How the German culture wars shaped Hitler's worldview

What is it about?

Adolf Hitler frequently used the term worldview (Weltanschauung) to refer to the ideology of National Socialism. Historians have since sought to explain this worldview as an expression of what Hitler actually believed, or alternatively, as something he constructed to win adherents. This article argues instead that Hitler's use of worldview was constrained by the existing definitions of the term. These were shaped by the "culture wars" between Protestants and Catholics and between secularists and Christianity since the mid nineteenth century. Yet, precisely because the culture wars flared up again in the interwar period, worldview became a key political topic of the day and the Nazis were able to utilize worldview politics to curry favor with conservatives voters. Nazi worldview, they hoped, would unite Protestants and Catholics against Jews and atheists.

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Why is it important?

This article is important because it prompts a rethinking of our approach to HItler's relationship to religion. Rather than focusing on what Hitler believed when he spoke of worldview, we should think first of the existing field of power relations in which worldviews were situated. From that vantage point, we can see where Hitler innovated and where he sought to mobilize existing tropes, which had been developed in the nineteenth century Kulturkampf.

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