Book Panel: Rebecca Carter-Chand's "Christian Internationalism and German Belonging: The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism"

The Salvation Army arrived in Germany in 1886. After existing on the margins of the German religious landscape while solidifying its role as a social service provider, it proactively shaped its public profile during the Nazi rise to power. Accepted into the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (ethnonational community) the organization continued limited operations throughout the Nazi period. It returned to its international affiliations after the war and rehabilitated its reputation. In this book, Rebecca Carter-Chand argues that the Salvation Army was able to emphasize different aspects of its identity to bolster and repair its reputation as needed in varied political contexts, highlighting the variability of Nazi practices of inclusion and exclusion.  Counter to common hypotheses that minority religious groups are more likely to show empathy to other minorities, dynamics within Nazi Germany reveal that many religious minorities sought acceptance from the state in an effort to secure self-preservation.