We’re pleased to host a book review by Amanda5245 of Scholaristas: A Women’s Religious History Blog.

Roger P. Minert. In Harm’s Way: East German Latter-day Saints in World War II. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009. 545 pp. $29.95. Hardback, ISBN: 978-0-8425-2746-0.

In 1974, Roger Minert began to explore the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Germany.  Leafing through the pages of Der Stern, an LDS magazine published in Germany, he began to ask questions about the everyday experiences of the men and women who had lived through the war and had participated in the Church?s branch meetings and Relief Societies.  He wondered how destruction from Allied bombing affected the ways in which German Saints worshipped and how many of members had lost their homes.  He soon discovered that these were questions that had no easy answers.  The research simply had not been done.  The Church was uncertain of how many members had died during the war.

Minert?s recently published In Harm?s Way: East German Latter-day Saints in World War II is an attempt to answer these questions. Minert has compiled an impressive amount of information on the types of buildings in which Latter-day Saints worshipped, the numbers of elders, priests, and deacons within individual districts, and the names of the men and women who went missing or were known to have died as a result of the war.  He has divided the book into sections based on the various church districts that existed in Germany at the time.

What is most compelling about the book, however, is the way that Minert is able to incorporate individual stories into the book.  We learn of Raimund Gockeritz who was not allowed to participate in the sports games because of the fear his family had of the air raids and yet still found the war fascinating.  He would later remark that he could ?still remember the one time when a dogfight [took place] right in front of [his] house? (195).  He watched as three airplanes chased another and one, recently shot down, landed just a few yards away. In another chapter, he describes the experiences of Ingeborg Neugebauer Gildner who experienced the firebombing of Dresden first hand.  The people that she saw after the bombing laying dead in the streetcars looked ?like they were only sleeping.?  They had died, not from the flames or the bombs themselves, but from the resulting increase in air pressure (131).

Minert is not afraid to show World War II from the German point-of-view.  When the Allied forces arrive, they are not an uncomplicated force.  Although Minert obviously sides with the allies, he describes them treating the German men and women they captured like ?animals.?  According to one woman, they stole all of her father?s?valuables.?  He was eventually assigned to a good job but always remembered his initial treatment.

It is in these descriptions of individual people Minert ultimately fulfills his purpose for the book.  In the introduction, he wrote that he hoped that the book would allow Latter-day Saints living in the United States to imagine themselves in the position of the German soldiers and nurses they encountered in textbooks and documentaries about World War II.  His book, with its emphasis on individual stories and statistics, accomplishes that.  His book is largely descriptive rather than analytic but it will prove a great resource for those who want to learn more about their German heritage or just about the Church in Germany.  Minert has done a fantastic job bringing this little researched community to life.