A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past

Abstract

In this useful and informative study, Matthew Hockenos examines German Protestants' confrontations with the Nazi past in the early postwar period. Following an entire series of recent studies on postwar memory, Hockenos, too, disproves the long-held assumption that postwar Germans simply repressed the past. Instead, Hockenos unearths a comprehensive and often controversial Protestant discourse about the Nazi past. To be sure, Protestant memory, as this study makes clear, did not entail an “honest, open postwar discussion of the church's complacency and complicity in the face of Nazis' illegal, inhumane, and unchristian policies” (p. 10). Yet the significance of this book does not primarily consist of exposing rather unsurprising deficiencies of Protestant memories. More importantly, it reveals the considerable internal disagreements of a “divided Church” about the Nazi past, and it demonstrates the crucial significance of long-standing theological and doctrinal differences for shaping Protestant responses to the Nazi past.