Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Martin Niemöller

He Voted For Them First · Pastor & Camp Prisoner · 1892–1984

The First World War submarine commander who voted for the Nazis, founded the church opposition to them, spent eight years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, and spent the rest of his life accusing himself.

Defend these ideas against Niemöller

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Martin Niemöller is that person for one topic on the course:

• Education, women, the young and the Churches — History · Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45

Who was Niemöller?

Born in Lippstadt in 1892, Niemöller commanded a U-boat in the First World War and refused to hand his boat to the British in 1918. He trained as a pastor, welcomed the National Socialist rising and voted for it. In September 1933 he founded the Pastors' Emergency League against the Aryan paragraph — the attempt to exclude converted Jews from the ministry — and the League became the Confessing Church, which issued the Barmen Declaration in 1934. He was received by Hitler in January 1934, arrested in 1937, and held as a personal prisoner in Sachsenhausen and then Dachau until 1945. Afterwards he signed the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt and spent forty years repeating, in different words each time, the lines about coming for the socialists, the trade unionists and the Jews.

Major achievements

• Founded the Pastors' Emergency League in September 1933 against the Aryan paragraph
• Helped bring about the Confessing Church and the Barmen Declaration of 1934
• Survived eight years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau without recanting
• Signed the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in October 1945

Life in brief

• 1892 — Born in Lippstadt: Son of a Lutheran pastor.
• 1917 — Commands U-67: Refuses in 1918 to surrender his boat to the British.
• 1933 — The Pastors' Emergency League: Founded in September against the Aryan paragraph.
• 1937 — Arrested: Held in Sachsenhausen and then Dachau until 1945.
• 1945 — The Stuttgart Declaration: Signs the German churches' confession of guilt.
• 1984 — Dies at Wiesbaden: Having spent forty years repeating the same confession.

Explore the life of Niemöller — five chapters

1. From U-boat to Pulpit — A naval officer who could not serve a republic
2. The Line He Would Not Cross — Not the Jews of Germany — the Jews inside his church
3. The Führer's Personal Prisoner — Acquitted in court, and taken from the courtroom
4. The Confession, and the Sentence Nobody Can Date — Stuttgart, and the words that got away from him
5. The Long Afterwards — A nationalist who ended as a pacifist

Read the five-chapter life of Martin Niemöller →

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