Description: 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.
Brief description: Robert P. Ericksen is Kurt Mayer Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University. Ericksen is also a Fellow of the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation. He is on the editorial boards of the journals Kirchliche Zeitgeschicte (Contemporary Church History) and Association of Contemporary Church Historians. Ericksen is the author of Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (1985) and co-editor of Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (1999).
Review Quotes: '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