Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Jenna Pittman
Guest: Brandon Bloch, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Book: Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy (Harvard UP, 2025)
Date: September 11, 2025

Overview

Today's episode delves into Reinventing Protestant Germany, a groundbreaking book that challenges the dominant narratives about religion, nationalism, and democracy in post-WWII Germany. Author Brandon Bloch discusses how Protestant churches and their leaders navigated their Nazi-entangled past while shaping the new democratic order in West Germany. The conversation blends cultural, political, and religious history, offering a rich, nuanced look at the transformation of German Protestantism and its enduring legacy in shaping German society and politics.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Project and Author’s Background

• Personal Motivation: Bloch’s initial interest emerged during his time teaching English and working for a Jewish organization in Berlin (2011-12), where he observed ongoing religious tensions in supposedly secular Germany.

  "The narrative that we tend to have about, you know, the United States being a kind of outlier among Western democracies as a highly religious society versus Germany and Europe being exclusively secular seemed not to be quite matching up." — Brandon Bloch [04:12]

• Academic Context: Continued interest shaped by graduate studies under Peter Gordon, focusing on secularism and its complexities within the German context.

2. Main Arguments and Historiographical Intervention

• Central Thesis: Protestant churches played a surprisingly vital role in promoting constitutional and human rights in post-war West Germany, despite prior Nazi collaborations.

  "The book argues that the Protestant churches play a really important role in shaping some of West Germany's earliest movements for the expansion of constitutional and human rights, which is surprising given the entanglements of the churches with the Nazi regime." — Brandon Bloch [06:49]

• Beyond Reckoning: Bloch posits that Protestant transformation post-1945 stemmed less from moral reckoning and more from the strategic recasting of their own traditions.

• Generational Approach: Focus on leaders socialized during the Weimar era, whose experience with Protestant nationalism informed both support for and subsequent reorientation away from authoritarianism.

• New Take on Secularism: The German Protestant experience defies the linear secularization model, with churches maintaining unique institutional power even as religious observance waned.

3. Protestantism, Catholicism, and Democratic Transition

• Historiography's Gaps: Previous studies focused mainly on Catholicism and its ties to Christian Democracy, overlooking Protestant-specific developments.

• Integrating Religion and Democracy: The book situates Protestant activism as both constructive for democracy but also exclusionary in its conception of citizenship.

  "Even movements that were pushing for the expansion of constitutional rights or the sort of fullest realization of the promise of the Basic law could be quite exclusionary in their outlook." — Brandon Bloch [12:53]

4. Reexamining Protestant-Nazi Relations and the Myth of Resistance

• Resistance Narratives Deconstructed: Traditional historiography overemphasized Protestant resistance via figures like Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church. Recent scholarship—and Bloch’s book—offers a more critical view, exposing widespread complicity and antisemitism.

  "I'm showing how key elements of Protestant nationalist ideology, a certain antisemitism, hostility toward a pluralist democracy, and desire for authoritarian leadership all prime many members... to sort of join up with the Nazi party or be sympathetic to it early on." — Brandon Bloch [17:04]

• Postwar Utility of Resistance Myths: The persistence of resistance myths—though exaggerated—became a tool for church leaders to reposition themselves as democratic defenders post-1945.

5. Who is 'Protestant Germany'? Leadership vs. Laity

• Broad Church Membership: Automatic state-church membership made Protestantism a majority identity, disconnecting "membership" from "active engagement."
• Diversity within Protestantism: Active laity often leaned more conservative than leadership, and not all parishioners supported the church’s new direction.

  "In Germany, the church dues are collected through the state tax system and people have to sort of opt out of the church rather than opt in." — Brandon Bloch [22:28]

6. Denazification and Democratization: A Tense Relationship

• Protestant Opposition to Allied Denazification: Church leaders saw denazification as punitive, unchristian, and antidemocratic, often advocating for the rights of the accused more than the victims.

  "Denazification was not truly based on... Christian ideas of kind of grace and reconciliation. But instead this was simply a kind of victor's justice... Both sides had committed terrible crimes during the war." — Brandon Bloch [27:08]

• International Dimensions: Protestant resistance to denazification found allies in the U.S. and Western Europe, as Cold War imperatives required West German reintegration.

7. Impact of German Division

• Demographic Shifts and Divided Loyalties: After 1945, the majority of Protestants were in East Germany; the West lost its Protestant supermajority and organizational coherence.

• Internal Divisions over Neutrality and Rearmament: Opinions on reunification (neutral vs. NATO-aligned) deeply split the Protestant community in the 1950s.

• Memorable Moment: The 1965 Protestant memorandum supporting recognition of the German-Polish border was unprecedented and unified both progressive and conservative church factions.

8. Protestantism in East and West: Diverging Paths

• Church Within Socialism: East German churches adopted a doctrine of loyalty to the socialist state in 1958, a move hotly debated among West German Protestants.

• Debate on Church-State Relations: Both anti-communist and pro-dialogue camps increasingly employed the language of democracy to justify their positions.

  "Both sides are increasingly appealing to a language of democracy." — Brandon Bloch [43:05]

9. Enduring Legacies in Contemporary German Politics

• Continuity of Protestant Influence: Protestant leaders remain prominent in German politics; the office of president is traditionally Protestant.
• Churches’ Stance on Islam and the AfD: Protestant and Catholic churches have publicly denounced the far-right AfD, but still tend to frame their engagement with Islam in terms of integrating Muslims into a Protestant-dominated normative framework.

  "The Protestant church toward, you know, embracing its place in a democracy... But on the other hand, interreligious dialogue is frequently framed by the churches less as a project of a sort of mutual transformation and learning from one another, but rather of integrating the minority into the values of the majority society." — Brandon Bloch [45:45]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Protestant Church’s Surprising Role:

  "Protestant churches play a really important role in shaping some of West Germany's earliest movements for the expansion of constitutional and human rights, which is surprising given the entanglements of the churches with the Nazi regime." — Brandon Bloch [06:49]

• On Resistance Narratives:

  "The illusory resistance narrative also becomes, after the war, productive in some sense for the church's reorientation toward democracy." — Brandon Bloch [18:30]

• On Postwar Church Membership:

  "There's a difference between being merely a church member versus being sort of actively engaged, which is something that my, you know, the people I'm looking at were quite concerned about." — Brandon Bloch [25:31]

• On the Enduring Impact:

  "Those older ideas, I think, are still with us... There is this move toward a kind of inclusion and anti racism. But on the other hand, interreligious dialogue is frequently framed... as integrating the minority into the values of the majority society." — Brandon Bloch [44:50, 45:45]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:51–05:17]: Bloch’s background and origins of the book
• [06:49–10:53]: Book’s arguments, Protestantism’s evolving role, and historiography
• [12:09–15:13]: Integration of religion and democracy; Protestant movements as inclusionary and exclusionary
• [15:46–19:46]: Protestantism, Nazi ideology, and the evolution of resistance narratives
• [20:26–25:42]: Defining “Protestant Germany” (leadership vs. laity)
• [26:27–31:13]: Protestant perspectives on denazification and democratization
• [31:58–38:32]: The effects of German division and intra-church debates
• [39:23–44:25]: East vs. West Protestantism; “church within socialism” and ongoing influence of democratic language
• [44:50–49:54]: Contemporary legacies, Protestantism’s influence on current politics, integration debates
• [49:54–53:20]: Bloch's next project: Expellees, memory, and human rights

Conclusion

Jenna Pittman and Brandon Bloch offer a far-reaching conversation that bridges the gap between postwar history and present debates about religion, democracy, and national identity in Germany. Bloch’s book reframes the role of Protestant churches, not just as historical actors but as enduring influences on the shape of German democracy. This episode is essential listening (or reading) for those interested in religious studies, European history, democratization, and contemporary German politics.