GERMANY: Dynamite

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In Berlin, jittery with continued crisis, opened last week the sedition trial of Rev. Martin Niembller, who during the War served Kaiser Wilhelm II as one of the most indomitable, hellraising U-boat commanders ever to spread high-powered "frightfulness" for the Fatherland.

In 1916, young Lieutenant Niemoller set off on the ramshackle U-73 told to do as much damage to Allied shipping as he could with the old hulk. He promptly hoisted the French flag and under these false colors sailed boldly past the British war boats guarding Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. There, still flying the French flag whenever it suited his purposes. Lieutenant Niemoller became "The Scourge of Malta," daringly sank two troopships and a British manofwar, even laid German mines in the very harbor of Valletta.

The delighted Imperial German Government soon transferred Hero Niemoller to the larger, modern U-151 and this submarine on a single marauding 114-day voyage hung up a record of 55,000 tons of Allied shipping gesunken. Commander Niemoller was next given the UC-67 with which he stole about outside Marseille, managed to sink so many French ships that the port was ordered temporarily closed. So many Allied sub-chasers were then assigned to get the UC-67? that even Daredevil Niemoller saw the game was up, cleared out.

Inflation of the German mark after the War ruined a rich uncle who had offered to set up Martin Niemoller as a farmer in Tecklenburg. He turned to the relative financial security of Germany's State-supported Lutheran Church, became a pastor in 1924. Ten years later Pastor Niemoller, who threw into saving German souls the same brawling vigor that stood him in good stead sinking ships, had corralled Berlin's wealthiest and most influential congregation for his Jesus Christus Kirche in the swank suburb Dahlem. Such redoubtable parishioners as Dr. Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, autocratic Reichsbank Governor, immensely liked the two-fisted sermons Pastor Niemoller preached.

When he first heard of the Nazi movement Dr. Niemoller supported it with such enthusiasm that he is believed by many Germans to have been for a time an enrolled member of the Nazi Party. When, however, he saw that Adolf Hitler intended to dominate the Church, Pastor Niemoller began preaching about the Nazis very much as though they were ships he wanted to torpedo. As he had fought for the Kaiser, he now fought for the Church, and in Berlin most churchmen agree today that but for Niemoller most of the opposition to Hitler within the Lutheran fold would probably have been beaten down. Seven months ago the Gestapo (Secret Police), who had searched Pastor Niemoller's home repeatedly, finally clapped him into Moabit Prison on the triply seditious charge of ''misuse of the pulpit to vilify the State and the Party and attack the authority of the Government." The longer he has languished in jail the more of a Church hero indomitable Martin Niemoller has become, and as his trial began last week he had potent friends in many lands. At the opening of the spring Assembly of the Church of England last week the Archbishop of York prayed: "Let us remember in silent prayer the trial of Dr. Niemoller."

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