This book is a brilliant reexamination of one of the most obdurate of sacred cows, the myth of Martin Niem"oller. Ziemann has done prodigious work in pushing past the postwar narrative so carefully curated by Niem"oller's circle of confidants, to do what historians are supposed to do: get to the truth. By deploying a fact-driven methodology concerned with scrutinizing old truth-claims, Ziemann delivers the kind of probing reevaluation of Niem"oller that we have waited literally decades to read.
Benjamin Ziemann is Professor of Modern Germany at the University of Sheffield. He has gained his PhD from the University of Bielefeld, and has held visiting fellowships at Humboldt University Berlin, the University of York, the University of Jena, Oslo University and Kyoritsu Women's University in Tokyo.