First They Came

Author

Martin Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian born in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1892. Niemöller was initially an anti-Communist, antisemite, and supporter of Adolf Hitler. But when Hitler rose to power and insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned. He became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler.

In 1937 he was arrested and eventually confined in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. He was released in 1945 by the Allies. He continued his career in Germany as a cleric and as a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II.

Origin

Niemöller made confession in his speech for the Confessing Church in Frankfurt on 6 January 1946, of which there is a partial translation:

"... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"

Then they got rid of the sick, the so-called incurables. I remember a conversation I had with a person who claimed to be a Christian. He said "Perhaps it's right, these incurably sick people just cost the state money, they are just a burden to themselves and to others. Isn't it best for all concerned if they are taken out of the middle [of society]? " Only then did the church as such take note.

Then we started talking, until our voices were again silenced in public. Can we say, we aren't guilty/responsible?

The persecution of the Jews, the way we treated the occupied countries, or the things in Greece, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia or in the Netherlands, that were written in the newspapers. I believe, we Confessing-Church-Christians have every reason to say: mea culpa, mea culpa! We can talk ourselves out of it with the excuse that it would have cost me my head if I had spoken out.

We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without fault, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934—there must have been a possibility—14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths? If we had said back then, it is not right when Hermann Göring simply puts 100,000 Communists in the concentration camps, in order to let them die. I can imagine that perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 Protestant Christians would have had their heads cut off, but I can also imagine that we would have rescued 30–40 million people, because that is what it is costing us now."

This speech was translated and published in English in 1947, but was later retracted when it was alleged that Niemöller was an early supporter of the Nazis. The Communists, socialists, schools, Jews, the press, and the Church are named in a 1955 version of Niemöller's speech that was cited in an interview with a German professor who quoted Niemöller. A representative in America made a similar speech in 1968, omitting Communists but including industrialists who were only targeted by the Nazis on an individual basis.

Niemöller is quoted as having used many versions of the text during his career, but evidence identified by professor Harold Marcuse at the University of California Santa Barbara indicates that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum version is inaccurate because Niemöller frequently used the word "communists" and not "socialists". The substitution of "socialists" for "communists" is an effect of anti-communism, and most common in the version that has proliferated in the United States. According to Marcuse, "Niemöller's original argument was premised on naming groups he and his audience would instinctively not care about. The omission of Communists in Washington, and of Jews in Germany, distorts that meaning and should be corrected."

According to Niemöller's biographer Matthew D. Hockenos in a 2025 interview, another possibility is that the well-known form was a contribution to Niemöller.

In 1976, Niemöller gave the following answer in response to an interview question asking about the origins of the poem. The Martin-Niemöller-Stiftung ("Martin Niemöller Foundation") considers this the "classical" version of the speech:

There were no minutes or copy of what I said, and it may be that I formulated it differently. But the idea was anyhow: The Communists, we still let that happen calmly; and the trade unions, we also let that happen; and we even let the Social Democrats happen. All of that was not our affair.

Role in Nazi Germany

Like many Protestant pastors, Niemöller was a national conservative, and supported the conservative opponents of the Weimar Republic. Thus he welcomed Hitler's accession to power in 1933, believing that it would bring a national revival. By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessional Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches.

Still, in 1935, Niemöller made pejorative remarks about Jews, while protecting those of Jewish descent who had been baptised in his own church, but were persecuted by the Nazis due to their racial origins. In a sermon in 1935, he said, "What is the reason for [their] 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 1936, however, he decidedly opposed the Nazis' "Aryan paragraph". Niemöller signed the petition of a group of Protestant churchmen which sharply criticized Nazi policies and declared the Aryan Paragraph incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity. The Nazi regime responded with mass arrests and charges against almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers.

After his imprisonment he volunteered to act as a U-boat commander, reprising his role in WWI, but this offer was rejected by the Nazi authorities.

Usage

At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the quotation is prominently featured on a wall as the final display of the museum's permanent exhibition, and the museum website has a discussion of the history of the quotation.

A version of the poem is on display at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The poem is also presented at the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia; the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts; the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida; and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois.

Billy Bragg referenced the poem in his song "City of Heroes" about Operation Metro Surge in the US and the protests against it.