In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the western and southern regions of Germany were home to intensely devout Roman Catholic communities. By the late 1950s, however, this Catholic subculture could not withstand the onslaught of a culture of consumption--motorcycles, Hollywood films, and vacations abroad. In The Wayward Flock, Mark Edward Ruff analyzes why the strategy of using modern means to fight modern society--which had worked so successfully from the 1870s to the 1920s--did not succeed in the postwar era.
Ruff examines the vast network of Catholic youth...
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the western and southern regions of Germany were home to intensely devout Roman Catholic communi...