Among the many excellent general studies of the war, the fullest and most balanced is Jörn Leonhardt, Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World War, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2018). The translator nodded at least once, somehow making General von Moltke the younger the grandson of General von Moltke the elder, instead of his nephew—this given correctly in the original German edition and virtually everywhere else.

Indispensable also is John Horne, ed., A Companion to World War I (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). Encyclopedic in form, the individual articles, with their bibliographies, are by experts in the field.

Virtually all of the works authored or edited by Jan Winter are essential. To begin with, see the Cambridge History of the First World War, which he edited in three volumes (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

And Nicolao Merkur, La guerra di Dio. Religione e nationalisme nella Grande Guerra (Rome: Carocci, 2015) would be the classic text on the topic of God-talk and nation-talk if it were better known! One hopes for a second edition and even more for an English translation in the near future.

The major book on conscientious objectors, war resisters, and pacifists is Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Study of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2011).

Chapter 1

“Railway Stations: Gateways and Termini” and “The Streets,” by Adrian Gregory and Emmanuelle Cronier respectively, chapters 2 and 3 of Capital Cities at War, vol. 2, Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) provide excellent coverage for each of these themes.

For German newspaper reports in greater detail, Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). And for the British newspaper reports in greater detail, Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Bruno Cabanes, August 1914: France, the Great War, and a Month That Changed the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016) is a detailed look at the first days of the war in Paris.

Reports on the earliest days of the war in Paris are from the diaries of Félix Klein and Henri Desagneaux. Félix Klein, Diary of a French Army Chaplain, trans. Harriet M. Capes, 4th ed. [printing] (London: Andrew Melrose, 1917), and Henri Desagneaux, Journal de guerre, 14–18, ed. Jean Desagneaux (Paris: Denoel, 1971).

Articles on religion in Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse, ed. Wolfgang Michalka (Munich: Piper, 1994) are basic for Protestant and Catholic engagement in the war.

Also, for official German Protestant and Catholic church engagement with the war, the collection of sermons edited by Bruno Doehring, Ein feste Burg, 2 vols. (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1914–15).

A stunning presentation of the writings and accomplishments of Bishop, eventually Cardinal, Michael von Faulhaber can be appreciated even by those readers who would not otherwise attempt a German text. It is Kardinal Michael von Faulhaber, 1869–1952: Eine Ausstellung des Archivs des Erzbistums München und Freising, des Bayerischen Hauptstaatsarhivs und des Stadtarchiv München zum 50. Todestag. München, 6. Juni bis 28. Juli 2002 (Munich: Archiv des Erzbistums München und Freising, 2002).

The basic writings of the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Amette, Léon Amette, Pendant la guerre: Lettres pastorales et allocutions (août 1914–février 1915) (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915).]

Two principal collections of the sermons and writings of the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, are A Day of God: Being Five Addresses on the Subject of the Present War. (London: Wells, Gardner, Darton, 1914) and The Church in Time of War (London: Wells, Gardner, Darton, 1915).

Chapter 2

The sober theological interpretation of the “Miracle of the Marne” as presented in Stéphen Coubé’s “Introduction” to the Missel du Miracle de la Marne has a sober secular parallel in the David Clarke, The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), as well as in the Terence Zuber, The Mons Myth: A Reassessment of the Battle (Gloucestershire: History Press, 2010).

War religion was portrayed in an enormous and enormously important collection of picture postcards, which is presented in Heidrun Alzheimer, ed., Glaubenssache Krieg: Religiöse Motive auf Bildpostkarten des Ersten Weltkriegs (Bad Windesheim: Fränkisches Freilandmuseum, 2009). I hope to negotiate a special arrangement with the Fränkisches Freilandmuseum, to make this material more readily available.

On English soldier experience of and production of literature, including religion talk, Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford, 2000) is a classic, and has generated extensive commentary and criticism since its first publication in 1975.

The Christmas truce of 1914 engendered false hope back then and ever since. Two books deserve a full reading: Terri Blom Crocker, The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, and the First World War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), and Marc Ferro, Malcolm Brown, Rémy Cazals, and Olaf Mueller, eds., Meetings in No Man’s Land: Christmas 1914 and Fraternization in the Great War, trans. Helen McPhail (London: Constable & Robinson, 2007).

The model study of soldier faith and the church in France is Annette Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 1914–1930, trans. Helen McPhail (Bloomsbury Academic, 1998), but Jacques Fontana, Les catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre is still eminently useful. For German Catholic—as well as Austro-Hungarian—soldier faith, see Patrick J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1922 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 117–52, chapter 5: “Faith in the Trenches: Catholic Battlefield Piety During the Great War.”

For war devotions in Germany, both Protestant and Catholic, check Gottfried Korff, ed. Allierte im Himmel: Populare Religiosität und Kriegserfahrung (Tübingen: Vereinigung für Volkskunde e. V., 2006), and the most exhaustive study in any language of Sacred Heart devotion across the war is Claudia Schlager, Kult und Krieg: Herz Jesu—Sacré-Cœur—Christus Rex im deutsch-französischen Vergleich, 1914–1925 (Tübingen: Vereinigung für Volkskunde e. V., 2011).

The preeminent cultural history of the war is Ernest Piper, Kulturgeschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs (Berlin: Propyhläen, 2013).

Chapter 3

On the range of God-talk, the English soldier and former divinity student Donald Hankey is a key figure, engagingly presented in Ross Davies, A Student in Arms: Donald Hankey and Edwardian Society at War (Burlington, VT: Ashgate: 2013). But on the possibility and especially the near impossibility of God-talk, Gerard A. Jaeger, Les poilus: Survivre à l’enfer des tranchées de 14–18 (Paris: l’Archipel, 2014).

Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier: Religion and the British Army in the First and Second World Wars (New York: Routledge, 2005) is most helpful for England, and, for Germany, Wolfgang Michalka, ed., Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse (Munich: Piper, 1994).

For texts of soldier letters, the three classic collections are Philip Witkop, ed., and A. F. Wedd, trans., German Students’ War Letters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), La dernière lettre écrite par des soldats français tombés au champ d’honneur 1914–1918, a recent edition of which appeared in 2014 (Paris: Éditions Michel de Maule), and Laurence Housman, ed., War Letters of Fallen Englishmen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Readers would do well to first check Martha Hanna, “War Letters: Communication Between Front and Home Front,” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://‌encyclopedia‌.1914‌-1918‌-online‌.net.

Indispensable for the study of colonial forces fighting in the French and English armies are Richard A. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2008) and David Omissi, intro. and ed., Indian Voices in the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914–1918 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). For a religious history of the American soldiers in France, see Jonathan H. Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2010).

The most useful studies of the generals and their religious proclivities are Annika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), B. H. Liddell Hart, Foch: The Man of Orléans (Boston: Little, Brown), and Brian Bond and Nigel Cave, eds., Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On (Barsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 1999). Haig’s favorite chaplain, G. S. Duncan, later published Douglas Haig as I Knew Him (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966)

Haig, in fact, is used as a beginning point for the one recent study of the agnostic Catholic general, the Bavarian prince Rupprecht, by Jonathan Boff, Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)— although the religion aspect is covered only in Dieter Weiß, Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern (1869–1955): Eine politische Biographie (Regensburg: Friederich Pustet, 2007).

Chapter 4

Hanneke Takken, Churches, Chaplains, and the Great War (New York: Routledge, 2019) is the all-encompassing study.

The experiences and ministries of the German chaplains are collected in Lisbeth Exner and Herbert Kapfer, eds., Verborgene Chronik 1914 and Verborgene Chronik, 1915–1918 (Berlin: Galiani, 2014–16), and in Helmut Baier, ed., Als evangelischer Feldgeistlicher im Ersten Weltkrieg: Wilhelm Stählins Tagebücher 1914–1917 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2016). For the Catholic chaplains, the fullest published records are Frank Betker and Almust Kriele, eds., Gerd Krumeich, intro., “Pro Fide et Patria!” Die Kriegstagebücher von Ludwig Berg 1914–1918: Katholischer Feldgeistlicher im Großen Hauptquartier Kaiser Wilhelms II (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1998), and Hans-Josef Wollasch, ed., Militärseelsorge im Ersten Weltkrieg: Das Kriegstagebuch des katholischen Feldgeistlichen Benedict Kreutz (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1987).

For both representative testimony and perceptive analysis of the importance of the French priests who were drafted into actual combat as well as appointed as chaplains, see Anita Rasi May, Patriot Priests: French Catholic Clergy and National Identity in World War I (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Although limited to the priests of one region of France, the most insightful presentation of the priests’ spiritual and psychological involvement in the war is Daniel Moulinet, Prêtres soldats dans la Grande Guerre: Les clercs bourbonnais sous les drapeaux (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014). The earlier work by Jacques Fontana, Les Catholiques français pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Cerf, 1990), covers both the priests on the front lines and the churches back home.

The essential study of Church of England chaplains is Edward Madigan, Faith Under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and the study that combines chaplain and home-church history is Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2014).

Chapter 5

The remarkable collection of the diaries and sermons of rabbis in World War I that must serve as a model for all such presentations—whether of rabbis or clergy of any faith—is Peter C. Appelbaum, Loyalty Betrayed: Jewish Chaplains in the German Army During the First World War (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2014).

With its chapter on Jewish soldiers in World War I, Derek J. Penslar, Jews and the Military (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) is a helpful, inclusive history.

Philippe E. Landau is the scholar whose histories of Judaism in France, at home and at the front, are primary here. His major book is Les Juifs de France et la Grande Guerre: Un patriotisme républicain (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008), but he presents a brief cross-section of his work in “Patrie et religion: Juifs et Judaisme dans la guerre totale,” in Foi, religion et sacré dans la Grande Guerre, ed. Xavier Boniface and Xavier Cochet (Artois: Presses Université, 2014).

For the preaching of English and other rabbis across two hundred years, including World War I, Marc Saperstein, ed. and intro., Jewish Preaching in Times of War, 1800–2001 (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008). For English rabbi chaplain Michael Adler, whose efforts supported, if not overshadowed, those of his peers, see his, “Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain on the Western Front (1915–1918),” Jewish Guardian (1920): 33–58. This century-old journal article can be found on the internet.

For the letters of German Jewish soldiers, an invaluable two-volume work is Herman Simon, ed., Feldpostbriefe Jüdischer Soldaten, 1914–1918 (Teetz: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2002). I fear it is likely that these letters, set in a brilliantly edited presentation, will remain untranslated in the near future.

A French Jewish witness that is outstanding in its combination of patriotism and honesty regarding the nation, and outstanding in its combination of agnosticism and respect for Jewish tradition, is André Kahn, Journal de guerre d’un juif patriote, 1914–1918 (Paris: Jean-Claude Simoën, 1978).

Chapter 6

The gold standard for an individual soldier diary, in this case French, has recently been published in an English translation: Edward M. Strauss, trans., Poilu: The World War One Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). Although Barthas has his own political and social agenda, the personal, moral, and physical resiliency of the man, not pious but assuming the goodness of his family Christianity, comes through at every turn. An anthology of other diaries that gives readers a cross section of soldier-diary concerns and themes is Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans Coetzee, eds., Commitment and Sacrifice: Personal Diaries from the Great War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

The gold standard for collected diaries is Lisbeth Exner and Herbert Kapfer, eds., Verborgene Chronik, 2 vols. (Berlin: Galiani, 2014–2016).

And for the French diaries, the classic collection is Jean Norton Cru, Témoins: Essai d’analyse et de critique des souvenirs de combattant édités en français de 1915 à 1928, (1929; repr. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1993). Now readers have the advantage of a new edition with an introduction by Philippe Olivera (Marseilles: Éditions Agone, 2022).

Extremely valuable collections of British soldier experiences have been published by Lyn Macdonald. See her basic 1914–1918, Voices and Images of the Great War (London: Michael Joseph, 1988). For further testimonies, see her individual volumes: They Called it Passchendaele (1978), Somme (1983), 1914 (1988), 1915 (1993), To the Last Man: Spring 1918 (1998).

The individual diaries singled out for presentation in chapter 6 are all worth a full reading. The Englishman: Arthur Graeme West, Diary of a Dead Officer: Being the Posthumous Papers of Arthur Graeme West, ed. Cyril Joad, intro. Nigel James (n.p.: Greenhill Books, 2007). The German: Stephan Kurt Westmann, Surgeon with the Kaiser’s Army, ed. Michael Westman (South Yorkshire: Pen-and-Sword Books, 2014). The Frenchman: Ferdinand Belmont, Lettres d’un officier des Chasseurs alpins (2 août 1914–28 décembre 1915) (Paris: Plon, 1916).

Chapter 7

Arlie J. Hoover, God, Germany, and Britain in the Great War: A Study in Clerical Nationalism (New York: Praeger, 1989) covers the Protestant war of theological and philosophical words on the German and English home fronts. Some of the German clergy who took a stand against the war are presented in Karlheinz Lipp, Berliner Friedenpfarrer und der Erste Weltkrieg: Ein Lesebuch (Freiburg: Centauras, 2013).

For the French and German Catholic mutual recriminations, the sources are Alfred Baudrillart, ed., La guerre allemande et le catholicisme (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1915), and George Pfeilschifter, ed., Deutsche Kultur, Katholizismus, und Weltkrieg: Eine Abwehr des Buches La Guerre allemande et le catholicisme (Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1916). German Americans published a translation of this book, also in 1916, to try to present the German point of view to the then neutral Americans: Georg Pfeilschifter, ed., German Culture, Catholicism and the World War: A Defense Against the Book “La guerre allemande et le catholicisme” (St. Paul, MI: Wanderer, 1916). Reprint available.

The writings of Alfred Baudrillart were edited thirty years ago by Paul Christophe in Les carnets du Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart (1 août 1914–31 décembre 1918) (Paris: Cerf, 1992). But see also Baudrillart’s own later war writings, La France, les catholiques et la guerre (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1917).

There is no translation, or even a modern edition, of Faulhaber’s preaching at the war front, Das Schwert des Geistes: Feldpredigten im Weltkrieg (Freiburg-im-Bresgau: Herder, 1918). Worth repeating here, however, is the above reference to Kardinal Michael von Faulhaber, 1869–1952: Eine Ausstellung des Archivs des Erzbistums München und Freising.

Chapter 8

The outstanding Jewish philosophical/theological accomplishment of a combatant (on the southern front, but in close relationship to the western front) is Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Before working on this text, readers will find it helpful to look at the war-era sections of Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1961).

There is a rich bibliography of Tillich studies, but for World War I purposes, readers should start with the thus-far definitive biography, Wilhelm and Marion Pauck, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), and then see the studies of Matthew Lon Weaver, Religious Internationalism: The Ethics of War and Peace in the Theology of Paul Tillich (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010). Frederick J. Parrella and Raymond F. Bulman, eds., Religion in the New Millennium: Theology in the Spirit of Paul Tillich (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001) is a study of Tillich’s continuing influence.

Obviously, the two volumes of Teilhard de Chardin’s war writings deserve the fullest possible attention: Writings in Time of War, trans. René Hague (New York: Harper, 1967); and The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier Priest, 1914–1918, trans. René Hague (New York: Harper, 1965). Claude Cuénot, Teilhard de Chardin: A Biographical Study, trans. Vincent Colimore (New York: Helicon, 1965), has been a mainstay for decades, but the best work to read in relation to chapter 8 is Ursula King, Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015).

For a full presentation of the life and ministry of Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, readers must turn to the carefully researched and eminently readable Linda Parker, A Seeker After Truths: The Life and Times of G. A. Studdert Kennedy (“Woodbine Willie”) 1883–1929 (West Midlands: Helion, 2017). Studdert Kennedy’s own wartime sermons and essays are collected in The Hardest Part (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1918), and the old volume of appreciations written by his contemporaries, G. A. Studdert Kennedy by His Friends (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929), is a primary source. But on the theological accomplishments, the essay by Stuart Bell, “The Theology of ‘Woodbine Willie’ in Context,” in Clergy in Khaki: New Perspectives on British Army Chaplaincy in the First World War, ed. Michael Snape and Edward Madigan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 95–110, is indispensable.

Further Reading

General Reading