The Reverend Martin Niemoller and his opposition to the Nazi regime

I write briefly of Martin Niemoller in my IGCSE e-book, Living in Nazi Germany, as well as in a short piece for IGCSE too, and in both 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 did 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.

Martin Niemoller was a Protestant, a patriot and a nationalist; passionate in every case. He had been a U-Boat captain in the war with all that entailed, and like Hitler, he had been distraught to hear of Germany’s defeat. However, whereas Hitler took to politics to rescue Germany, Niemoller decided to train as a pastor in order to save Germany’s spiritual collapse. He was, though, still very much involved in the political fight to “save” Germany too: as a student he joined the students’ league of the German Nationalists, he supported the Kapp putsch, and he even formed a Freikorps unit. In 1923 he was a pallbearer to a nationalist saboteur who had been shot dead by the French occupying force. He was, then, very much to the Right of German politics, opposed to both the Treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic. He was also, if not an outright anti-Semitic, at least concerned that the Jews had too much influence in Weimar. And he was convinced that Germany needed a saviour and that Hitler was that man. He voted for Hitler in the March, 1933 election. In his autobiography, From U-Boat to Pulpit, published the same year Hitler came to power, he wrote of the Weimar Republic as the ‘years of darkness’ and that Hitler had brought light back to Germany and how he looked forward to Germany’s national revival under his leadership. The Nazi’s helped make his book a best seller. Already, in 1931, he had become a pastor in a wealthy Berlin suburb. His sermons seemed to support the Nazi’s call for a united, positive, nationalist Christianity.

However, Niemoller was soon to become disillusioned with the Nazi’s attempts to control the protestant churches with the creation of a Reich Church replacing the independent autonomous regional churches. He also disagreed with their support of the German Christian Faith Movement which wanted the Old Testament to be abandoned altogether and the New Testament to be revised so that it conformed with National Socialism. They also wanted converted Jews to be removed from the Church and they wanted all pastors to declare an oath of allegiance to Hitler. As it was, Nazi flags were hung in churches and swastikas engraved on church bells, and some pastors were even preaching in SA or SS uniforms.

Niemoller felt that 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.  So, in September, 1933 Niemoller helped set up and would co-lead the Pastors’ Emergency League which looked to a return to Bible readings as the way to save their church. He was also a founding member of the Confessional Church, the Protestants response to the Reich Church. And the Gestapo noted how his congregation (and those of similar-minded pastors) were attracting opponents to the regime.

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, Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi theorist, and Franz Gurtner, the Minister for Justice, as responsible. He gave prayers for non-Aryans who were being discriminated against. Niemoller remained anti-Semitic, however. 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. For them it was not a racial issue. In May, 1936, Niemoller, along with others, sent a memorandum to Hitler calling on him to end the regime’s unchristian practices, particularly its anti-Semitism, and to stop interfering in the churches. They were arrested but, in Niemoller’s case at least, 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’ (after all, there had been nothing “underhanded” about them) but he was found guilty of ‘abuse of the pulpit’ and sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment which he had already served. However, on Hitler’s orders, he was rearrested on leaving the court by the Gestapo. He was sent to Sachsenhaussen concentration camp where he became a martyr not only in Germany but in Protestant churches around the world. 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, he had faced an initial period in solitary confinement, 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]

So, you have an example of one individual who stood up to Hitler and the Nazis. He didn’t change the course of history, he didn’t even change Nazi policies. He did, however, stand for his principles and stand as a beacon of light in dark times.

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