Martin Niemöller

Martin Niemöller
Niemöller at The Hague's Grote of Sint-Jacobskerk in May 1952.
Born	Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 14 January 1892 Lippstadt, German Empire
Died	6 March 1984(1984-03-06) (aged 92) Wiesbaden, West Germany
Church	Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau Confessing Church Evangelical Church in Germany
Writings	First they came ...
Congregations served	St. Anne's in Dahlem, Germany
Offices held	President, Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau (1945–1961) President, World Council of Churches (1961–1968)
Title	Ordained pastor

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (German: [ˈniːmœlɐ]; 14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his statement "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Socialist. ... Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me."

He was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, but he became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph, but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.