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91 D Chapter Twenty-Five d pAStor mAde priSoner The pastor of Dahlem had continued to preach his inflammatory sermons to larger and larger crowds. During the last days of June 1937, he traveled to hold services in Bielefeld, Wiesbaden, and in the historic Paulskirche in Frankfurt where, in 1848, the National Assembly had taken place. In a state of exhaustion, he arrived home on July 1 to find four Gestapo officials waiting to arrest him. This time, they hinted, he should not count on an early release. He was permitted to pack a few necessary items before being taken to the Berlin Police Headquarters on Alexanderplatz. There he was subjected to a brief interrogation, after which the heavy door of a stark prison cell in the notorious Moabit Prison closed on him. Although not overly alarmed by his arrest, the sixth one so far, he had a notion that this time his confinement might very well last longer, perhaps even a lot longer. Only nine days prior, as if moved by a dark foreboding, he had urged his Dahlem congregation “not to give in to evil, but instead obey God more than man!” The prisoner,stretched out on the hard wooden planks in his cell,slept soundly during that first night, his nervous anxiety having given way to an overwhelming feeling of relief. “The responsibility has been taken from me,”he later confided to his wife in a letter.“Lord Christ himself is now steering the ship.”What he experienced was a boundless trust in God. On the day following his arrest, the Gestapo paid another visit to the rectory. For one entire day, they rummaged through the house for proof of illicit activities. They not only took personal documents and the pastor’s private diaries, but also, from the wall safe, stole the sum of thirty thousand marks,property of the Pastors’Emergency League.In the meantime , Hitler and Goebbels were in a state of euphoria, for once in total agreement that, for too long, Dahlem had been allowed to become a festering sore,“an abscess on the body of the German people,”as Goebbels publicly denounced it, for which there was only one person to blame: Martin Niemoeller. On July 2, 1937, Goebbels was finally able to enter gloating remarks in his diary:“Pastor Niemoeller arrested at last! A brief notice in the press.And now sentence him until he is blue in the face. (He must never be free again!)”19 His opinion was wholeheartedly shared by the führer. The final straw had been a letter typed by Martin and addressed to the Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner, which bore the date of June 17, 1937. In the letter, the pastor complained in no uncertain words about the mass arrests of innocent citizens and clergy who were members of the Confessing Church. One passage in the letter was particularly infu- ParT one 92 riating; the writer had the impudence to quote Hitler himself from Mein Kampf: “When freedom is violated, the best ones meet in prison.” He added that,“Since Christians are obviously treated as outlaws, the time has come to call injustice INJUSTICE, truth TRUTH, a lie a LIE, as well as violence and terror VIOLENCE AND TERROR.” The pastor concluded his letter with the words:“I had to write this, so coming generations will not be able to blame me for having kept silent in the face of injustice.” Hitler decided that he would not tolerate any more audacity from this dangerous agitator , figuring that by simply removing the shepherd from his flock, the leaderless Confessing Church would soon break apart. His prognosis, unfortunately, would not prove to be altogether erroneous. What the führer had not taken into account was an unexpected wave of protest by numerous international leaders, a tremendous echo in response to his action throughout the world, a world he believed he had enchanted after the glory of the Olympic Games. Only a few days after the pastor’s arrest,Hitler’s Deputy Rudolf Hess received a sharply formulated note from George Bell,theAnglican Bishop of Chichester,England.A declaration of protest was read from the pulpits of numerous churches in Germany:“Martin Niemoeller’s arrest touches all Protestant Christians,whose hearts are filled with deep concern for our people.” If Hitler had ever planned to quietly dispose of his foe in one of his concentration camps like any other victim, he now changed his mind; he wanted...

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