No medieval pope ever forbade vernacular Bible reading.

The current chapter investigates the relationship dynamics between Germany and the Axis bloc countries. The chapter concludes that the Axis coalition-building efforts were poorly organized, haphazardly coordinated, and dreadfully led, suffering from German racism, mutual mistrust, and systematic lack of resources. Finnish participation in Operation Barbarossa was motivated by two things: the country’s exposed geographical position next to Russia and the unfinished Soviet attempt to occupy it during the Winter War in 1939–1940. Finland was not occupied by the Red Army and thus maintained its liberal democracy.

While most histories describe the Romanian Army as a reluctant ally of the German Army on the Easten Front, this chapter argues that Romania had embraced a far-right ideology that made the country Nazi Germany’s most important partner in the campaign against the Soviet Union. The Italian Royal Army fought an unplanned campaign, under German command, against the Red Army between August 1941 and January 1943. Despite severe limitations, the combatants of the CSIR and the ARMIR fought bravely until German defeat at Stalingrad led to the deadly disaster on the Don River.

The personal impact of Nicholas I anticipated the papal turn of the eleventh century, but the papal court lacked the administrative and cultural capacity to institutionalize his vision.

This chapter recounts the major events from Operation Barbarossa, the codename for the invasion of the Soviet Union beginning on 22 June 1941. It looks briefly at the German operational planning and then the invasion itself. It considers how German operations sought to implement the strategic plan to defeat the Soviet Union in a summer campaign. Much of the discussion focuses on the panzer groups in the battles of Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, and Moscow. It looks at the problems they encountered as well as the strategic disagreements in the German High Command. Key personalities like Franz Halder, Heinz Guderian, Hermann Hoth, Fedor von Bock, as well as Adolf Hitler are discussed. The final section discusses the Soviet winter offensive, which began in December 1941, and the subsequent German retreat from Moscow.

This chapter argues that Soviet crimes at times of war were both widespread and complex in their origin, goals, logic, and trajectory. It distinguishes and explains several forms of Soviet criminality during its defensive war against Germany in 1941–1945: crimes against humanity and war crimes, both perpetrated by agents of the state and often in accordance with explicitly formulated state policy; troop crimes, not guided by state policy but often understood to be in its fulfilment by the perpetrators; and a variety of violent and criminal behaviour emanating from small group bonding, both within the military and outside of it. The chapter explains their origins and charts the reasons why there was so much silence about the criminality of the Soviet war effort after victory.

That papal Christianity was primarily reactive rather than proactive is the least controversial conclusion from the case studies as a whole, something of a ‘folk-theorem’ of historians today, though a generation or two ago there was more of a tendency to think in terms of the deliberate if gradual assertion of an ideology. As already noted in the Introduction, most of the case studies are of papal responses to demand. I have tried to give a better idea of the range and contents of the demand and the responses. Exceptions are Case 1, showing how Cyprian of Carthage inadvertently gave popes the idea that the famous ‘Thou art Peter’ passage in the gospel of Matthew legitimated authority over the whole church, the Donation of Constantine (Case 8), probably not a papal document at all and important mainly half a millennium after its production, and (so far as one can tell) Case 14, Sergius IV’s attempt to launch a crusade avant le mot, in 1010. The absence of any outcome reminds us that it was demand that drove the power of the papacy. Case 16, the Roman reform council of 1049, does show a proactive papacy in action, but without the desired effects for want of understanding of facts on the ground. Case 17, the Dictatus papae, looks like a draft and had no impact to speak of. With Case 28, the pope is rewarding major service that historians have found scandalous, a moralizing judgment I have tried to tone down. In the other cases, popes granted requests: Cases 5, 9, 12, 13 (assuming the initiative came from the emperor), 15, 22, 24, 25, and 30; or resolved conflicts between systems: 5 again, 25 again, 26 again, 27, and 31; or attempted to deal with problems they could hardly escape: 4, 18, and 31 again; or responded to questions: Cases 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 19, 21, 23, and 27. Evidently, there is overlap between the categories of ‘requests’, ‘conflicts’ and inescapable ‘problems’, and ‘questions’.