Complicity in the Holocaust
Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany

This book argues that enthusiasm for Hitler within churches and universities effectively gave Germans permission to participate in the Nazi regime.

Robert P. Ericksen (Author)

9781107663336, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 February 2012

280 pages
22.6 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.43 kg

'More forcefully and uncompromisingly than any other Holocaust scholar, Ericksen argues for the importance of churches and universities to Nazi-era Germans. … Ericksen's assessments of American occupation policy and post-war discourse on the role of the clergy and universities in the Holocaust are among his most crucial contributions.' Paul Bookbinder, European History Quarterly

In one of the darker aspects of Nazi Germany, churches and universities - generally respected institutions - grew to accept and support Nazi ideology. Robert P. Ericksen explains how an advanced, highly educated, Christian nation could commit the crimes of the Holocaust. This book describes how Germany's intellectual and spiritual leaders enthusiastically partnered with Hitler's regime, thus becoming active participants in the persecution of Jews, and ultimately, in the Holocaust. Ericksen also examines Germany's deeply flawed yet successful postwar policy of denazification in these institutions. Complicity in the Holocaust argues that enthusiasm for Hitler within churches and universities effectively gave Germans permission to participate in the Nazi regime.

1. Why the Holocaust matters in a century of death
2. Churches and the rise of Hitler
3. Universities and the rise of Hitler
4. Consent and collaboration: the churches through 1945
5. The intellectual arm: universities through 1945
6. Repressing and reprocessing the past: denazification and its legacy of dissimulation
7. A closer look: denazification at Göttingen University
8. Implications.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]