Why read The Polish Catholic Church Under German Occupation?

Book cover of The Polish Catholic Church Under German Occupation: The Reichsgau Wartheland, 1939-1945

Book description

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it aimed to destroy Polish national consciousness. As a symbol of Polish national identity and the religious faith of approximately two-thirds of Poland's population, the Roman Catholic Church was an obvious target of the Nazi regime's policies of ethnic, racial, and cultural Germanization.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Polish Catholic Church Under German Occupation as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Kevin P. Spicer and Rebecca Carter-Chand

Author

Huener has produced a definitive study of the Catholic Church in western Poland under German occupation. Identified by the Germans as the Reichsgau (district) Wartheland or Warthegau, it encompassed 45,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire) with a “population of more than 4.9 million, including approximately 4.2 million Poles, 400,000 Jews, and 325,000 Germans.” Of this demographic, 3.8 million were Catholic and ninety percent were ethnic Poles. The German Reich incorporated the territory even though its borders remained guarded and not easily crossed. It included 1,023 parishes, served by 1,829 diocesan priests, 277 male religious, and…

From Kevin's list on Catholic churches in Hitler’s Germany.