About the Author

Victoria Barnett is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, New York, and a professional writer whose articles have appeared in Christianity and Crisis, The Christian Century, The Witness, and the news bulletins of Religious News Service. She lived in Germany for 13 years and now lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

"The book offers a thorough and insightful picture of the churches in Nazi Germany. Combining the personal memories drawn from oral histories with archival research of church documents, Barnett has written a masterful work of history. Most important, the book is written in a vivid style that brings to life the complex moral dilemmas of the Third Reich."--Susannah Heschel, Case Western Reserve University
"Conveying an accurate portrait and understanding of the German church struggle under National Socialism has proven to be extraordinarily complicated....Victoria Barnett is singularly well prepared to do this. She has written an unusually accurate, sophisticated, and vivid book about the German church struggle...a genuinely absorbing and readable work."--Eberhard Bethge, biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Fascinating and insightful....The book is neither hagiographic nor a martyrology. Instead, using interviews conducted during the 1980s with some of those Protestants who did protest against Hitler, Barnett renders the much greater service of helping to illuminate the cultural, political, and religious considerations responsible for German Protestant hesitancy to resist National Socialism."--The Princeton Seminary Bulletin
"There are many reasons to read this book with care. It describes with a freshness of detail a crucial period in the history of the church, a period we neglect at our peril. Moreover, the author has not only sketched out the story of the rise and fall of Hitler and the response of the Confessing church but has also interviewed fifty of the survivors--a gathering of oral histories that are instructive, poignant, and powerful. The attention she gives to women
throughout the entire church struggle is a new and welcome detail....In addition to all the new historical and psychological material, the book gives us new insight and even courage to face our own
temptations to idolatry."--Theology Today
"The book offers a thorough and insightful picture of the churches in Nazi Germany. Combining the personal memories drawn from oral histories with archival research of church documents, Barnett has written a masterful work of history. Most important, the book is written in a vivid style that brings to life the complex moral dilemmas of the Third Reich."--Susannah Heschel, Case Western Reserve University
"Conveying an accurate portrait and understanding of the German church struggle under National Socialism has proven to be extraordinarily complicated....Victoria Barnett is singularly well prepared to do this. She has written an unusually accurate, sophisticated, and vivid book about the German church struggle...a genuinely absorbing and readable work."--Eberhard Bethge, biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer