Martin Niemöller Was an Antisemite

His poem was not about indifference.

If you know one poem about the Holocaust, you probably know Martin Niemöller’s confessional statement of complicity and regret. It’s available in a range of translations, but this is the one on the United States Holocaust Memorial.

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.

Niemöller (1892-1982) wrote this in 1946, after the Nazis had been defeated, the concentration camps liberated, and the full horrific extent of the Holocaust was beginning to be known and understood.

The passage is widely seen as a warning against indifference and silence. Niemöller indicts himself for not defending socialists/Communists, trade unionists, and Jewish people because he was not a socialist, a trade unionist, or a Jew. He failed to understand that all our fates are interconnected; he thought his privileged status would protect him. Then, when the Nazis came for him, it was too late.

The message is clear; fight the Nazis right away, even if you are not immediately threatened, because once you (as a privileged person) are threatened, the Nazis have already won, and no one will be able to protect you.

This is not exactly wrong; fighting Nazis right away is a good idea. But as an account of Niemöller’s own experience, it is misleading. Niemöller was not an indifferent, disengaged apathetic observer motivated primarily by selfish myopia. He was an active supporter of the Nazi cause precisely because he despised socialists, trade unionists, and Jews.

The poem makes it sound like Nazis win because “good people” fail to fight them. But Niemöller’s actual history suggests that Nazis win because “good people” hate the same people the Nazis hate and therefore find the fascist program congenial.

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Niemöller Was a Nazi

Most people don’t know much about Niemöller beyond that poem. He was, however, a well-known public figure in Germany of the 20s and 30s. A World War I U-boat commander and war hero, he was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1924, when he was 32 years old. (Most of the information here can be found in the excellent Wikipedia biography.)

Like many religious leaders and veterans in Germany at the time, Niemöller despised Weimar democracy, and was an unabashed conservative nationalist. He was also a Nazi; he voted for Nazi candidates in 1924, 1928, and 1933. In his best-selling 1933 autobiography From U-Boat to Pulpit, he cheered on Hitler’s victory enthusiastically, referring to the Weimar Republic as “years of darkness” and predicting that Hitler would bring about a “national revival.” Nazi reviewers praised the book, and no wonder; Niemöller was one of their own.

What led Niemöller to embrace the Nazis? He said himself that a big part of the attraction was the fact that the Nazis hated the people he hated. That included Communists, and it included Jews.

In a 1935 sermon, Niemöller argued all but explicitly for the righteousness of Nazi discrimination, declaring, “What is the reason for [Jews’] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!” In 1941, Niemöller explained his initial support for Hitler as rooted in the congruity of Hitler’s prejudices and his own:

I really believed, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time – that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.

Niemöller added, in regards to his faith in Hitler, “I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.”

Niemöller was what historian Claudia Koonz has called a “yes but” Nazi—he was someone who agreed with much of the Nazi program even if he had some reservations about (for example) the total extermination of Jewish people. Unlike most “yes but” Nazis, though, the yes lost out to the but.

Soon after Hitler’s takeover, Niemöller’s support for Hitler began to turn to bitter opposition. The pastor’s antisemitism was of the old school, confessional sort; he was fine with discriminating against Jews who professed religious faith, but he objected to Hitler’s biological/eugenic targeting of people with Jewish ancestors who had converted to Lutheranism. Niemöller, like many Protestant clergy, also opposed Hitler’s efforts to subvert and gain control over the Protestant churches.

By 1937, the regime saw Niemöller as an enemy; he was arrested and spent seven years in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps until he was liberated by Allied armies at the end of the war. Even during his imprisonment, however, his attitude towards the Nazis was ambivalent; he offered to volunteer as a U-boat commander! His offer was rejected, but it is significant that even after two years in a concentration camp, even knowing full well what the Nazis were doing and to whom, he nonetheless wanted to fight for Germany and use his skills and expertise to protect and extend the life of the regime.

Not indifference, but hate

After the war, Niemöller was a forceful voice arguing that Protestant churches in Germany had failed in their mission by refusing to oppose the Nazis. He became a pacifist and worked for nuclear disarmament. He took personal responsibility for his own role in helping and supporting the Nazis. His acceptance of guilt and his efforts to make recompense were admirable and sincere.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the poem for which he is most famous is self-aggrandizing and deceptive in ways that have been very unhelpful as we sink into fascism like Germany before us. Niemöller presents himself as someone who was agnostic about the plight of socialists and Jews; he suggests that he did not defend them because he cared primarily for his own safety and comfort.

But looking at Niemöller’s history, we know that isn’t true. He was not indifferent to the plight of Jews and socialists. He actively wanted them harmed. In line with longstanding Christofascist bigotries, he blamed the Jewish people for the death of Christ and agreed with the Nazis that Jews should be forced out of public life. He loathed socialists for their atheism, and wanted the Nazis to crush them and the Weimar Republic which often gave socialist parties a democratic voice.

The moral of Niemöller’s poem, then, isn’t really “speak up even if you aren’t in danger.” It’s “speak up, even when the Nazis threaten marginalized groups that you yourself despise.” Fascists do take advantage of indifference and apathy to some degree. But they also build on widespread prejudice.

People who want to compromise with Nazis share the prejudices of Nazis

We tend to view fascism as an on/off binary; fascists are pure evil, those who fight them are good. But as Koonz’s “yes but” Nazis indicate, the truth is often considerably more complicated. People who we think of as decent, as normal, even as moral leaders, can harbor socially acceptable bigotries and hatred, and those bigotries and hatreds can lead them to try to find common ground with the worst people on earth.

This is a dynamic that you can see everywhere right now. Massachusetts representative Seth Moulton claims he’s not anti-trans—as Niemöller would have claimed he was not anti-Jewish—but nonetheless wants Democrats to embrace legislation discriminating against trans people (just as Niemöller supported anti-Jewish legislation.) Anti-immigrant Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman rushed to attend an anti-immigrant photo-op signing ceremony with Trump—just as Niemöller rushed to associate himself with Hitler’s bigotry in his best-selling autobiography. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, babbled about how companies need more “masculine energy” as he fell over himself to write Trump big masculine bribes—embracing the fascist ideology of misogyny just as Niemöller embraced the fascist ideology of anti-leftism.

Moulton, Fetterman, and Zuckerberg are not apathetic and clueless. They are not ignoring or turning away from fascist attacks on trans people, immigrants, and women. Rather, they are actively supporting those attacks because they have the same prejudices as the fascists. Just as Niemöller wanted to boost Hitler because Hitler targeted people he hated, so most Republicans, many CEOs, and some Democrats see Trump as good, or at least acceptable, because he promises to come for people they would also like to come for.

First they come for the people you despise

The Nazis eventually came for people and institutions that Niemöller cared about. That led him, ultimately, to understand that his bigotries and prejudices were wrong. But (at least in his poem) he was unable to acknowledge that it was not his self-absorption, but his own hatreds, that had betrayed him and his humanity.

Will John Fetterman, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Mitch McConnell, ever spend any time reflecting on why they embraced atrocity? Probably not. But whether or not they do, it’s important to understand that Fetterman, Zuckerberg, McConnell, and so forth, are not throwing marginalized people under the bus out of indifference, and not even really out of a selfish failure of empathy. They have embraced atrocity because they think certain groups of marginalized people deserve to be harmed, and they like the fact that Trump has promised to harm them.

Fascists can and do use and build on indifference. But their real source of strength is hate. John Fetterman hates. Republican voters hate. Martin Niemöller hated. It wasn’t all he did; it wasn’t who he was in his best moments. But his hate brought him to fascism. The poem he left us would be more useful in our current moment if it admitted as much.