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.

Hitler and Germany had waited twenty-three years for this triumphant moment, and if ever Adolf Hitler became the Savior of the German nation, this was it. Many Germans who had reservations and misgivings about Hitler now changed their opinions. He had healed the unhealable wound of the First War and Versailles. He had restored a broken Germany to her former greatness. The old had passed way, and behold, he had made all things new. In many people’s eyes he was suddenly something like a god, the messiah for whom they had waited and prayed, and whose reign would last a thousand years.

After Hitler’s success in France, a new day had dawned. Bonhoeffer and so many in the Resistance had been convinced that Hitler would ruin Germany by dragging it into a miserable military defeat. But who could have dreamed he would destroy Germany through success, through an ever-escalating orgy of self-love and self-worship? Actually Bonhoeffer considered it in the truncated speech given two days after Hitler came to power. He knew that if Germany worshiped any idol, it would incinerate its own future, as those who worshiped Moloch did by burning their children. After the fall of France, many understood that Hitler was destroying Germany through success.

That day in Potsdam he was trying to shake the cobwebs from everyone’s understanding, and it happened again. By saying that Hitler had won, he was trying hard—in retrospect, too hard—to get his listeners to wake up and change course. So now, when he spoke of how National Socialism had won, some in his audience thought he was giving his assent to this victory. They seriously thought he had said, in effect, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” In the next few years, after he began work for the Abwehr—ostensibly as an agent of the German government, but of course as a member of the Resistance—many remembered what he said that day and thought he actually had gone over to the “other” side and was working for Hitler and the Nazis.

How one tells the truth depends on circumstances. Bonhoeffer was aware that what he called the “living truth” was dangerous and “arouses the suspicion that the truth can and may be adapted to the given situation, so that the concept of truth utterly dissolves, and falsehood and truth draw indistinguishably close to each other.”

So the day had come. Bonhoeffer had officially joined the conspiracy. He would be enfolded into the Abwehr’s protection and, in the guise of a member of Military Intelligence, would be protected by Oster and Canaris. The levels of deception were several. On the one hand, Bonhoeffer would be actually performing pastoral work and continuing his theological writing, as he wished to do. Officially this work was a front for his work as a Nazi agent in Military Intelligence. But unofficially his work in Military Intelligence was a front for his real work as a conspirator against the Nazi regime.

On February 24, the Abwehr sent Bonhoeffer to Geneva. His main purpose was to make contact with Protestant leaders outside Germany, let them know about the conspiracy, and put out feelers about peace terms with the government that would take over. Müller was having similar conversations at the Vatican with Catholic leaders. But at first, Bonhoeffer couldn’t even get into Switzerland. The Swiss border police insisted that someone inside Switzerland vouch for him as his guarantor. Bonhoeffer named Karl Barth, who was called, and assented, but not without some misgivings. Like others at the time, Barth was perplexed about Bonhoeffer’s mission. How could a Confessing Church pastor come to Switzerland in the midst of war? It seemed to him that Bonhoeffer must have somehow made peace with the Nazis. This was one of the casualties of the war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths. Such doubts and questions from others would plague Bonhoeffer, but he certainly wasn’t free to explain what he was doing to those outside his inner circle. This represented another “death” to self for him because he had to surrender his reputation in the church. People wondered how he escaped the fate of the rest of his generation. He was writing and traveling, meeting with this one and that one, going to movies and restaurants, and living a life of relative privilege and freedom while others were suffering and dying and being put in excruciating positions of moral compromise. For those who ...

The German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. —HENNING VON TRESCKOW

Some generals were the noble leaders1 of the conspiracy, ready to act at any time. But many others were less noble and wise, and their desire to be unmired from the swamp and ignominy of Versailles was so strong that it overrode their extreme revulsion toward Hitler. Many reasoned that once he had served his purposes, he would falter and be replaced by someone less brutal; if necessary, they would see to that. But not while they were winning so spectacularly, not while they were rolling back Versailles.

Then came June 6, 1941, and the notorious Commissar Order. Hitler was about to launch his campaign against Russia, code named Operation Barbarossa, and his bitter contempt for the “eastern races” such as the Poles and the Slavs would again be on full display. The Commissar Order instructed the army to shoot and kill all captured Soviet military leaders. Hitler had allowed the army to avoid the most gruesome horrors in Poland. He knew they didn’t have the stomach for it, and the soulless SS Einsatzgruppen had done the foulest and most inhuman deeds. But now he ordered the army itself to carry out the butchery and sadism in contravention of all military codes going back for centuries. The generals took notice. Even the weakest-willed among them saw that they had been gaily riding along on the back of a tiger.

Henning von Tresckow3 was a typical Prussian with a strong sense of honor and tradition who had come to despise Hitler early on. He was the first officer at the front to contact the conspirators. When he heard about the Commissar Order, he told General Gersdorf that if they weren’t able to convince Bock to have it canceled, “the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years.” He said the guilt would fall not only on Hitler and his inner circle, “but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine.” For many generals this was the turning point. The indefatigably weak-willed Brauchitsch was so shocked by the Commissar Order that he brought it up with Hitler, who promptly hurled an inkwell at the venerable general’s head.

By the fall of 194113, however, all hopes that the conspiracy could get Britain’s assurances of a negotiated peace were gone. The war had dragged on too long. With Germany fighting Russia, Churchill14 saw it as all or nothing. He was not interested in the conspiracy—if one even existed. He took a defiant stance that branded every German a Nazi and turned a deaf ear to the voices of the conspirators. Bishop Bell spoke on their behalf nonetheless. He tried to raise British awareness that there were men and women in Germany eager for Hitler’s demise. Earlier that year he had given a speech at a large demonstration criticizing the British government for talking of victory, but not of any mercy toward those suffering outside Britain.

Churchill and his Foreign Secretary Eden were unmoved. Still, Bonhoeffer would persevere. He wrote a long memorandum in which he explained, among other things, that the Allied indifference to those who might stage a coup against Hitler was discouraging them from staging it. If the good Germans in the conspiracy thought that after risking their lives they would be treated by the British and their allies as indistinguishable from the Nazis, there was precious little incentive to do so: “The question must be faced whether a German government which makes a complete break with Hitler and all he stands for, can hope to get such terms of peace that it has some chance to survive. . . . It is clear that the answering of this question is a matter of urgency, since the attitude of opposition groups in Germany depends upon the answer given.”

As Germany’s armies moved16 toward Moscow, the barbarism of the SS had again been given the freedom to express itself. It was as if the devil and his hordes had crawled out of hell and walked the earth. In Lithuania, SS squads gathered defenseless Jews together and beat them to death with truncheons, afterward dancing to music on the dead bodies. The victims were cleared away, a second group was brought in, and the macabre exercise was repeated. As a result of such things17, many more in the army leadership were driven to the conspiracy.

When Bonhoeffer returned from Switzerland in late September, he learned of more horrors. But these were being perpetrated inside Germany. A new decree required all Jews in Germany to wear a yellow star in public. Things had now moved into a new realm, and Bonhoeffer knew it was but a foretaste of things to come. At the Dohnanyis’ house that September, Bonhoeffer famously said that, if necessary, he would be willing to kill Hitler. It would not come to that, but Bonhoeffer had to be clear that he was not assisting in the fulfillment of a deed he was unwilling to do. He stipulated, however, that he would first have to resign from the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer knew that most of its members would not share his position on this matter, but more important, he did not want to implicate them in something that he was undertaking alone.

Still, despite the entreaties of other generals, Hitler mercilessly drove his armies forward, and on December 2, a single German battalion pushed close enough to glimpse the fabled golden spires of the Kremlin, fourteen miles away. That was as close as the Germans would get. On December 4 the temperature fell to thirty-one below zero. On the fifth it fell to thirty-six below zero. Generals Bock and Guderian knew they had come to the end of their abilities and resources. They must retreat. Brauchitsch, the commander in chief of the army, determined to resign his post. On the sixth the Russians attacked the German lines with such shattering force that the once invincible armies of Adolf Hitler turned tail and went into full retreat.

Von Moltke and Bonhoeffer met for the first time during their trip to Norway, which had recently been handed over to Hitler by the Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose surname became an improper noun, meaning “traitor.” For his treachery, Quisling was made prime minister of the new puppet government on February 1, 1942. But on the day he took office, Quisling struck a belligerent pose with the Norwegian church, forbidding one of its leaders, Provost Fjellbu, to hold a service at the nationally symbolic Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. This caused a firestorm of resistance and linked the Norwegian church to the wider Norwegian resistance in a way that was publicly disastrous for the new puppet government and the Nazis in general. In April, the Abwehr decided to send Bonhoeffer to Norway to help the situation, although of course he was going there to do precisely the opposite.

Quisling removed Fjellbu from office on February 20. But unlike what had happened in Germany, the Norwegian church leaders were both united and firm: every Norwegian bishop immediately severed his connections to the government. In March Quisling overreached again, establishing a Norwegian version of the Hitler Youth. A thousand teachers immediately struck in protest.

Bonhoeffer and Schönfeld diverged6 in their general attitude. Schönfeld presented an attitude of German strength and sought favorable peace terms. He suggested, for example, that the British could not win the war, so it was in the best interests to cut a deal with the conspirators. Bonhoeffer came from a position of deliberate weakness, one that hoped to appeal to a sense of Britain’s justice and mercy. He expressed deep humility and shame over Germany’s sins, and he felt that he and every German must be willing to suffer for those sins. They must show the world that they were seriously repentant.

He wanted to demonstrate to the world the sincerity of their grief and their solidarity with those who had suffered and were suffering. He had no desire to minimize the evils committed in the name of Germany: “Christians do not wish to escape repentance, or chaos, if it is God’s will to bring it upon us. We must take this judgement as Christians.” Christians must be like Jesus in their willingness to suffer for others, and Germany must now do this before the world.

Bonhoeffer knew that to live in fear of incurring “guilt” was itself sinful. God wanted his beloved children to operate out of freedom and joy to do what was right and good, not out of fear of making a mistake. To live in fear and guilt was to be “religious” in the pejorative sense that Bonhoeffer so often talked and preached about. He knew that to act freely could mean inadvertently doing wrong and incurring guilt. In fact, he felt that living this way meant that it was impossible to avoid incurring guilt, but if one wished to live responsibly and fully, one would be willing to do so.

The plan was for4 Schlabrendorff to plant a bomb on Hitler’s plane in Smolensk, where he would be on March 13 for a brief visit to the troops on the eastern front. Years later, Schlabrendorff explained that “the semblance of an accident would avoid the political disadvantages of a murder. For in those days Hitler still had many followers who, after such an event, would have put up a strong resistance to our revolt.” As soon as it was confirmed that the Führer’s remains had been properly scattered across Minsk, the generals would launch their coup.

During what certainly must have been an exceedingly tense meal, not least because some knew it was the final meal for all those boarding the Führer’s plane, General Tresckow casually asked a favor of his table mate, Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Brandt. Brandt was in Hitler’s entourage, and Tresckow asked whether he would mind taking a gift of brandy to Rastenberg to give to his old friend, General Stieff. Tresckow implied the brandy was payment for a gentlemanly wager. Brandt agreed, and a little while later, just as they headed to the airfield, Schlabrendorff handed Colonel Brandt the package. Just before, he pressed the magic button, presto, setting things in motion, and knowing that approximately one half hour later, somewhere far above the earth, the final buzzer would sound over the Third Reich.

The extent to which Hitler6 planned his movements and activities to avoid assassination was impressive. All his meals were prepared by a chef he brought with him wherever he went, and like some ancient despot, he made sure that each dish set before him was first tasted by his personal quack physician, Dr. Theodor Morrell, while Hitler watched. He also wore a fantastically heavy hat. On the sly, Schlabrendorff hefted this fabled chapeau when the generals were meeting at Kluge’s quarters. It was “heavy as a cannon ball,” lined with three and a half pounds of steel. As for Hitler’s plane, it was divided into several compartments. His personal cabin, Schlabrendorff explained, “was armor-plated and had a contrivance for descent by parachute. According to our computation, however, the explosive charge in the bombs was sufficient to blow up the whole plane, including the armored cabin. Even if that should not happen, such essential parts of the plane would be torn off that it was bound to crash.” For two hours they heard nothing. Then came the impossible news: Hitler landed safely in East Prussia. The attempt had failed. Everyone was too filled with fear to be depressed about the outcome. They knew that the bomb had likely been discovered.

When Hitler approached him7, Gersdorff reached inside his coat and pressed the buttons. Now it would happen. The vials were broken, and the acid began to eat away slowly at the wires. Gersdorff greeted the Führer and with extraordinary bravery and discipline began the acting job of a thousand lifetimes, pretending to be concerned with the Russian weaponry and giving the Führer details as they proceeded. But Hitler suddenly decided to end his visit. In a moment he walked out a side door onto Unter den Linden and was gone. What was to have taken half an hour had taken a few minutes. Gersdorff was still wearing an overcoat laden with explosives about to go off. There was no “shut off” switch. The acid was doing its corrosive work, dissolving the metal wire further with every second. As soon as Hitler was gone, Gersdorff rushed into a restroom and ripped the fuses from the two bombs. Instead of dying that afternoon as planned, this brave man lived to 1980. But Hitler had escaped again.

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

Such people neither steal62, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But . . . they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. They will either be destroyed by this unrest, or they will become the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

To those for whom Bonhoeffer’s few words on religionless Christianity were the sine qua non of all he ever said, this uncompromising Christocentrism would be strong meat, as are his pronouncements in Ethics on a number of other issues, such as abortion: Destruction of the embryo65 in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

But another newspaper15 took a similarly reproachful tone toward the conspirators. The New York Times declared that those who had attempted “to kidnap or kill the head of the German state and commander in chief of the Army” had done something one would not “normally expect within an officers’ corps and a civilized government.” And Winston Churchill16, who had done his best to starve the conspiracy to death, now kicked its corpse, calling the attempt a case of “the highest personalities in the German Reich murdering one another.”

Many people consider the most beneficial aspect of work to be its tendency to numb the psyche. Personally, I think what really matters is that the right kind of work renders one unselfish, and that a person whose heart is filled with personal interests and concerns develops a desire for such unselfishness in the service of others.

His cell mate Alvensleben was typical of many arrested after the July 20 plot in that he had done nothing more than be on friendly terms with some of the plotters. Thousands had been arrested for this crime. Anyone related by blood was guilty of Sippenhaft (liability of kin), whereby relatives of the accused were arrested and punished: wives, parents, and children too. Some small children were taken away from parents, never to be seen again.

But to the last Hitler would preserve the fiction of legality in the German state. The corpse of German jurisprudence must be exhumed to create the image of lawfulness. So the SS prosecutor Huppenkothen must go through his paces, must travel with his documents—including Canaris’s incriminating diary—all the way to Flossenbürg to set up a “summary court-martial.” He traveled there on April 7. Also there for the charade was Dr. Otto Thorbeck, an SS judge. So that Saturday night, Canaris, Oster, Dr. Sack, Strünck, Gehre, and Bonhoeffer would be tried and executed in the morning.

On the morning22 of that day between five and six o’clock the prisoners, among them Admiral Canaris, General Oster, General Thomas and Reichgerichtsrat Sack were taken from their cells, and the verdicts of the court martial read out to them. Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. 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.

What happened to Maria after Dietrich’s death bears fuller explanation than what we provide here. But the short answer to the question is that after she learned of her beloved Dietrich’s fate in the summer of 1945, Maria von Wedemeyer was understandably heartbroken. Not long afterward she left Germany for the United States, enrolling as a student at Bryn Mawr. There, far from the horrors of her recent past, she studied mathematics, as she had always planned to do, and she eventually took a position with Honeywell in Massachusetts, rising to become the head of a department there, no small accomplishment for a woman at that time. Maria’s personal life was less happy. She married twice and divorced twice, and in 1977, at the age of fifty-two, she died of cancer. She was survived by two sons.