British Christians and the Third Reich


Book Description

In this ground-breaking study, Andrew Chandler examines the complex relationship between religions and politics, church and state, and national and international politics during the period that witnessed the rise and fall of the Third Reich. He explores these dilemmas within the context of the tumultuous years when many British Christian confronted and challenged the Nazi regime. Chandler shows how many of the key moral questions which came to define the modern world now crystallized: What view should the Christian take of the political state? How should the claims of dictators and democrats be judged? How should the Church protest against injustice – and what can be done about it? How should peace be preserved and when should war be declared? How should a just war be justly fought? It is a history which places the Third Reich firmly in an international perspective, revealing the moral arguments and debates that Nazism provoked across the democracies. It is also an important study of the many ways in which men and women outside Germany intervened, protested, and campaigned against the Hitler regime and sought to support its critics and its victims.




The Church of England and the Holocaust


Book Description

Explores the Church of England's understanding of the Third Reich and its impact on the reactions to and memory of the Holocaust in Britain. Argues that the Anglican Church did not engage with the Third Reich through the prism of the persecution of the Jews. English Christians commonly perceived Nazism as significant through its anti-Christianity, as an attack on Christian culture, and not through its antisemitism. In the 1930s the Church was opposed to war, but when Nazi antisemitism became much more pronounced after 1938, the Church incorporated this persecution into its image of Nazism as anti-Christian. While there was some concern for Jewish victims (especially on the part of George Bell and William Temple), particular concern was expressed for the German Christian victims of totalitarianism. This led the Anglican Church, after the war, to favor reconstruction of West Germany as a buffer against communism and anti-Christianity. The Church objected to war crimes trials as being opposed to "Christian forgiveness" vs. the "Jewish" value of vengeance, a view which sought to reduce the significance of Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust.




Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity


Book Description

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 adopted: 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.










Christian Faith in Dark Times


Book Description

This notable study of Christian faith and how it functions in "dark times" reveals the thoughts and actions of six leading theologians of the Weimar Republic/Third Reich period--Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Friedrich Gogarten--and what prompted them to either resist or support the Nazi movement. Jack Forstman examines the theological values of these theologians and considers the interconnectedness among them; their easy, uneasy, and shifting alliances with each other; and the controversies that arose within their circle. His book provides a fascinating glimpse into an important moment in the history of Christian theology. It will stimulate contemporary Christians to think how they might recognize the demonic in society and resist it.




This Christian Cause


Book Description




God & Churchill


Book Description

When Winston Churchill was a boy of sixteen, he already had a vision for his purpose in life. “This country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion . . . I shall be in command of the defences of London . . . it will fall to me to save the Capital, to save the Empire.” It was a most unlikely prediction. Perceived as a failure for much of his life, Churchill was the last person anyone would have expected to rise to national prominence as prime minister and influence the fate of the world during World War II. But Churchill persevered, on a mission to achieve his purpose. God and Churchill tells the remarkable story of how one man, armed with belief in his divine destiny, embarked on a course to save Christian civilization when Adolf Hitler and the forces of evil stood opposed. It traces the personal, political, and spiritual path of one of history’s greatest leaders and offers hope for our own violent and troubled times. More than a spiritual biography, God and Churchill is also a deeply personal quest. Written by Jonathan Sandys (Churchill’s great-grandson) and former White House staffer Wallace Henley, God and Churchill explores Sandys’ intense search to discover his great-grandfather—and how it changed his own destiny forever.







The Third Reich and the Christian Churches


Book Description

A documentary account of Christian resistance and complicity during the Nazi era.--cover.