The Cost of Discipleship 21

What happened to Bonhoeffer?  

 Bonhoeffer ran an underground seminary at Finkenwalde from 1935 to 1937 when it was closed by the Gestapo. Then he carried out a “seminary on the run” as long as he could (1937-1938). How about that? Seminary as resistance to the popular right-wing political regime! Dictators do not like the real Jesus nor his teachings.

 Bonhoeffer left for the United States again in June 1939 partly because he feared being drafted by the army where he would have to refuse to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. So far, in the United States Army, a soldier swears first “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” (see Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, 2020, Page 211-217). Then a soldier swears to obey the orders of the Commander in Chief and the officers who are appointed over him according to regulations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is not an oath sworn to any person, but an oath to follow proper military commands from the proper line of authority. 

 Bonhoeffer regretted his decision to leave and went back to Germany within weeks. He wrote this in a letter to Reinhold Niebuhr: 

  “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people ... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that a future Christian civilization may survive, or else willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization and any true Christianity. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from a place of security.”  (G. Leibholz, Memoir, preface to The Cost of Discipleship, 1958, Page16).

 On return to Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer was closely watched by the Gestapo. He could no longer teach, nor give speeches; all he could do was write, not publish.  

 To protect Bonhoeffer from the draft, his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi brought him into the Abwehr, that is, the military intelligence service that provided the high command with reports about foreign actions. He argued that Bonhoeffer’s international network of church connections might be useful. No oath required. 

 However, by this time, some in the Abwehr, which was under the command of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, were actively resisting the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi did what they could to assist Jews and others to escape. Bonhoeffer attempted to use church connections, especially in England, to make contact with British government officials on behalf of the resistance. These attempts never worked out because the British government was not interested.  

 Bonhoeffer may have known about various plots to assassinate Hitler, but he was never active in any of the plots. Still, in his passive knowledge and sharing of information, he saw that his participation as a Christian was questionable because it required an ethical decision about good and evil.

 “But Bonhoeffer himself refused to see any plot to assassinate Hitler as morally justified. He insisted that what he was doing, while necessary, was at the same time a grave moral wrong for which he must repent and beg God’s forgiveness. In the hundreds of pages he wrote during his years in the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer adamantly warned that any sense of moral clarity we might feel is always an illusion. If we trick ourselves into thinking that we have full knowledge of good and evil, that we clearly see right and wrong, then we never have to question the moral purity of our actions. Because we are on the side of good against evil, we think that our actions–and our violence–must therefore be good.” (Mac Loftin, “New Bonhoeffer Movie Isn’t Just Bad. It’s Dangerous,” The New Christian Century, January 2025. Published online November 21, 2024).

 Bonhoeffer gives no justification for violence in a ‘good cause’. He argues that a person must take on that guilt and hope for God’s grace. On 5 April 1943 Bonhoeffer and Dohnányi were arrested and imprisoned, but not for an assassination plot. That was revealed later. Bonhoeffer was sent to Tegel prison in Berlin. He was arrested because his actions were suspicious and he tended to uncover the truth. He knew where that would lead. 

 “In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness, and they resist it with all their might. That is why they persecute it and crucify it. It is only because we follow Jesus that we can be genuinely truthful, for he reveals to us our sin upon the cross. The cross is God’s truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.” (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, [1937] 1958, Page 155).

 While working at the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer had discovered the truth about the treatment of the Jews. His unit worked to provide papers and escape routes for some Jews to Switzerland. However, Bonhoeffer had been slow to come to this position. As late as 1933, he was writing that the Jews would have to suffer for their anti-social behavior going back to the crucifixion of Christ. Like Peter and Paul, Bonhoeffer was a work in progress, a disciple with a lot to learn. 

 The tension between activism and silence marked Bonhoeffer’s years under the right-wing German government. He spoke out or acted on certain concerns, but he was quiet about others. That is not surprising, we do the same. But once in prison, Bonhoeffer sought out the oppressed and ministered to their needs. Bonhoeffer also kept working on his projected book Ethics (which had to be finished by his students), as well as letters which became Letters and Papers from Prison (edited by Gremmels et al, 2010. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English, volume 8). 

 On July 20th, 1944, von Stauffenberg made his famous but failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. Soon the whole Abwehr came under suspicion of conspiracy. The discovery of the diary of Admiral Canaris in early April 1945 implicated everyone in the Abwehr division. Hitler ordered executions. On April 9, 1945, now in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, Bonhoeffer was hanged along with Admiral Canaris, General Oster, General and military judge Sack, lawyer Strünck, and resistance agent Gehre. Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law Dohnanyi was executed at about the same time at another prison.

 All of this could have been avoided if Bonhoeffer had remained in America or in Sweden where he visited during the war to make contacts with the international church network. Or if Bonhoeffer would have been willing to bow the knee to Hitler and swear an oath of fealty. Or if Bonhoeffer had gone along with the majority of the Evangelical Church in Germany that was praising Hitler with these words:  

“No one could welcome January 30, 1933 more profoundly or more joyfully than the German Christian leadership.”

“Adolf Hitler, with his faith in Germany, as the instrument of God became the framer of German destiny and the liberator of our people from their spiritual misery and division.”

“If the German who truly believed in Jesus could find the Spirit of the Kingdom of God anywhere, he could find it in Adolf Hitler’s movement.”                                 (Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer: Debating Discipleship in the Age of Trump, 2018, Page 144). 

 As a mature disciple of Jesus Christ, Bonhoeffer saw through the sham and would not change his allegiance. 

 “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16: 25, also Matthew 10: 39).