The University of California at Los Angeles awarded a doctorate to James Irvin Lichti for this study of Mennonite, Seventh Day Adventist and Quaker responses to the ideology of National Socialism. The author provides few details of the historical and theological background of the three denominations. Those seeking a study of pacifist resistance to National Socialist militarism will be disappointed. The ecclesiastical ‘houses built on the sand’ did not come crashing down in the storm – they survived, yet without apparently becoming aware that they had been accessories to the crime of the century. Lichti gleans most of the source material for this study from denominational periodicals, focusing on issues of Church-State relations, nationalism and antisemitism. Members of these denominations were deceived by the language of the Third Reich. Lichti aptly highlights the dangers of seeking status and legitimacy in, or even of wanting to be accepted by, the wider society. Most eyes became blind to the sufferings of the victims of Nazism. It is the author's contention that Mennonites and Adventists not only defended, but embraced key elements of Nazi ideology whereas only Quakers appear to have had the requisite spiritual armour to ward off attacks from what they recognised as a spiritual enemy. While the first two denominations turned out to be ‘hollow forms’ more interested in self-preservation than self-sacrifice, the Quakers appear in this study as a ‘viable entity of faith’ with a prophetic testimony. Like the Free Churches these ‘sects’ accepted Hitler's invitation to join the religious mainstream, on condition, of course, that their efforts be directed towards stabilising the regime and providing wholesome spiritual nourishment to the citizens of his Reich. The fear of Communism in particular was used by church leaders to manipulate and control religious believers. While Adventists breathed a sigh of relief that a vegetarian teetotaller was running the German show and Mennonites warmed to manly völkisch concepts, Quakers – such as the religious socialist Emil Fuchs, who would one day find a spiritual home in the German Democratic Republic – saw through the tempting appeals to put communal interests before self-interest. They alone ‘proved uniformly immune to the penetration of Nazi ideology’. A final point on presentation seems in order. More careful proof-reading might have found a good number of typos. Material in one footnote reappears in an endnote; two endnotes contain identical material. There are more than one hundred pages of endnotes in addition to the numerous additional footnotes throughout the chapters. The most interesting chapter, that dealing with anti-Judaism and antisemitism, has fifty-eight pages of text, forty pages of endnotes plus thirty-eight footnotes which take up another ten pages. Many of these notes are far too long and add little to the argument.