The story of a significant British church leader who fought for justice and freedom during World War II It was to George Bell, an English bishop, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer sent his last words before he was executed at the Flossenb rg concentration camp in April 1945. Why he did so becomes clear from Andrew Chandler's new biography of George Kennedy Allen Bell (1883-1958). As he traces the arc of Bell's life, Chandler reshapes our perspective on Bonhoeffer's life and times. In addition to serving as bishop of Chichester, Bell was an internationalist and ecumenical leader, one of the great Christian humanists of the twentieth century, a tenacious critic of the obliteration bombing of enemy cities during World War II, and a key ally of those who struggled for years to resist Hitler in Germany itself. This inspiring biography raises important questions that still haunt the moral imagination today: When should the word of protest be spoken? When should nations go to war, and how should they fight? What are our obligations to the victims of dictators and international conflict?

George Bell remains one of only a handful of twentieth-century English bishops to possess a continuing international reputation for his involvement in political affairs. His insistence that Christian faith required active participation in public life, at home and abroad, established an eminent, and often provocative, contribution to Christian ethics at large. Bell's participation in the tragic history of the German resistance against Hitler has earned him an enduring place in the historiography of the Third Reich; his February 1944 speech protesting against the obliteration bombing of Germany, made in the House of Lords, is still often considered one of the great prophetic speeches of the twentieth century. Throughout his long career, Bell became a leading light in the burgeoning ecumenical movement, a supporter of refugees from dictatorships of all kinds, a committed internationalist and a patron of the Arts. This book draws together the work of leading international historians and theologians, including Rowan Williams, and makes an important contribution to a range of ongoing political, ecumenical and international debates.

Bishop George Bell always felt that the Church must endeavour to meet the problems of the modern world. He was thus foremost in applying the precepts of the Christian faith to national and international issues. George Bell very often raised his voice in the House of Lords (of which he was a distinguished member from December 1937 till January 1958) against class and racial hatred, against war, and against totalitarianism, and spoke for the innocent and helpless victims of persecution. Complete texts of all Bell's House of Lords speeches are presented here, published for the first time in one volume. The issues that Bell tackled are, in essence, still relevant today. This volume also includes unpublished correspondence between George Bell and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Bell, as a committed Christian, felt that he had to act in defence of the German Church, which the Nazis were eager to destroy. The Bishop made strenuous efforts to contact people in power in Germany, people who, he knew, took decisions with momentous consequences. Rudolf Hess was one of them.

Travel "diaries" of Bishop George Bell from 1933 to 1939 provide insights into the crisis of German Protestantism in those years. Throughout the middle years of the twentieth century George Bell, bishop of Chichester 1929-57, was deeply involved in the ecumenical movement and the political life of Europe. His sustained commitment to German affairs was demonstrated by his ten visits to Germany, between 1928 and 1957. They are documented in extensive travel "diaries", some of them purely personal and others circulated confidentially to fellow church leaders at the time. Together with other related sources, they provide extraordinary insights into the struggles of the German churches during and after the Third Reich. Equally, they demonstrate the profound difficulties which English Christians faced in coming toterms with a very different Protestant Christianity, and a disturbingly violent political culture. ANDREW CHANDLER teaches in the Department of History at the University of Birmingham.