Book Review – Christian Counter-Attack: Europe’s Churches Against Nazism

How to stand up to totalitarian paganism 101

---

An opening note. I initially wrote & posted this book review on January 26, 2022. I had read this book in the context of lockdowns and was thinking about how Christians can and should speak to the powers that be. This book really affected me alongside a book by the Dutch pastor Hermanus Knoop entitled A Theatre in Dachau. In this book I am reviewing today you will find a summary of the spiritual resistance to Nazi paganism across Europe. Bonhoeffer was not the only one to resist, nevertheless, the Christian protest was not as vocal as it should have been. One wonders how the compromises of our fathers in Europe in the 1940s affects the witness of the church today and feeds into our current compromises. Nevertheless, this is not a book about compromise. It is about the segment of the church (whether Roman Catholic or Protestant or Eastern Orthodox) that was struggling to remain faithful during a very evil age in world history. I hope & pray that this book review will be an encouragement to you in your reflection on how to stand for Christ in evil times.

---

The book ”Christian Counter-Attack: Europe’s Churches Against Nazism” was written by four men to relay a factual account of the response of the churches across Europe to the invasion during WWII by the Nazi Germans. It is written in 1943 and so provides a unique perspective on the War since it was written during the War.

The book covers the Roman Catholic and Protestant response in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France. It also covers the response of the Eastern Orthodox churches in Yugoslavia, Greece, and occupied Russia. Finally it touches on Italy, Finland, and Hungary. It concludes with a few questions about the future.