WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.740 First, they came for the socialists, and I did 00:00:01.740 --> 00:00:03.379 not speak out because I was not a socialist. 00:00:03.620 --> 00:00:05.519 Then they came for the trade unionists, and I 00:00:05.519 --> 00:00:07.639 did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. 00:00:08.019 --> 00:00:10.419 Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak 00:00:10.419 --> 00:00:12.599 out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:14.800 me, and there was no one left to speak for me. 00:00:15.619 --> 00:00:18.699 It really creates a visceral reaction, doesn't 00:00:18.699 --> 00:00:21.339 it? Every single time. It really does. It's just 00:00:21.339 --> 00:00:23.339 haunting. Yeah, it's one of those few pieces 00:00:23.339 --> 00:00:26.370 of tech that feels like it's just... etch into 00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:29.050 the global hard drive. You see it on museum walls. 00:00:29.190 --> 00:00:30.949 You see it on protest signs. People quote it 00:00:30.949 --> 00:00:33.350 on social media constantly. Everywhere. Right. 00:00:33.469 --> 00:00:36.189 It's the ultimate shorthand for, you know, don't 00:00:36.189 --> 00:00:38.969 be a bystander. It's concise. It's poetic. And 00:00:38.969 --> 00:00:41.979 the structure is just perfect. But, and this 00:00:41.979 --> 00:00:43.780 is exactly why I love doing these deep dives 00:00:43.780 --> 00:00:46.780 with you. Here we go. I have a massive stack 00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:49.200 of notes here based on historical records and 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:51.979 Wikipedia entries that suggests the version I 00:00:51.979 --> 00:00:54.479 just read, which is arguably the most famous 00:00:54.479 --> 00:00:57.479 version in the English speaking world is, well, 00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:00.659 it's basically a cover song. A cover song. That 00:01:00.659 --> 00:01:03.140 is a very, very charitable way to put it. Really? 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:05.540 Yes. It's a cover song where the lyrics have 00:01:05.540 --> 00:01:07.120 been changed to make it more radio friendly. 00:01:07.319 --> 00:01:09.819 Radio -friendly. We're talking about a confession 00:01:09.819 --> 00:01:12.519 regarding the Holocaust. How on earth do you 00:01:12.519 --> 00:01:15.319 make that radio -friendly? By removing the people 00:01:15.319 --> 00:01:17.219 that the audience just doesn't want to hear about. 00:01:17.379 --> 00:01:21.000 Wow. Look, the sentiment of the quote is undeniable, 00:01:21.019 --> 00:01:24.390 obviously. It's historic. But if we actually 00:01:24.390 --> 00:01:26.450 look at the source material we have today, the 00:01:26.450 --> 00:01:29.390 historical records, the research from historians 00:01:29.390 --> 00:01:32.629 like Professor Harold Marcuse, and the actual 00:01:32.629 --> 00:01:35.090 biography of the man who said it, Martin E. Miller. 00:01:35.129 --> 00:01:37.530 Right, the author. Almost everything the general 00:01:37.530 --> 00:01:40.189 public thinks they know about this quote unquote 00:01:40.189 --> 00:01:43.709 poem is a little bit wrong, or even a lot wrong. 00:01:43.909 --> 00:01:46.189 Okay, so we have a full -blown case of the Mandela 00:01:46.189 --> 00:01:49.343 effect on our hands. A very serious one. We have... 00:01:49.340 --> 00:01:52.099 Text that has been edited. We have specific groups 00:01:52.099 --> 00:01:54.560 of victims that have been entirely erased and 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:59.239 we have a hero figure in need Miller who is Let's 00:01:59.239 --> 00:02:01.400 just say his reality is a lot messier than the 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:04.000 myth. Well messy is usually where the truth lives 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.040 So for everyone listening our mission today is 00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:09.580 to unpack all of this. We're gonna cover three 00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:13.919 main things First the text itself and what's 00:02:13.919 --> 00:02:17.180 mysteriously missing? Second, the incredibly 00:02:17.180 --> 00:02:20.479 complex and honestly shocking backstory of Martin 00:02:20.479 --> 00:02:23.139 Niemöller. Well, definitely shocking. And finally, 00:02:23.419 --> 00:02:25.860 the actual historical moment this confession 00:02:25.860 --> 00:02:28.020 was born. So let's just start with the text. 00:02:28.439 --> 00:02:30.539 I read the version that starts with, first they 00:02:30.539 --> 00:02:33.020 came for the socialists. That's the one prominently 00:02:33.020 --> 00:02:34.919 displayed at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:37.419 right? It is. And it's the version most Americans 00:02:37.419 --> 00:02:41.419 know by heart. But if you were to travel to Germany, 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:43.800 or if you dig into the earliest transcripts of 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:45.639 Niemöller's speeches from right after the war, 00:02:46.360 --> 00:02:49.000 you would notice a glaring omission in that American 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:52.139 version. An omission? A big one. The original 00:02:52.139 --> 00:02:54.419 sequence did not start with socialists. Who did 00:02:54.419 --> 00:02:56.580 it start with, then? It started with the communists. 00:02:56.780 --> 00:02:58.879 The communists. Yes, when the Nazis came for 00:02:58.879 --> 00:03:01.539 the communists. OK, that is a very specific swap. 00:03:01.919 --> 00:03:05.780 So why the edit? I mean, I can probably guess, 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:07.930 given the history, but walk me through it. Why 00:03:07.930 --> 00:03:10.469 do we say socialists, or I've even seen some 00:03:10.469 --> 00:03:13.389 versions say industrialists, but we completely 00:03:13.389 --> 00:03:15.909 leave out the communists? Well, you have to think 00:03:15.909 --> 00:03:18.590 about when this quote actually became famous 00:03:18.590 --> 00:03:20.930 in the United States. Yeah. It started circulating 00:03:20.930 --> 00:03:26.090 widely in the 1950s. Ah, OK. The Cold War, McCarthyism. 00:03:26.210 --> 00:03:28.409 The Red Scare, exactly. I remember the political 00:03:28.409 --> 00:03:31.009 climate of the time, you have this incredibly 00:03:31.009 --> 00:03:35.150 powerful, moral, anti -Nazi statement that people 00:03:35.150 --> 00:03:38.030 want to use. Right. But in 1950s America, it 00:03:38.030 --> 00:03:40.750 was politically impossible to sell a poem that 00:03:40.750 --> 00:03:42.750 started by asking for empathy for communists. 00:03:42.930 --> 00:03:44.270 It would have been investigated? It would have 00:03:44.270 --> 00:03:45.969 been dead on arrival. People would have rejected 00:03:45.969 --> 00:03:48.430 the whole message. So it was sanitized. Sanitized 00:03:48.430 --> 00:03:50.530 for an American audience. Yes. And Professor 00:03:50.530 --> 00:03:52.969 Marcuse, who has done an incredible deep dive 00:03:52.969 --> 00:03:55.689 into the history of this exact quote, argues 00:03:55.689 --> 00:03:58.030 that this isn't just some minor harmless edit 00:03:58.030 --> 00:04:00.789 for the sake of palitability. What does he say 00:04:00.789 --> 00:04:02.930 it does? He thinks removing communists actually 00:04:02.930 --> 00:04:05.689 breaks the internal logic of the entire confession. 00:04:05.819 --> 00:04:09.199 breaks the logic. Just by swapping one political 00:04:09.199 --> 00:04:12.099 group for another. How so? Because it breaks 00:04:12.099 --> 00:04:15.060 the chronological order of who was targeted first. 00:04:15.419 --> 00:04:18.620 Well, partly that. The Nazis did target the communists 00:04:18.620 --> 00:04:20.759 first, politically speaking. They were the primary 00:04:20.759 --> 00:04:23.420 rival in the streets. But it's more about the 00:04:23.420 --> 00:04:25.579 psychological point Niemöller was trying to make 00:04:25.579 --> 00:04:28.519 to his audience. OK, tracking with you. His argument 00:04:28.519 --> 00:04:30.779 wasn't just, hey, we should have protected our 00:04:30.779 --> 00:04:34.540 friends. His profound realization was we should 00:04:34.540 --> 00:04:38.220 have protected our enemies. Oh, oh, wow. That 00:04:38.220 --> 00:04:40.439 is a huge distinction. It's the whole point of 00:04:40.439 --> 00:04:43.860 the text. You see, Niemöller was a staunch conservative. 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:46.759 He was a traditional churchman. He instinctively 00:04:46.759 --> 00:04:48.800 disliked communists. He didn't just disagree 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:52.240 with them. No, he saw them as godless, as direct 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:54.139 threats to the Christian church and to German 00:04:54.139 --> 00:04:57.560 society. So the true power of his confession 00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:00.259 lies in him standing up and saying, I didn't 00:05:00.259 --> 00:05:01.759 speak up for them because I didn't like them. 00:05:01.930 --> 00:05:04.069 because I thought they deserved it. That was 00:05:04.069 --> 00:05:06.689 my sin. So if you change it to socialists, which 00:05:06.689 --> 00:05:09.209 feels a little softer, a little more democratic 00:05:09.209 --> 00:05:11.250 to a Westerner, or if you just skip straight 00:05:11.250 --> 00:05:14.110 to Jews, you completely lose that element of, 00:05:14.550 --> 00:05:17.490 I let the people I actively hated be taken away. 00:05:17.949 --> 00:05:21.160 Precisely. You turn a deeply uncomfortable confession 00:05:21.160 --> 00:05:24.839 about political bias and moral blindness into 00:05:24.839 --> 00:05:27.779 a generic feel -good statement about solidarity. 00:05:27.819 --> 00:05:30.379 It waters it down. Completely. The full list 00:05:30.379 --> 00:05:32.939 in the German original usually tracks the actual 00:05:32.939 --> 00:05:36.120 escalation. It goes communists, then trade unionists, 00:05:36.420 --> 00:05:39.379 then social democrats, then Jews, and finally 00:05:39.379 --> 00:05:42.920 the speaker. It's a slippery slope, but the slope 00:05:42.920 --> 00:05:45.420 specifically starts with the people on the absolute 00:05:45.420 --> 00:05:47.480 margins of that society's sympathy, the ones 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:49.579 nobody wants to defend. Exactly. And that brings 00:05:49.579 --> 00:05:52.379 us perfectly to the me in the poem, the speaker, 00:05:52.759 --> 00:05:54.660 because understanding why he didn't speak up 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:57.819 for communists initially requires us to understand 00:05:57.819 --> 00:06:00.439 who Martin E. Miller actually was. Right. I think 00:06:00.439 --> 00:06:02.160 most people, when they read this, they picture 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:04.540 a lifelong resistance fighter. That's definitely 00:06:04.540 --> 00:06:07.379 the image I had. Like a brave underground pastor 00:06:07.379 --> 00:06:09.740 standing in the pulpit denouncing the regime 00:06:09.740 --> 00:06:12.259 from day one. It's a nice image. But looking 00:06:12.259 --> 00:06:15.639 at these notes from our sources, yikes. Complicated 00:06:15.639 --> 00:06:18.379 is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It really 00:06:18.379 --> 00:06:22.660 is. Martin A. Moeller was born in 1892. And yes, 00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:25.540 he was a Lutheran pastor. But before he ever 00:06:25.540 --> 00:06:27.829 put on the clerical collar, He was a military 00:06:27.829 --> 00:06:30.430 man. OK. He was a U -boat commander in World 00:06:30.430 --> 00:06:33.930 War One, a highly decorated naval officer. A 00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:36.970 U -boat commander. So he's not exactly the profile 00:06:36.970 --> 00:06:39.889 of a gentle pacifist. Or from it. He was a fiercely 00:06:39.889 --> 00:06:43.470 patriotic, staunch national conservative. And 00:06:43.470 --> 00:06:46.310 here's the kicker. The detail that usually floors 00:06:46.310 --> 00:06:48.129 people when they first learn about him. Lay it 00:06:48.129 --> 00:06:52.290 on me. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Niemöller 00:06:52.290 --> 00:06:54.980 didn't oppose him. He welcomed him. Wait, he 00:06:54.980 --> 00:06:57.120 welcomed Hitler. He voted for the Nazi. You're 00:06:57.120 --> 00:06:59.439 kidding. Not at all. You really have to understand 00:06:59.439 --> 00:07:01.819 the context of the time for someone of his background. 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:04.759 Niemöller hated the Weimar Republic, which was 00:07:04.759 --> 00:07:06.839 the fragile democracy that came after World War 00:07:06.839 --> 00:07:08.959 One. Right. A lot of conservatives felt it was 00:07:08.959 --> 00:07:11.759 forced on them. Exactly. He thought it was weak, 00:07:12.060 --> 00:07:15.459 chaotic and fundamentally un -German. So when 00:07:15.459 --> 00:07:17.860 Hitler came along promising a national revival, 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:20.680 Niemöller bought in. He believed the Nazis would 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:23.829 restore order. traditional values and national 00:07:23.829 --> 00:07:26.290 pride. So he wasn't just a passive bystander 00:07:26.290 --> 00:07:28.709 in the beginning. He was a supporter. He actively 00:07:28.709 --> 00:07:31.589 wanted this revival. He was an enthusiastic supporter. 00:07:31.930 --> 00:07:35.610 He even met Hitler personally in 1934 and came 00:07:35.610 --> 00:07:38.089 away from that meeting initially thinking, I 00:07:38.089 --> 00:07:40.269 can work with this man. We share the same goals 00:07:40.269 --> 00:07:43.269 for Germany. OK, so. Obviously, things went south 00:07:43.269 --> 00:07:45.850 at some point. Niemöller famously ends up in 00:07:45.850 --> 00:07:48.230 a concentration camp. So what was the turning 00:07:48.230 --> 00:07:51.170 point? Did he see the street violence against 00:07:51.170 --> 00:07:53.310 Jewish people and suddenly realize he'd made 00:07:53.310 --> 00:07:55.610 a terrible mistake? You would hope that was the 00:07:55.610 --> 00:07:58.290 line in the sand. As modern readers, that's what 00:07:58.290 --> 00:08:00.410 we want the turning point to be. But it wasn't. 00:08:00.750 --> 00:08:03.069 The historical record is very clear that it wasn't. 00:08:03.170 --> 00:08:04.709 Niemöller didn't turn against Hitler because 00:08:04.709 --> 00:08:06.850 of the Holocaust or the broader persecution of 00:08:06.850 --> 00:08:09.329 minorities. Initially, he turned against Hitler 00:08:09.329 --> 00:08:12.779 because of a turf war. A turf war. Over what? 00:08:13.240 --> 00:08:16.300 Over who controlled the church. Hitler and the 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:18.779 Nazis wanted to coordinate all the Protestant 00:08:18.779 --> 00:08:21.660 churches in Germany. They wanted to create this 00:08:21.660 --> 00:08:24.600 unified, right church that entirely followed 00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:27.420 Nazi ideology. Oh, they wanted to absorb religion 00:08:27.420 --> 00:08:29.519 into the state. Exactly. And as part of that, 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:31.920 they introduced something called the Aryan Paragraph 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:34.320 into the church constitution. And what did that 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:37.379 paragraph do? It explicitly stated that anyone 00:08:37.379 --> 00:08:40.019 of Jewish descent even if they were baptized 00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:43.340 Christians, could not serve as pastors or hold 00:08:43.340 --> 00:08:47.080 any office in the church. Basically, the totalitarian 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:48.919 state was telling the church who was allowed 00:08:48.919 --> 00:08:50.600 to be a minister. And that's where Niemöller 00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:53.179 finally drew the line. Yes. He essentially said, 00:08:53.179 --> 00:08:55.539 you don't tell the church what to do. The state 00:08:55.539 --> 00:08:58.200 cannot dictate theology. So it was an institutional 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:00.899 defense. He founded the confessional church specifically 00:09:00.899 --> 00:09:03.700 to oppose this state control. But we have to 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:06.240 be incredibly careful with the nuance here, as 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:08.720 the sources point out. He was fighting for the 00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:11.899 autonomy of his religious institution. He wasn't 00:09:11.899 --> 00:09:13.779 necessarily fighting for the human rights of 00:09:13.779 --> 00:09:16.519 Jewish people and society at large. So he was 00:09:16.519 --> 00:09:19.559 staying strictly in his lane, defending his own 00:09:19.559 --> 00:09:21.860 house. Correct. And we know this for a fact, 00:09:22.179 --> 00:09:25.360 because even in 1935, and remember, this is two 00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:28.220 full years into the brutal reality of Nazi rule, 00:09:29.220 --> 00:09:31.659 Niemöller is still giving sermons where he says 00:09:31.659 --> 00:09:34.679 some truly regrettable, deeply prejudiced things. 00:09:34.799 --> 00:09:38.220 Like what? He preached from the pulpit that Jewish 00:09:38.220 --> 00:09:40.720 people were being punished by God for, quote, 00:09:41.220 --> 00:09:44.120 bringing the Christ of God to the cross. Wow, 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:47.580 okay. That's standard centuries -old theological 00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:49.639 anti -Semitism. It was very common, yes. Yeah. 00:09:50.159 --> 00:09:52.360 But it shatters the myth of him as this enlightened 00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:54.860 hero fighting for a universal equality from the 00:09:54.860 --> 00:09:57.279 start. He was very much a man of his time, harboring 00:09:57.279 --> 00:09:59.360 all those inherited prejudices. Right. He was 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:01.320 protecting baptized Jews within his church because 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:03.340 he viewed them as Christians, not because he 00:10:03.340 --> 00:10:05.399 opposed anti -Semitism as a fundamental evil. 00:10:05.500 --> 00:10:08.320 That is a massive, massive distinction. But eventually, 00:10:08.500 --> 00:10:10.659 despite his narrow focus, the regime got tired 00:10:10.659 --> 00:10:13.080 of him pushing back. They did. He was too high 00:10:13.080 --> 00:10:17.059 profile and too loud. Hmm. So in 1937, he was 00:10:17.059 --> 00:10:20.159 arrested by the Gestapo. He was sent to Sachsenhausen 00:10:20.159 --> 00:10:23.039 concentration camp and later transferred to Dachau. 00:10:23.159 --> 00:10:25.879 He spent seven years as a personal prisoner of 00:10:25.879 --> 00:10:28.559 the Fuhrer. Seven years in those camps? I mean, 00:10:28.740 --> 00:10:31.759 regardless of his early politics, that is a horrific 00:10:31.759 --> 00:10:35.080 price to pay. That kind of suffering usually 00:10:35.080 --> 00:10:37.639 cements someone as an untouchable martyr. It 00:10:37.639 --> 00:10:40.519 does. And he absolutely suffered. He was kept 00:10:40.519 --> 00:10:42.740 in solitary confinement for a long time. There 00:10:42.740 --> 00:10:46.139 is no minimizing that. But... And this is the 00:10:46.139 --> 00:10:47.639 part of the research that I literally had to 00:10:47.639 --> 00:10:49.559 read three times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. 00:10:49.559 --> 00:10:51.019 You can't know exactly what you're about to bring 00:10:51.019 --> 00:10:52.960 up. It's wild. The letter. The letter. So I want 00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:56.440 you to picture this scene. It is 1939. Niemöller 00:10:56.440 --> 00:10:58.639 has been locked in a concentration camp for two 00:10:58.639 --> 00:11:00.899 years. He is a political prisoner over the Nazi 00:11:00.899 --> 00:11:03.019 state. Right. World War II officially breaks 00:11:03.019 --> 00:11:05.840 out. And what does Niemöller do? He writes a 00:11:05.840 --> 00:11:08.580 letter to the Nazi Naval Command. He volunteers 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:11.049 to fight. I just... I really can't wrap my head 00:11:11.049 --> 00:11:13.830 around that. He's sitting in a cell in a concentration 00:11:13.830 --> 00:11:16.230 camp put there by Hitler, and he writes a formal 00:11:16.230 --> 00:11:18.210 letter saying, put me back in a U -boat. I want 00:11:18.210 --> 00:11:21.070 to fight for Germany. It is the ultimate historical 00:11:21.070 --> 00:11:24.570 paradox, but it really speaks to the sheer depth 00:11:24.570 --> 00:11:27.909 of his nationalism. In his mind, he was able 00:11:27.909 --> 00:11:31.129 to completely separate the Nazi government, which 00:11:31.129 --> 00:11:33.669 he was actively fighting against on church matters, 00:11:34.330 --> 00:11:37.370 from the fatherland. which he loved unconditionally. 00:11:37.669 --> 00:11:40.470 That level of compartmentalization is terrifying. 00:11:40.789 --> 00:11:43.070 His instinct as a former soldier and a German 00:11:43.070 --> 00:11:45.029 patriot was simply that when the country's at 00:11:45.029 --> 00:11:47.750 war, you fight. Even if the guy leading the war 00:11:47.750 --> 00:11:50.190 is the exact same guy who locked you up. Did 00:11:50.190 --> 00:11:52.570 they let him out? Did they actually consider 00:11:52.570 --> 00:11:55.450 giving him a U -boat? No. Thank goodness. The 00:11:55.450 --> 00:11:58.509 Nazis flatly rejected the offer. Goebbels apparently 00:11:58.509 --> 00:12:00.950 thought the whole thing was absurd. But just 00:12:00.950 --> 00:12:02.710 imagine for a second if they hadn't rejected 00:12:02.710 --> 00:12:05.139 him. Oh, man. Imagine if the man who eventually 00:12:05.139 --> 00:12:07.600 wrote First They Came had spent the Second World 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:10.360 War actively sinking allied ships in the Atlantic 00:12:10.360 --> 00:12:12.759 for the Third Reich. We definitely wouldn't be 00:12:12.759 --> 00:12:15.000 quoting him on protest signs today. Definitely 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:17.720 not. So if we pull all this together, we have 00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:21.259 a man who welcomed Hitler, spouted anti -Semitic 00:12:21.259 --> 00:12:23.779 rhetoric from the pulpit, fought for his church, 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:26.980 but not for broad civil rights, and then literally 00:12:26.980 --> 00:12:29.519 tried to volunteer for the Nazi Navy while rotting 00:12:29.519 --> 00:12:32.990 in a concentration camp. How in the world do 00:12:32.990 --> 00:12:36.149 we get from that guy to the beautiful universal 00:12:36.149 --> 00:12:38.909 poem about standing up for others? We get there 00:12:38.909 --> 00:12:41.750 through a very slow, very painful, and very public 00:12:41.750 --> 00:12:44.429 awakening. And honestly, that's what makes the 00:12:44.429 --> 00:12:46.409 text so powerful when you really understand it. 00:12:46.750 --> 00:12:48.730 It's not a pristine lecture from a saint who 00:12:48.730 --> 00:12:51.190 was always right. Right. It's a raw confession 00:12:51.190 --> 00:12:53.289 from a deeply guilty man. He finally realized 00:12:53.289 --> 00:12:55.190 he was wrong, but only when it was way too late. 00:12:55.509 --> 00:12:58.580 Exactly. That brings us to the actual origin 00:12:58.580 --> 00:13:00.720 of the text itself, because as we touched on 00:13:00.720 --> 00:13:02.519 earlier, it wasn't written as a poem at all. 00:13:02.919 --> 00:13:05.000 He didn't sit down at a mahogany desk in a study 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:08.899 in 1945 and pen a brilliant sonnet. It came from 00:13:08.899 --> 00:13:12.720 a speech, right? Just off the cuff. Yes. January 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:16.620 6, 1946, in Frankfurt. Now, to understand the 00:13:16.620 --> 00:13:19.019 speech, you have to picture the scene. Germany 00:13:19.019 --> 00:13:22.240 is absolute rubble. The war is over. The true 00:13:22.240 --> 00:13:24.320 scale of the Holocaust has just been revealed 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:27.159 to the world. And the prevailing mood among the 00:13:27.159 --> 00:13:29.559 surviving German populace wasn't, oh my God, 00:13:29.559 --> 00:13:31.980 what have we done? What was it? It was, look 00:13:31.980 --> 00:13:33.440 at what happened to us. They were freezing. They 00:13:33.440 --> 00:13:35.440 were starving. Their cities were firebombed. 00:13:35.539 --> 00:13:38.019 They felt overwhelming self -pity. They felt 00:13:38.019 --> 00:13:39.980 like the victims. So nobody in that audience 00:13:39.980 --> 00:13:42.039 wanted to hear about German guilt. Nobody. They 00:13:42.039 --> 00:13:44.879 wanted comfort and sympathy. Andy Miller gets 00:13:44.879 --> 00:13:47.159 up on that stage and entirely refuses to give 00:13:47.159 --> 00:13:48.860 it to them. He's speaking to the confessional 00:13:48.860 --> 00:13:50.940 church, his own people, and he's there to talk 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:56.139 about one thing. Mea culpa. My fault. Our fault. 00:13:56.399 --> 00:13:58.019 There's a specific line in the transcript of 00:13:58.019 --> 00:14:00.259 that 1946 speech that really stood out to me 00:14:00.259 --> 00:14:02.259 when I was reviewing the sources. He's talking 00:14:02.259 --> 00:14:04.019 about the communists being taken away to the 00:14:04.019 --> 00:14:07.059 camps in those early days of 1933. And he says, 00:14:07.159 --> 00:14:09.720 and I quote, we knew it, it was printed in the 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:12.539 newspapers. That line is devastating. Really, 00:14:12.639 --> 00:14:15.500 it was printed in the newspapers because it cuts 00:14:15.500 --> 00:14:18.299 right through the most common post -war excuse, 00:14:18.700 --> 00:14:20.799 which was, we simply didn't know. Right, the 00:14:20.799 --> 00:14:24.019 myth of ignorance. He destroys that myth. He 00:14:24.019 --> 00:14:26.399 admits to his own flock, we knew, but we just 00:14:26.399 --> 00:14:28.799 didn't care. In the speech, he says, who raised 00:14:28.799 --> 00:14:31.460 their voice, we thought, well, communists. Those 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:33.700 are opponents of religion. Should I be my brother's 00:14:33.700 --> 00:14:35.860 keeper? He's stripping away every ounce of innocence. 00:14:35.899 --> 00:14:38.279 He's looking at his peers and saying, we saw 00:14:38.279 --> 00:14:40.340 it happen in broad daylight and we let it happen 00:14:40.340 --> 00:14:42.039 because we didn't like the people being targeted. 00:14:42.139 --> 00:14:44.889 And he doesn't stop there. He also uses this 00:14:44.889 --> 00:14:48.789 really intense, almost jarring mathematical hypothetical 00:14:48.789 --> 00:14:50.750 in that speech. Did you catch that figure? I 00:14:50.750 --> 00:14:53.870 did. It's a staggering calculation. He basically 00:14:53.870 --> 00:14:56.809 speculates that if 14 ,000 Protestant pastors 00:14:56.809 --> 00:15:00.610 had just stood up together in 1933 and 1934 and 00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:02.750 defended the truth to the death. Right. He says 00:15:02.750 --> 00:15:05.570 maybe 30 ,000 or 40 ,000 Christians would have 00:15:05.570 --> 00:15:08.029 had their heads cut off. He's very graphic and 00:15:08.029 --> 00:15:10.539 blunt about the cost of resistance. But then 00:15:10.539 --> 00:15:13.200 he says if they had done that, if they had sacrificed 00:15:13.200 --> 00:15:15.759 themselves early on, maybe they would have saved 00:15:15.759 --> 00:15:18.980 30 to 40 million people. It's chilling. He is 00:15:18.980 --> 00:15:21.580 literally weighing the hypothetical martyrdom 00:15:21.580 --> 00:15:24.120 of his own colleagues against the total death 00:15:24.120 --> 00:15:27.360 toll of the war in the Holocaust. And he concludes 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:29.240 that because they weren't willing to pay the 00:15:29.240 --> 00:15:32.460 relatively small price of 14 ,000 lives, the 00:15:32.460 --> 00:15:35.379 whole world was forced to pay the price of 30 00:15:35.379 --> 00:15:38.299 million lives. That is just, I mean, it's incredibly 00:15:38.299 --> 00:15:40.779 heavy. It's an economic argument about the cost 00:15:40.779 --> 00:15:43.220 of silence. It really is. It perfectly encapsulates 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:46.299 the idea that the price of resistance is undeniably 00:15:46.299 --> 00:15:49.679 high, but the price of silence is infinite. So 00:15:49.679 --> 00:15:53.360 if this origin was a rambling, emotional, extemporaneous 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:56.240 speech about shared guilt and mathematical death 00:15:56.240 --> 00:15:59.200 tolls and reading the newspaper, how did it eventually 00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:02.940 become the tidy four stanza poem we see on posters 00:16:02.940 --> 00:16:05.419 today? It was essentially the ultimate game of 00:16:05.419 --> 00:16:08.679 telephone. Yeah. It started circulating informally 00:16:08.679 --> 00:16:11.940 in religious circles right after the war. Niemeller 00:16:11.940 --> 00:16:14.480 eventually went on a massive global speaking 00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:17.399 tour. He actually became a huge figure in the 00:16:17.399 --> 00:16:19.639 international peace and anti -nuclear movement 00:16:19.639 --> 00:16:22.100 later in his life. Full 180 from the U -boat 00:16:22.100 --> 00:16:25.000 days. Exactly. And people would go hear him speak 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:27.419 and they'd naturally paraphrase the core message 00:16:27.419 --> 00:16:29.620 to their friends. They'd say, you know, he said 00:16:29.620 --> 00:16:31.320 first they took the communists, then they took 00:16:31.320 --> 00:16:34.330 the unionists, and we did nothing. and eventually 00:16:34.330 --> 00:16:37.649 someone decided to polish it up. Right. By the 00:16:37.649 --> 00:16:41.309 1950s, the structured poetic form that we recognize 00:16:41.309 --> 00:16:44.830 today just sort of organically emerged in print. 00:16:45.029 --> 00:16:47.009 Niemöller himself was actually asked about the 00:16:47.009 --> 00:16:49.470 wording in an interview in 1976. What did he 00:16:49.470 --> 00:16:52.129 say? He openly admitted he had no written minutes 00:16:52.129 --> 00:16:54.850 or exact script of that original Frankfurt speech. 00:16:55.470 --> 00:16:57.049 He said he might have formulated it slightly 00:16:57.049 --> 00:16:58.529 differently on different nights of his tour, 00:16:58.529 --> 00:17:01.169 but the core idea was always exactly the same. 00:17:01.419 --> 00:17:04.039 All of that was not our affair. Not our affair. 00:17:04.180 --> 00:17:06.799 That is the truly chilling part. It is. And to 00:17:06.799 --> 00:17:08.500 add another layer to this, there was a recent 00:17:08.500 --> 00:17:11.579 2025 interview with his biographer, Matthew D. 00:17:11.700 --> 00:17:14.680 Hakanos. OK. What does he add to the timeline? 00:17:15.049 --> 00:17:18.470 Hakanos suggests that the famous rhythmic poetic 00:17:18.470 --> 00:17:21.829 structure was most likely a direct contribution 00:17:21.829 --> 00:17:24.349 from Niemöller's supporters and translators. 00:17:24.450 --> 00:17:26.950 They cleaned it up for him. They took this incredibly 00:17:26.950 --> 00:17:30.609 messy raw sprawling confession and expertly turned 00:17:30.609 --> 00:17:32.730 it into something punchy that could fit on a 00:17:32.730 --> 00:17:34.910 memorial plaque. Which honestly makes total sense. 00:17:35.009 --> 00:17:38.289 You can't put a 45 minute agonizing theological 00:17:38.289 --> 00:17:41.470 speech on a bumper sticker or a t -shirt. But 00:17:41.470 --> 00:17:44.789 the poem. That format sticks in the brain. It 00:17:44.789 --> 00:17:47.069 sticks perfectly. And that precise stickiness 00:17:47.069 --> 00:17:49.390 is what allowed it to travel everywhere. To the 00:17:49.390 --> 00:17:51.710 permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust 00:17:51.710 --> 00:17:54.569 Memorial Museum, to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, 00:17:54.710 --> 00:17:56.930 and all the way into pop culture references like 00:17:56.930 --> 00:17:59.089 the Billy Bragg song, Sea of Heroes. But hearing 00:17:59.089 --> 00:18:01.289 all this history, it leaves me with one really 00:18:01.289 --> 00:18:03.990 big question. Sure. Does the clean version, the 00:18:03.990 --> 00:18:06.470 poem everyone knows, does it lose something essential? 00:18:07.180 --> 00:18:10.359 If we forget that socialists was originally communist, 00:18:10.420 --> 00:18:12.160 and if we forget that the guy saying it was a 00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:14.180 former anti -Semite who literally wanted to command 00:18:14.180 --> 00:18:17.000 a U -boat for the Nazis, do we lose the actual 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:19.160 teeth of the warning? I think we absolutely do. 00:18:19.220 --> 00:18:22.019 If you view the poem as coming from a saint, 00:18:22.599 --> 00:18:25.460 a pure, unblemished hero who always knew right 00:18:25.460 --> 00:18:27.660 from wrong from the very beginning, then it's 00:18:27.660 --> 00:18:30.519 really just a nice, safe sentiment. Right. It's 00:18:30.519 --> 00:18:32.619 just, hey, be nice to people, look out for each 00:18:32.619 --> 00:18:34.940 other. Exactly. It becomes a platitude. But if 00:18:34.940 --> 00:18:37.859 you view it as coming from a collaborator, from 00:18:37.859 --> 00:18:40.519 a man who was actively part of the problem, who 00:18:40.519 --> 00:18:43.400 shared the dark prejudices of his time, and who 00:18:43.400 --> 00:18:46.019 realized his catastrophic mistake only when the 00:18:46.019 --> 00:18:48.859 monster finally came to his own door, then it 00:18:48.859 --> 00:18:51.579 becomes a much more urgent, terrifying warning 00:18:51.579 --> 00:18:54.460 about us. It completely stops being a comfortable 00:18:54.460 --> 00:18:56.420 story about history and starts being a mirror. 00:18:56.660 --> 00:18:59.380 Yes. It forces us to ask ourselves, what are 00:18:59.380 --> 00:19:01.279 we intentionally ignoring right now because we've 00:19:01.279 --> 00:19:04.119 decided it's not our affair? That's what the 00:19:04.119 --> 00:19:06.519 sources refer to as cognitive inertia. Cognitive 00:19:06.519 --> 00:19:08.799 inertia. Break that concept down for me a bit. 00:19:09.099 --> 00:19:11.480 It's the human tendency to just keep going with 00:19:11.480 --> 00:19:14.519 the flow of society, to not react or put yourself 00:19:14.519 --> 00:19:18.000 at risk until the problem directly disrupts your 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:21.970 own personal life. Nieler's confession is a blistering 00:19:21.970 --> 00:19:24.950 condemnation of that exact inertia. He's saying 00:19:24.950 --> 00:19:27.670 that waiting until you are the target is essentially 00:19:27.670 --> 00:19:30.190 a death sentence. Because by the time they get 00:19:30.190 --> 00:19:32.410 to you, the institutions and the people that 00:19:32.410 --> 00:19:34.809 could have protected you are already gone. Exactly. 00:19:35.329 --> 00:19:37.690 The unions have been dismantled. The opposition 00:19:37.690 --> 00:19:39.970 parties have been outlawed. The press has been 00:19:39.970 --> 00:19:42.869 silenced. You're completely alone. It really 00:19:42.869 --> 00:19:45.250 reframes the entire experience of reading that 00:19:45.250 --> 00:19:46.670 quote. I don't think I'll ever be able to look 00:19:46.670 --> 00:19:49.440 at it the same way again. It's not a hero's advice 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.980 from a mountaintop. It's a cautionary tale from 00:19:51.980 --> 00:19:54.859 a deeply flawed man who failed the test. And 00:19:54.859 --> 00:19:57.500 flawed men are much, much easier to relate to 00:19:57.500 --> 00:20:00.880 than saints. We are all flawed. We all have built 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:03.339 in biases. We all have groups of people in society 00:20:03.339 --> 00:20:04.960 that we'd rather not stick our necks out for. 00:20:05.240 --> 00:20:08.019 So we've unpacked the Mandela effect of the changing 00:20:08.019 --> 00:20:11.460 text, the very messy reality of the U -boat commander 00:20:11.460 --> 00:20:14.299 turned pastor and the fascinating transformation 00:20:14.299 --> 00:20:18.359 from a post -war speech to a global poem. What 00:20:18.359 --> 00:20:21.160 is the one core thing you want the listener to 00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:23.640 take away from all these sources today? I would 00:20:23.640 --> 00:20:25.980 go right back to Professor Marquise's point about 00:20:25.980 --> 00:20:28.460 that missing first line. First, they came for 00:20:28.460 --> 00:20:31.900 the communists. The true power of the quote doesn't 00:20:31.900 --> 00:20:35.619 lie in naming your friends. It lies in specifically 00:20:35.619 --> 00:20:37.680 naming the people you really don't want to defend. 00:20:37.839 --> 00:20:39.700 The people who make you uncomfortable or who 00:20:39.700 --> 00:20:42.019 you fundamentally disagree with. Exactly. So 00:20:42.019 --> 00:20:43.680 I want to leave the listener with a thought experiment 00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:45.640 based on that. If you were writing this poem 00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:48.569 today for your own society right now, Who would 00:20:48.569 --> 00:20:51.069 be in that first stanza? Who is on your list? 00:20:51.470 --> 00:20:53.890 Who are the people currently being targeted or 00:20:53.890 --> 00:20:56.569 marginalized that you instinctively feel, mm, 00:20:56.849 --> 00:20:58.630 eh, that's not my problem? Because according 00:20:58.630 --> 00:21:01.750 to the painful lesson Niemöller learned, if you 00:21:01.750 --> 00:21:03.890 wait until the threat gets to the second or third 00:21:03.890 --> 00:21:06.630 stanza, you're already too late. That is a very 00:21:06.630 --> 00:21:08.970 heavy, provocative question to chew on, but I 00:21:08.970 --> 00:21:11.490 think it's absolutely the necessary one to ask. 00:21:11.970 --> 00:21:13.910 For everyone listening, we highly encourage you 00:21:13.910 --> 00:21:16.710 to go look up the full original German translation 00:21:16.710 --> 00:21:20.170 and the excerpts from that 1946 Frankfurt speech. 00:21:20.609 --> 00:21:23.190 It gives a totally different, much rougher texture 00:21:23.190 --> 00:21:25.869 to the words we all think we know so well. Thank 00:21:25.869 --> 00:21:28.269 you for helping us navigate this incredibly messy 00:21:28.269 --> 00:21:30.390 history today. It was a real pleasure to dig 00:21:30.390 --> 00:21:32.130 into it with you. We'll catch you on the next 00:21:32.130 --> 00:21:33.809 deep dive. Stay curious.