Conclusion

Summary

What can one say of the work of the Religious Affairs Branch? It is now rarely even a footnote to history. Matthew Hockenos, looking at the way German Protestants handled their Nazi past in the immediate aftermath of the war, made no mention of it. The Control Commission had thus even disappeared from an account of the post-war history of the German Protestant churches, despite the important role that it played in ensuring that the crucial Treysa conference in August 1945 had been able to take place. Equally important, but also ignored, was its role in ensuring that Bishop George Bell and the Revd Gordon Rupp were able to be in Stuttgart for the meeting at which the famous ‘Declaration’ was delivered to the representatives of the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches. Barbara Marshall was more aware of the work of the Religious Affairs Branch. For her, it was one of the ways in which the British administration came to know what was happening in their zone. Her analysis was that it was a flawed method as there was little co-operation with other Branches. She had the advantage of writing her article when a number of those involved in the work of the Commission were still alive.

Marshall was also one of the contributors to an important study of the work of the British Element of the Control Commission, published in 1989. The book had several useful organisational charts that have helped in the identification of names that are to be found in the files of the Religious Affairs Branch. The editor, Ian Turner, in the Introduction to the book, made the claim that, ‘Moreover, there were some areas, for example, policy towards the Churches, where the British had apparently no considered policy at all.’ The book's final chapter called for further research. It noted work by Ian Connor on the strained relationship between the Military Government and the Catholic Church in North-Rhine Westphalia, and a forthcoming, though apparently never completed, Oxford thesis on the German churches. Had it been finished it might have clarified the way that the churches were viewed because of their involvement with the Third Reich.