They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

by Milton Sanford Mayer

My authority was Policeman Willy Hofmeister. In 1936 or 1937 each of the Kronenberg detectives was openly assigned to a local church as observer, to report on the “loyalty” of the sermons. In addition—this the detectives were not supposed to know, but they did—there was a Gestapo agent assigned to report on the fidelity of the detective’s report. One day, at the height of the Church-Party struggle, Hofmeister was ordered to inform Pastor Faber, whose sermons he reported, that he must not read the pastoral letter sent out by the Protestant bishops to be read from the pulpits on the following Sunday. To Policeman Hofmeister’s horror, Pastor Faber coldly told him that the Church, not the State, would decide what was to be read from the pulpit. Hofmeister tried to “reason” (he puts it this way, fifteen years later) with the clergyman and told him that there would be a Gestapo agent present and that they would both, Faber and Hofmeister, get into trouble if the pastoral letter were read. Faber said that Hofmeister would have to look out for himself, and rose, ending the interview. To my amazement, Hofmeister, who had by no means been an ardent Nazi, still, fifteen years later, resented the pastor’s defiance of the “law,” that is, of the authorities. He no more admired Faber’s heroism—the letter was read from the pulpit—now than then. He himself, Hofmeister, had violated the “law,” that is, what his superiors told him to do, by revealing to the pastor that there would be a Gesta...