The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany, 1945-1980

Mark Edward Ruff is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at St Louis University, Missouri, and the author of The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar Germany, 1945–1965 (2005), and co-editor of Die Katholische Kirche im Dritten Reich (2011). He is the recent recipient of research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation.

'This is a timely and fascinating account of how, under pressure from Pius XII, the Catholic Church in Germany propagated a narrative of Catholic martyrdom in the Third Reich, and in so doing ignited a controversy over the Catholic role in Nazi Germany that lasted for more than three decades and in which both the Church's defenders and detractors distorted its actual record in the Third Reich for reasons of state and ideology. Armed with an impressive mastery of both the primary sources and the enormous volume of often contentious secondary literature this conflict engendered, Ruff reviews the way in which the Church's efforts to whitewash its Nazi past provoked a vigorous counterattack from Social Democrats and liberals. But perhaps the most impressive aspect of Ruff's work is the objectivity and empathy with which he reconstructs a conflict that excited the passions of those on both sides of the debate and that directly challenged the Church's moral authority in postwar Germany.' Larry Eugene Jones, Canisius College, New York

• Introduction; 1. The first postwar anthologies, 1945–9; 2. The battles over the reichskonkordat, 1945–57; 3. Generation gaps and the Böckenförde controversy; 4. Gordon Zahn versus the German hierarchy; 5. The storm over the deputy; 6. Guenter Lewy and the battle for sources; 7. The Repgen–Scholder controversy; Conclusions.