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Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. By Doris L. Bergen. (Chapel Hill:The University of North Carolina Press. 1996. Pp. xv, 341. $39.95 hardcover; $16.95 paperback.)
In post-World War I Germany there were a good number of groups within the Protestant Land Churches "preaching religious renewal along nationalist, volkisch lines" (p. 5). Among the strongest of these movements was one in the Land Church of Thuringia led by two young pastors, Siegfried Leffler and Julius Leutheuser. Other groups joined, and their movement came to be called German Christians, a name often held to have been suggested by Hitler.The church elections which took place in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, gave the German Christians a golden opportunity to gain control of many congregations and...