Christian Internationalism and German Belonging

The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism

Rebecca Carter-Chand (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

272 Seiten

2025
University of Wisconsin Press (Verlag)
978-0-299-35390-2 (ISBN)

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Ever since the Salvation Army, a British Protestant social welfare organization, arrived in Germany in 1886, it has navigated overlapping national and international identities. After decades of existing on the margins of the German religious landscape while solidifying its role as a social service provider, the Salvation Army proactively shaped its public profile during the Nazi rise to power. Accepted into the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (ethnonational community) and made an auxiliary member of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), the organization continued limited operations throughout the Nazi period before returning to its international affiliations in the immediate postwar period, thereby bypassing denazification and rehabilitating its reputation.

In this groundbreaking reevaluation, Rebecca Carter-Chand argues that the Salvation Army was able to emphasize different aspects of its identity to bolster and repair its reputation as needed in varied political contexts, highlighting the variability of Nazi practices of inclusion and exclusion. In that way, the organization was similar to other Christian groups in Germany. Counter to common hypotheses that minority religious groups are more likely to show empathy to other minorities, dynamics within Nazi Germany reveal that many religious minorities sought acceptance from the state in an effort to secure self-preservation.

Rebecca Carter-Chand is the director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is the co-editor of Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars. Her research focuses on Christianity in Nazi Germany and aid and rescue during the Holocaust.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The Transplantation into Imperial Germany
2 World War I and the Limits of Internationalism
3 Goodness and Corruption in the Weimar Imagination
4 Negotiating Charity from Weimar to Nazism
5 Finding Belonging in the Volksgemeinschaft
At War Again
Conclusion
Appendix A. Select List of Artistic Works from Germany That Portray the Salvation Army
Appendix B. Select List of Artistic Works Outside Germany That Portray the Salvation Army
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	22.10.2025
Reihe/Serie	George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas
Zusatzinfo	24 b&w photos, 7 tables
Verlagsort	Wisconsin
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
	Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
ISBN-10	0-299-35390-7 / 0299353907
ISBN-13	978-0-299-35390-2 / 9780299353902
Zustand	Neuware