A series of oral history life-course interviews that G. Kurt Piehler conducted with World War II veterans in the 1990s under the auspices of Rutgers University inspired this volume. The GIs’ discussion of their religious practices lingered a decade later when Piehler went to conduct research at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library. Among the first items he read were a series of 1930s Rosh Hashanah greetings. Piehler couldn't help but contrast these pleasant presidential greetings, stock-in-trade of any American politician, sent to American Jews with the contemporaneous experiences of German Jews under Hitler. Religion, Piehler thought, would provide a unique angle of vision on American participation in World War II. Setting out to explore the war's religious dimensions, Piehler started with FDR's support of religious pluralism.

Piehler maintains that FDR's understanding of religion as an expression of American democratic ideals helped to shape how the chaplaincy developed in the armed forces and eventually reached men and women in uniform. The process was far from smooth; its unevenness excluded many groups—Buddhists, African Americans—from an emerging consensus. But Piehler sees a kind of transformative power in how the religious beliefs of American soldiers get lived during the war.

The book begins with a wonderful discussion of an army training film, “For God and Country,” starring Ronald Reagan. The movie portrays the military's religious values through three chaplains, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, giving each equal billing. While heavy handed, like most army training films, it does provide a crucial link connecting FDR's interpretations of religion and those of the U.S. Army. It exemplifies how religion should be practiced by American men in uniform. Piehler argues that “the ways the armed forces structured religious life for the American GI served to foster” a tri-faith movement, which “ultimately diminished traditional Protestant political and cultural dominance of American society” (7–8).

The book's twelve chapters, plus introduction and conclusion, move from mobilization and recruitment of men and chaplains, through analysis of their training, to the significance of religion on the battlefield confronting the dead and wounded. Piehler pays attention to important differences between Army and Navy procedures, with the latter far more restrictive in employing chaplains from minority groups. He devotes a chapter to women, although gender largely does not figure in the book. The book concludes with a brief discussion of possibilities for reconciliation with enemies.

Midway through the book, Piehler devotes a chapter to “The Question of Race and Religion.” It is a key chapter that plumbs the limitations of the emerging tri-faith model, which stumbles badly over racism and segregation. Religion, or more specifically, chaplains, as the military's religious representatives, succumb to the biases of the United States’ Jim Crow Army, rarely mounting any challenges in the name of Christian universalism. Piehler discusses not only the African American GIs but also Chinese American, Japanese American, and Native American soldiers. Although each case differs, all provide evidence of the failure of religion. Piehler prefers to end on a somewhat more upbeat note, contending that religion “proved a source of comfort and identity for these marginalized groups in their efforts to fight for victory against enemies both foreign and domestic” (191).

In addition to his oral histories, Piehler draws extensively on scholarship about World War II, especially military histories that deal with GIs’ experiences. He also consults writings by chaplains, both memoirs of their years in service and letters. The latter, written during the war, offer illuminating insights into chaplains’ lived religious experiences and, indirectly, into the religious lives of some of the men they encountered. These primary sources particularly enrich and enliven the book.

Although Piehler thanks his editors, he was not well served in copy editing. He regularly gets names wrong, starting on page 3 with Walter Huston (called Houston), who does the closing narration for the army training film. Even more frustrating to this reader were the three different spellings of Lloyd Kalugin's name. He is introduced as Klaugin, a Jewish GI in an infantry unit that liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp (284). The footnote names him Kalugin. Then he reappears on page 290 as Kalguin, a Jewish liberator, with the footnote similarly identifying him as Kalguin. Since this is not someone famous, one does not know which name is correct. Such small errors plant seeds of distrust.

A Religious History of the American GI in World War II aims to be simultaneously comprehensive and original, an ambitious book that tackles critical issues about religion and war. In many ways, it succeeds. Piehler saves the four chaplains who died on the USS Dorchester for the conclusion. They represented the ideal of American religious pluralism during wartime but became only “a flickering light in the American memory of the Second World War” (320). This book seeks to revive the values that their heroism and sacrifice embodied.