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A hostile faction had formed on one wing of the Church, the ‘Confessional Church’ led by Pastor Martin Niemöller.
Niemöller was a former U-boat commander, who had preached since
1931 at Dahlem in Berlin. He was ‘the first Nazi priest.’ His was among the
first telegrams of congratulation to the Führer after Germany walked out
of the League of Nations in 1933. His ambition was to become Reich Bishop,
appointed by the Nazis for the Protestant Church in Germany. Throughout
the summer of 1933 the various Protestant factions had bickered over a
suitable Reich Bishop; none of the names they put forward – including that
of Bodelschwingh – was acceptable to the ruling Party. Eventually, in September
1934, a synod at Wittenberg had elected Ludwig Müller to the
position. Müller had been garrison chaplain at Königsberg and was recommended
by General von Blomberg from personal acquaintance. Schwerin
von Krosigk heard Niemöller propose to Bodelschwingh and others one
evening that winter that their only solution was to visit Müller one dark
night with a few strong-arm boys from his Dahlem congregation and ‘beat
up the Reich Bishop so his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.’

Toward the Promised Land

Tired of the sniping against Müller, Hitler invited a dozen of the Protestant
leaders to his chancellery on January 25, 1934. Göring had by then
begun furnishing Hitler with wiretaps on Niemöller. One recorded a very
recent conversation between Niemöller and a brother clergyman, discussing
an audience they had just had with Hindenburg to campaign for Müller’s
replacement. ‘We sure gave the old fellow the extreme unction this time,’
Niemöller had guffawed. ‘We ladled so much holy oil over him that he’s
going to kick that bastard [Müller] out.’ Listening to the dozen bickering
Protestant clergy in his chancellery study, Hitler’s patience left him. He
allowed them to make their demand for Müller’s resignation – ‘with mealy
mouths and many quotations from the Scriptures,’ as he described on one
occasion, or ‘with unctuous language’ as he put it on another – and then he
motioned to Göring to recite out loud from the FA wiretap transcripts.
Niemöller denied that he had spoken the words concerned. According to
Lammers, Hitler expressed indignation that a man of the cloth should lie.
After that, there was open war between Niemöller and the Nazi regime.
In July 1935, Hitler made one last attempt to calm these troubled waters,
setting up a Reich Church Ministry under Hans Kerrl. Kerrl in turn
established a Reich Church Council that October, but again these efforts
were frustrated by the squabbling between the German Christians and
Niemöller’s Confessional Church. Over the months that followed, a wave
of police raids and arrests befell the latter. Niemöller himself was spared at
first, but from his pulpit he launched such verbal torpedoes at Kerrl that
Franz Gürtner, Minister of Justice, warned him to cease fire. Hitler was
loath to make a martyr of the man, but on July 1, 1937, Niemöller was
arrested for sedition.
The trial, in February 1938, was a noisy affair. Brilliantly defended by
three lawyers, Niemöller used the witness box to denounce Hitler and his
regime. ‘In future,’ Hitler groaned, years later, ‘I shall allow duelling only
between the gentlemen of the clergy and the legal profession!’ In a snub to
the regime, the court sentenced Niemöller to the seven months already
served; to Hitler’s pleasure, however, he refused to give the court the customary
assurances of good behaviour and he was re-arrested and interned
in a concentration camp. Here this turbulent priest would languish, though
comfortably housed and fed, until 1945. At Munich in September 1938,
Mussolini interceded for him; Hitler replied with a steely refusal: ‘Within
the concentration camp Niemöller has the maximum of liberty and he is
well looked after,’ he said. ‘But never will he see the outside of it again.’

Pag 185-186 : Hitler's War - David Irving.

Note:

page 185 Niemöller aroused strong
passions even in 1945. The material on
him includes vivid OCMH interrogations
of Meissner, Krosigk, and Lammers;
Engel’s notes; Likus’ reports to
Ribbentrop; Hans Buchheim’s study on
the Niemöller trial in VfZ, 1956, 307 ff;
Krosigk’s papers in the IfZ (zs.A/20),
and Dr. Goebbels’s 1938 diary.
page 186 For Hitler’s confrontation
with Niemöller on Jan 25, 1934, I used
the Göring interrogation of Jul 20,
1945 a hand-written account by Lammers
and versions rendered by Krosigk
and Dönitz in July 1945 (OCMH), and
the Table Talk of Apr 7, 1942. See too
Rosenberg’s diary, Jan 19, 1940 (Hitler
said he had ‘mimicked Niemöller’s
sanctimonious phraseology and then
ordered the man’s earlier phone conversation
– which was conducted in the
crudest matelot’s jargon – to be read
out loud to them. Result: embarrassed
collapse of stout brethren!’) The actual
FA intercept is in BA file r.45 ii/168.
page 186 Many moderates considered
Niemöller’s incarceration well deserved,
among them Dönitz – the pastor’s
former crewmate at naval academy
– Lammers and Krosigk (OCMH).
Niemöller was after all preaching open
sedition from his pulpit. The Allied interrogators
also minuted that Niemöller’s
personality was ‘a matter of concern
to AMG [Allied Military Government]
officers.’ As late as Jul 28, 1943,
Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen
recorded in his diary Göring’s reflection
that ‘the Führer tried just about everything
to establish one Reich Church
along Lutheran lines; but the obstinacy
of the Church leaders thwarted