Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

by Eric Metaxas

Three days later in some woods north of Paris, a curious scene was unfolding. Hitler, to whom mercy was a sign of subhuman weakness, arranged for the French to sign the terms of their surrender in the forest of Compiegne on the very spot where they had the Germans sign the armistice in 1918. That black day of humiliation was fresh in Hitler’s mind, and he would now make the most of the opportunity to reverse it. Forcing his vanquished foes to return to the site of Germany’s humiliation was only the beginning. Hitler would clamber to oxygen-free heights of pettiness by having the very railroad car in which that armistice had been signed removed from the museum in which it was kept and hauled all the way back into this forest glade. Pneumatic drills were employed to remove the museum wall, and the railroad car was taken out and back again into the past where the fateful wound had been inflicted on the German nation. If this gesture wasn’t enough, Hitler had the very chair in which Foch had sat delivered to him, so that he could sit in it, inside the railroad car, there in the forest of Compiegne. With such a penchant for symbolism, it’s a wonder he resisted putting the Treaty of Versailles into a safe and casting it into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.