Richard Steigmann-Gall is Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, and was the Director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010. He received his BA in history in 1989 and MA in European History in 1992 from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in European History in 1999 from the University of Toronto. In 2003, he published The Holy Reich through Cambridge University Press, which explored Nazi conceptions of Christianity. The Holy Reich argues that the Nazi Party was not anti-Christian as popularly understood, nor was it in any sense a paganist movement. Exploring the concept of positive Christianity, Steigmann-Gall writes that many in the Nazi Party leadership believed themselves and their movement to be inherently Christian. He argues that point 24 of the Nazi Party Program of 1920—which states that "the party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession"—was according to Steigmann-Gall, "more than a political ploy." It was "central to the inner logic of their worldview." Steigmann-Gall also underscores the fact that some anti-Christian party members fought to "expunge Christian influence from Nazism" and the movement became "increasingly hostile to the churches". The Holy Reich has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It has been reviewed widely, culminating in a symposium on the book published by the Journal of Contemporary History in 2007. In a 2003 review of the book, historian John S. Conway wrote that Steigmann-Gall made an "almost convincing case" and was "right to point out that there never was a consensus among the leading Nazis about the relationship between the Party and Christianity" but "Nazi Christianity was eviscerated of all the most essential orthodox dogmas. What remained was the vaguest impression combined with anti-Jewish prejudice." On September 30, 2009 Steigmann-Gall was featured on the History Channel in a sensationalist documentary discussing Hitler's religious views. More recently, Steigmann-Gall has turned his attention to the question of fascism in the United States. He published a scholarly article, “Star-Spangled Fascism”, in the journal Social History, that explores the traditions of American historical writing, and the ways in which the Americanfar right in the period between World Wars I and II can be called fascist in spite of these traditions. And for the last several years, he has turned to public commentary on the question of fascism in contemporary American politics. His articles on this can be found in Tikkun Magazine, the Huffington Post, Politico, and Jacobin.
