Jantzen, Annette: Priester im Krieg. Elsässische und französisch-lothringische Geistliche im Ersten Weltkrieg, Paderborn [u. a.] 2010

Annette Jantzen: Priester im Krieg. Elsässische und französisch-lothringische Geistliche im Ersten Weltkrieg.

This study makes an important contribution to the history of German and French experiences during World War I.

Using the examples of the border region Alsace-Lorraine and of French Lorraine, which was cut up by the front, the author examines how deeply clerics on both sides, who served as soldiers, medics, and field or civilian chaplains, connected the religious interpretation of the war with national self-images and views of the enemy. Based on a broad foundation of previously unpublished sources, which are included with the book on a CD-ROM, the author comes to a sobering conclusion: the religious interpretation of the war wore away but it was not fundamentally called into question.