The New World Order: Christianity and the Cold War

On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, which included secret protocols dividing Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Germany was able to invade Poland without fear of Soviet intervention, in the knowledge that the Soviet Union would appro- priate the eastern region of Poland in subsequent weeks. Yet as German victories mounted, Hitler began to plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union. The invasion began on June 22, 1941, under the codename “Operation Barbarossa.” The Soviet Union now entered the war on the Allied side.

Slowly, the war shifted in the Allies’ direction. A bridgehead was established in Normandy in June 1944, leading to a war on two fronts against Germany. Rapid indus- trialization in the 1930s allowed the Soviet Union to replenish its forces from factories safe beyond the Ural Mountains. By the spring of 1945, the Red Army was advancing westwards, sweeping resistance aside as it headed for Berlin. Soviet forces occupied much of eastern Europe. And it soon became clear that they had no intention of withdrawing. Political opposition to communist rule was neutralized by the formation of anti-fascist political fronts, in which communists were initially able to secure dominance, and subse- quently establish communist states. Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia all became part of the Soviet sphere of influence, along with the eastern part of Germany.

The immediate impact of these developments for Christianity was predominantly nega- tive. The state ideologies of the eastern bloc were atheistic and materialist (5.1.2), with the churches being seen as the antiquated remnants of an old world order that had no place in the future. Initially, relatively little attention was paid to the churches, as the state authorities were more concerned with eliminating armed insurrection and neutralizing political opposition to the new social order.