Doris L. Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender, and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War II and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. Her publications include War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, now going into its fourth edition, with translations into Polish and Ukrainian. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has taught in Canada, the USA, Germany, Poland, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
'Beautifully and absorbingly written, Between God and Hitler draws the reader in, to deliver the gut punch of the role of Wehrmacht chaplains, but also to compellingly explore that shifting role with broad perspective and extraordinary nuance, delivering fresh and important insight into the functioning of Nazism. Worthy of the widest readership.' Belinda Davis, author of Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin 'Doris Bergen's eagerly-awaited magnum opus draws on searing testimony of Holocaust survivors and the banal homilies of German military chaplains to show us what it meant to preach Christian virtue to the soldiers waging their war of annihilation in the Soviet Union. Far from opening up a fault line between notions of 'just war' and genocide, sermons and spiritual guidance were an essential part of mobilizing Germans and the military chaplains were proud of their service to the very end. This is an extraordinary work. Bergen leads us through some of the most challenging moral issues raised by the Holocaust and she is the most historically and morally enriching of guides.' Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45 'A powerful and sophisticated work by a gifted historian that expertly details how military chaplains embraced martial traditions and the ethics of 'warrior Christianity' to become moral enablers of the Nazi regime. Serving God and Hitler proved a fraught moral battlefield for chaplains whose fealty to their Fuhrer overshadowed principles of faith and conscience.' Edward Westermann, author of Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany