Niemöller, Martin

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Niemöller, Martin (1892–1984). German pastor and Confessing Church leader. He was a submarine commander in the First World War, and later a pastor in Dahlem, a suburb of Berlin. He formed the Pastors' Emergency League to resist the Nazi takeover of church life, and this formed one basis for the Confessing Church. As an outspoken preacher against the regime, Niemöller was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 and only freed from concentration camps in 1945. Into his 80s he remained an active leader of the Christian peace movement.

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