Focusing on the often-neglected international dimension of the church struggle during the Nazi years, McKinney's deeply researched volume places that fateful history in its broadest context.
German Protestants in the Third Reich did not stand alone. The German Protestant Church struggle was an international phenomenon. International Protestants monitored German church developments under National Socialism with concern from the moment that Adolf Hitler assumed power. German church politics developed under the gaze of the watching world.
Foreign observers, however, were not mere spectators. They often intervened. International Protestants perceived warning signs (sometimes with apocalyptic significance) within German church political incidents. They saw threats to religious freedom in Germany as a peril to religious liberty everywhere, and many within the international ecumenical movement touted transnational Christian cooperation as the surest guarantor of world peace. As such, they endeavored to influence German church politics and to retain German participation in the global ecumenical community. From 1933 to 1937 the interpretations of--and interventions by--international Protestants played a major role in the experiences of German Protestants.
This volume not only tells a compelling story. It also demonstrates the profound role that international opinion and intervention played in German domestic church politics from the National Socialist rise to power in 1933 through the forced withdrawal of German Protestants from the global Protestant community in the summer of 1937.
