tionalism within Protestantism, Hitler had tried first reconcilia-
tion, and then, when that failed, subversion, setting up a new
church, the “German Christians,” as a Trojan Horse operation.
At an April convention, these worthies had dutifully called
for a united Reich Church, with twenty-nine regional bishops to
choose a Reich bishop as their leader. More or less democrati-
cally they had elected Ludwig Müller of Königsberg to the job.
Thousands of disaffected Protestant pastors had thereupon
chosen an opposition candidate to Müller, the roughneck pastor
Fritz von Bodelschwingh. The leader of this opposition faction
was an opportunistic and implacable clergyman, Martin
Niemöller, a former U-boat commander who had been a zealous
Nazi until this Müller business.
After initially sharing their dismay at Müller’s appoint-
ment, Göring found it more useful to back him, however, and
his temporal cunning outwitted the spiritual conniving of the
clergymen. On January , , he began assembling a police
dossier on Niemöller’s opposition group, the Pastoral Emer-
gency Pastors’ League (Pfarrer-Notbund). Meeting with Hitler
on January , Göring found him still characteristically unde-
cided on what to advise President Hindenburg on this issue, so
he suggested that the Führer meet a dozen of the clergymen in
person. The meeting was set up for January , and Göring or-
dered wiretaps placed on Niemöller’s phone meanwhile.
At : .. on the appointed day the rival bishops and
pastors formed up in two lines facing the desk in Hitler’s recep-
tion room. They had barely begun to argue their case (“with
mealy mouth,” as Hitler later nastily described, “and many
quotations from the Scriptures”) when Hermann Göring
rushed in, brandishing a red file, from which he extracted sev-
eral Brown Pages.
“Mein Führer,” he cried, “as prime minister of the largest