These stories of rebellion against the Nazi regime are always sure to grab my attention. With so much focus on Hitler and his cronies, it is easy to think there was no Germanic opposition. Books like this widen the understanding for what was really happening in the country.

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

BY MATTHEW D. HOCKENOS

Basic Books 2018, 336 pp.

Published September 18th 2018


Numerous books about the World War II era, Germany Hitler’s involvement and, the Holocaust have long been an area of interest and even contention for readers, depending on which perspective the author has presented. Hockenos a history professor has spent many years researching and writing on these topics including authoring his first book on German Protestants and the Nazis.

In Hockenos second book titled Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis, he provides a poignant narrative to the life of this German Protestant leader. Martin Niemöller is mostly known for his “confession” made to various German audiences in 1946 post World War II. This is where the title of Hockenos book originated from.

Hockenos chronicles Martin Niemöller’s (1892-1984) tale beginning from around the time of his birth, giving insight into the shaping of his ultra-conservative formative years. Niemöller’s pastor father Heinrich, had an undying love of the German Protestant church that was on par with his devotion to the Prussian-German Hohenzollern monarchy. This was strongly entrenched into the hearts and minds of the impressionable Niemöller children. The seeds of German nationalistic pride planted at this young tender age were thus equated to being a true and devout Protestant Christian. Thus this ideology was strongly influential and carried on into his adult life.

Niemöller’s strong sense of nationalism was further propagated by the new reigning monarch Wilhelm II, who sought to strengthen Germany’s colonial power through naval expansion. Thus the young naval enthusiast quickly devoured the naval propaganda that was fed to him.

Hockenos in his book then provides further historical background information that influenced Niemöller’s life as a U-boat commander and then pastor. Including the motives behind why Niemöller initially enthusiastically supported Hitler’s rise to power as Chancellor in 1933. Niemöller’s ardent support of Hitler waned when the German Protestant church was negatively affected by the strong Nazi influence into their church affairs.

Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other colleagues were the founders of the Confessing Church who sought to defend the Protestant church traditions and the gospels. Hockenos in his discourse of Niemöller showed a distinction of mindset between the two influential German pastors. Bonhoeffer believed that German nationalistic pride was incongruous to being a true follower of Christ. He rebuked the notion of nationalism and distanced himself from these views.

Bonhoeffer was eventually executed by Hitler and Niemöller spent eight years imprisoned in Dachau. It was in Dachau that Niemöller started to make a significant shift in his nationalistic mindset, as he was imprisoned with people from different nationalities and denominations and saw that it was possible to fellowship equally and harmoniously with them.

Hockenos biography of Niemöller provides a fair and balanced view of a complex character. It is a redemptive story of a fervent German nationalist and anti-Semite, to a man who became a supporter of the Jews and multi-denominational fellowship.

Hockenos’s book is thoroughly researched and annotated. Although at times the book is laborious to read with its pages of background historical facts.

Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis is an indispensable for everyone who wants to truly understand this enigmatic figure in German Protestant history. It is needed especially at the times when Nazism and its derivatives are meeting less and less resistance and criticism in the public debate. Martin Niemöller can teach our contemporary man that the road to nationalism ends with disrespect to the other human person, it often tramps on human dignity in the name of social cohesion.

This is a timely book which should ignite the debate on the importance of teaching both the essence of the Nazism, antisemitism, and racism and the dignity of the human person which Martin Niemöller emphasised and Professor Hockenos transmitted with his elegant prose.

(This review was first published on PH-Tribune)

"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."
~ German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller

From the very beginning of this book, it is clear that the author's intention is not only to paint the subject, Martin Niemoller, in a negative light, but to make implied connections to modern political movements at the same time. It was curious to me that someone would put the time and effort into writing a book about someone that they clearly do not admire. A very negative tone is present throughout this book that made it unpleasant to read despite the research that has clearly gone into it.

The author refers to everyone he who aligns themselves with (or those who don't stand up loudly and publicly enough against) the Nazis as right-wing. I feel that applying this vague term to such a wide variety of people - disenchanted workers, Christians, those furious about the Treaty of Versailles - is oversimplifying the success of the Nazi party. Clearly Hitler was able to appeal to people regardless of class and political association in a way few others have. To write this off as an evil right wing movement just sounds childish. Niemoller is referred to as 'elite' even as the author describes how he had to take on odd jobs to support his family on a young pastor's salary, revealing his prejudices against the church.

I did not appreciate that I could easily determine the author's modern day politics based upon how he wrote about 1930s German politics. He is not pleased that some, including Niemoller, stood up to Hitler. He criticizes them for taking too long, not speaking out loudly enough, or opposing him for the wrong reasons. The author is a great critic of the church and fails to make a clear distinction between the German Church, which Hitler effectively brought under government control, and the Confessing Church, which worked against Hitler and even attempted to assassinate him. He writes, "the Confessing Church was never publicly aligned against Hitler." Tell that to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other members of Confessing Church leadership who paid the ultimate price for their opposition. The author complains that Niemoller did not do enough, even though he was arrested several times before spending 8 years in concentration camps. Because Niemoller spoke out about independence of the church rather than the treatment of Jews, his opposition is portrayed as selfish and anti-Semitic.

In the midst of all this, the author admits that "The jockeying for control over Jewish policy by various high-ranking Nazis resulted in multiple, overlapping, and contradictory policies." Forget that most of the German people could scarcely determine what the policy regarding Jews actually was until it was too late. The author still wishes to place the blame for what happened upon the church, the elite, the right-wingers.....certainly not the Nazis themselves. He also states that while Niemoller was imprisoned "We do not know whether Niemoller heard from other special prisoners about the mass killings of Jews." Clearly, whether he knew or not, he should have used his pulpit to speak out about it.

The parts of this book that I did enjoy were the details of Niemoller's life - and what a life! From WWI soldier to pastor to civil rights activist, Niemoller led a full life. I only wish it hadn't been told from such a negative point-of-view. When Niemoller lobbied for Martin Luther King, Jr to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he received hate mail from US southerners. Yet, this author continues to say that he "never fully escaped his upbringing and continued to conceive of humanity as divided into racial groups often at odds with each other." I suppose that this is true in a way, as many were forging a new path of racial equality in the 1960s and figuring out what that looked like, but why attack one of the people encouraging others to try?

It is disappointing to have to write this review because I looked forward to this book and it could have been enjoyable if it weren't filled with as much of the author's opinion as it is historical facts. After the end of the war, Niemoller stated that Germans felt "misled into believing in a regime that was led by criminals and murderers." Niemoller certainly wasn't alone. It is one of the intriguing, yet worrying, aspects of WWII that someone as evil as Hitler was able to convince so many that he was doing the right thing. Why this author feels the need to throw dirt on the memory of this particular man is somewhat mysterious. No, Niemoller was not perfect - far from it. He had his own ambitions and motivations, as we all do, but he was also humble and willing to admit when he had made a horrible mistake. May the rest of us do as much and the world would be a better place.

Then They Came for Me
Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis
by Matthew D Hockenos

Perseus Books, Basic Books

Basic Books
Biographies & Memoirs
Pub Date 18 Sep 2018


I am reviewing a copy of Then They Came for Me through Basic Books and Netgalley:


Martin Niemoller grew up in the shadow of the church.


The name Martin Niemoller is not very recognizable today, though his confession maybe. In this book the author traces Niemoller’s evolution from a Nazi supporter to a determined opponent of Hitler, revealing him to be a more complicated figure than we believed before.


Niemoller was born in to a traditionalist Prussian family, Niemoller initially welcomed Hitler’s rise to power as an opportunity for national rebirth. When the Regime attempted to take control of the Protestant Church, he helped lead the opposition and was soon arrested. After spending the war in concentration camps Nirmoller became a controversial figure.


I give Then they Came For Me five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

Admittedly, outside of the famous quote: "First they came...”, I knew nothing of Niemöller. As someone who was previously satisfied with a vague, imagined figure of man who was decent but ultimately defeated by his own passivity, this book was quite an eyeopener. In fact, the more I read of the biography, I couldn’t help but think of another quote involving hyenas and faces.

Then They Came for Me is an incredibly well researched biography of Pastor Martin Niemöller. A deeply flawed and complicated individual who lived an extraordinary life to say the least. The historical events surrounding Niemöller are chronicled and detailed in broad brush stokes to put his actions and opinions into context for the reader. I'll admit, in that regard, there was a small detail or two that kept coming up within the text that made me raise an eyebrow every so often. However, I doubt many people will pick up on it, so I suppose it's negligible in the grand scheme of things.

The biography, doesn’t sugar coat Niemöller's stances throughout the early years of the Nazi Party's reign or his continued authoritarian impulses after the war. The author is also quick to point out the pastor’s revisionist accounts to allied officials, only adding commentary where there isn’t enough information available.

Hockenos also gives a compelling account of Niemöller's transformation into an advocate for peace and racial equality, still successfully interweaving the turbulence and tragedies from the pastor’s personal life into the narrative throughout.

Ultimately, this is a remarkable book with an incredible amount of information to digest. Although Hockenos concludes the book solidly, I’m not sure I agreed with some of his opinions on Niemöller. Either way, though I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

This was an ARC from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. With thanks.

This fascinating non-fiction book should stay long in the memory. It should – but I think the fact the author has gone for forensic detail in order to provide for the definitive volume on the subject means a lot of it will not register. I certainly learnt that I was very ignorant of the side of World War 1 focussed on here – and the resulting turn against the old school authorities that led to the Weimar Republic. In times of hyperinflation or not, the powers-that-be tried to ignore the fact that their aged stuffiness and idiocy had lost them the war (a feeling shared by their fellow Axis powers in Turkey, who in identical fashion blamed the loss on 'foreigners' and caused the Armenian Holocaust, but that's a side issue). This book will counter the thought that the damaging Versailles Treaty caused Nazism and WW2 – that's reductionist, and you certainly need one step deeper and one step further back in time to find the truth.

You may think all that is a side issue, too, really, when you consider the subject of this book is one man and not his milieu. But the core of the read is the milieu – from the idiocy of the German Christians, who refused to believe in the Old Testament, or Jesus' being Jewish, to the machinations that all were engaged in when Hitler got his people into positions of church authority. That at least is where the author can lose the man on the stereotypical omnibus – in sections regarding whether Jewish blood could be in the pulpit, even once Baptised, the layman will know the ultimate conclusion to that debate, and not wish to see it all played out.

Still, thorny characters who do not relinquish their anti-Semitism as quickly as we would have liked, or as rapidly as they were to later claim, make for intriguing books. This then could easily be shelved alongside works by Gitta Sereny in discussing such matters, and making a biography of a character who really should be more known. A flawed man with the flawed thinking of the time (and, of course, of the current UK Labour Party) does not feature in a flawed book, but I can see many preferring a less academic and completist approach.