God's Marshall Plan American Protestants and the Struggle for the Soul of Europe

God's Marshall Plan tells the story of the American Protestants who sought to transform Germany into a new democratic and Christian nation at the heart of twentieth-century Europe. James D. Strasburg follows the American pastors, preachers, diplomats, and spies who crossed the Atlantic in an era of world war, responded to the rise of fascist dictators, and began to identify Europe as a continent in need of saving. He examines their far-reaching campaigns to make Germany into the European cornerstone of America's global spiritual empire.

God's Marshall Plan illuminates the dramatic effects of these efforts by showing how the mission to remake Germany in America's image actually remade American Protestantism itself. American Protestants realized they were far from united and had in fact come to dramatically different conclusions about how to rebuild the West out of the ruins of war. Their European counterparts, meanwhile, began to sharply protest America's spiritual advance. Forsaking their wartime nationalism, a growing number of ecumenical Protestants championed a new internationalist ethic of reconciliation and global justice. At the same time, a fresh wave of evangelical Protestants emerged and ensured that the religious struggle would continue into the Cold War. Strasburg argues that the fight for Christian Europe ultimately forged two competing visions of global engagement--Christian nationalism and Christian internationalism--that transformed the United States, diplomacy, and politics in the Cold War and beyond.

James D. Strasburg is Assistant Professor of History at Hillsdale College.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter 1: World Conquest
Chapter 2: World Chaos
Chapter 3: The Lonely Flame
Chapter 4: For Christ and Country
Chapter 5: Remaking Germany
Chapter 6: Battleground Europe
Chapter 7: God's Marshall Plan
Chapter 8: Spiritual Rearmament

Epilogue