Part Two: Martin Niemöller, the author of 'First They Came', was a murderous fascist

Behind the Bastards

This episode of Behind the Bastards examines Martin Niemöller as a decorated World War I U-boat officer who became a pastor and increasingly right-wing nationalist in postwar Germany. The hosts

Key takeaways

• Martin Niemöller is described as a decorated German U-boat sailor who refused to surrender submarines after World War I, becoming a minor celebrity on the German right.
• The hosts argue that Niemöller likely participated in executions of wounded and unarmed communists during the Ruhr uprising while serving with the Academic Defense Corps.

Main topics

• Martin Niemöller's World War I U-boat service and postwar nationalist reputation
• Freikorps violence against communists in early Weimar Germany

Notable quotes

First they came for the submarines. First they came for the submarines.

Conclusion

The episode uses Niemöller to interrogate how a morally inconsistent auth

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:01) Call zone media. Speaker 3 (0:05) Welcome back, dear friends and dearest enemies. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history, with one of the very best people in all of history as my guest this week, Margaret Killjoy. Margaret, welcome back to the program. How are Speaker 4 (0:22) you feeling about Martin Niemöller? I am, uh, I knew he was going to start off bad, but I had him as like, you know, he's a pastor, he's kind Speaker 3 (0:32) of conservative. He's Speaker 4 (0:32) kind of like a spineless, yeah. I did some episodes about, I should remember this guy's name, the saint who sacrificed himself in a concentration camp so that someone else could live. I literally can't remember his name. Oh, geez, yeah, I know who you're talking about. I think it's Colby. And he started off more on the fascist side of things than the anti-fascist side of things. But I don't think he started off like this. And so I was thinking at the beginning. I was like, I basically run an episode on sort of this guy. And I'm like, no. Speaker 3 (1:05) No, not with the murdering, drowning sailors in the ocean. Yeah. Sinking hospital ships left and right. Yeah. Stuff. Speaker 4 (1:14) Yeah. Bad enough that your biographer has to put. obviously fake words in your mouth. Yeah. Speaker 3 (1:19) And that 1959 book by Clarissa Godsmann is so fawning. And it was written when he was alive. So she's talking to him. I think he didn't want to admit to this nice young journalist lady that he had just been murdering drowning boys. Yeah. Speaker 4 (1:34) It wasn't me. I Speaker 3 (1:36) got lucky I'm on this Speaker 4 (1:37) side of it. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:41) This Speaker 5 (1:42) is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You Speaker 6 (2:01) never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Speaker 5 (2:06) And you can get access to all episodes 100 % ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription. exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. I'm Speaker 2 (2:25) Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Speaker 3 (2:36) Ooh, I scammed him. What? I could talk to you for an hour. Speaker 2 (2:39) You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (2:54) Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman. Angela Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Speaker 1 (3:32) Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1986, a man named Scott Macklem was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm reexamining this case. I Speaker 6 (3:50) really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Speaker 1 (3:57) Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Speaker 1 (4:02) Listen to Examined, The Backfire Effect, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (4:17) Martin Niemöller ended World War I as one of the most decorated sailors in the German fleet, his prestige enhanced by the fact that the German Navy had little enough to brag about at the war's end besides its sub-crews. He'd gotten engaged to be married in 1917, and one might have thought even the sting of losing the war would be mitigated by the chance to start a family and lead a normal life again. But Martin's not that kind of nationalist. He is a fanatic. Yeah, he is a fanatic. One part of the armistice deal was that the great German high seas fleet, which had so helped precipitate the conflict, would be interned at Scapa Flow under the watchful guns of the British Navy. No one could agree quite on what should be done with it. The British wanted some of those boats, you know, but that was not something they came to an accord on. But the submarine fleet was ordered to be handed over post haste because they were really angry at the U-boats and they wanted them. Right. And Martin was ordered to. Yeah. Martin was ordered to take two U-boats to England. He refused. And his reply became famous as a symbol of German post-war resistance or defiance. And this is how it's described in God's Man. First, Speaker 4 (5:27) they came for the submarines. First, they came for the submarines. Speaker 3 (5:29) And I said, absolutely not. I'll defend those more than any person. I have sailed in submarines for three years, fighting against England, sir, he told his commodore. I have neither sought nor concluded this armistice. And as far as I am concerned, the people who promised our submarines to England can take them over. I will not do it. Okay, man. Mr. Hospital Killer here, getting real, getting pissy about handing over his stupid Speaker 4 (5:54) boat. It's a good thing they didn't have the nuclear submarine or he just would have been like, goodbye. I'm hanging out underwater. I'm going Nemo. I'll Speaker 3 (6:03) just Speaker 4 (6:03) live underwater forever. Speaker 3 (6:04) Yeah. He resigned his commission. The matter would be wound up being moot anyway. The German fleet scuttled itself rather than fall into English hands. But nonetheless, Martin became a minor celebrity, particularly on the German right for his actions. In 1919, he gets married and begins working as a farmer, and he briefly entertains dreams of starting a farm of his own. But rapidly rising inflation makes that a possibility, an impossibility. One Sunday, while at church pondering, my people and my home, he decided to become a pastor. In his Nazi-era autobiography, From U-Boat to Pulpit, Martin would claim that working the soil had drawn him closer to his Volk. It's hard to say what actually happened here. The war had ended in Germany with a socialist revolution that actually starts as a naval mutiny. And this leads, by hook and crook, to the establishment of a democratic republic, the Kaiser's abdication, and the end of the war. Martin blames the socialists, particularly Friedrich Ebert, for German defeat. And in doing so, he adopted the stabbed in the back myth with gusto. He never questions this for a moment. He sympathizes because right after this happens, you've got this wing of left wing revolutions that leads to the Weimar government. But then the revolutions keep coming. And so you also get these Freikorps units, these right wing militias of German veterans that rise up and kind of wind up in this period of time in an awkward alliance with the Weimar government because the government needs them to crush this leftist uprising called the Spartacists. Right. Yeah. You know all of the basics of this. Right. And Martin is super on board with the Freikorps. He considers joining at this point to crush the Spartacists, but he doesn't right now. Right. He doesn't now. This Speaker 4 (7:50) is like AOC joining the Trump administration to crush the PSL. Speaker 3 (7:55) Yeah. Yeah. Well, if she'd had like a military background, I guess. Yeah. It's really messy. German postwar history is very messy and complicated. Right. In the book Then They Came for Me, Hockenau seems to attribute Martin's failure to join the Freikorps at this point to his belief that serving as a pastor would better allow him to participate in the revival of the German nation. Quote, he joined the ranks of the Lutheran Church for the same reason he had joined the Imperial German Navy, to advance the cause of the fatherland. But history had other plans for him. Niemöller starts school to get his theology degree in January of 1920. His wife, Elsie, is pregnant and near delivery at this point in time. But right as he's about, as he's expecting his first child, General Walter von Lütwitz, the so-called father of the Freikorps, leads another coup against the government, this one a right-wing coup against the Weimar government. And, you know, the government had just used Lütwitz and his Freikorps to suppress the Spartacists. But then afterwards, they're like, okay, so you're going to disband your right-wing... militia now right and he's like how about i do a butch and so he he he caught he launches this butch and he you know they forced the government out of berlin um and he makes a right-wing politician named wolfgang kapp the head of state this is the cap butch and it doesn't work in the long run right but i don't know about the Speaker 4 (9:16) pre-hitler butches Speaker 3 (9:17) there's a lot of them there's butches left and right from the left and right in the immediate post-war period The Social Democrats have to flee Berlin and they call a general strike. The whole left rises up and it locks the country down entirely, so entirely that almost no state functions are possible. The government cannot act. Is this the early 20s? This is 1919 still. Oh, we haven't even entered 1920. It's 1919 to 1920, I think. Speaker 4 (9:44) OK. Speaker 3 (9:44) No, this is sorry. This is January of 20. Yeah. Speaker 4 (9:46) Yeah. Speaker 3 (9:48) So Speaker 4 (9:48) the Social Democrats. This is I still want to learn so much more about. Late teens, early 20s Germany. So like I'm excited to hear about this. Speaker 3 (9:57) It's the mess. And this is not I'm not trying to give a detailed history here, but Martin's very involved in all this. Right. So there's a there's a general strike. The government completely shuts down. And as a result, this both will prove doom for the cap putsch because there's just not a functioning state for them to govern. So they have to kind of give up. That's not exactly. So Speaker 4 (10:16) the Speaker 3 (10:16) general strike actually. Oh, yeah. It stops the catpunch, right? The general strike helps to stop the catpunch, right? And it also provides opportunity for a communist uprising in the Ruhr. And this group called the Red Ruhr Army, I think is what they're called, assembles an army of like 50,000 people to create like a communist state in the industrial heartland of Germany. So the very same day the catpunch began, Niemöller and a bunch of student veterans at their university formed what they called the Academic Defense Corps. And this is a Freikorps militia force. their school, but they don't mobilize to defend the CAP government. That said, once the putsch attempt was called off and the CAP thing, like once they're like, OK, we lost, we're giving up Weimar, like you're the legitimate government. We got to do something about this Red Ruhr army because they're actual communists as opposed to. This Speaker 4 (11:03) isn't the Bavarian commune. These, Speaker 3 (11:06) no, Speaker 4 (11:06) I think that's a separate one. The Speaker 3 (11:08) Ruhr is a different area. Speaker 4 (11:10) There's multiple. That Speaker 3 (11:10) one Speaker 4 (11:10) gives us B. Traven and the treasurer of the Sierra Madres. Speaker 3 (11:13) Mm hmm. Yes, it does. And someone else who we'll talk about in these episodes, Margaret. OK, but this is the Red Ruhr army and uprising. And basically, so the right like the right always does, like when they feel like they're winning, just says anyone left of us is a communist. But as soon as there's a communist army and the Ruhr, they're like, oh, Weimar, no, we can work with you guys. You're different from the communists, obviously. What were we saying earlier? No. So. At this point, the Academic Defense Corps is like risen up and the government. The Weimar government calls the Freikorps into action again to crush this Red Ruhr army. Niemöller takes command of one of the three battalions of the Academic Defense Corps. They enter combat on April 1st. Yeah, he's a Freikorps veteran, right? The guy who wrote First They Came is a Freikorps veteran. He's Speaker 4 (12:04) like, first I came for the communists. First I came for the communists with a gun. Speaker 3 (12:10) And I didn't say anything because I was shooting them in the head while they were unarmed. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. They enter combat on April 1st, and the Red Ruhr army had mostly dissolved by the 5th. They do not hold up for very long. Hockenos' book gives a description of the kind of service Martin and his comrades would have been engaged in. The right had a policy of taking no prisoners. A student volunteer, Max Zeller, wrote his parents, we shoot even the wounded. Anyone who falls into our hands first gets the rifle butt and then is finished off with a bullet. Estimates vary, but approximately 1,000 communists were killed along with 200 to 300 rightists. We were greeted as liberators from the hell of Bolshevism, Niemöller maintained, although few industrial workers in the Ruhr saw it that way. Speaker 4 (12:52) They probably threw them into the water to pretend they're drowning soldiers. They probably threw them in the water. Yeah, yeah, he loves Speaker 3 (12:58) that. And Martin never, I've read his autobiography. He talks about this, but he doesn't talk directly about what they did. He never admits to executing any prisoners or unarmed people. He never admits to engaging in any specific violence. But if you want to know, did Martin Niemöller execute wounded and unarmed people during the Ruhr uprising? Think of how he behaved to those drowning French soldiers. And I think you might have your answer. I think Martin Niemöller probably shot some unarmed people to death, right? From this point on, Martin only grew more and more involved in right-wing politics. As a monarchist to his bones, he felt that ideally politics would not be necessary because it would not be allowed. He was unable to see that the monarchy had brought Germany all of its problems and instead blamed the left, which is an insane read of World War One. But it is the read all these guys have of it, right? Like we did everything. We were in complete power and control. It was a disaster. The fault of these Jewish communists who had to write in when we starved the country to death. to try to rescue our few survivors from nightmare, right? They're the ones who fucked it up, right? Yeah, yeah, famously. In his book, Hitler's Personal Prisoner, Benjamin Zeman describes most of the early 20s as a time of intense right-wing radicalization for Martin. He joined the German Völkisch Protection and Defiance Federation, arguably the first German fascist populist party, right? This is the first, like, mass fascist party in Germany, debatably. The DNVP was intensely anti-Semitic and considered Judaism and Bolshevism to be synonyms. Martin also joined other right-wing parties and organizations over the next years while he worked as a plate layer for the railroad company to make money as he finished school. He made a point of bragging to his wife, Elsa, whenever he encountered his coworkers because he's very proud to briefly be a blue-collar man. That I worked on the railroad like a real vote. It's like, Martin, you're a nerdy pastor's son. Fuck off. Being in the U-boat should be good enough for your blue-collar credentials. You don't need to work at a railroad and brag about it. Right. But that's the hip thing in his subculture. In 1923, after graduating, he opted not to take on his own parish due to the disastrous economic conditions and instead manages to get a job as manager for a much larger church, the Intermission of Westphalia. In this position, he managed all church social welfare programs for the entire province. Martin was delighted that this job paid enough to, Simon writes, secure a bourgeoisie lifestyle for him and his family. So by 1923, 24, they're like middle class again, you know, by running charities. Yeah. By running by running charities. Yeah. Yeah. That's how he's making his money. By 1924, he's pushing 30 and a father of three. His latest was had been born just that January. He voted first for the Nazis probably in this year. I don't 100 percent know. Zeman, one of his biographers, the author of Hitler's Personal Prisoner, says that he did not vote for the Nazis at this point. But Hockenos' book reports that he voted for the Nazis at least once before 1930. And several sources I found say that he did so in 1924. I don't know if that would have been the year, because in his own autobiography, Martin writes almost nothing about the Munich Putsch that had been carried out by the Nazis around then. So he doesn't seem to be super involved in the Nazis. By 24, but certainly at some point before 1930, he starts voting for the Nazis and does so at least once. I can't exactly know when. Speaker 4 (16:32) This is really relatable to me, not voting for the Nazis, but you trying to figure out exactly which year and which sources are true and not. Because there's not a lot of people who have the same job as me. You're getting really annoyed that these sources don't agree with each other. And needing to figure out which seemed more accurate so that you can give the most. Anyway, it's a very charming thing. It's Speaker 3 (16:57) frustrating, but yeah, I try. I don't know exactly, but certainly he does seem to have voted for the Nazis before 1930 at least once. Right. Yeah. He was finally or makes Speaker 4 (17:05) complete sense with everything you're describing. It's it's totally in line with him. Right. Yeah. They're just the lesser evil, he probably said. Speaker 3 (17:14) Well, no, actually, Margaret, we'll talk about what he said. He's going to say a lot about what he thinks about the Nazis. He was finally ordained as a pastor this year, and his first act was to baptize his new son, who he named for one of his dead comrades. However, one could not call Martin a diligent father in this period. As Zeman writes, Martin's immense workload and frequent periods of absence were the reason for many marital conflicts with Elsa. In a 1926 letter to him, she describes herself as a grass widow. which I think means that like, you know, a regular widow is a dirt widow because they're her husband's underground, right? He's buried. My husband's still walking, but I'm a widow, right? Because he's never fucking here. You know, I actually think that's a pretty clever term. You don't get a lot about Elsa, but she could turn a phrase, I think. Maybe that was a common one. I don't know. She probably Speaker 4 (18:01) wrote the speech. Speaker 3 (18:02) She maybe, yeah, she probably wrote it. As he spent years engaged in making welfare programs operate for the church, he began to think more and more about who exactly was included in the people's community. Which Germans are really German and thus deserving of help? Hmm. While he mulled these issues, the National Socialists recovered from their failed push attempt and slowly built themselves into a major electoral force. Well, not really all that slowly. Next, per an article by George Bloom, quote, By 1931, Niemöller was eager to accept a church of his own. He was appointed third pastor to a church in Berlin, Dahelm, one of the richest and most fashionable parishes in Germany. Within months, he became senior pastor upon the death of the incumbent, and two years later, he found himself a national figure in Germany. The two sides of his personality continued to show. He was a committed Christian caring for the souls of his parishioners and a man of deep political convictions. So he is now, it's not really a mega church, but it... This is as close as you get in this period to something occupying that position because it's like a – it's a rich church. It is a parish for people with money. Yeah. Where you can sit around and Speaker 4 (19:09) think about who's really German. Speaker 3 (19:11) Right. And his parishioners included a lot of very influential conservatives, including a lot of early Nazis. And as one of the most affluent parishes in Germany, it was not seen as inappropriate that Martin repeatedly spoke up to advocate for far-right politics and political parties. The 1929 depression seems to have hardened him to the necessity of something like the Nazis and someone like Hitler, for clearly Germany needed a single strong man to embody the national spirit and whip things back into shape. In