The Holocaust Historiography Project

'Reductio ad Hitlerum'

“The propagators of the new religion of the holocaust are not actually interested in the sufferings of the Jews but in the destruction of every good thing that can be tarred with the Nazi brush: Lutheran and Catholic Christianity, patriotism and the affection for one’s own people and traditions, conventional morality, traditional art and literature.

“Leo Strauss called it the reductio ad Hitlerum. If Hitler liked neoclassical art, that means that classicism in every form is Nazi; if Hitler wanted to strengthen the German family, that makes the traditional family (and its defenders) Nazi; if Hitler spoke of the “nation” or the “folk,” then any invocation of nationality, ethnicity, or even folkishness is Nazi …”

— Thomas Fleming, editor, Chronicles (Rockford, Illinois), May 2000, p. 11.


Bibliographic information
Author: Thomas Fleming
Title: 'Reduction ad Hitlerum'
Source: The Journal for Historical Review
Date: September/October 2000
Issue: Volume 19 number 5
Location: page 24
ISSN: 0195-6752
Attribution: “Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA.”
Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.