Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-7lvjp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-10T09:35:04.334Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914–1945

Between Atheism and Messianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

Patrick J. Houlihan
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin

Summary

The history of modern war has focused on destruction; however, practices of saving lives and rebuilding societies have received far less scrutiny. The world wars reconfigured geopolitics on a sacred-secular spectrum dominated by the USA and the USSR. In these events, the motivations of humanitarian actors are disputed as either secular or religious, evoking approval or censure. Although modern global humanitarianism emerged during the world wars, it is often studied in a Euro-centric framework that does not engage the conflicts' globality. The effects of humanitarianism during the Second World War look toward the post-1945 era with not enough reflection on the pre-1945 history of humanitarianism. Thus, what is needed is a critical history beyond moralizing, bringing synchronic and diachronic expansion to study questions of continuity and change. A global history of religious humanitarianism during both world wars places faith-based humanitarianism on a spectrum of belief and unbelief.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781009472241
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 13 June 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Akçam, Taner, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Alterman, Jon ; and von Hippel, Karin, (eds.), Understanding Islamic Charities (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2007).Google Scholar
Barnett, Michael, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Barnett, Michael (ed.), Humanitarianism and Human Rights: A World of Differences? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, Michael; and Stein, Janice Gross, (eds.), Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, Robert; and McLeary, Rachel, “Private Voluntary Organizations Engaged in International Assistance, 1939–2004,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 2008): 512536.Google Scholar
Bartov, Omer, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baughan, Emily, Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004).Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A., Remaking the Modern World 1900–2015: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).Google Scholar
Betts, Paul, Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe after World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2021).Google Scholar
Bloxham, Donald, History and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borgwardt, Elizabeth, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borton, John; and Davey, Eleanor, “History and Practitioners: The Use of History by Humanitarians and Potential Benefits of History to the Humanitarian Sector,” in Pinto, Pedro Ramos and Taithe, Bertrand, eds., The Impact of History? Histories at the Beginning of the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2015), 153168.Google Scholar
Cabanes, Bruno, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig; Juergensmeyer, Mark; and van Antwerpen, Jonathan (eds.), Rethinking Secularism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Clarke, Gerard; and Jennings, Michael, (eds.), Development, Civil Society, and Faith-Based Organizations: Bridging the Sacred and the Secular (New York: Palgrave, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Kenneth C., More Deadly than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War (New York: Henry Holt, 2018).Google Scholar
Egan, Eileen M., Catholic Relief Services: The Beginning Years (New York: Catholic Relief Services, 1988).Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present Times, trans. Rachel Gomme (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Fehrenbach, Heide; and Rodogno, Davide, eds., Humanitarian Photography: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferris, Elizabeth, “Faith-Based and Secular Humanitarian Organizations,” International Review of the Red Cross 87, no. 858 (2005): 311325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Figes, Orlando, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (New York: Viking, 1997).Google Scholar
Forsythe, David P., The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Elizabeth A., African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Furniss, Jamie; and Meier, Daniel, “La laïc et le religieux dans l’action humanitaire,” A Contrario: Revue Interdisciplinaire de Sciences Sociales 18 (2012): 736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatrell, Peter, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatrell, Peter, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent (New York: Basic Books, 2019).Google Scholar
Gatrell, Peter ; Gill, Rebecca ; Little, Branden ; and Piller, Elisabeth, “Discussion: Humanitarianism,” in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, eds. Daniel, Ute, Gatrell, Peter, Janz, Oliver, et al., eds., issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin November 9, 2017. https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.11168; www.1914-1918-online.net.Google Scholar
Gerwarth, Robert; and Manela, Erez (eds.), Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geyer, Michael ; and Fitzpatrick, Sheila (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Granick, Jaclyn, “Waging Relief: The Politics and Logistics of American Jewish War Relief in Europe and the Near East (1914–1918),” First World War Studies 5, no. 1 (2014): 5568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granick, Jaclyn, International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirono, Miwa, “Three Legacies of Humanitarianism in China,” Disasters 37, Supplement 2 (October 2013): S202S220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Horne, John; and Kramer, Alan, German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Houlihan, Patrick J., Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houlihan, Patrick J., “Renovating Christian Charity: Global Catholicism, the Save the Children Fund, and Humanitarianism during the First World War,” Past & Present 250, no. 1 (February 2021): 203241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibhawoh, Bonny, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ickx, Johan, Pio XII e gli ebrei. L’archivista del Vaticano rivela finalmente il ruolo di papa Pacelli durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, trans. Prencipe, Rosa, Chiappa, Caterina, and Pezzella, Monica (Milan: Mondadori Libri, 2021).Google Scholar
Irish, Tomás, Feeding the Mind: Humanitarianism and the Reconstruction of European Intellectual Life, 1919–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iriye, Akira, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Global Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Julia F., Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Jenkins, Philip, The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (New York: HarperOne, 2014).Google Scholar
Johnson, Todd M. and Ross, Kenneth R. (eds.), Atlas of Global Christianity (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Todd M. and Zurlo, Gina A. (eds.), World Christian Database (Leiden: Brill, 2023).Google Scholar
Jones, Heather, “International or Transnational? Humanitarian Action during the First World War,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 16, no. 5 (2009): 697713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kertzer, David I., The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler (New York: Random House, 2022).Google Scholar
King, David P., God’s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Kong, Lily ; and Woods, Orlando, Religion and Space: Competition, Conflict, and Violence in the Contemporary World (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).Google Scholar
Koschorke, Klaus; Ludwig, Frieder ; and Delgado, Mariano (eds.), A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990: A Documentary Sourcebook (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007).Google Scholar
Dal Lago, Enrico; and O’Sullivan, Kevin, “Introduction: Towards a New History of Humanitarianism. Moving the Social,” Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements 57 (2017): 520.Google Scholar
Lempereur, Alain, “Humanitarian Negotiation to Protect: John Rabe and the Nanking International Safety Zone (1937–1938),” Group Decision & Negotiation 25, no. 4 (July 2016): 663691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Yannan, “Red Cross Society in Imperial China, 1904–1912: A Historical Analysis,” Voluntas 27 (2016): 22742291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little, Branden, “An Explosion of New Endeavours: Global Humanitarian Responses to Industrialized Warfare in the First World War Era,” First World War Studies 5 (2014): 116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobo, Bryan ; Morali, Ilaria; and Pinto, Rolphy (eds.), Maximum Illud: La Missione Tra Storia e Attualità (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2020).Google Scholar
MacCulloch, Diarmaid, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Viking, 2009).Google Scholar
Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Mark et al., Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).Google Scholar
Maul, Daniel, “The Politics of Neutrality – Quaker Relief and the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 23, no. 1–2 (2016): 82100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mawdsley, Evan, World War II: A New History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCleary, Rachel M., Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Organizations and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
McGreevy, John T., Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis (New York: WW Norton, 2022).Google Scholar
Mendes-Flohr, Paul, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Mineev, Andrey ; Bourmistrov, Anatoli; and Mellemvik, Frode (eds.), Global Development in the Arctic: International Cooperation for the Future (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023).Google Scholar
Mitter, Rana ; and Johnson, Elsbeth, “What the West Gets Wrong about China,” Harvard Business Review 99, no. 3 (2021): 4248.Google Scholar
Möller, Esther; Paulmann, Johannes; and Stornig, Katharina (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century: Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation (New York: Palgrave, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moses, A. Dirk, Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008).Google Scholar
Nash, George H., The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914–1917 (New York: WW Norton, 1988).Google Scholar
Neubauer, Jack, “Adopting Revolution: The Chinese Communist Revolution and the Politics of Global Humanitarianism,” Modern China 47, no. 5 (2021): 598627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orend, Brian, The Morality of War, 2nd ed. (Petersborough: Broadview Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Osterhammel, Jürgen, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Overy, Richard, Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931–1945 (New York: Penguin, 2022).Google Scholar
Paulmann, Johannes, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4, no. 2 (2013): 215238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paulmann, Johannes, (ed.), Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pendas, Devin O., “Toward a New Politics? On the Recent Historiography of Human Rights,” Contemporary European History 21, no. 1 (2012): 95111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Howard, “’17, ’18, ’19: Religion and Science in Three Pandemics, 1817, 1918, and 2019,” Journal of Global History 15, no. 3 (2020): 434443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Howard ; and Killingray, David, (eds.), The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919 (New York: Routledge, 2003).Google Scholar
Piller, Elisabeth, “German Child Distress, American Humanitarian Aid and Revisionist Politics, 1918–1924,” Journal of Contemporary History 51, no. 3 (July 2016): 453486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piller, Elisabeth, “American War Relief, Cultural Mobilization and the Myth of Impartial Humanitarianism, 1914–17,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, no. 4 (October 2018): 619635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, John F., The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914–1958 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, Stephen, “Humanitarian Politics and Governance: International Responses to the Civilian Toll in the Second World War,” in Geyer, Michael and Tooze, Adam, eds., Cambridge History of the Second World War, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 3: 502527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preston, Andrew, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012).Google Scholar
Proctor, Tammy M., Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918 (New York: New York University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Reinisch, Jessica, “Relief in the Aftermath of War,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 371404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinisch, Jessica, “‘We Shall Rebuild Anew a Powerful Nation’: UNRRA, Internationalism and National Reconstruction in Poland,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 451476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinisch, Jessica, “Internationalism in Relief: The Birth (and Death) of UNRRA,” Past & Present 210, no. 6 (2011): 258289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reinisch, Jessica, “Auntie UNRRA at the Crossroads,” Past & Present 218, no. 8 (2013): 7097.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodogno, Davide, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Rodogno, Davide, Night on Earth: A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East, 1918–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salih, M. A. Mohamed, “Islamic NGOs in Africa: The Promise and Peril of Islamic Voluntarism,” in de Waal, Alex, ed., Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 146181.Google Scholar
Salvatici, Silvia, A History of Humanitarianism, 1789-Present: In the Name of Others, trans. Philip Sanders (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Scheer, Monique, Rosenkranz und Kriegsvisionen: Marienerscheinungskulte im 20. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 2006).Google Scholar
Shephard, Ben, “‘Becoming Planning Minded’: The Theory and Practice of Relief, 1940–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 405419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shine, Cormac, “Papal Diplomacy by Proxy? Catholic Internationalism at the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, 1922–1939,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 69, no.4 (2018): 785805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slezkine, Yuri, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Smolkin, Victoria, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Spadaro, Antonio (ed.), Anticipare il futuro della Cina. Ritratto di Mons. Aloysius Jin Luxian S.I. (Vatican City: Incroci, 2020).Google Scholar
Stahl, Ronit Y., Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Stanley, Brian, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, Kevin ; Hilton, Matthew ; and Fiori, Juliano, “Humanitarianisms in Context: Histories of Non-state Actors, from the Local to the Global,” Special Issue, European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’Histoire 23, no. 1–2 (2016): 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Sullivan, Kevin, The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taithe, Bertrand, “The ‘Making’ of the Origins of Humanitarianism,” Contemporanea 18, no. 3 (2015): 485492.Google Scholar
Tanielian, Melanie S., The Charity of War: Famine, Humanitarian Aid, and World War I in the Middle East (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Tusan, Michelle, “Genocide, Famine and Refugees on Film: Humanitarianism and the First World War,” Past & Present 237, no. 1 (November 2017): 197235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Waal, Alex (ed.), Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (London: Hurst, 2004).Google Scholar
de Waal, Alex, “The Humanitarians’ Tragedy: Escapable and Inescapable Cruelties,” Disasters S2 (2010): S130S137.Google Scholar
Watenpaugh, Keith David, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Berkeley, CA, : University of California Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weitz, Eric D., A World Divided: The Global Struggle for Human Rights in the Age of Nation-States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
aan de Wiel, Jérôme, Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe: Combatting Hunger from Normandy to Tirana, 1945–1950 (New York: Central European University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wieters, Heike, The NGO CARE and Food Aid from America, 1945–80: “Showered with Kindness”? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).Google Scholar
Wilcox, Vanda (ed.), Italy in the Era of the Great War (Leiden: Brill, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, Jay, “The Second Great War,” Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 7, no.14 (2018): 160179.Google Scholar
Winter, Jay, The Cultural History of War in the Twentieth Century and After (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, Jay ; and Prost, Antoine, The Great War in History and Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Woodbridge, George, UNRRA: The History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950).Google Scholar
Wu, Albert Monshan, From Christ to Confucius: German Missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Globalization of Christianity, 1860–1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Wylie, Neville ; Oppenheimer, Melanie; and Crossland, James (eds.), The Red Cross Movement: Myths, Practices and Turning Points (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914–1945
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914–1945
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Religious Humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914–1945
Available formats
×