"Miracle!"

Shouting "We are the storm troops of Jesus Christ!" the brown-shirted Storm Troops of Adolf Hitler spent the week making sure that German Protestants would obey Germany's Catholic Chancellor and vote to merge their many sects in one Nazi-dominated Evangelical Church of the German nation.

Non-Nazi Protestants, led by Rev. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, were barred from the German radio, intimidated into displaying such milk & water slogans as "The Church Must Remain The Church." On election eve Catholic Hitler stepped to the microphone and told 20,000,000 German Protestants how to vote. "A church that is unable to support the state is just as worthless to the state," he shouted, "as a state that does not protect the church is to the church!"

His Nazi state, the Chancellor argued, is protecting German Protestants against Jews and Bolsheviks. "Every political evolution affects churches," he cried. "Only insane people believe that the triumph of Communism in German)' would have left the Catholic or the Protestant churches untouched! . . . I am not interested in questions of faith, dogma or teaching. . . . Superseding these are problems which force the Leader of the state to take a hand!"

Meanwhile zealous Storm Troopers were flaunting such amazing slogans as "Christ was the first anti-Semite!" and "Down with baptized Jews who have become Protestant pastors!" Such stuff of course meant nothing except that the Nazis were resolved to win the ballot battle. Up for election were candidates to fill some 400,000 posts as German church elders and board members. All over the Fatherland Nazi intimidation tactics worked. In Munich, Nuremberg and scores of lesser cities the von Bodelschwingh opposition crumpled up completely, agreed to support "fusion lists" of candidates, each packed with a thumping majority of Nazi "German Christians."

On election day Nazi pressure forced a vote approximating 80% of all male & female Germans above 24 years of age who held Protestant baptismal certificates. Thousands of German Protestants who had ceased to be regular churchgoers trudged fearfully to the polls. Early election returns seemed to indicate a Nazi victory by two-thirds or more of the poll. Jubilant, Rev. Ludwig Mueller, styled last week "Chancellor Hitler's Plenipotentiary in Protestant Affairs," hailed as a certainty that the church elders elected last week will vote to create the Evangelical Church of the German Nation. "This is a miracle," cried Plenipotentiary Muller, "wrought by God!"

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