Christian Internationalism and German Belonging: The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism

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Rebecca Carter-Chand

Christian Internationalism and German Belonging

The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism

Rebecca Carter-Chand

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

University of Wisconsin Press
21 October 2025

European history; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Second World War; Christianity; Christian institutions & organisations

Series: George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas

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.

By: Rebecca Carter-Chand
Imprint: University of Wisconsin Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780299353902
ISBN 10: 0299353907
Series: George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 21 October 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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

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.

Reviews for Christian Internationalism and German Belonging: The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism

""Carter-Chand's long-awaited study of the Salvation Army's uncanny ability to survive absorption into the main Nazi social welfare organization, the NSV - without ever having, after 1945, to acknowledge any complicity in the Third Reich's countless evils - brilliantly explains this feat by placing the movement in the necessary longer-term and internationally comparative perspectives."" - Dagmar Herzog, City University of New York ""Carter-Chand tells the riveting story of an international religious minority and its members' quest to adapt to modern German society, including their startling and disturbing efforts to conform to the racial norms of the Third Reich. Eloquently written and conceived, this is a brilliant, eye-opening work of judicious scholarship."" - Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University