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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Brandon Bloch, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Description: Germany’s Protestant churches, longtime strongholds of nationalism and militarism, largely backed the Nazi dictatorship that took power in 1933. For many Protestant leaders, pastors, and activists, national and religious revival were one and the same. Even those who opposed the regime tended toward antidemocratic attitudes. By the 1950s, however, Church leaders in West Germany had repositioned themselves as prominent advocates for constitutional democracy and human rights.
Brandon Bloch reveals how this remarkable ideological shift came to pass, following the cohort of theologians, pastors, and lay intellectuals who spearheaded the postwar transformation of their church. Born around the tu...