Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to al-Qaedaby Michael Burleigh HarperCollins £25, pp576
In years to come, Michael Burleigh's two-volume study of secular hubris since the French Revolution may well be judged to be the most significant work of history published this decade. If so, it will be as much for its prescience and steely moral certainty as its formidable grasp of the fine grain of the past, since Burleigh clearly believes that his moment as a polemicist has arrived.


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Following his evisceration of 19th-century utopianism in Earthly Powers, Sacred Causes sees him resume his task in the aftermath of the Great War, with the same resolute partiality. While mystic charlatans such as Ludwig Christian Haeusser, whose nationalist ranting provided the context for Hitler's early career, are rightly dismissed witheringly, the claims by the Catholic party of Weimar Germany that its service in unpopular coalition governments was 'a form of sacrifice for the fatherland' are accepted without the slightest scepticism. The pattern persists, but soon enough, the vicious hypocrisies of the totalitarian regimes overwhelm such petty issues of preference.
Burleigh's ostensible thesis is that communism, fascism and Nazism appropriated the form and function of religion and suppressed their rivals in hideous orgies of anticlericalism, the better to exploit the unfulfilled spiritual cravings of the masses. He brings a daunting weight of scholarship to bear on the idea and telling detail abounds, including the icon painters shot by the Bolsheviks for deceiving the devout by their use of luminous paint. Surprisingly, Burleigh derides those cultural historians who study the aesthetics of totalitarianism as cowards and fellow travellers. For him, the lure of postmodernism is an ethical issue.
Although Sacred Causes is strident in its opinions, its central claim remains coyly implicit: that mankind will always be dangerously adrift without the moral authority of the Vatican to anchor it and Western civilisation is in jeopardy without the solitary bulwark that the Catholic church can provide. Clearly, this is hardly a credible proposition while the Vatican's relationship with the Nazis remains in question and Burleigh's vigorous defence of its integrity lies at the heart of this book.
He presents the case persuasively, invoking Cardinal Pacelli's denunciation of the Nazis when Vatican Secretary, and his conspiratorial contact with the Allies after becoming Pius XII. But pragmatism is Burleigh's watchword: what were the realistic options for a pope faced, for example, with a Catholic minority in Germany who were hostage to Nazi malice? His exoneration of the church is premised on what he describes, elsewhere, as its 'spiritual goals, which took precedence over evanescent temporal governments'. Could the promise of a 1,000-year Reich be viewed as a temporary inconvenience, so long as the church endured? Or could the Stalinist occupation of eastern Europe be seen as a spur to Christian renewal? Burleigh appears to believe so, but not for any lack of empathy with the oppressed.
In one crisp metaphor, Burleigh evokes the spiritual discipline required of those living in totalitarian regimes: 'People had to keep the political equivalent of a Bach keyboard variation ringing clearly in their heads, to blot out the ambient ideological Muzak with its bogus messages of happiness, goodwill and progress.'
Burleigh is a fine and contentious writer and a hugely accomplished historian, but he is also such a good hater that his vituperation reads like some form of primal-scream therapy for life as the only conservative on the campus. His writing is seasoned with rancour against a parade of unworthy bugbears, from the Irish (cowboy builders, duplicitous ingrates, naive rock star missionaries) to academics of the 'Left University' (destined to become sexual vampires in their search for eternal youth). Sadly, his wit is as likely to alienate as to entertain and risks leaving him preaching to the pulpit.
Sacred Causes offers a bracing challenge to secular nostrums in an age whose instabilities are increasingly apparent. Recoil as one might at some of Burleigh's convictions, he has charted deep currents in these two books and his erudition renders chilling the advice that those whose 'views are irreconcilable with our civilisation ... should take the opportunity to leave before Europe's history repeats itself'. Whether this work is to be remembered as a summons to Catholic piety or a wake-up call to Enlightenment values should be the subject of ferocious debate.
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