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

(upbeat music) - Cool, sir, media. - 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 you feeling about Martin Nemuller? - I am, I knew he was gonna start off bad, but I had him as like, you know, he's a pastor, he's kind of like a spirit. - He's kind of like a spirit. 'Cause like, 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. - Yeah, I know what he's talking about. - Yeah, 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 yeah, I was thinking at the beginning, I was like, I basically run an episode on sort of this guy. - And I'm like, no, no, no, man. - Not with the murdering, drowning sailors in the ocean. - Yeah. - Sinking hospitalships, left and right stuff. Yeah, bad enough that your biographer has to put, obviously, fake words in your mouth. - Yeah, that's a lie. And that 1959 book by Clarissa Goddsman is so funny. 'Cause it was, and it was written when he was alive. So she's talking to him. - I think you didn't want to admit to this nice young journalist lady, but it's just been murdering, drowning boys. - Yeah. (laughs) - Ah, it wasn't me. - I got lucky, I'm on this side of it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - This is an I Heart podcast. - Guaranteed Human. - Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Yuanio, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lee Citi Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - 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 never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. - And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an I Heart True Crime Plus subscription, exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to I Heart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts, search for I Heart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. - Hi, this is Kylie Breikman, Angel Jaretana. - Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald. - And we're the hosts of The Artists on Artists on Artists on Artist Podcasts. - The Improvized Character Comedy Podcasts were 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? - Hi, he winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. - I hear you get the elbows here, the eyelashes hate each other. - You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to ring on Halloween. - Listen to artists on Artists on Artists on Artists, every Thursday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator and host of Scam Goddess Podcasts. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. - Ooh, I scam them. - What? - I could talk to you for an hour. - 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 I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Scam Goddess! - Martin Nemuller, Ended World War One, is 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 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 they came for the submarines. First they came for the submarines. 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 busy about handing over his stupid boat. - It's good thing they didn't have the nuclear submarine or he just would have been like, goodbye. - Bye. - I'm hanging out underwater. I'm just living underwater forever. 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 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 bulk. 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 socialist, 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, 'cause right after this happens, we'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 Freikor 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? You know all of the basics of this, right? And Martin is super on board with the Freikor. He considers joining at this point to crush the Spartacists, but he doesn't right now, right? He doesn't now. This is like AOC joining the Trump administration to crush the PSL. 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. Hakenos seems to attribute Martin's failure to join the Freikor 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. Niemoller starts school to get his theology degree in January of 1920. His wife, Elze, 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 Blutwitz, the so-called father of the Freikor, leads another coup against the government. This one, I right-wing coup against the Weimar government. And the government had just used Blutwitz and his Freikor to suppress the Spartacists. But then afterwards, they're like, OK, so you're going to disband. You're right-wing militia now, right? And he's like, how about I do a push? And so he launches this push. And they force the government out of Berlin and he makes a right-wing politician named Wolfgang Kapp, the head of state. This is the Kapp push. And it doesn't work in the long run, right? But the social democrats-- No, no, no, no, the pre-Hitler pushes. There's a lot of them. There's pushes left and right from the left and right. And the immediate post-war period. The social democrats have to flee Berlin and they call it General Strike. The whole left rises up and they 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, OK. We haven't even entered in 1921. Is 1919 to 1920, I think. OK. No, this is-- sorry, this is January of '20. Yeah. Yeah. So the social democrats-- This is-- I still want to learn so much more about late teens early '20s. It's vast Germany. So I'm excited to hear about this. 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 general strike. The government completely shuts down. And as a result, this both will prove doom for the cat putch because there's just not a functioning state for them to govern, so you have to kind of give up. That's not exactly the answer. - So the general strike actually stops the cat putch, right? The general strike helps to stop the cat putch, right? And it also provides opportunity for a communist uprising in the rural, and this group called the Red Rural Army, I think is what they're called, as symbols 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 cat putch began, Niemoller and a bunch of student veterans at their university formed what they called the academic defense core. And this is a fri-core militia for their school, but they don't mobilize to defend the cat government. That said, once the putch attempt was called off and the cat thing, like once they're like, okay, we lost, we're giving up Vimar, like you're the legitimate government, we gotta do something about this Red Rural Army because their actual communist is supposed to-- - This isn't the Bavarian commune. These, no, I think that's a separate one. - Okay. - The rule on these streets. - 'Cause there's a different area, there's multiple. - That one gives us be traven and the treasure of the Sierra Madras. - Yes, it does. And someone else who we'll talk about in these episodes, Margaret, but this is the Red Rural 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 as a communist, but as soon as there's a communist army and the Rural, they're like, oh, Vimar, 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 Vimar government calls the Frey Corps into action again to crush this Red Rural Army. Nemoler takes command of one of the three battalions of the academic defense corps. They enter combat on April 1st and the-- Yeah, he's a Frey Corps veteran, right? - Oh my god. - The guy who wrote first they came is a Frey Corps veteran. (laughing) - First, I came for the communists. - First, I came for the communists with a gun. (laughing) 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 Rural Army had mostly dissolved by the 5th. They do not hold up for very long. Hawkenose's 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 Nemoler maintained, although few industrial workers in the rures saw it that way. And they probably threw them into the water to pretend they're drowning in solitude. - They probably threw them in the water. - Yeah, he loves that. And Martin never, his autobiography he talks about this, but he hasn't talked 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 wanna know, did Martin Nemoler execute wounded and unarmed people during the Rural uprising? Think of how he behaved to those drowning French soldiers. - Yeah. - And I think you might have your answer. I think Martin Nemoler 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, yeah, yeah. - In his book, Hitler's Personal Prisoner, Benjamin Ziemann describes most of the early 20s as a time of intense right-wing radicalization for Martin. He joined the German-Volkish 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 co-workers because he's very proud to briefly be a blue-collar man that I worked on the railroad, like a real boat. 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 inner mission 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 Wrights 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 charities. Yeah, that's how he's making his money. By 1924, he's pushing 30 and a father of three. His latest was pebb and born just that January. He voted first for the Nazis probably in this year. I don't 100% know. Zemen, one of his biographers, the author of Hitler's Personal Prisoner, says that he did not vote for the Nazis at this point, but Hakanose's 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 Wright's almost nothing about the Munich push that had been carried out by the Nazis around then. So he doesn't seem to be super involved in the Nazis at that point by 24, but certainly at some point before 1930, he starts voting for the Nazis and does so at least once. We don't exactly know when. This is really relatable to not voting for the Nazis, but you trying to figure out exactly which year and which sources are true and not because this is, there's not a lot of people have the same job as me. And yeah, that's what they just does. You're like 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 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 complete sense with everything you're describing. It's totally in line with him, right? They're just the lesser evil, he probably said. 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 a regular widow is a dirt widow 'cause her husband's underground, ready's buried. My husband's still walking, but I'm a widow, right? 'Cause he's never fucking here, you know? I actually think that's a pretty clever term. You don't get a lot of Elsa, but she could turn her phrase, I think. Maybe that was a common one, I don't know. She probably wrote the speech. She made, 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 molded these issues, the national socialist recovered from their failed puts a tempt 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, Nemoler was eager to accept a church of his own. He was appointed third pastor to a church in Berlin, Dahlm, 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 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, you know? Yeah, where you can sit around and think about who's really German. 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 an appropriate 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 their teaching the Holocaust section, consider the source writes this about Nemoler's Nazi sympathies at this time. Like many Germans, he believed Hitler would provide strong leadership and help Germany recover. Nemoler even viewed Hitler as an instrument sent by God and supported the Nazis despite their open anti-symmetism and persecution of Jews and other groups. An instrument sent by God. An instrument of God. First they came for the communists Nice love that. was great because God declared it and made Hitler in his own image. A little different of a poem if you read it that way. Yeah. I would say. Probably would be be be spread so much on social media. That same source notes that Martin quote himself held anti-Semitic beliefs, referring to Jews in the 1920s and 30s as a despised people and Christ killers. He would later insist that his support for the Nazis never included support for genocide. He simply hoped Nazi racial policies and laws would force the Jews out of politics and public life. This is like one of his excuses. I just thought you were going to make them not be allowed to talk. I just don't want the Jews. I didn't say I wanted them dead. I just want them not where the food is and the shelter and the healthcare. That may be true, but I don't care. I still think you should have been shot at the end of the war to be honest, Martin. I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe you'll think that's unfair by the end. In my mind, he still has redemption arc ahead of it. He couldn't. He couldn't. There's room. There are some guys who are legitimate Nazi. If you're a legitimate Nazi, for me, redemption means you either gave or risked your life to save people from the Nazis. That's the only redemption for you. If you're a committed Nazi in the pre-war period, however, it must be said that Martin was not like a racial anti-Simmite or at least I don't see a lot of evidence for that. I'm not saying this to like mitigate what he's doing. That doesn't make it better. It's just different. What I mean by that is, Martin was not driven so far as I can tell by a belief that the Jews are destined to only be Jews. His issue is with their faith and culture. When Jews converted to Christianity, he was generally happy to recognize them as his fellow citizens and Christians. That does separate him from the Nazis. This is a sticking point that he's unwilling to. Not unwilling, but less willing to compromise on. 1931 and '32 would be the happiest years of Nemoler's life. His career was going great. He had a large and healthy family. He was influential. His political sides seemed to be winning, but had not yet come to power. Thus been able to like fuck up all the things that they were saying were good. And then in July of 1932, after a month that saw dozens killed and hundreds injured in street fights between left and right wing groups in Berlin, the Nazis came out on top in a parliamentary election. This did not lead immediately to Hitler's chancellorship, but it did lead quite directly to it. Hitler's going to demand to be chancellor from Hindenburg. Hindenburg is the president, and from months there's backroom deals and skull-duggery. We've covered this on another episode, so I'm not going to get into it. But it's during this chaotic period when Hitler is destined for, but not yet in total power, that Pastor Nemoler gave one of his most famous speeches on New Year's Day 1933 in his church. Per an article in Christian century by Matthew Hakenos. What God's intentions may be with regard to our nation or to ourselves in the New Year, we do not and shall not know, he intoned. But he warned that in these dark times, God's grace is not just a source of relief or comfort. That is, easy Christianity and artificial grace. Rather, God offers us his grace so that we will put our whole trust in him and his son. We are not God's generals, but his soldiers. Ars is not to make the plans, but to carry out the orders. Nemoler's message was clear. It was not the responsibility of the individual or the church to meddle in the secular affairs of state and its law. Now Hakenos notes that Hitler published his own New Year's Day appeal the same time that Martin gives this speech, and in it Hitler urged his followers to reject conservative power sharing and give all power and trust to him. Any compromise he warned would destroy them and their party. Per that article, Nemoler's parishioners, at least the more conservative and nationalistic ones, must have suffered a conflict of conscience after reading this propaganda, wondering whether it was possible to trust both their God and the Nazi leader. If the parishioners looked to pass your Nemoler for direction to this question, the answer was clear. Nemoler made no secret of his support for the Nazis, although he never campaigned from the pulpit for Hitler. Nemoler initially saw no contradiction in calling on his flock to follow a merciful God, while at the same time backing the Nazi leader who demanded absolute political loyalty to his racist worldview. German Protestants Nemoler believed could and should do both. So he's not saying vote for Hitler, but he's making an ethical case where the only response is vote for Hitler to his parishioners, right? Yeah, no, he's making a theological case for shut the fuck up and let bad stuff that's clearly end. Right, Christian happen. Yep. Yep. That's shut up and let it happen. Shut up and let it happen. That's what he said, right? Yeah. So the first they came for the trade unionist and I didn't say anything because I believe that the state should make its own decisions about what to do. The trade unionist is not my place to say, not my place to say, I did vote for them to kill those guys, but it's not my place to say what happens. But that's unrelated to my unrelated beliefs. Yeah. I can't be blamed for that. Yeah. Martin supports certainly was not crucial to Hitler taking power later that month, but it had the effect of helping calm any conservative parishioners who weren't fully convinced of this Hitler chap in another speech on March 5th, 1933, before the first instant totally love Hitler, right? Like, no, no. And in fact, I talked to a man who fought, he was 14 when the war ended, but he fought in the Hitler youth when they were drafting the teenagers, right? His grandfather was a Prussian military officer who died in a concentration camp because he has his resistance to the Hitler regime and his resistance to the Hitler regime wasn't Hitler's racist or Hitler's a bigot. It was, he's an idiot and he's going to get us all killed. I know more about war than this dipshit and he's fucking up, right? He's probably right. Yeah. He was suit. He was certainly right. He was absolutely correct. Probably wouldn't have invaded the USSR. Probably wouldn't have left him alone. Might have been a bad call. Probably the whole battle of Britain, bad call, you know? Yeah. North Africa. I don't know. That could have worked. I don't want to get into war gaming though. So in another speech in March 5th, in another speech on March 5th, 1933, before the first and last elections of the Nazi era, Martin gave a different kind of talk. Accepting that quote, it is simply impossible for us today to accept the comfortable formula that politics have no place in the church. And so he urged his parish to take a conscientious stand this very day. Given that Niemoller voted for Hitler, I'm not sure what to call this, but an endorsement. And Hitler wins, obviously. Once Hitler gets what he wanted though, Martin slowly began to get cold feet. And one thing that upsets him is once the new Nazi era is like fully underway, this new Protestant movement starts up. And they call themselves the German Christians. And the German Christians have an issue, right? Germany is a Christian country, mostly like Protestant, but a lot of Catholics. And Jesus was Jewish, or was he? People were wasn't this where the German Christians come in. And their argument is, Jesus wasn't a Jew. He had no Jewish ancestry. And their whole goal was to purify Christianity of Jewish influence. And as a result, one of the things they advocated is we got to toss out the Old Testament. We got to throw that shit in the trash. All these Jews wandering around the desert, absolutely not. Can't do that in our Nazi Christianity. I love it. Yeah. The Old Testament is like more conservative than the New Testament. It's super conservative. Yeah. But it's too Jewish. It's really, it is very Jewish. I mean, I got bad news read by Christianity. My God. Yeah. It's really bad news comes from that. Yeah. They do not believe this. And this is where Martin starts to realize, oh, this is his like arrested development. I've made a terrible mistake moment. When Martin the Theologian starts hearing his parishioner say, you know, Jesus wasn't a Jew. And he's like, well, okay, wait a second. So Martin does not like this. And he doesn't like that the German Christians also think Jews should not be allowed to be baptized as Christians. One of their slogans was literally baptism can't straighten a crooked nose. And yeah. Yeah. This, this is the line for Martin. This is where he is like, I have to do something. Right. Yeah. Okay. This, this is the fucking line. Because he actually is religious at the end of the day. He is religious. He believes in just looking for power from religion. He believes in religion. He does believe in something even when it's inconvenient to him. That is, that is true. Right. Okay. He's not completely without a moral backbone. Right. He does have things that he believes in. And it's Martin's rejection of this nonsense theology that would sow the seeds of his resistance to Hitler if we can really call it that. I say this because while the first concentration camps are being set up, while the police agencies of the German states are being notified, while Jews and socialists are being murdered and tortured and locked up, Martin chose to become an activist against the German Christians by helping to form a group called the young reformers. And the young reformers say the German Christians are wrong, but we joyfully affirm Hitler and the new state while also demanding church independence and condemning the so-called Aryan paragraphs. A paragraph of the 1933 law for the restoration of civil service. Right. So they're not, their whole thing is like, well, if Jews are going to be Christian, we shouldn't be shitty to them. And if someone just has like a little bit of Jewish ancestry, that shouldn't be a problem as long as they're Christians. They do believe that, but that's why they're only issue. And they're, they're still emphatically, we love Hitler. Wow. Don't get us wrong. Huge Hitler fans, right? Yeah, no, I love, it's the reformist approach to Nazism. They're like, we still want Nazism a little bit. But like, what if it was like 95% I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. Our family never bought it and the man they suspected wore a badge. 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. My name is Josie Duffy Rice, I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. In over my career I've heard a count after a count of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite like this. The more I kept reading that stuff I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up, over and over, we'll hypnotize them to strengthen that memory. So we went into a good France. I 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. Listen to examined, the Backfire Effect, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If anyone wanted to commit a murder up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body, but no one will find it. He acted friendly, he talked friendly, he sounded friendly. They won't knew that I did the scary boogie stuff and this is maybe she'll find out where this girl is. And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with it. The clock is ticking down and the woods are calling. There are a lot of demons in Putnam County, but I've met the devil and he's real. I'm Paul Solitarov and this is season two of The Devil's Quarry. Listen to The Devil's Quarry season two on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear The Devil's Quarry season two add free with exclusive content, subscribe to The Lava For Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. This is Hunter Youngmore, host of Hunting for Answers, a true crime podcast, shedding light on the silent epidemic of missing and murdered black women and girls, bringing attention to stories that equally deserve to be told and to the questions that still remain. As the years passed, detectives continued working the case, but more than three decades after Annette's death, no one has been held accountable. Annette's mother, Freda Scott, spent years hoping to see her daughter's case song. She never saw that day come. Annette Jones's case remains unsolved. Listen to Hunting for Answers, a true crime podcast from The Black Effect Podcasts Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So I don't want to be, the Young Reformers are more complicated than just like a bunch of assholes who believe Hitler's basically fine. There are some really good people in them who just see this as a way to fight the regime. The best of them is probably Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is like Martin, a pastor, a Protestant pastor. Dietrich is ultimately going to die, helping to rescue 14 Jews late in the war. He would be executed by the Nazis in 1945, as Hockenau's rights. Dietrich does not buy, he and Martin work together because they're both pastors fighting against the German Christians, but Dietrich does not buy Martin as a dissident. Quote, "Although they agreed about the need to fight the German Christian threat they did not see eye to eye on much else." In a letter to a friend, Bonhoeffer referred to Nemolar and his type as "naïve, starry eyed idealists who thought they were the real national socialists because of their dual devotion to national socialism and national Protestantism." This was nothing less than delusional as far as Bonhoeffer was concerned. Naziism and Protestantism were inimical because the Nazis openly derided Christ's message of love and mercy. Simply put, a good Christian Bonhoeffer believed could not be a good Nazi. And yeah, I've thought a lot doing these episodes about my own Protestant upbringing. And I had both Catholic because my dad had been raised Catholic and I went to mass some as a littler kid. But we wound up being more Protestant than anything. And I feel like if I'd met more Bonhoeffer Christians as a kid, I might not have given up Christianity, but unfortunately I met only Nemolers, oops, all Nemolers. And my old church is a kid that split away from the Episcopalian church and led that break away to the African-Anglican church because they didn't want gay people to be bishops. That was my pastor as a kid. He was in charge. Like the head of that whole movement. I got on TV for that. Coming out of Sunday school, there was a, anyway, a bunch of fucking Nemolers, right? That's my attitude about these people. I remember like being like really confused and going to my non-aunt and being like, why are all the sudden people saying that Christians believe the earth is like 10,000 years old or whatever? And my non-aunt is like, don't worry about the whole shit. My dad was always great as a fucking former altar boy when I was like, what is with these creations? He's like, they're idiots. Yeah. They're idiots and the Pope says so. Yeah. My aunt was literally married to God. God's wife says it's fine. Fuck off. Yeah. I think a lot about the two different ways you can interpret Christianity, right? Like my pastor did where he's like, well, he shouldn't let gay people preach the word of God. And that's the, that's, that's a big enough cause that I'm going to fight for it of all of the evils in the world. My pastor picked that as the one to like stake his name, defiding, whereas Dietrich Bonhoff was like, oh, people are being oppressed. Guess all die like Christ would saving them. Yeah. One thing to do is die saving them, you know? And it's, you know, you, the connections to American, what's this word, Christophashism in America? Yeah. Like Christian nationalism is the word. They're so direct like what you're saying about like, we need to basically reinvent Christianity and like, leave out all of the, like this nice shit. Yeah. There's a whole lot about being nice to random people. Yeah. Especially strangers and foreigners, you know, get rid of that. And I'm not saying like the Bible is inherently consistent or moral, but there's a bunch of shit in there. That's when it hits on a lot. And they're just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, got to get rid of that. Got to get rid of that. Yeah. Yeah. And so even to the extent that Martin sort of breaks good after this point and becomes an enemy of the regime, he never, ever at any point in his life shows even a tenth of the moral courage that someone like Bonhoff or exists. In fact, even as he organized with Dietrich, he worked to profit off of nationalism and ingratiate himself to Nazi leadership as this quote from an article by Barry Yorgrow in the Nation makes clear. That very summer, Nemoler was once again reaffirming his nationalist bonafides, writing and quickly publishing from "You Boat to Poet" a memoir of his submarine exploits and his struggles against the Weimar Republic. By the end of 1934, it had sold 60,000 copies. But the talkinos observes that the author sent it to Joseph Goebbels with a note saying it was written in the spirit of the Third Reich. At the Dolemn Church, Remark Simon, the pastor would receive the Sig Heil salute from parishioners and acknowledge it. Oh my god. So would we call him a relentless foe of Hitler at this point? No. No. I'd say someone who has like a mild structural disagreement with Hitler. Yeah. Well, there's like kind of a level where if it's like if there's Nazis and you have any kind of public voice and you're not basically dead or dying in your fight, you're not doing it right. You're not doing it right. And fucking Martin sure is not at this point. But over the next few years, he did work to thwart a narrow plank of Hitler's system, organizing to try and beat the German Christians in church leadership elections and generally failing. This finally made it clear to Nemoler that he had made a grave error. And he dedicated the next three years, like 34, 35 to 37, 38, trying to staunch the bleeding and stop Hitler from taking over the Protestant church in Germany entirely. It was for this that Hitler had him arrested for the first time in July of 1937 for misusing the pulpit to a political end. Now, he'd been detained several times prior to this, but 37 is when it sticks and he's taken to prison and he's not going to get out until the war is in. He is in jail for the next couple of almost a decade, right? This prompts international outrage for reasons that are somewhat frustrating. While American newspapers lauded Martin as a heroic figure of anti-Nazi resistance and published on. Ed's making him out to be a martyr to Hitler's cruelty. Neymuller defended himself in court by arguing, "Wait, no, I love Hitler, bro. Don't even get me wrong. Like, I'm such a fan of this, dude. Like, I don't know even why I'm here, right? It's just all a mistake. If Hitler knew how I felt, he'd let you go." Yeah, quote, and this is from Ziemann's book. The court allowed the defendant to talk about his life and detail. Neymuller seized the opportunity and gave a speech that contained many elements of the narrative and from hubote to pulpit. He presented himself as a Navy officer and hubote commander who had risked his life for the fatherland and wanted to serve the uprooted German people as a free core fighter in 1920, as a student of theology and as a pastor. He claimed to have always voted for the NSDAP from 1924 onwards. And Ziemann notes that this is untrue, although as I've said, other sources insist he voted at least once for the Nazis in the '20s. That said, if Martin had been saying this in court, to be like, "I love Hitler, I voted for you guys. While actively sneaking Jews and other endangered people out of the country," and the lie was just a cover. I'd be like, "Sick, don't leave me on my show." Awesome thing to do, bro. Yeah, he's not, right? And we, part of why we, I mean, we know he's got, 'cause he didn't do that. And also in court, he insisted Jews were alien and that he disliked them. So again, he's still calling them Christ killers. I wonder if he's like, "I hate the Jews. I want them out of the country, but I want them safely out of the country." That's what he would say was his attitude, right? Yeah, not an okay attitude to be clear. I'm not defending this position, but yeah. Not meaningfully different. Yeah. Now, it is true that he succeeded in pissing off Joseph Goebbels because the judges really liked him. And he was cleared of all but one charge. And the last one was, shouldn't have been that big a charge. But this does not get him out of prison, right? Hitler personally orders Martin Nemuller to be sent to Saxon House. A concentration camp outside of Berlin, mainly for political prisoners. If you're ever in Berlin and get a chance to see it, I really recommend going. Okay. He would spend the next two-thirds of a decade behind bars as the personal prisoner of Hitler. This was not like a great situation, obviously, but as Hitler's personal prisoner, his own treatment was vastly better than that of the Jews, homosexuals, and socialists that he had no problem voting to put in camps. He is much more comfortable in the bar, right? This is not a death camp situation. He's not being tortured, right? But across the pond in the United States is legend-only grew. Barry Yorgrow writes that Americans are so stupid. It's unbelievable. We're so stupid. Oh, man. Barry Yorgray. I thought I was calling her name. No, no, no, no, no, you're great. You're great. No, no, just the rest of the country. Not American dogs. You're innocent. It's not your fault that us human Americans are doing. Hardly many of this on dogs. Stupid. I'm so stupid. I have one immediately at my feet right now. Very happy. I go, "What at my feet in one when it next to me?" That's how I'd like to be forever, double-dogging. Yeah, I got no dog, but I do have a bunch of shit to read about this asshole. So, yeah, Barry Yorgrow writes that in the United States, numerous church pastors asked their congregations to pray for the man they called the fighting pastor. That's what the American nickname of Martin Nemoler is. Although, I'm not really sure what fighting he'd done other than in the Freikor at this point. I hate this. He's more famous than the other guy you said just because he's like the first person. At this point in time for sure. For sure. Probably still today more famous than Dietrich gone over. Right? Yeah. Dietrich doesn't write a poem. He just dies saving people. But he has to write a poem, you know? So, he should have thought about that. Should have thought about that, Dietrich. Yeah, he didn't believe in trying to be a moral by writing poetry. No, but instead through good deeds. One Brooklyn clergyman restaged Nemoler's arrest on his pulpit, then delivered his sermon from behind Mox Saxon House in Cell Bars. The New York Times and Time Magazine issued regular updates on his fate. Time, as noted, put him on its cover as the martyr of 1940. The martyr of 1940. Nothing else bad happened in '19. Nothing else bad happened that year. The Nazis did. It's a fucking stupid. In 1939, a German Jewish exile named Ernst Toller, who'd previously been a major part of the Bavarian Soviet Republic that had been crushed by the Freikor, wrote a barely fictionalized play about Nemoler's life called Pastor Hall. I would say it's a barely accurate play about Nemoler's life, titled Pastor Hall. The play was made into a movie in 1940 and James Roosevelt, son of Eleanor Roosevelt, brought it to the United States for release. The poster gives you an idea of the contents of the film. At the top it says, "It can happen here." No. And there's like a whip in front of above his head and the pastor's like cradling a young girl. You know, there's Nazis beating guys in the streets. Yeah. This is where you all got your podcast name from. Yeah. That's that is. That's where we stole it from. You can find the whole-- Actually, Robert, do you recall that you were going to call the show it can happen here and then I just changed it to Kud and then that was the title? Yeah. Yeah, well, because I was copying it from a book that they were also referencing in this movie. Anyway. You can find the whole movie on YouTube today. The opening card reads, the story of the individual in Europe during the past decade has shown us how much more potent is truth when compared to fiction. Pastor Hall is based on authentic, verified facts. I just love that you prove that contention wrong by the fact that you made a movie about this guy. No, fiction is way more powerful than truth. You're making a movie about a guy who's a committed Nazi and saying he's a foe of Hitler. And everyone in America pretty much buys it at this point. Here's how your grow reviewed the flick for his article. The film shows Pastor Hall being brutally flogged in wretched concentration camp conditions. This was pure invention. Nemoler was never physically abused or punished with forced labor in all his eight years of imprisonment. The Nazis didn't want to enhance his martyr status, right? Just a complete fabrication. But the fact that there's movies and shit about him is why they didn't beat him, according to this. Probably, like, right, that did help. That's part of why he does not suffer as much. Martin's fame was not diminished by the facts, like that in 1938, a year into his incarceration. He wrote a letter to the Nazi authorities and volunteered to serve in the armed forces again. In 1941. Okay, that's that's actually the. I've now I've now had a fuck this guy completely. I good. I was fucked this guy completely in like World War One. I was wondering if it would hit in the 1920s. But like, what's his like in prison? I'm like, well, prison. He like clearly disagreed enough that he's in prison. But when he's like, let me out. So I can go further your war and not see, yeah, for the third Reich. That's why they call him the fighting pastor. I'll tell you who he wanted to fight for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fight the everyone else. Fight the Alan. That's very true. And why are we in fighting? I'm on your side. I'm on your side. Let me help. In 1941, he was transferred to dock out. And once the war was well and truly underway, he volunteered again, begging to be allowed to crew or captain a U-boat for Hitler. Wow. No, it was the long game. He was like, I'm going to rescue people with my U-boat. I don't believe this, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Around this time, a man claiming to be a Jewish refugee from Germany, Leo Stein, published a book in the United States called "I Was in Hell with Nemolar," in which he claimed to have sat with Martin and Saxonhausen. And it's a talks about like, oh, he talked about how, you know, the Jews are being so horribly abused and Hitler's a monster. And we have to stop this. Oh, so it was wise. It's complete wise. It's fiction, yeah. He would have never seen. Stein never met Martin. Martin was too high value a prisoner to have been in a cell with any Jews. Right. This is a complete fabrication. Okay, we'll get reference today. Which means that this guy both was grifting and making anti-fascist propaganda. And honestly, kind of not mad. Fucks over historians. I'm not mad at him. But Leo, no. Now, I'm just kind of mad at what it does to his reputation, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But I can't blame Leo, you know? Yeah. Tough time out there. In 1943, after the disaster at Stalingrad when German defeat became inevitable, Nemoler wrote to his wife to consider trying to join the. About like, should I consider trying to join the military again? He confessed to Elsa. Sometimes I am tormented by the thought that the whole bloody fighting might end for us in Bolshevism. And I do, in terms of determining the character of Martin, one thing I find interesting. He's willing to fight for the Nazis in '38. He's willing to fight for the Nazis in '41. He considers it in '43. But he says nah. Because at that point, you know they're not going to win. And I really think more than any ethical concern, Martin was a guy who liked being on the winning side. Yeah, right? Yeah. That's a big power. That's a big power. If you're a big puttlicker, if you like. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. He was the subject of another movie in 1944. The Hitler Gang, which was a fictionalized account of the Nazi rise to power in which Hitler at all were depicted as actual gangsters, right? Which is actually a pretty good way to look at the way the Nazi party functioned. Nemoler gets a scene in the movie where he yells directly into Hitler's face, "Do you think we're really so contemptible "that we would surrender the sacred faith "given to us by God and accept a political program in its place?" This never happened. Nothing like this ever happened. Did he think he was mad about the fact that everyone kept calling him a leftist, basically? No. He's got to make hey out of that, Margaret. Okay, at least try to. Yeah, especially after the war, everyone's like nah. Yeah. I was on the other side of swear. Yeah. I don't know how much he knows about that at this point, right? There are a lot of movies he can watch in Dachau. Yeah, they're not showing that movie in Dachau. Martin's entire reputation today, though, is built on these fictions. Writing for the nation, Barry Yorgrow describes Martin's actual wartime conditions and how World War II finally ended for him. In Dachau, he was housed there with three German Catholic priests in a separate facility for special and honorable prisoners, along with foreign inmates with whom he could mingle and share meals. On Christmas Eve, 1944, he conducted a profoundly poignant service in a makeshift cell for six fellow Protestants whose country's Germany was besieging or occupying. In the war's chaotic final days, shortly after Bonhoffer was stripped naked and gruesomely hanged at Flossenberg camp for his connection to the plot to kill Hitler, Nemoler was rushed away with select others into northern Italy by SS troops, according to Simon, and to be either murdered or held as a bargaining chip. Hockenos argues for the latter. Nemoler was at last liberated on May 4, 1945, to an international jubilation, right? So he's sitting comfortable in a cell where they'll fucking killing Bonhoffer in the worst way possible. He's kind of tangentially connected to this attempt to take out Hitler. And yeah, the war ends and he's a celebrity for a little while. It comes out not long after he gets freed that Martin had volunteered twice to fight for Hitler. And that really amesses with his reputation. Oh, my God. Is this why he gives the speech and writes the poem is to try and like, yep, get himself to be seen as a good anti-f-- oh, my God, you are breaking my heart. I know that your job is to pick a guest who's going to be heartbroken by the topic. Yep. Yep. I'll see you feel at the very end. Okay. Yeah, speaking of the very end, don't think about that. Think about these products. Yay. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of The What Happened to Her Podcast. Her family never bought it and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing the disguise, sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an I Heart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to I Heart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for I Heart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body, but someone will find it. I saw him by the backhand of the bow. I'm Paul Solitarov and this is Season 2 of The Devil's Quarry. Listen to The Devil's Quarry Season 2 on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear The Devil's Quarry Season 2 add free with exclusive content, subscribe to Love A For Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. We'll hypnotize him to strengthen that memory, so he went into a good France. Listen to examined the backfire effect on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Shortly before 6 o'clock AM on November 13th, 1991, Annette's mother and her two young sons found her unresponsive inside their apartment, investigators ruled the case a homicide. Over the years, detectives continued searching for answers, but the case eventually went cold. Hunter Youngwarm, host of Hunting for Answers, a two crime podcast, shedding light on the silent epidemic of missing and murdered black women and girls, bringing attention to stories that equally deserve to be told and to the questions that still remain. Annette Jones' case remains unsolved. Listen to Hunting for Answers, a true crime podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. At a press conference with Allied Occupation Forces that was given after it had come out that he'd volunteered to fight for the Nazis, Martin tried to explain this where he gives that quote, "If there is a war, German doesn't ask if it's just or unjust, but he feels bound to join the ranks." But he was forced to admit, during this press conference, that he had quote, "Never quarreled with Hitler over political matters, but purely on religious grounds." And for a time, Martin's reputation was justly deflated. A writer for the New York Times assessed that he had been a singularly ineffectual figure of anti-Nazi resistance, and this is true. Even after the war, Martin refused to admit supporting Hitler had been a total mistake. The insisted Germans could not live in a democratic society. I kind of like that he doesn't lie about what he believes in. He doesn't at this point. He's saying like, "No, I'm a piece of shit." Yeah. Yeah, he kind of is. He kind of tells us. This is coming to the thing that's a little grayer, right? Because he does have what seems to be, I think, is somewhat of a genuine flip, right? And to the extent that this is a genuine flip, it comes with the growing awareness of the Holocaust and what had really happened. Martin claimed to be stunned when he learned about it. And the specific moment that caused this is he and his wife go on a visit and they see the crematoria at Dockhau where there's a plaque put up commemorating the people murdered there. And he saw that the deaths dated from 1933 to 1945. And that made it undeniable that the killing had started while he was still free and supporting the Nazis. From this point on, if you believe this story, Martin became a belated anti-Nazi. Martin who would dedicate the next portion of his life to loudly preaching German guilt for the atrocities of the war years. However, even if you read his apologies after becoming aware of the Holocaust, they're mostly shit, right? And this is one of the things he says in one of these press conferences. I really believe, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany at that time, that Jews should avoid aspiring to government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's Assurance satisfied me at the time. I am paying for that mistake now and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me, right? Hitler lied to me and I didn't know it would be that bad. I'm paying for it now. But it's a shit apology, but I'm glad it's a shit apology because he's still so far presenting to me someone who is not Trying to lie. I don't think he is like he's he seems to be about what he's about and what he's about is hindered. Yeah Largely bad, right? Yeah, but he's pretty open about it. Yeah, like even his anti-Nazi isn't being kind of about his own guilt Like one, that's the most German way to handle it. Yeah possible, but like You know, I honestly him being a shitty politician about it. Not a mark against him What he said a mark against it because it's what he believes and it's a bad to believe he is like saying in front of these cameras Oh, no, those rumors about me are not true I was like pretty cool with Hitler for the most part. Yeah, I don't know where you guys got this movie script from but that's not me. Yeah Um, he would be a worse guy if he'd come out and been like I've it was all true. I was anti-fascist So what he finally decides to do as a result of his can he's he says he's convinced that like Germany is guilty of an of an historical crime And we need to make like clear our personal role in that right and he makes something called or he helps make something called the Stuttgart Declaration in which he and a bunch of other Protestant church leaders Declared their personal guilt and the German Protestant churches guilt for the slaughter of European Jewry Per an article in 1517.org Many Germans rejected this document because they objected to the idea that they were complicit in the murder of their neighbors Others thought it too little and too late as a rejection of nationalism and racism from Neemolar during the Cold War years Neemolar raised the iron of fellow Protestants in Germany by refusing to articulate the strong Anti-communist and pro-American views of the new West German government condemning both sides Neemolar met with leaders of both NATO oriented and communist states setting the horrors of the Second World War and the apocalyptic possibility of a nuclear war Neemolar became a champion for peace and disarmament and dreamed of a united Germany and that all sounds good Yeah, it does That doesn't present the whole story because while Martin did become a dog at invocal advocate of German war crimes guilt and Anti-war activist he also used his notoriety to kind of troll people as your grouse rights. He railed about the the treatment of the German people by the occupation forces. He fiercely opposed denotification as far too blunt and punitive an instrument, insisting it would only further victimize suffering Germans. There is a new anti-Semitism in Germany. He contended in the state and quoted by Simon. It is caused by the Americans letting Jews carry out the denotification. There were other such ugly outbursts. So he's not better? So he's not better. Yeah, yeah. He's not better. And when I came across that passage, I couldn't help but think of a different passage that I read in the book "God's Man" back at the start of my research that goes, "He is happiest when a storm is raging about his ears, is a phrase often used about Martin Nemuller." And some have interpreted this to mean that he enjoys the tempest so much that he provokes a controversy if none exists. And I think this is done more than any other data point to solve one of the mysteries of Martin Nemuller for me, which is that above all else, he's kind of a troll, right? Yeah, he's a little edgelord kid and he's still a little edgelord guy. Okay. He's kind of an edgelord. Yeah, even when he's like largely right about stuff in the postwar period, he's still kind of a troll. Huh. And this last chapter in Martin's life is the one that people prefer to remember because it wasn't points pretty good. He travels regularly to the Soviet Union. He kind of gets piled on communism, actually, because he sees what capitalism is doing. And he thinks the Christians in the USSR live a more wholesome and less materialist existence. And he's like, well, this seems better, actually, to me. Perhaps I was incorrect. It is closer to Catholic social doctrine. I don't know as much of a Protestant social. But he was running the social charities. Yeah, exactly. It's not surprising. He would feel that way to me. Yeah. It's during this period that he writes his famous poem, although there's some debate about exactly when and what not. It's finished this postwar period, though, is kind of when that comes out, probably. It's not famous in 1959 or 1984, at least not famous. Both of, he has biographies published in both of those years and neither of them mentioned the poem, which is interesting to me. It was out by his own. Because it was all he's known for now. Yeah, exactly, exactly. His second wife would later claim the poem's origin stated to a meeting he had with German students in 1946 who asked him, how did it happen? But this may not be true. We don't really know. I think that's what I had heard. Yeah. Which doesn't make it right. I just that's what I had. No. Yeah. A competing level of it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because of his second wife, who was not there for it, right? Martin Emoler did not fully and unequivocally disavow anti-Semitism until a radio interview conducted in 1963. But during the 60s, he appeared on stage next to Martin Luther King, Jr. and went to Vietnam to meet with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War, where he endorsed the Vietnamese cause. It's correct. Right? So he's not wrong about everything. He wound up taking what I have to call. He's not like wrongness. I'm going to call it an uncomfortable stance on Palestine as your grouse article. That's hard. His complicated stance on the morality of his stance on Palestine is really messy. Right. Here's from your grouse article in the nation. While Hockinot salutes the extraordinary transformation of this German ultra conservative with his repellent early views and to someone with the courage to change deeply held beliefs, Simon is not so forgiving. He traces unsettling continuities, with particularly acute sensitivity to Neemollar's behavior regarding Jews. And all his globe trotting, for instance, the ambassador of God, somehow never set foot in Israel. And I think that's a silly thing to judge someone as an anti-Semite for. I don't agree with Zeman that that matters. However, Martin's specific comments defending the Palestinian cause are not ideal. Right? Quote. A classic problem. Simon indicts Neemollar for a mark such as saying in 1963 that he couldn't hold it against Arabs if they felt threatened and under attack by the Jewish state, or in 1967, privately expressing that if he were in Arab, he'd be anti-Semitic about an alien people founding a state on his soil. And like, you don't have to be anti-Semitic to see what people don't like an army kicking them out of their home. And the fact that he's like, oh, I get why they'd be at it because he can't, he has to think of things in that way. Right. Totally. That's not necessarily at all. Right. Stamming that he is, that's the way he presents it. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, couldn't you just be pissed that they're kicking you out of your home and like shooting your guys? Yeah. Do you have to be a racist about it? Yeah. I don't know that I think I don't think that's necessary, Martin, totally. But it is, it is very telling that that's how he talks about it, right? You know, you can only go so far from what you start where you start, I guess. Yeah. There is evidence that he never left his bigotry completely behind. He does seem to have become at least a committed anti-authoritarian by the end of his life. At age 90 in 1982, Nemoler stated, an ultra conservative who wanted the Kaiser to come back and now I am a revolutionary. I really mean that. If I live to be a hundred, I shall maybe be an anarchist. He never made it that far, dying two years later in 1984. But yeah. Oh. That's the Martin Nemoler story. Shit. This is fascinating to me. Really interesting. Yeah. I like his turn, not because late he's right. I mean, he is, it's the right turn for him to have made. But I do get the sense that he thinks about his positions and tries to make them morally consistent and is just like wrong a lot. Yeah. A lot. But he like, but because he's coming from like, like his moral positions do get him in trouble, I haven't spent that long in prison, you know, like yeah. And my beliefs are substantially get out of prison by fighting for the Nazis. Yeah. No, totally. No, like, like, I'm not, I don't want to say like, is good man, right? No. But like, but I, like, I prefer when my enemies are morally consistent because I can receive it. I can respect it and fight it, you know, but most of the time, they don't believe in shit but power. Yeah, exactly. And he does, he thought he believed in power as a moral imperative, a theological imperative. And then he was like, oh, I've seen who I am wrong. And yeah. So to defend the poem, like the thing that is really interesting to me about the poem is I think, and I could be wrong, I think that that poem has saved uncountable lives. I think we look at that poem. We don't think about the man at all anymore, right? I don't know that there's two movies about this man, you know, I couldn't remember his name if you asked me like right now, I mean, I could tell you Martin, Neem Miller, Mueller, but Neem Miller, yeah. But like, there's so many people who are like, nah, man, we read the poem, we're not following for this shit again, right? Like going to Minneapolis and talking to people, it's the sense of like, nah, man, we, we've read this. We know what this is about, first they come for, then they come for it, you have to speak up. So, and I don't know if I believe total separate art from artists kind of thing, I literally don't know how I feel about that and I hate when people try and make me have an opinion about it. But like, it, that poem does matter. You can, you can just, yeah, go ahead, that's why I don't, I don't know that I think it matter. I don't know that I think it, I don't know that it stopped much. I think it might be a poem that affects and is valued by people who are already going to react the right way to the threat of fascism. Maybe. Like, I don't know if I think it's paused any of that. Yeah. And I think the further point, maybe, maybe it has in his post-war life the, the activism, the anti-nuclear stuff, the anti-war stuff, that's good. And it, does it make up for the fact that he did not realize he was wrong until he had been beaten and had the piles of corpses shoved literally in front of his face, right? And for me, I guess we should forgive him or not. Yeah, I guess it, from a moral condemnation standpoint, I think before 2024, I probably would have been more open-minded about coming to a better opinion of Martin. And now I'm kind of like, I just sort of wish, I kind of just wish he'd gotten hit by a bomb. You know? I wish, I wish they'd fucking be 52 and rolled over your ass or something, right at the end of the war. Like, I don't, I, I do not, I don't have a lot of charity in my heart for the, the people like this anymore. And perhaps I should that may just be a sign that I have gotten too angry and bitter in my, in my dotage. I'm willing to admit that. Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's real easy and possibly useful to be really angry right now. I'm not. Yeah. Like, yeah. But I also like, I want everyone to leave the Nazi side right now, right? Absolutely. And so there's still order to do that. We have to let them leave. Yeah. You know, but we are not at 1945, right? Totally. And so that is where I come from is like, I am still willing to, willing to take on some people who are willing to get off the fascism train. Um, but that, that is a limited time offer, folks. Yeah. No, the fact that he like did the rate, like it just being like enough that you're like, no, you helped Hitler come to power. You helped not, not a major instrument of it, but you, you did what you could, you, you, you pulled with the team in order to try and get, you know, the, one of the worst things that ever happened in human society to, yeah, happen, like being able to, I have no problem with just being like, not you're done. Like, I'm not. I fully understand where people would be coming from about it. But I just like, I'm interested in his, how a morally consistent but wrong person. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I mean, that is the fascinating thing about him. As you do get, and one of the things I like about Hawkenose's book and Zeman's book is you get a look at how this guy keeps trying to make keep a consistent worldview in his head as the evidence around him builds that he's completely wrong about everything he believes. Yeah. And he does eventually seem to be like, I was so fucking wrong. Yeah. But also, you know, in 1959, he's still covering up that he's killing that he murdered, you know, drowning sailors, sailors. No, you're right. You know, no, that's true. Because he was, because he, okay, he is inconsistent on this, right? Because sometimes he's like, he's not perfectly consistent. He's like, no, no, I did help Hitler. It wasn't so great. Yeah. But he lies. Yeah. He's like, oh, no, I was great on that. You vote. Like they're glad I was there. That was why I saved seven. I was a good thing. It was a good. Yeah. It was, it was, I stopped the killing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I'm not trying to come out for this guy. I just don't know. I'm fascinated by what you want, because I, I wanted that this conversation at the end about like, where do we land on Martin Emaler? Because I, I, I, I'm very, I, I, I'm pretty frustrated with the fella. But I do find it fascinating. His admission that like, even if he couldn't quite make himself into an anarchist that like, I could, he's, I can see it in 90 that that's probably close to the right thing that I've ever gotten in my life. Yeah. Maybe I'll get there in another 10. He's just like, oh, I am moving away from authoritarianism and that is the actual direction I should be taking my entire life. Every power structure I've endorsed has proven wrong. Yeah. Totally. Maybe that's the problem. But if, but if like a centrist or a, especially like a leftist had written that poem, it would be meaningless. Yeah. It is meaningful. Now, I was expecting him to be the first thought, which was the standing around like the good German who just went along. That's what I voted for Hitler holding his nose once, but didn't ever really get out like supported in the streets certainly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, no, that's probably shot unarmed people put down a revolution. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, not both boy shouting, I fucking love Hitler from jail. That guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I swear he'd let me out if he just knew what a great guy was. He knew how much I liked him. Yeah. Oh, that is, this is not a boring man. No, no. He does live quite a life. Even if I, even, it would have been better if he either made it to 100 or died when he was like 15th. Right. Yeah. Yeah. World War One death would have been great for him. What if his brother had survived instead of him? The guy with a good. Gerhard would have done us a solid. Gerhard would have been saving people left and right. He would have stopped his Hitler stuff. Yeah. Like Mark Wahlberg if he'd been at 9/11. Yeah. Yeah. I've only Gerhard had been there. Yeah. We got a Margaret plugables on that. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to hear me talk about complicated people where I try and talk about the good they did. I have a podcast about cool people who did cool stuff where I'd always starts with people who people think are heroes and then I'm like, oh, they're like 70% heroes. And it's on this very network. I also a podcast where I read fiction to you called Cools and Media Book Club. And I write books. And one of my books is about a trans which in the book is called the sapling cage. And it's legally distinct from YA. It's a crossover book because of the way that I write characters somehow disqualifying it from YA. Even though it's a coming of age story about a young trans which I have some frustrations with how people define YA. Yeah. So do a lot of my readers. A lot of my readers are like, oh, thank God. A fucking protagonist. I don't want to strangle. So yeah, you can check me out. Margaret Kiljoy. Yeah. I'm on the internet. I wish I wasn't check out the sapling cage. Great book. Check out whatever episode we do next, which won't be on Martin Emiller because we already we already did him. You know, maybe maybe we'll finally do the Jim Henson episodes. No, Jim was nice. Jim was nice. Jim was nice. That's just a good Lord. No, I was terrified that you know something I don't. No, no, no, no, other than he probably should have gone to the doctor faster. Unfortunately. Yeah. All right. We're done. Bye. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone media. For more from Cool Zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the I hurt radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel YouTube.com/at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you statistically speaking. Lisa, tell them about our new show. I'm Lexi, you want to wear two best friends 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa de Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. Listen on the I hurt radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snow storm. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise. Sometimes it's a police year. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad free with an I heart true crime plus subscription exclusively on Apple podcasts, available only to I heart true crime plus subscribers. So don't wait. I'm 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. Oh, I scammed them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. 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 I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie breakman, Angel Jaretana, Jeremy Colinghane Cash McDonald, and we're the hosts of the artist on artist on artist on artist 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, he winks on Halloween. I hear you get the elbows here. The eyelashes hit each other. You never seen it least 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 I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.