ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Review Article: Academic and Ecclesiastical Complicity in the Third Reich

By Victoria J. Barnett, Director of Church Relations, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Robert P. Ericksen, Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Jens Gundlach, Heinz Brunotte 1896-1984: Anpassung des Evangeliums an die NS-Diktatur. Eine biographische Studie (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 2010).

The issue of complicity has become a major focus of Holocaust historiography in recent years, fueled by the research of historians like Christopher Browning, Robert Gellatelly, Peter Hayes and many others. While the very word “complicity” connotes a more secondary, passive role, the work of these scholars has documented the extent to which complicity was in fact an active and participatory process, particularly with regard to the persecution of the Jews. Germans from every walk of life participated in and benefited from these measures. Continue reading →