Choice 评论

Shortly after his election as Reichkanzler in 1933, Hitler informed a group of Methodist women that his mandate for the Third Reich (politically, "Third Empire" but religiously, "Third Kingdom" as rooted in German Trinitarian pietism) was "From God's word." Arguably, centuries of Christian teachings of alienation from and contempt for Jewish people contributed to the German Christian hatred of Jews before, during, and after the Shoah. Why, how, and who in the Christian support of Hitler's war against the Jews, and what we can learn about German Christian (mainly Catholic and Lutheran) culpability in the near total destruction of European Jewry, are the focus of this anthology. Ericksen (Pacific Lutheran Univ.) and Heschel (Dartmouth College) revise previously published essays; the former in exposing the role played by influential German Protestant theologians and the latter on Protestant antisemitic propaganda. Other chapters by seasoned American and German scholars talk of various degrees of accommodation with National Socialism played by ecclesiastical movements (Deutsche Christen, Confessing Church, and German Catholic Church) and revered Church personalities (Pius XII and Dietrich Bonhoeffer). The final chapter assesses progress or lack of it made to contra-Judaeos preaching and teaching in post-Holocaust German theology. An important contribution to a neglected field in Shoah education. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Z. Garber; Los Angeles Valley College