East Central European scholarship has recently addressed themes and periods that were avoided or heavily propagandized during the Communist era. Martin Zückert and Laura Hölzlwimmer's volume focuses on two such topics: religion in the Bohemian Lands and the era of World War II and its aftermath. In doing so, the contributors rethink both periodization and emphasis in Bohemian history. The collection features German, Austrian, Czech, and Slovak scholars, who draw on archival materials and the most recent scholarship in the field. Munich's Collegium Carolinum sponsored this volume, based on several thematic conferences held there since 2004.

The collection of twenty essays considers the period 1938–1948 as a whole, instead of marking 1945 as a historical break. The decade saw religious questions permeate social structures and political culture. The loss of autonomy during the Second Republic and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia led to a period of intense national soul-searching from the war era through the 1948 Communist coup.

The focus on religion in the Bohemian Lands is welcome, as this theme has received comparably little attention by scholars. This collection may be seen as a follow-up to Martin Schulze Wessel and Hans-Christian Maner's Religion im Nationalstaat zwischen den Weltkriegen 1918–1939. Polen—Tschechoslowakei—Ungarn—Rumanien (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002). Zückert and Hölzlwimmer's exclusive focus on Bohemia, though, highlights the centrality of religion to questions of national identity in a country often viewed as secular, especially in comparison to its more religious neighbors. The editors' introduction explains why 1938–1948 should be considered a single period, particularly when studying religious questions. Precisely because interwar Czechoslovakia had strong secular tendencies, the churches viewed the war and its aftermath as a time of renegotiation. National leaders in the Roman Catholic Church, Czechoslovak church, and Church of Czech Brethren, as well as external institutions, such as the Vatican, sought new influence in a region often deemed hostile to religious involvement in the state.

Martin Schulze Wessel's essay provides historical background on the long history of division between the majority Roman Catholics and an anticlerical Czech nationalist culture that identified with medieval church reformer Jan Hus. Events of the seventeenth-century forced reconversion or exile of Protestants and led to the development of a Czech nationalism that considered Roman Catholicism and the Habsburg monarchy threatening to a national culture. This position ostracized not only Czech Catholics, but also Slovaks and Germans, who had little stake in the Hus cult. Wessel mentions the 1918 destruction of the baroque Marian Column and the 1925 break in diplomatic relations with the Vatican following a Jan Hus Festival, as indicative of the anticlerical culture. The Catholic Church's opportunism during the German occupation, however, led to dangerous collaboration with the Nazis, which in turn easily enabled the Communist Party to discredit the church in the late 1940s.

Although the book calls for reperiodization, most essays address either the war or 1945–1948. For the war era, several chapters provide important regional analysis. Martin Zückert's chapter on the Bohemian-Moravian border and Johann Grossruck's analysis of southern Bohemian parishes depict these regions as more traditionally religious than industrial Prague and northern Bohemia. The section on the postwar years complements the work of Bradley Abrams and Karel Kaplan, who have examined Protestant and Catholic intellectual and political contributions to Czechoslovak society. Árpad von Klimó, for example, writes about postwar social history, locating social service organizations within church communities.

Several essays incorporate trends in cultural history. Emilia Hrabovec explores the St. Wenceslas cult during the Second Republic and Protectorate. President Emil Hácha promoted the Bohemian patron saint as an alternative religious-national symbol to Jan Hus. René Küpper examines the uses of Wenceslas by the Nazis, quoting Reinhardt Heydrich's favorable report on a Wenceslas celebration at St. Vitus Cathedral. Wenceslas's tenth-century compromises with German nobles led both Czech and German leaders to use him as an example of friendship between the two Central European peoples.

The book suggests directions for future scholarship, particularly in the area of religion and everyday life. This collection is primarily about politics, and the editors call for more work on belief systems and religious communities. The volume's title uses the word “religion,” but the book's main topic is Christianity. Only Monika Hanková's essay focuses primarily on Judaism, examining the rebuilding of Jewish religious communities among postwar survivors. Nonetheless, this collection will be of great use to scholars interested in religious life, Vatican–state relations, and Czech politics. The documents in the appendix, which include Roman Catholic pastoral letters and writings by Protestant clerics, will also serve specialists in the field.