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Following Germany’s defeat in 1945 and occupation by the Allies, the German Protestant Church took on critical social and political roles as a purveyor of humanitarian aid and a mediator between the German population and Allied forces. This presentation will examine the fraught interactions of German Lutheran pastors with their American Protestant counterparts and U.S.-based faith organizations, which helped pave the way for the German Protestant Church’s evolution from its historic association with German nationalism to a new postwar orientation toward peace, human rights, and democracy. At the same time, encounters with American pastors enabled German church leaders to gain international support of their own, self-serving narratives of the war, which often misconstrued the extent and nature of Christian resistance against the Nazi regime.
The talk will address the role played by U.S. pastors and theologians in supporting the German church’s campaign against the Allied denazification and war crimes trials programs.
Brandon Bloch is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His book, Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy, was published by Harvard University Press in August 2025.