At a time like this here in America, people are repeating the now famous statement by German pastor Martin Niemöller about his silence during Hitler’s reign of terror:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
What Niemöller said may have been the inspiration for Martin Luther King’s famous statement, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (“Letter from Birmingham Jail”).
Either way, the message is clear. What tyrannts do to one person, they end up doing to others. What affects one affects all.
But his famous statement is not the whole story about himself as a pastor in Nazi Germany, not by a long shot.
Indeed, the surprising, even startling, truth is that early in his ministry Martin Niemöller was a Nazi sympathizer.
He voted for the Nazis in 1924, was drawn to Hitler’s campaign to make Germany great again, and was convinced that Hitler would help bring about the establishment of conservative Protestantism as Germany’s state church.
He celebrated the decision by President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor, and was a public supporter of Hitler in the 1933 Reichstag elections after Hindenburg’s sudden death that opened the door to Hitler merging the offices of President and Chancellor into one, thus, establishing himself as Germany’s sole political leader (Der Fuhrer).
This is the largely unknown story about Niemöller that Martin Hockenos tells in detail in his book, Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis.
Niemöller could write about the Nazis taking away the socialists, the trade unionists, the Jews, and many others such as the communists, the gypsies, the ministers who spoke against Hitler because he watched it all during the time period between 1933 and 1937 and said nothing.
A primary reason he did was his conservative Christian beliefs that made him susceptible to Hitler’s lies about the Jews and his affinity to Christianity that served as a confirmation to the biases and prejudices Niemöller already held.
While he did not accept the Hitler doctrine of a superior Aryan race that the German Christian Movement fully embraced, Niemöller was firmly committed to the supremacy of conservative Christianity as the foundation for German life.
For all practical purposes Niemöller was what we today would call a Christian Nationalist, so much so, Hockenos says, that the renown Swiss theologian Karl Barth who was teaching in Bonn, Germany during this period harshly criticized Niemöller and the Young Reformers Christian Movement of which he was a member over their support for Hitler.
Bart, of course, was the primary author of the Barmen Declaration of 1933 that opposed the church’s submission to Hitler and became the theological basis for the emergence of the Confessing Church of Germany that resisted Hitler.
Its most notable leader, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, joined Bart in being critical of Niemöller and the Young Reformers, describing them, says Hockenos, as “naive, starry-eyed idealists” who were foolish to believe devotion to Hitler was compatible with devotion to the church.
By 1937 Niemöller had finally realized how wrong he was about Hitler and Nazism. More than that, he put his mouth where his moral conscience was, boldly using the pulpit at the prestigious St. Anne’s Church in Berlin-Dahlem to urge his congregation to oppose both.
For the “good trouble” he created, he was arrested, jailed, and eventually spent the next eight years in two different concentration camps until the war ended.
One of those was Dachau, and, according to Hockenos, it was the experience of a post-war visit to Dachau with his wife, Else, that led Niemöller to write the words for which he is most remembered.
Seeing the sign as he entered Dachau that read, “Here in the years 1933–1945, 238,756 people were cremated,” Niemöller felt the full weight of his own moral failure as he remembered that at the very time Jews and non-Jews alike who opposed Hitler were dying at the camp where he himself was later sent, he was silent about it all.
But that was not the end of the Niemöller story. Though his early complicity in Hitler’s rise to power was a serious betrayal of his own faith, Hockenos wisely reminds us that our connection with Niemöller is precisely his flawed humanity. As he puts it, “Once the legend is stripped away, Niemöller necessarily disappoints us. But the imperfection of his moral compass makes him all the more relevant today.”
“This middle-class, conservative Protestant,” he continues, “who harbored ingrained prejudices against those not like him, did something excruciatingly difficult and uncommon for someone of his background: he changed his mind.”
Ah, there it is, the real and lasting lesson of the Niemöller story: He changed his mind.
More than that, he admitted his moral blindness, admitted his failure to recognize the evil others saw, insisting instead that it wasn’t there. All because he had the character and integrity to change his mind.
Yes, he was late seeing the truth, but not too late in finally doing what was right.
It never is.
linnposts.com 