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`For the Love of Christ': Strategies of International Catholic Relief and the Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945—1948

History of Medicine in the School of Arts and Humanities, Oxford Brookes University

The end of the second world war saw the Allied occupation authorities faced by substantial problems of malnutrition, refugees and crime. The military and Allied occupation authorities lacked the resources to resolve these problems, and had to rely on a range of external assistance organizations to cope with malnutrition and the refugee problem. Assistance came from a complicated array of organizations, including international agencies associated with the new United Nations, bilateral assistance from neutral countries, and religious and welfare organizations. While the Allies would have been happier working with organizations that they could exert leverage on, for example, the Red Cross, such was the enormity of the problems that they had to admit a broad range of relief organizations. This article will consider the politics of assistance, as organizations steered a course between the Allied authorities, local Germans and Displaced Persons. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, the Americans recognized that to maintain the legitimacy of the occupation, it was politic to keep the Vatican and Catholic organizations sympathetically. On the other hand, the Church saw that it could gain support by supporting German dissent and complaints about the inadequacy of provision. I will consider the tense political relations surrounding relief through a number of such case studies.

Key Words: Allied occupation • Bergen-Belsen • Catholic welfare • Holocaust • Maritain • Muench

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