The Reverend Martin Niemoller and his opposition to the Nazi regime

I write briefly of Martin Niemoller in my e-book, Living in Nazi Germany, and I draw attention to the statement or poem he wrote, it reads as a confession of personal guilt which, indeed, is what it was:

‘First they took the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I sai nothing.

Then they took the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing.

Then it was the Trade Unionists turn, but I was not a Trade Unionist.

And then they took the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little.

Then when they came and took me, there was no one left who could have stood up for me.’

A brief look at Martin Niemoller and his opposition to the Nazis will serve to illustrate the bravery needed to oppose the regime as well as the futility at least as far as bringing down the regime, though personal redemption is another matter.

As a patriotic German, Niemoller welcomed Hitler’s determination to revive Germany but he soon became disillusioned with the Nazi’s attempts to control the protestant churches making them conform to National Socialism. For example, Nazi flags were hung in churches and swastikas engraved on church bells, and some pastors were even preaching in SA or SS uniforms. The Protestant Church needed to focus on religion not matters like race, and it needed to be free from the politicians in order to do so.  As a result, Niemoller was a founding member of the Confessional Church, the protestants attempt to free themselves from Nazi control.

Niemoller was now preaching against the regime. He read out lists of the names of pastors who had been arrested, and he publically held Goebbels and others as responsible for those arrests. He gave prayers for non-Aryans who were being discriminated against. Niemoller was, however, anti-Semitic. He claimed in 1935 that Jews had been eternally cursed by God because of Christ’s crucifixion. But he argued that the judgement on them was entirely God’s and that it was not for man to get involved. Indeed, Jesus had instructed men to love their enemies. Also, Niemoller and other like-minded pastors, insisted that Jews who converted, were no longer Jews. In May, 1936, Niemoller, along with others, sent a memorandum to Hitler calling on him to end the regime’s unchristian practices, particularly its ant-Semitism, and to stop interfering in the churches. However, Niemoller and the others were arrested for their pains but, in Niemoller’s case at least, was later released.

Still, as a result, pastors like Niemoller were placed under surveillance and were subjected to continuous harassment. Such pastors might be banned from preaching, or else from teaching in schools. They might also have their pay stopped. By the end of 1937, some 700 to 800 pastors, Niemoller again included, had been arrested and imprisoned. When Niemoller was tried in one of Hitler’s ‘special courts’, eight months after being arrested, he was acquitted of the more serious charge of ‘underhand attacks against the State’ (there had been nothing underhanded about them) but he was found guilty of ‘abuse of the pulpit’ and sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment which, as he had already served, meant he was free to go. However, on Hitler’s orders, he was rearrested on leaving the court by the Gestapo. He was sent to Sachsenhaussen concentration camp where he was to become a martyr not only in Germany but in Protestant churches around the world. He initially faced a period in solitary confinement but his status led to some privileges – he was allowed occasional visits from his wife and was released for a day to see his dying father – but Hitler refused an appeal from his wife in 1939 to release him permanently and he was subjected to beatings and humiliations. For example he was forced to hop, sometimes crouch and hop, whilst being beaten. Still, he was able to see the suffering of others, and seeing the suffering inflicted on the camp’s Jews, he repudiated his earlier anti-Semitic views. In 1941 he was moved to Dachau where he was treated better. He wasn’t freed until the end of the war.[1]

[1] Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, pp. 220-33 + William L. Shirer, The Nightmare Years, pp. 150-7