‘Lobby for the Nazi Elite’? The Protestant Churches and Civilian Internment in the British Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1948 Andrew H. Beattie The final version, published in German History vol. 35, no. 1 March 2017, pp. 43-70 (Oxford University Press), is available here: https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/35/1/43/2706326?guestAccessKey=428b5d15- d1e6-44e4-becc-fb1c828fd10c The accepted, pre-copy editing version is below. It is well known that the German churches opposed denazification and assisted former Nazis and war criminals in the late 1940s. Clergy of both major denominations helped Nazis escape abroad, wrote countless Persilscheine (flattering accounts of individuals’ behaviour and character) and criticized Allied denazification procedures and war crimes trials. 1 Overall, the churches appear to have rejected the practice and even the desirability of post-Nazi ‘transitional justice’ and to have moved quickly from criticizing from the side-lines to actively ‘sabotaging’ Allied programs. 2 Church handling of the ‘guilt question’ presents a similar picture: all but a tiny minority of clergy and laity minimized Germans’ individual and collective responsibility (including their own) at every opportunity. 3 The literature is rightly critical of these and related tendencies, including the churches’ efforts to avoid purging their own ranks, their widespread refusal to address Christian anti-Semitism and support for Nazism and their self-serving exaggerations of their own resistance against Nazism.