Pastor Martin Niemöller, Admiral Karl Dönitz, and the German Experience of the 20th Century

By Lawrence Sondhaus

This book traces the remarkable lifelong friendship of Martin Niem ller, the Evangelical minister who defied Hitler, and Karl D nitz, the mastermind of Germany's submarine campaigns in World War II who ultimately succeeded Hitler. From their days as cadets at the German naval academy in the years 1910-1913 to their deaths in the early 1980s, their story is full of ironies and unexpected twists. After World War I, D nitz served the Weimar Republic and shunned the far right, while Niem ller briefly left his seminary studies to command a battalion in the right-wing Freikorps. Then, after World War II, when Niem ller was hailed for his principled Christian resistance to Hitler and D nitz indicted for war crimes, Niem ller volunteered to help with his old friend's defense at the Nuremberg Trials. Finally, late in life, D nitz, a hero for unrepentant Nazis, and Niem ller, a world renowned pacifist, frequently shared a table at navy class reunions throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In the end, they and their friends and classmates learned to love their country in ways that differed from the chauvinistic nationalism of their youth. In this manner, their lives were emblematic of the transformation of their generation, and of Germany as a whole.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3111532224
• ISBN13: 9783111532226
• Release Date: June 2025
• Publisher: de Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Length: 411 Pages
• Weight: 1.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"