THE PERSON IM DOIN MY PAPER ON A LIL BCKGRND

German naval officer Martin Niemöller (top, foreground) commands a U-Boat during World War I. Flensburg, Germany , ca. 1914-1917.

— USHMM, courtesy of Sibylle Niemoeller

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Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was an ardent nationalist and prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last 7 years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

Martin Niemöller was the son of a Lutheran pastor, Heinrich Niemöller, born in the Westphalian town of Lippstadt, Germany on January 14, 1892. In 1910 he became a cadet in the Imperial German Navy. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Niemöller was assigned to a U-Boat, of which he was eventually appointed the commander. Under the stipulations of the armistice of November 11, 1918, that ended hostilities in World War I, Niemöller and other commanders were shortly after ordered to turn over their U-Boats to England. Along with many others, Niemöller refused to obey this order, and was, as a consequence, discharged from the Navy.