More on Niemoeller:
"Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German anti-Nazi theologian[1] and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem First they came...."
"Like most Protestant pastors, Niemöller openly supported the right-wing opponents of the Weimar Republic.
He even welcomed Hitler's accession to power in 1933, believing it would bring a national revival.
However, he decidedly opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph.
In 1936, he signed the petition of a group of Protestant churchmen that sharply criticized Nazi policies and declared the Aryan Paragraph incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity.The Nazi regime reacted with mass arrests and charges against almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers.
In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background."[10]
By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessing Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches.
The author and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann published Niemöller's sermons in the United States and praised his bravery."
There is much more of interest about Martin Niemoeller, including his WWI U-boat service.
He is perhaps representative of clergy who first supported the Nazis, but were later arrested and spent the war in concentration camps, where many perished.
Despite his reservations about Nazism, Pastor Niemoeller volunteered to serve in the German Navy if Hitler would release him. He had been a decorated U-boat commander in WWI.
After World War II, he became a communist fellow traveler, President of the World Council of Churches, accepting the Lenin Peace Prize, traveling to Hanoi to praise Ho Chi Minh.
Homer's Comments, 28 Feb 1938 Thread
I have no newspaper articles for today but thought it worthwhile mention the case of Pastor Martin Niemoeller. He was a WWI U-boat commander who became a leader of the German Protestant church. He welcomed the rise of the Nazis in 1933 but became an outspoken anti-Nazi when he came to know them better. Niemoeller was arrested on July 1, 1937."After eight months in prison he was tried on March 2, 1938, before a Sondergreicht, one of the "Special Courts" set up by the Nazis to try offenders against the State, and though acquitted of the main charge of "underhand attacks against the State" was fined two thousand marks and sentenced ot seven months' imprisonment for "abuse of the pulpit" and holding collections in his church. Since he had served more than this time, the court ordered his release, but he was seized by the Gestapo as he was leaving the courtroom, placed in "protective custody" and confined in concentration camps, first at Sachsenhausen and then at Dachau, where he remained for seven years until liberated by Allied troops."
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Niemoeller is known today because of the following poem attributed to him.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.