Free An Honourable Defeat by Anton Gill Page A

for long. In July 1933 there were fresh elections. This time, with the full force of the Nazi propaganda machine behind him, Ludwig Müller got the job, and the German Christians gained power in terms of important administrative posts. Few leading prelates spoke up against these bulldozer techniques. Among those who did was Bishop Theophil Wurm of Württemberg, who also objected to measures against non-Aryans. He was put under house arrest for a time, but the Nazis never dared move too drastically against dissident Church leaders because they were aware of the power of religion. During the early years of the Third Reich mass protests against the regime often took the form of enormous religious gatherings.
    Nevertheless, with Müller’s election Hitler might have thought the battle won. In reality it was only just joined. Two months later, Martin Niemöller and several like-minded clergy men founded the Pastors’ Emergency League. This organisation, though not joined by many Church leaders, was hugely successful: by the beginning of 1934 it had 7036 members — more than one third of all the Protestant pastors in Germany — and though its membership dropped during the following decade, it never went below 3933. Its programme was to abide by the letter of the Christian law as expressed in Christ’s teaching and the Confession of Faith. In this it represented a step forward for the Church. No longer would the Church simply be seeking the right of self-determination, it would be reaching out its hand in true Christianity to support other victims of Nazism. As the regime grew more draconian, so did the Church increase its humanitarian opposition.
    Those days, however, were still some time away. Niemöller did object publicly at the end of the year to those ‘Aryan paragraphs’ — measures against the Jews — which had already been ushered in, but for the present there was no active questioning of Hitler’s right to rule as secular head of state. Niemöller even sent him a telegram of congratulation on leaving the League of Nations.
    Here one can clearly sense the difficulty and paradox attending the birth of a rebellion stemming from the Establishment, and understand why it was so slow to begin. Niemöller perceived that certain areas of National Socialism were wrong, but he could not see the whole picture, because he was a conservative German patriot and war hero. There is even a story that later, in 1941, when he had already been a prisoner of the Reich for four years, he volunteered for naval service. But he was also a convinced Christian who could not stand by and see the ethical and moral values of his Faith brushed aside. In a confrontation with Niemöller at the beginning of 1934, the Rihrer said, ‘You confine yourself to the Church, I’ll take care of the German people.’ Niemöller replied, ‘We too, as Christians and churchmen, have a responsibility to the German people which was entrusted to us by God. Neither you nor anyone else in the world has the power to take it from us.’ [23] This retort earned him Hitler’s personal animosity and shortly afterwards he was suspended, but with the backing of his parishioners he was able to continue his work.
    Meanwhile, the German Christians had created problems for themselves by being too outspoken in their virulent anti-Semitism and thereby alienating a large number of people who now withdrew their support. The so-called ‘Brown Synod’ of September 1933 had called for the expulsion of all churchmen of impure Aryan origin, together with those married to non-Aryans. In November, at a mass meeting in the Sportpalast in Berlin, there had been a call to abolish the Old Testament as a ‘Jewish script’. Gustav Heinemann, one of the most powerful German industrialists, wrote an outraged personal letter of protest to Hitler.
    The Church, as an international organisation with deep roots and commanding profound loyalty, was a dangerous opponent. Further attempts to