Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The "Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939- The Definitive English-Language Edition of the "Kulturkampf ... History of Religious and Political Pluralism)

by Richard Bonney (Editor)

Contemporaries and historians have found it difficult to interpret the ambiguous relationship between National Socialism and Christianity. Both the Catholic and Protestant Churches tended to agree with National Socialists in their authoritarianism, their attacks on socialism and communism, and their campaign against the Versailles Treaty; but the doctrinal position of the Churches could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or a domestic agenda involving the complete subservience of Church to State. Important sections of the Nazi Party sought the complete extirpation of Christianity and its substitution by a purely racial religion, but considerations of expediency made it impossible for the National Socialist leadership to adopt this radical anti-Christian stance as official policy.
The Kulturkampf Newsletters, which have not appeared in English since the 1930s, were produced by German Catholic exiles in France. They scrupulously document the tensions between various strands of Nazi policy, and the nature of the policy eventually this was to reduce the Churches’ influence in all areas of public life through the use of every available means, yet without provoking the difficulties – diplomatic as well as domestic – which an openly declared war of extermination might have caused.

578 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2009

About the author

Dr. Richard P. Bonney was an English historian and priest.

Bonney was appointed Lecturer in European History at the University of Reading in 1971 and Professor of Modern History at the University of Leicester in 1984, where he stayed until his retirment in 2006. He was the founder of the Society for the Study of French History in the UK and the founding Editor of its Journal, French History, between 1987 and 2001.

Bonney published numerous publications on French history and European fiscal history. His first book, a revision of his Ph.D. thesis, "Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661", was published in 1978.

In 1997, Bonney was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. His work focused on religious pluralism, and also on Jihad.

Bonner received his undergraduate degree and his Ph.D. from Oxford University.

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