When British forces entered Germany in the final stages of World War II, it marked the beginning of seven decades of a British military presence in Germany. One of the most important periods during this time was the formal Allied military occupation of Germany, lasting from the unconditional surrender in May 1945 until the creation of the two German states in September and October 1949. Former British Army chaplain and historian Peter Howson examines this era, plus a few additional months into 1950, specifically by discussing the British occupation zone, located in the northwestern part of Germany and containing the major cities of Hanover, Cologne, Münster, and Hamburg. The main theme of Howson's book is how the British military and civilian authorities dealt with religious life in their zone, in particular the role played by the British Control Commission for Germany's Religious Affairs Branch.

The future of religious life in Germany after National Socialism not only attracted the attention of people such as the Reverend George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, but also, in one particularly memorable section of the book, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery (himself the son of an Anglican minister). Howson discusses how British military authorities and, a few months after the surrender, the civilian administrators on the newly formed Control Commission for Germany, which reported to the Foreign Office in London, considered the revival of spiritual life as essential to the revival of a peaceful, democratic Germany that would no longer be a menace to its neighbors. As Howson correctly points out, a desire to avoid the errors of the period after World War I, during which many British religious and government authorities treated a defeated Germany with scorn and reconciliation was nonexistent, was a central issue to many British military chaplains and civilian administrations who dealt with a defeated and destitute population. This was easier said than done, as the German Churches, among the few institutions that survived Hitler's rule intact, were often resistant to efforts by the British authorities to remove those sympathetic to the Nazis from their ranks; they especially resisted the notorious Fragebogen (Questionnaires) that clergy were expected to fill out to determine the extent of their support for the Third Reich. The British had to walk a fine line in making sure the Catholic and Protestant Churches, whose records from 1933 to 1945 were mixed at best in terms of resistance to the Nazis, agreed to the process of denazification, while not appearing to dictate a religious new order to the German population.

Howson's book is organized along both a chronological and thematic framework beginning with how the British government viewed the role of religious life in postwar Germany; the creation of the Control Commission to replace the military authorities once the war was over; the situation on the ground in the summer of 1945; the creation of a separate Religious Affairs Branch in 1946 apart from the Education Branch, both of which were part of the Control Commission's Department of Internal Affairs and Communications; the relations with the Protestant Churches, the Catholic Church, and various religious minorities including what remained of the Jewish community; and efforts to ensure foreign clergymen could visit Germany so that the international isolation of the German Churches could come to an end; before concluding with an examination of the ultimately failed efforts by representatives from the Religious Affairs Branch to create a common religious policy in all four zones from the Allied Control Authority's Allied Religious Affairs Committee.

While Howson occasionally references other secondary sources about the Allied Occupation of Germany, especially the role of the British Army of Rhine, much of his work is grounded in primary sources produced by the British authorities in Germany, especially from the records of the Royal Army Chaplain's Museum; the Lambeth Palace Library, which houses the papers of Bishop George Bell, who unsurprisingly plays a very large role in the book; and especially the National Archives in Kew, which contains the records of the British Control Commission. He also provides a great deal of firsthand observations from diaries, journals, personal and public correspondence, and newspaper accounts from the periods under consideration. He offers several fascinating anecdotes, such as how both clergy who demonstrated resistance to the Nazis, such as the Catholic Cardinal August von Galen of Münster, and those who had supported them, such as the Protestant Bishop August Marahrens of Hanover, could cause problems for the British authorities in different ways. He also points out how much improvisation was involved by the British in the aftermath of the war, including the question of religion, as many records in Berlin they hoped to access after the surrender were destroyed in the fighting between the Wehrmarcht and the Red Army in the closing weeks of the war, as well as how crucially important British Army chaplains were in working with the German Churches in the early phases of the occupation.

While Howson, given his background as a chaplain in the British Army, has a personal connection to the historical subject matter, he remains largely objective for the most part. There are some occasional mistakes, such as the claim on p. 111 that Berlin was not incorporated into West or East Germany in the duration of the Cold War (the eastern half was the capital of the German Democratic Republic), and at times the writing is a bit dry. Despite this, the work is highly recommended for all those interested in the occupation of Germany and religious life after Stunde Null (Zero Hour). Howson concludes his work by claiming the Religious Affairs Branch deserves to be better known. In the opinion of this reviewer, he has ably made his case.