Religion under Siege, Vol. 2: Protestant, Orthodox and Muslim Communities in Occupied Europe (1939-1950) (review)

This collection, like its companion volume Religion under Siege: The Roman Catholic Church in Occupied Europe (1939-1950; reviewed in ante, 96 [2010], 384-86), is part of a larger project sponsored by the European Science Foundation on "The Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Occupation in Europe." It covers an assortment of religious communities in eastern, northwestern, and southeastern Europe in the years during and after World War II. Two chapters deal with the largely Orthodox Ukraine under Nazi and Soviet occupation; other chapters treat important Balkan religious groups (the Serbian and Greek Orthodox, and Bosnian Muslims); and the rest cover Protestant communities (Lutheran and Reformed) in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium.

Mikhail Shkarovskij and Katrin Boeckh both compare Nazi and Soviet church policy in Ukraine in their contributions. They show how both Nazis and Soviets sought to use the Orthodox churches for their own ends. Although ideologically hostile toward these churches, both regimes made concessions for tactical reasons, observing and reacting to each other's policies. Both authors also show how Germany's policy involved a complex overlapping of civil, military, party, and other jurisdictions, and Shkarovskij makes clear that Hitler and Stalin both took religious policy very seriously. From 1943 to 1948, the Soviets were heavily involved in church politics—even including unrealized and extremely ambitious plans to hold an ecumenical council and transform Moscow into a sort of Orthodox Vatican. Readers learn how readily Orthodox church leaders, even some outside the Soviet bloc, let themselves be used as tools of Soviet propaganda and policy. Boeckh, for example, cites examples of Orthodox bishops and clergy praising Stalin, even calling him "The Greatest Friend of Believers" (p. 123). Both authors note that the Nazis and Soviets shared a hostility to the Catholic Church. Both regimes worked during the occupation to curtail Catholic influence in the region, and after the war the Soviets liquidated the Uniates and expelled the Polish Catholics. Shkarovskij, however, while noting a readiness on the part of Moscow to settle the "Uniate Question" after the war in a way acceptable to Rome, seems to imply that Pope Pius XII failed to understand Soviet "signals" and missed an opportunity to normalize relations with the Soviet Union. In fact, given the sort of regimes Moscow was intent on establishing in Eastern Europe (especially Poland), the pope understood all too well what the Soviets were doing.

In the chapters on the Balkans, Radmila Radić and Grigorios Psallidas deal with the Serbian and Greek Orthodox churches respectively. Radić shows how the Serbian Orthodox Church navigated a complex and challenging situation—the loss of its position in prewar Yugoslavia, eight distinct occupation zones, a civil war pitting nationalist Serb Chetniks against communist Partisans, and the ultimate communist takeover of their country. The Greeks, as Psallidas shows, faced a similar situation—division into multiple occupation zones; a communist insurgency and civil war, and a monarchy in exile. Valeria Heuberger's contribution shows the great variety of Muslim responses in Bosnia to the complex wartime situation. Muslims sheltered Jews, joined Chetnik and Partisan resistance movements, and organized their own self-defense militias. They also joined Bosnian Muslim units of the Nazi SS, for which Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem who was living in exile in Germany, served as recruiter. After the war, under the Yugoslav communist regime of Josip Broz Tito, Muslims faced considerable repression until the mid-1950s, when Yugoslavia joined the Non-Aligned Movement and it became in Tito's interest to portray Yugoslavia as a great friend of the Islamic world.

Three chapters in this collection examine Protestants in northwestern Europe. Anders Jarlert surveys the churches in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, treating them comparatively and in a broad historical context. Drawing from scholars such as Hartmut Lehmann, Olaf...