Mosse, in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,5/2 (2004), pp. 226242.

58. Cf. Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics, p. 24. On the failure of political religions in fulfilling realreligious needs see also Burrin, Political Religion, particularly p. 342. According to Burrin, thetension between modernisation and the attempt to reenchant society through a political religion

was destined to be solved in favour of a rational modernisation.59. The author of this introduction is old enough to remember the paroxystic mass mobilisation in thepeak phases of the student movement in the early 1970s. After a while, most militants wentback to their ordinary occupations. Those who did not, drifted into terrorist groups (sects) orbecame functionaries in the Communist Party (Anstaltkirche).

60. Cf. Emilio Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics in Fascist Italy(Cambridge, Mass./London: HarvardUniversity Press 1996, [1993]), pp. 2528.

61. See particularly the following books: Germany Turns Eastwardsand The Racial State(together withWolfgang Wippermann).

62. Cf. Burleigh, Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 299300: Men otherwise possessed with death anddestruction, strove for a life of a thousand years through the superior racial nature of their people.Such interesting remarks may be related to Noltes analysis on transcendence (cf. fn 51).

63. See Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden. Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten undSymbole(Vierow bei Greifswald: SH-Verlag, 1996).

64. See on this practice douard Conte and Cornelia Essner, Culti di sangue. Antropologia del nazismo(Roma: Carocci Editore 2000, [1995]), pp. 147164. The motivation to allow marriage betweenGerman women and fallen soldiers was not only to blur the limit between the living and the deadbut also to permit pregnant women to legitimise their children.

65. Cf. Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden, p. 523.66. See Klaus-Georg Riegel, Marxism-Leninism, in this volume, p. 10967. See Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths(New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1969).68. Cf. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Die zwei Krper des Knigs. Eine Studie zur politischen Theologie des

Mittelalters(Mnchen: DTV 1990, [1957]), particularly pp. 317443.69. On this issue see the fascinating interpretation of Paolo Prodi, Konkurrierende Mchte:

Verstaatlichung kirchlicher Macht und Verkirchlichung der Politik, in Blickle and Schlgl (eds.),Skularisation in der europischen Skularisierung, forthcoming.

70. For a very stimulating analysis on the syncretistic mixture of Marxism and orthodox tradition inSoviet Russia see Mathias Hildebrandt, Politische Kultur und Zivilreligion (Wrzburg:Knigshausen und Neumann, 1996), pp. 201272.

71. Find an appraisal of Mosses early achievements on the analysis of the perception of timein Fascism now in Roger Griffin, Withstanding the Rush of Time. The Prescience of MossesAnthropological View of Fascism, in Stanley G. Payne, David J. Sorkin and John S. Tortorice(eds.), What History Tells: George L. Mosse and the Culture of Modern Europe(Madison: The Universityof Wisconsin Press, 2004), pp. 110133, particularly pp. 122127.

72. Cf. Gentile, Sacralisation of Politics, pp. 7579.73. Mathias Hildebrandt refers such expectations to the messianic myth of the end of history: as a

fourth Rome after the end of the third one (Czarist Russia) was not foreseen, a Bolshevist revolu-tion was expected to introduce the end of the world: It seems that it was early Soviet Russiawhich as the first country in history based its foreign policy on the foundation of the end of history(however, the empirical reality of course required compromises with ideology). Hildebrandt,Politische Kultur und Zivilreligion, pp. 241242.

74. Cf. ibid., p. 242. On Marxs conception of history see also Klaus Vondung, Die Apokalypse inDeutschland, (Mnchen: DTV, 1988), pp. 101105.

75. Cf. Emilio Gentile, Un apocalisse nella modernit. La Grande Guerra e il Mito della Rigenerazi-one della politica, in Storia contemporanea, XXVI, 1995/5, pp. 733787. See also Dall apocalissedella modernit alla modernit totalitaria, forthcoming.

76. V.I. Lenin, Der Imperialismus als hchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus, in Werke (Berlin: DietzVerlag, 1960), vol. 22, p. 198. See also the following apocalyptic passage (ibid., p. 196): Feeding

on the ruins of war in the whole world, the worldwide revolutionary crisis grows, regardless ofwhatever long and difficult changes it may suffer, with no other possible end than the proletarianrevolution and its victory.

77. On this important difference between the Communist and the national socialist perspective seeBurrins observations in Political Religion, pp. 321349, here pp. 339340.

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78. Some authors, among them Philippe Burrin, have stressed that the conception of time in NationalSocialism is a cyclical one: the racial struggle is destined to reproduce itself again and again. Evenif this was correct, it does not contradict the vision of the end of history intended as an openprocess occurring inside linear time.

79. Cf. Gentile, Sacralisation of Politics, particularly pp. 80101.80. Cf. Philippe Burrin, Die politischen Religionen: Das Mythologisch-Symbolische in einer skula-

risierten Welt, in Michael Ley and Julius H. Schoeps (eds.), Der Nationalsozialismus als politischeReligion(Bodenheim bei Mainz: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997), pp. 168185.81. Ibid., pp. 172176.82. Ibid., pp. 182183.83. With new politics I refer to the expectation of the regeneration of society through politics as a

consequence of the devastating experience of World War One; see Gentile, Unapocalisse nellamodernit.George Mosse utilised the concept in a more diffuse and general way. He refers to it as aritual, liturgic and symbolic aspect in mass politics of German nationalism; see Mosse, TheNationalisation of Masses. In The Crisis of German Ideology, Mosse broadens the concept furtherincluding vlkischtrivial literature.

84. On this aspect of Fascist new politics see Ulrich Schmid, Style Versus Ideology, in thisvolume.

85. Cf. Armin Mohler, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 19181932. Ein Handbuch(Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989 [1972]), p. 10.

86. This thesis was consistently sustained by Jeffrey Herf, who linked the antimodernism of conser-vative revolutionaries in the Weimar Republic to the positive attitude towards technology in theThird Reich. Technology in National Socialism was to be utilised to achieve antimodernistgoals. See Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and theThird Reich(Cambridge: University Press, 1984.)

87. See Roger Griffin, Cloister or Cluster? The Implications of Emilio Gentiles Ecumenical Theory ofPolitical Religion for the Study of Extremism, in this volume; see also Mircea Eliade, The Myth ofthe Eternal Return or Cosmos and History(Princeton: University Press, 1991 [1954]). On the relation-ship of linear time and Christianity see also Mohler, Konservative Revolution, pp. 8286.

88. See the impressive picture of the new European thinking outlined by H. Stuart Hughes,Consciousness& Society. The Reorientation of European Social Thought 18901930 (Brighton: The Harvest Press

Limited, 1979 [1959]).89. See Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, pp. 521529. According to Nolte, the radical-reactionary

trait in Marxs criticism of bourgeois society cannot be missed, p. 525.90. It may be stated, that the dialectic approach itself allowed Communism to assume an optimistic

view of the future, despite how desperate the present was.91. On this central aspect of Marxism see the sharp analysis of Augusto del Noce, La non-filosofia

di Marx e il comunismo come realt politica, in Il problema dellateismo(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990),pp. 213266.

92. See Roger Griffin, Cloister or Cluster?, in this volume, p. 4393. See Hermann Lbbe, Religion and Politics in the Process of Modernisation in this volume.94. On political correctness as political religion see the critical observations of Stanley G. Payne,

Review of Le religioni della politica: Fra democrazie e totalitarismiby Emilio Gentile, in Totalitarian

Movements and Political Religions, 3/1 (2002), pp. 122130, particularly pp. 128129.95. Ulrich Schmid, Style versus Ideology,in this volume, p. 13996. It is perhaps worth remembering that until recently conscious action was a privileged domain of

historical analysis. On this admittedly old-fashioned characteristic of historiography see the verydignified statement by Rosario Romeo, Lo storicismo: eventi e strutture, in: Pietro Rossi (ed.), Lastoriografia contemporanea. Indirizzi e problemi(Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1987), pp. 349354.

97. George L. Mosse, Nazism: A Historical and Comparative Analysis of National Socialism. An Interviewwith Michael A. Ledeen(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 30. Mosses Hegelianism was also stressedin some historiographical contributions by Steven Ascheim and Giuseppe Galasso. However, allcontributors underline rather the role of dialectics in Mosses conception of history and not so muchthe role of impersonal forces in historical processes. See also Giuseppe Galasso, Il Novecento diGeorge L. Mosse e le sue origini in Nuova Storia Contemporanea,2000/1, pp. 4376; and Steven

E. Aschheim, George Mosse at 80: A Critical Laudatio, in:Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 34,1999/2, pp. 295312. I thank Karel Plessini for having supplied me with worthy references onMosses Hegelianism.

98. Gentile, Sacralisation of Politics, p. 159.99. Cf. ibid., pp. 160161.

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100.The most noticeable achievements in this field in the last decades were supplied by Hans Maier.See for example Hans Maier, Politische Religion Staatsreligion Zivilreligion politischeTheologie, in Maier (ed.), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen, vol. III, pp. 217221.

101.Zapponi spoke of the necessity of integrating the history of politics and the history of religionsreciprocally. Cf. Moro, Religione politica nellet della secolarizzazione, p. 313.

102.Cf. Burrin, Political Religion, pp. 328329.

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