A Little Known Story: “First they came for the Communists…”

A brief look into Nazi Germany’s attempts to eliminate their greatest threat.

Photo: hardiktuteja (via Pixabay)

“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew,
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.”

— Pastor Martin Niemoller

On February 27, 1933, the arson attack on the Reichstag building led to a full-scale inquiry on who exactly was behind such an act.

The rounding up of communists after the Nazi coup of April 1933.

This led to the arrest of a council communist known as Marinus van der Lubbe. Because of this arrest, Hitler took this as a “communist conspiracy” to try and overthrow the German government. And so, because of the growing anti-communist…