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 Christian and democratic nation in the heart of twentieth-century Europe. James D. Strasburg follows the American pastors, revivalists, diplomats, and spies who crossed the Atlantic in an era of world war, responded to the rise of totalitarian 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 a new American-led global spiritual order. God’s Marshall Plan illuminates the dramatic ramifications of these efforts by showing how the mission to remake Germany in America’s image actually remade American Protestantism itself. American Protestants realized they had come to dramatically different conclusions about how to rebuild the West out of the ruins of war. European Protestants, meanwhile, began to sharply protest America’s spiritual advance. Forsaking their wartime nationalism, a growing number of ecumenical Protestants championed a new ethic of global fellowship, reconciliation, and justice. However, a fresh wave of evangelical Protestants emerged and ensured that the religious struggle would continue into the Cold War. Strasburg argues that the spiritual struggle for Europe ultimately forged two competing visions of global engagement DL Christian nationalism and Christian globalism DL that transformed the United States, diplomacy, and politics in the Cold War and beyond.