"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 I'm guessing most readers don't know about this confessional from Martin Niemöller is that he himself was a Nazi.
Niemöller was born in Prussia in 1892 and began his career as a U-boat officer in the Imperial Navy of the German Empire. He sank 55,000 tons of Allied ships and was eventually awarded the Iron Cross for his accomplishments. Coming home after World War I, he got married, became a Lutheran pastor, and was a paramilitary commander helping put down the Ruhr Uprising in 1920 (an attempt by leftist workers to call for a general strike in response to an attempted nationalist/monarchist coup by authoritarians in Berlin).
Niemöller opposed the democratic, post-WWI Weimar Republic, was antisemitic, and voted for the Nazis in 1924, 1928, and 1933 hoping for a "national revival" under Hitler. (Niemöller even had an audience with Hitler where, "Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: 'There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany.' Hitler betrayed me."
By late 1934, however, Niemöller joined noted theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposing the Nazification of German churches. On July 1, 1937, Niemöller was arrested and released after receiving a light sentence via Special Court. The Gestapo immediately arrested him again and sent him to "protective custody" at Dachau concentration camp where he would remain until 1945.
In April 1945, Niemöller was pulled--along with 140 other high-ranking prisoners--to be used as a hostage in surrender negotiations. The SS had orders to execute everyone in the group if Allied occupation became apparent. Instead, regular Wehrmacht troops took over in the region and Niemöller was liberated by the United States Seventh Army.
By 1954, Martin Niemöller had become a pacifist, encouraged a declaration of German guilt for not resisting Nazism, campaigned against nuclear arms, and became president of the World Council of Churches.
Martin Niemöller died in West Germany in 1984 at the age of 92.