Witness against Hitler
by Mike Oettle
WAS Dietrich
Bonhöffer a martyr? Debate on this question will no doubt go on for many years,
hinging on the question of whether it is right in Christian ethics to plot the
death of an evil ruler. For that is the crime for which Dietrich was hanged by
nazi Germany on 9 April 1945, at Flossenbürg, Bavaria.
For his involvement in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, under the leadership of
Lieutenant-Colonel Claus Schenk, Graf von Stauffenberg, Dietrich[1] Bonhöffer[2] has long figured as a hero in my eyes. But whether the plot can be justified in the light of Scripture is another question. Certainly if one reads Matthew 26:52b (“For all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”) with Romans 13:1 (“Everyone must submit himself to governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.”) it seems as if the plot could not be a Christian action. Yet Christ also told his disciples: “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” (Luke 22:36b) And scholars believe that Paul wrote the Letter to the Romans from Corinth in AD 57, two years before the evil emperor Nero began his excessive behaviour by killing his mother.
Dietrich Bonhöffer was born in Breslau, German Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) on 4 February 1906 and grew up in the academic circles of the University of Berlin, where his father was professor of psychiatry and neurology. He studied theology at Tübingen and Berlin universities, coming under the influence of the school of historical theologians and of Karl Barth’s “theology of revelation”.
He became assistant pastor of a German congregation in Barcelona in 1928, but then went to New York’s Union Theological Seminary for a year and, on returning to
Germany in 1931, became a lecturer in systematic theology at Berlin University.
“From the first days of the nazi accession to power in 1933 he was involved in
protests against the regime, especially its anti-Semitism, and despite
another 18-month absence when he served as pastor of two small German congregations in London (1933-35), Bonhöffer became a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church, the centre of German Protestant resistance to the nazi regime. In 1935 he was appointed to organise and head a new seminary for the Confessing Church at Finkenwald (Pomerania), which continued in disguised form until 1940, despite its proscription by the political authorities in 1937. Here he introduced the practice of prayer, private confession and common discipline outlined in his book Gemeinsames Leben (1939; Life Together, 1954).”[3]
After the closing of Finkenwald, Dietrich joined Admiral Canaris’s military intelligence staff and worked as double agent. “Using his ecumenical contacts, especially his friendship with Bishop George Bell of Chichester, England, Bonhöffer vainly sought the British government’s support for the anti-Hitler conspirators. His arrest in 1943 arose from his involvement in smuggling fourteen Jews to Switzerland.”[4]
Engaged shortly before his arrest, Dietrich never married.
“Although only thirty-nine when killed, Bonhöffer left a rich legacy of books – Sanctorum Communio, Act and Being, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together – as well as letters, papers and notes published after his death by his close friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge. These include Letters and Papers from Prison, Ethics, and six volumes of collected writings.”[3] Many different theologies have sprung from these.
But in conclusion, let’s focus on Dietrich’s last days. He almost survived the war,
but eight months after Stauffenberg’s failed coup of 20 July 1944, papers were
produced proving his involvement. He was given a rough trial and executed. The
camp doctor wrote this about his last morning:
“I saw Pastor Bonhöffer before taking off his prison
garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply
moved . . . In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”[5]
