German Catholicism at War explores the role Roman Catholicism played in shaping the moral economy of German society during the Second World War. Drawing on previously unused source materials, German Catholicism at War examines the complex relationship between Catholics and Nazi authorities and religious responses to the war.

German Catholicism at War explores the mentalities and experiences of German Catholics during the Second World War. Taking the German Home Front, and most specifically, the Rhineland and Westphalia, as its core focus German Catholicism at War examines Catholics' responses to developments in the war, their complex relationships with the Nazi regime, and their religious practices. Drawing on a wide range of source materials stretching from personal letters and diaries to pastoral letters and Gestapo reports, Thomas Brodie breaks new ground in our understanding of the Catholic community in Germany during the Second World War.

German Catholicism at War explores the mentalities and experiences of German Catholics during the Second World War. Taking the German Home Front, and most specifically, the Rhineland and Westphalia, as its core focus German Catholicism at War examines Catholics' responses to developments in the war, their complex relationships with the Nazi regime, and their religious practices. Drawing on a wide range of source materials stretching from personal letters and diaries to pastoral letters and Gestapo reports, Thomas Brodie breaks new ground in our understanding of the Catholic community in Germany during the Second World War.

Lauren Faulkner Rossi plumbs the moral justifications of Catholic priests who served willingly and faithfully in the German army in World War II. She probes the Church’s accommodations with Hitler’s regime, its fierce but often futile attempts to preserve independence, and the shortcomings of Church doctrine in the face of total war and genocide.

A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War II In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony -- personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence -- to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War. When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war the Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict -- the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of German cities -- alter their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realize they were fighting a genocidal war? Told from the perspective of those who lived through it -- soldiers, schoolteachers, and housewives; Nazis, Christians, and Jews -- this masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs and fears of a people who embarked on and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.

Disruptive Power examines a surprising revival of faith in Catholic miracles in Germany from the 1920s to the 1960s. The book follows the dramatic stigmata of Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth and her powerful circle of followers that included theologians, Cardinals, politicians, journalists, monarchists, anti-fascists, and everyday pilgrims. Disruptive Power explores how this and other similar groups negotiated the precariousness of the Weimar Republic, the repression of the Third Reich, and the dynamic early years of the Federal Republic. Analyzing a network of rebellious traditionalists, O’Sullivan illustrates the divisions that characterized the German Catholic minority as they endured the tumultuous era of the world wars. Analyzing material from archives in Germany and the United States, Michael E. O’Sullivan investigates the unsanctioned but very popular visions in several rural towns after World War II, providing micro-histories that illuminate the impact of mystical faith on religiosity, politics, and gender norms.