GERMANY: Holy Ghost’s Man

In trying to realize the Nazi dream of a perfect “Totalitarian State,” Adolf Hitler has notably failed to bring to heel Germany’s devout Protestant pastors and their congregations. So thoroughly has the Nazi Reich Bishop, blustering onetime Army Chaplain Luclwig Miiller, been frustrated in his efforts to dragoon these pastors into the State’s German Christian Church, that last week Realmleader Hitler’s only recourse was to try a finesse. His Minister of Church Affairs, Hans Kerrl. dispatched an emissary to a meeting of the opposition pastors’ Prussian Confessional Synod at Berlin. Surprisingly, he offered to junk Dr. Müller and appoint as Reich Bishop the opposition’s candidate, gentle, widely beloved Dr. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. Herr Kerrl also offered to let the opposition nominate a majority of the members of the new German Christian Church directorate which he promised to appoint instanter.

To this seemingly generous offer, the opposition pastors returned a flat and unanimous “No.” Behind the appearance of the State’s abject surrender, they spotted the finesse that Minister Kerrl, although promising to appoint opposition clerics, reserved the right to dismiss them as soon as opposition congregations had drained off into his German Christian Church.

The pastors’ suspicions were borne out next day when the Nazi Government angrily unmasked a decree that Realmleader Hitler had signed early in the week. This gave to Minister Kerrl, who has called the Reichsfuhrer “the Jesus Christ as well as the Holy Ghost of the Fatherland,” absolute dictatorial powers over all Protestant churches in Germany.