August 22, 1942

PASTOR A NAZI SPY
Plotted to Sell Secrets to Axis
HARTFORD, Conn.—Reverend Kurt E.B. Molzhan was convicted today in federal court of conspiring to deliver United States military secrets to the Axis powers. The trial lasted for four weeks, but jurors took only two hours to find him guilty. The verdict was delivered at 5 p.m. Eastern War Time (EWT). The prosecution requested a sentence of twenty years, which is the maximum for an act of espionage during peacetime. The case was continued until August 27 to allow the defense to prepare, but three of Molzhan’s co-conspirators were sentenced immediately. Molzhan is the pastor of an historic German-Lutheran church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has lived in the United States for the past eighteen years, but served as an officer in the German cavalry during the Great War.

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