The German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 marked a fundamental change in both the scope and systematic nature of Nazi mass violence. Over the course of the next three years, German warfare and rule in the occupied Soviet territories caused death and suffering on an unprecedented scale. It is particularly the death toll among civilians and other non-combatants that stands out here. The majority of Soviet war dead comprised civilians and unarmed, captured soldiers. In deliberate policies of mass murder, German forces killed 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 2.6 million Jews, more than 2 million residents of Soviet cities, 30,000 Roma, at least 17,000 psychiatric patients, and up to 600,000 rural-dwelling civilians in so-called anti-partisan operations. The military operations of the German-Soviet War cannot be addressed independently of mass murder in this theatre, where 10 million Wehrmacht soldiers were stationed at one time or another between 1941 and 1944. The number of Wehrmacht divisions deployed on the Eastern Front in which no war crimes were committed was low, and members of the Wehrmacht may indeed have made up the majority of those responsible for large-scale crimes committed here by the German Reich.

Mass rather than skill formed the basis of the Red Army’s victory primarily because inadequate training, weak motivation, and low morale plagued the army for the duration of the war, though after the Battle of Kursk, soldier motivation and morale improved. Often poorly led, inadequately fed, ill-trained, and under-supplied, Red Army soldiers faced daunting prospects just to survive. The dire need to replace losses led to abbreviated training; troops were thrown into battle with little preparation, leading combat effectiveness to suffer; fearful and feeling unprepared, soldiers deserted, shirked, straggled, and showed cowardice and committed many acts of indiscipline, crimes, and violations of regulations on a wide scale. When given the right equipment and weaponry, and properly trained to use it, and led by competent leaders, most soldiers fought well and with determination. These conditions, however, did not present themselves very often. Officers were often in positions for which they were unprepared. The ability of the Red Army to fight well improved in 1943 with defense production at full capacity and American Lend-Lease delivering vital supplies.

The brief for this chapter is to consider kingship in the abstract, that is both how late medieval people theorised kingship but also their assumptions, prejudices and expectations about what a king could and should do. The difficulty with this task is that, although these two domains overlap, they are distinct. The hard, theoretical categories of professional thinkers are different from the unspoken assumptions that a time-travelling anthropologist might uncover. The English took their political theory from different ages and places, occasionally adapting it to fit local conditions. This might seem surprising, since the period was rocked by momentous developments in the powers of kings and what their subjects expected them to do. Established ideas can prove surprisingly resilient despite their inapplicability to changed circumstances.

In an era steeped in national stereotypes that bled into slanders and hatred, the English were notorious in later medieval Europe for three things: drunkenness, bearing a tail and killing their kings. But it is with the implications of another alleged propensity – for waging wars of conquest that sought to turn neighbours into subjects – that this chapter is largely concerned. By the later Middle Ages, the bellicose reputation of England’s kings reverberated across Christendom. Jean Froissart (d. c. 1405), the chronicler of chivalry who visited the court of Edward III, noted that, because of their great conquests, the English were ‘always more inclined to war than peace’.

While later medieval England enjoyed an increasingly sophisticated array of governmental institutions that helped kings to rule, kingship itself remained a fundamentally personal and personality-driven enterprise. Consequently, space was needed where the ‘personal side’ of politics could take place and where each monarch’s domestic needs could be met. It was the royal court and household that provided space for both of these things. Despite the importance of each, defining them, and their relationship to one another, is not easy. The royal court (not to be confused with the courts of law, discussed in Chapter 6) has proven particularly problematic to historians because it lacked a clear structure or boundaries.

This chapter examines the relationship between the king and his ‘ordinary’ subjects and asks whether such a thing as ‘public opinion’ evolved over the period to play a role in politics. For medieval historians, ‘the public’ used to be synonymous with the nobility and gentry. They were the section of the population that had some formal role in governance and had time outside of the demands of labour to devote to political questions. However, recent scholarship has emphasised that most if not all people in later medieval England had access to texts, could hear them read aloud and discuss their contents. This has led to a reappraisal of the later medieval public, towards an expansionist view that includes people below the ranks of the gentry as politically aware and engaged.

In the summer of 1943, instead of a far-reaching offensive on the Eastern Front, the Germans planned only a limited attack at Kursk, which was nevertheless intended to decisively weaken the Red Army. Hitler then wanted to move the most powerful units to the west in order to repel the expected Allied invasion. However, the Soviets turned the front salient around the city of Kursk into a fortress and amassed huge reserves there. After repulsing the German attack, these were to launch an offensive of their own and advance to the borders of the German Reich in 1943. When the German attack began on 5 July 1943, it did not lead to a short and victorious annihilating strike, as Hitler had hoped, but instead initiated the largest battle of the Second World War. It lasted 50 days, led to the clash of around 3.5 million soldiers, 13,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, as well as 8,000 aircraft, and ended with a decisive Soviet victory. Although the Red Army was unable to achieve its strategic objectives in 1943 due to its huge losses, the Wehrmacht was so weakened after the Battle of Kursk that it never regained the initiative on the Eastern Front.

Nathalie Carnes takes a fine selection of concrete examples from different times and cultures to show that material objects, icons, images, and art can be a natural extension of Christian worship. Through the incarnation and its continuation, they can carry a set of meanings that enhance and clarify the liturgy and make it a sensory reality in complementary ways.

Clare Johnson provides a careful discussion of the “other” six sacraments that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church celebrate. Relying on the liturgical books themselves, she investigates their biblical roots, the logic behind their coherence, and their theological significance.

Jan Schnell picks up the thread in the formative period of the late Middle Ages and early modernity, the era of the Reformation. She surveys the ways in which Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Jean Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, and John Knox, among others, brought about substantial adaptations to the traditional liturgies they had inherited from Catholicism, and what motivated them theologically to do so.

Melanie C. Ross presents the various shapes of Christian liturgies that emerged in non-mainstream Protestant churches, including Quakerism, Anabaptism, Methodism, Pentecostalism, and Evangelicalism. Despite the prejudice that these traditions are non-liturgical, she demonstrates the profound theological and spiritual depth of their worship services.

Cas Wepener argues that there is a closer connection between liturgics and homiletics than one usually assumes. The proclamation of the Word has always been a crucial part of the Church’s liturgical services, but, maybe more significantly, it continues to co-shape the contexts in which its relevance can be shown and lived.