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Hitler’s Personal Prisoner: The Life of Martin Niemöller
Author: by Benjamin Ziemann (Author), Christine Brocks (Author)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 2024-03-15
Language: English
Print Length: 464 pages
ISBN-10: 0192862588
ISBN-13: 9780192862587
Book Description
This is the first fully researched biography of Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). It charts his life from his service in the Imperial German Navy, his work for the Inner Mission and as a Protestant pastor in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem from 1931. Niemöller’s work as a leading figure of the Confessing Church and his contribution to the conflicts over church policy during the Third Reich are analysed and contextualised. Chapters on the post-war period chart Niemöller’s contribution to ecumenism, anti-nuclear pacifism, and his role in rebuilding the West German Protestant Churches.
From 1938 to 1945, Martin Niemöller was detained as ‘Hitler’s Personal Prisoner’ in Nazi concentration camps. Liberated in April 1945, Niemöller was widely hailed as an icon of Christian resistance against the Nazi dictatorship. For many years, the Niemöller legend masked the problematic aspects of his life: his persistent antisemitism, on display even in the post-war period; his nationalism and support of the German war effort even whilst in concentration camp detention; and his disdain for parliamentary democracy. In his biography of the most important twentieth-century German Protestant, Benjamin Ziemann uncovers the ‘historical’ Niemöller behind the legend of the resistance hero. Carefully situating Niemöller’s personal trajectory in his wider social milieu — from the Imperial Navy to the West German peace movement — Ziemann probes into core themes of twentieth century German history: militarism, National Socialism, German guilt, and moral reconstruction post-1945.
Review
“This book is a brilliant reexamination of one of the most obdurate of sacred cows, the myth of Martin Niemöller. Ziemann has done prodigious work in pushing past the postwar narrative so carefully curated by Niemöller’s circle of confidants, to do what historians are supposed to do: get to the truth. By deploying a fact-driven methodology concerned with scrutinizing old truth-claims, Ziemann delivers the kind of probing reevaluation of Niemöller that we have waited literally decades to read.” — Richard Steigmann-Gall, Author of The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945
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