Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemoller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis

by Matthew D Hockenos

Overview

"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out-Because I was not a Communist . . . "

Few today recognize the name Martin Niemöller, though many know his famous confession. In Then They Came for Me, Matthew Hockenos traces Niemöller's evolution from a Nazi supporter to a determined opponent of Hitler, revealing him to be a more complicated figure than previously understood.

Born into a traditionalist Prussian family, Niemöller welcomed Hitler's rise to power as an opportunity for national rebirth. Yet when the regime attempted to seize control of the Protestant Church, he helped lead the opposition and was soon arrested. After spending the war in concentration camps, Niemöller emerged a controversial figure: to his supporters he was a modern Luther, while his critics, including President Harry Truman, saw him as an unrepentant nationalist.

A nuanced portrait of courage in the face of evil, Then They Came for Me puts the question to us today: What would I have done?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465097869
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/18/2018
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,229,688
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Matthew D. Hockenos is the Harriet Johnson Toadvine '56 Professor in 20th-Century History at Skidmore College. The author of A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past, he lives in Round Lake, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 With God for King and Fatherland (1892-1914) 7

2 Serving the Kaiser on the High Seas (1914-1918) 29

3 From U-Boat to Pulpit (1918-1933) 49

4 Trusting God and Hitler (1933) 71

5 Fighting Pastor (1934-1937) 95

6 Hitler's Personal Prisoner (1937-1945) 123

7 Guilt, Repentance, Renewal (1945-1946) 157

8 Barnstorming America (1946-1947) 187

9 Swords to Plowshares (1947-1956) 211

10 Ambassador of God (1956-1984) 235

Conclusion 263

Acknowledgments 267

Notes 269

Index 303

Editorial Reviews

07/23/2018
History professor Hockenos (A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past) provides a “revisionist” biography of Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), the dissident German Lutheran pastor best known for his postwar confession from which the book’s title is taken. He shows Niemöller as a staunch German nationalist up to and during the Third Reich—he voted for the Nazis in three elections, offered to serve in the German navy in 1939, and “showed contempt for groups he deemed anti-Christian and anti-German”—who also paid a heavy price for courageously resisting attempts to Aryanize the church: he was “Hitler’s prisoner” from 1937 to 1945 in two concentration camps, including years of solitary confinement. Still, the Confessing Church, the dissident wing of the Lutherans that Niemöller helped lead, was concerned only with the persecution of the churches and had little to say about the increasingly lethal persecution of the Jews. Hockenos shows that, after the war, Niemöller came to renounce German nationalism, slowly becoming a pacifist and acknowledging the Protestant Church’s history of anti-Semitism and silence during the Holocaust. But his credibility in the last decades of his life was undermined by his naïveté about the evils of Soviet communism. Hockenos’s impressively nuanced study captures a major 20th-century religious leader and his contradictions. Agent: Rob McQuilkin, MMQLIT Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] clear-eyed biography.... Hockenos's portrait sheds valuable light on a man and a society willing to overlook the sins of a leader whose interests initially seemed to dovetail with their own."—New Yorker


"A supremely nuanced account of an enigmatic figure."—Winnipeg Free Press


"Hockenos provides an honest view of Niemöller's heroic and not-so-heroic sides."—CHOICE


"Using extensive research, Hockenos writes a nuanced, well-rounded analysis of Niemöller's transformation from fervent nationalist and supporter of the Nazi regime to opponent of Hitler's attempts to control the Lutheran Church in Germany."—Library Journal


"Hockenos's impressively nuanced study captures a major 20th-century religious leader and his contradictions."—Publishers Weekly


"A valuable study in individual resistance to tyranny."—Kirkus Reviews


"In this engaging biography, Matthew Hockenos explores the many lives of Niemoller as he evolved from U-boat captain to clergyman to critic of Hitler to defender of the German people. Combining historical empathy with honest critical analysis, Hockenos masterfully demonstrates how a deeply flawed religious activist challenged an authoritarian political leader and changed the course of history."—Matthew A. Sutton, author of American Apocalypse


"Martin Niemoeller is best-remembered as an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany. As Matthew Hockenos shows in this penetrating and fast-paced biography, he was also an ardent early supporter of Hitler. By showing how strongly Niemoeller identified the Nazi regime with Germany's spiritual as well as political rebirth, Hockenos asks us to rethink what we understand about the nature of consent and opposition in Nazi Germany."—Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War


"In this riveting and searingly honest work of humane scholarship, Matthew Hockenos shows how a deeply flawed figure can nevertheless bequeath a moral legacy of timeless relevance. The complex, if 'ordinary,' Niemoller merits a superb biography, and now has it."—James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword and The Cloister


"Niemoller sunk Allied ships and called out for a Führer. He put God above Germany even though it was the same God who had cursed the Jews. In many ways, he was 'too German' and 'too Lutheran'—even in a concentration camp for the dissidence of his sermons, Niemoller volunteered to fight in Hitler's army. Hockenos makes sense of these jarring contradictions, portraying a remarkable, self-critical man in a highly readable but also critical biography. Readers will turn the pages of this book just as history turned the pages of Niemoller's life."—Peter Fritzsche, author of An Iron Wind

"Then They Came for Me is a moving and surprising look at Martin Niemoller. Based on extensive research and a profound understanding of history, it reveals Niemoller as a complex and flawed hero who embodied the nationalism, antisemitism, and militarism of his German Protestant surroundings but nonetheless proved able to change. Hockenos's wise and unsentimental biography is sure to challenge, inform, and entertain every reader."—Doris L. Bergen, author of War and Genocide


"A well-told story of faith, personal courage and repentance that speaks to a nation's journey through delusion and horror to contrition. With skill that weaves his deep research and knowledge of German history into a finely-knit biography, Matthew Hockenos takes us swiftly through Martin Niemoller's nine decades, from his origins in a family of monarchist, anti-Semitic, Lutheran ministers through his career as a naval officer and U boat commander, from his early support for the Nazis to his disillusionment and 8 years in concentration camps through his evolution into a pacifist icon and moral authority in turbulent post-war Germany."—Ethan Michaeli, author of The Defender

From the Publisher

08/01/2018
"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist… Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." These words by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–84) have been widely used to support many social injustice protests, but few know the man behind the text. Using extensive research, Hockenos (history, Skidmore Coll.; A Church Divided) writes a nuanced, well-rounded analysis of Niemöller's transformation from fervent nationalist and supporter of the Nazi regime to opponent of Hitler's attempts to control the Lutheran Church in Germany. After his arrest and imprisonment in concentration camps for his opposition, Niemöller continued to attract controversy following World War II during his visits to the United States. Some believed his actions were akin to Martin Luther; others felt he was unapologetic about his nationalism. VERDICT Best suited for researchers, especially those interested in the history of the Lutheran Church or the history of Germany around the time of World War II.—Terri Lent, Patrick Henry High Sch., Ashland, VA

Library Journal

2018-06-18
The tale of German pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), whose writings have become central documents of liberation theology.The title of this sometimes-plodding but useful biography derives from Niemöller's most famous writing, a poem that includes the lines "first they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist….Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." As Hockenos (Twentieth Century History/Skidmore Coll.; A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past, 2004) chronicles in the serviceable narrative, Niemöller was a man of contradictions: He commanded a submarine in World War I and was so embittered by Germany's loss that he refused to deliver his vessel to the Allies to be scrapped. Though a pastor who joined the clergy so that "he could serve God and country with little worry about interference from the state," he was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler and the Nazi regime. That changed when Hitler decided to turn the Protestant church in Germany into a Nazified extension of the state; Niemöller objected to the policy but not to National Socialism itself, even as he organized resistance to the Nazified church. He was imprisoned and sent to Dachau, and though treated better than most political prisoners, he would almost certainly have been murdered at the end of the war had his SS jailers not decided to "use their valuable cargo to negotiate their own survival." By a curious twist, Niemöller was saved from the SS by members of the regular German army, who knew that defeat was at hand. His political evolution occurred after the war, when he condemned anti-Semitism and became a civil rights activist and confidant of Martin Luther King's. "More and more in the 1950s and '60s," writes Hockenos, "he began to draw connections between pacifism, anticolonialism, and racial justice."The writing lacks flair, but Niemöller's story is a valuable study in individual resistance to tyranny.

Kirkus Reviews

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