Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Mark Nation

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship as well as his Life Together, not to ignore statements by friends, his christoform theology, and the consistency of his theology are on the line here.

He didn’t operate with the Prinzip of pacifism but the paradigm of Philippians 2:6–11, now turned into the term “cruciformity” by Michael Gorman.

one “has to proclaim the gospel ‘even in the Third Reich, but not under it nor in its spirit.’

The one who starts with heaven is sensitive to those who live in the hell of this earth; whereas the one who begins with earth is blind to the situation of exploitation upon which the earth is built.”

First, Bethge denies that Bonhoeffer was ever a pacifist, which flies in the face of Bonhoeffer’s own claims (both directly and indirectly).

That loses a lot of credibility right there

Second, Bethge portrays Bonhoeffer as having shifted rather dramatically in his theology by the beginning of the 1940s—becoming a practical realist in the last phase of his life. I have come to realize that this problem with Bethge’s interpretation is the most serious. For it entails Bonhoeffer’s having fundamentally changed from a Barthian to a Niebuhrian-type realist, which would entail a dramatic shift from his Christ-centered theology.

third, there are problems with Bethge’s interpretation in terms of facts. He implies that Bonhoeffer was executed for being involved in attempts to kill Hitler (and that he was personally involved in such attempts). Most now simply take this as a given.

Bonhoeffer’s views on violence and nonviolence. Although, again, the primacy here does not belong to nonviolence. It belongs to the centrality of Jesus Christ (as is made clear in both Discipleship and Ethics)—which, then, has theological and moral entailments.

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer—a pastor and author, known as much for such spiritual classics as The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, as for his 1945 execution in a concentration camp for his part in the plot to assassinate Hitler.1

Bonhoeffer is clear in his book Ethics that Christians should never shape their ethics around concerns about success.

In December 1932, for instance, in a brief lecture on “Christ and Peace,” he said: “For Christians, any military service, except in the ambulance corps, and any preparation for war, is forbidden.”

Jean Lasserre, who lectured with Bonhoeffer on peace in Mexico in 1931; Lawrence Whitburn, one of his parishioners in London, 1933–1935; Theodore Heckel, a German church authority who heard Bonhoeffer speak on a number of occasions and interacted with him personally during much of the 1930s; Joachim Kanitz and Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann, both students of Bonhoeffer in Berlin and at Finkenwalde; Herbert Jehle, who was converted to pacifism through Bonhoeffer; Paul Lehmann in the summer of 1939; and Karl Barth, who met with Bonhoeffer at least six times between 1940 and 1942—all claim that Bonhoeffer was an advocate for pacifism.

“Peace is not the way of safety. It must be dared!”

I have seen no evidence to confirm what Bethge implies, namely that Bonhoeffer went to work for the Abwehr in order to join the conspiracy. Rather, if we are paying attention to the trajectory of Bonhoeffer’s life and teachings, we should draw the same conclusion that Dramm has:

Peter Hoffman, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on resistance movements in Nazi Germany, refers to Bonhoeffer’s work among the conspirators as putting out “peace feelers.” More specifically, says Hoffman, “[Bonhoeffer] urged his [ecumenical] friends . . . to use their influence to ensure that the Allies would call a halt to military operations during the anticipated coup in Germany.”

To be clear, there is no evidence that Bonhoeffer had any role in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler itself. Rather, he was involved only in what Bethge refers to as an effort “parallel to the conspiracy,” namely, seeking to broker at least a temporary peace agreement with the Allies in the event that one of the attempts on Hitler’s life was successful.

“No scholars or serious readers of Bonhoeffer believe that he . . . was personally involved in attempts to kill Hitler.”

Because of the collected works of Bonhoeffer, we now know what the charges were that led to his imprisonment. We have a summary of the court proceedings. There is no mention of any attempts on Hitler’s life. Instead, the central issue for the judge in Bonhoeffer’s case is that he was effectively living out the life of a conscientious objector to Germany’s war through his work with the Abwehr.44 That is to say, in September 1943 Bonhoeffer was indicted on charges of avoiding the call-up to military service and thus officially “subverting military power.”45 The court records show that the judge realized that Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the Abwehr was certainly not essential for the welfare of Germany, as his uk status suggested. Rather, it was a cover, a way for Bonhoeffer to exist in Nazi Germany without killing in Germany’s war and without giving a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler—and yet still be free to do ongoing work for the church.

As historian Anton Gill has said, 7,000 people were arrested and 4,500 executed following the attempt on Hitler’s life in July of 1944. He goes on to say that “in their orgy of summary justice and killing, the Nazis brought in many thousands who were innocent of any plot to kill the dictator. . . . The authorities also found themselves with an excuse to execute many more dissidents who had been in prison . . . since before the 20 July attempt.”

Bonhoeffer would have been killed then if there was a close tie

“The Sermon on the Mount is either valid as the word of God’s world-reconciling love everywhere and at all times, or it is not really relevant for us at all.”58

Let me suggest a contemporary parallel. A colleague of mine at Eastern Mennonite University, a lifelong pacifist, used to live and work in Zimbabwe and other African countries. He tells me that he would not be at all surprised if some friends of his imagined that he would have affirmed the killing of President Robert Mugabe. For on certain occasions, in conversations with trusted friends and allies in the battle against oppression and injustice, he would vent, expressing his empathy with those who wanted to stop Mugabe by any means necessary. Who would not resonate with those who strongly opposed what were obvious forms of power abuse and oppression? That didn’t mean it was true that he affirmed the killing of other human beings, even Mugabe. But listeners, with other frameworks for approaching issues such as killing, might easily have heard him in ways that weren’t true to his own convictions.

Besides, there are contradictory memories. As mentioned earlier, Paul Lehmann reported that Bonhoeffer had reaffirmed his commitment to pacifism in the summer of 1939, just before he set sail to return to Germany. Emmi Bonhoeffer, one of Dietrich’s sisters-in-law, recounts a conversation she had with him sometime after he had returned to Germany in 1939: “How is that with you Christians?” she asks. “You will not kill but that another one does it, you agree and are glad about it. Why is that?” Dietrich responds: “One should not be glad. But I understand what you mean.”

When Franz Hildebrandt, whom Bethge referred to as Bonhoeffer’s “best and most like-minded friend,” was told in 1945 that Dietrich had been involved in efforts to kill Hitler, Hildebrandt said that he was sure that Bonhoeffer was not involved.64

John DeGruchy, in his biography of Eberhard Bethge, says, “Had another of Bonhoeffer’s close friends (say, Franz Hildebrandt) become Bonhoeffer’s literary executor and written his biography, in all likelihood we would have a rather different Bonhoeffer today.”65 Indeed, what if Franz Hildebrandt, a Jewish Christian, had written Bonhoeffer’s biography?

As a Christian and as a minister of the church I consider my means to fight Hitler different from those employed by the world. I cannot reconcile modern warfare with Christianity though I respect my fellow Christians who are conscientiously able to do so. I would not object to an ordinary police force doing away with the Nazi party. But I fail to see how the killing of thousands of lives on both sides will harm the guilty. . . . I need not say how I feel about any colleagues of mine now fighting in Hitler’s army. . . . Pacifism, therefore, is to me a practical, not a doctrinal question; it is the question of what means the Christian citizen should have in the service of his country. . . . My object is to preach the Gospel and to assure my fellow Christians of the prayers and solidarity of our suffering church with them; it is for the cause of Christ I want to work.66

Renate Bethge, Eberhard’s wife and Dietrich’s niece, has said that “when Bonhoeffer and his close friend Franz Hildebrandt met they invariably talked theology, but when Bonhoeffer and [Eberhard] Bethge met they invariably made music.”67 Is it possible that the reason Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt “invariably talked theology” was because, as Eberhard Bethge himself said, Hildebrandt was indeed Bonhoeffer’s “closest and most like-minded friend”—perhaps especially in relation to matters of theological ethics? And that Bethge was a different sort of friend, a friend with whom he enjoyed life, a profoundly trustworthy friend who, among other things, could be entrusted to be a faithful caretaker of Bonhoeffer’s writings as he left them in his care? And is it possible that Hildebrandt’s “rather different Bonhoeffer,” if such had been constructed, might at key points resemble the account offered in Bonhoeffer the Assassin? and in this book rather than the account offered to us by Eberhard Bethge?

Bonhoeffer’s [pacifism] is intrinsic to his whole theology. It cannot be separated from his Christology, his understanding of discipleship and the Sermon on the Mount, his way of reading the Bible, and his understanding of the gospel and of the church. It belongs to the heart of his faith. Accordingly, it cannot be reduced to a principle. It is not a discrete option on a menu of ethical “positions.” It is not a separate interchangeable part that can be removed from his theology and replaced by something else called, perhaps, “realism,” or even “responsibility.” His [pacifism] is woven throughout his theology and discipleship as a whole. It can’t be removed without shredding the whole cloth.69

What is commonly said [about Bonhoeffer the conspirator] . . . would “be just as possible, if Christ had never become incarnate, died, ascended to heaven, and sent His Spirit.” . . . In a theological and ecclesiastical climate . . . where any literal application of the Gospel is suspect of “Schwärmertum” and where only the ex-pacifist is respectable, it will take some time and not a little humility to admit, especially for those trained in the school of the great Reformers, that at this point in question the Mennonite minority has been, and still is right: “not because nonresistance works, but because it anticipates the triumph of the Lamb that was slain.”70

The national government sees as its first and foremost task the restoration of the unity of spirit and will of our people. It will preserve and protect the fundamentals on which the strength of our nation rests. It will preserve and protect Christianity, which is the basis of our system of morality, and the family, which is the germination cell of the body of the people and the state. It will disregard social rankings and classes in order to restore to our people its consciousness of national and political unity and the responsibilities that entails. It will use reverence for our great and glorious past and pride in our ancient traditions as a basis for the education of German youth. In this way it will declare a merciless war upon spiritual, political, and cultural nihilism. Germany shall not and will not sink into anarchistic communism.79

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“But the true church of Christ, which lives by the gospel alone and knows the nature of state actions, will never interfere in the functioning of the state . . . by criticizing its history-making actions from the standpoint of any sort of, say, humanitarian ideal.”

the church, he says, cannot take “direct political action.”

“questioning the state

service to the victims

not just to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel but to fall into the spokes of the wheel itself.”

Bonhoeffer believes he knows why much of the church has remained silent. “The church confesses,” he says, “that it has coveted security, tranquility, peace, property, and honor to which it had no claim, and therefore has not bridled human covetousness, but promoted it.”

“It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.”149

After ten years

was convinced decades ago by Beate Ruhm von Oppen that after the Nazi regime was fully underway it took courage to want to know.

he has observed the tendency to move from teachings in, say, the Sermon on the Mount, to formulating ethics in terms of principles. Principles then become independent of the will of God and our relationship to God, assuming their own, autonomous authority (apart from God). Something more unexpected, more radical is going on through the person and teachings of Jesus, says Bonhoeffer.

“there are no acts that are bad in and of themselves; even murder can be sanctified. There is only faithfulness to or deviation from God’s will. There is no law with a specific content, but only the law of freedom, that is, bearing responsibility alone before God and oneself” (367).

They both condemned war and violence. In fact, says Lasserre, “Dietrich spoke as firmly as I, if not more strongly, on the meaning of pacifism.” According to Lasserre, “This was in June or July, 1931, at the end of our stay in America.”

However, once again, in the midst of offering much help in understanding Bonhoeffer, Bethge’s account is misleading. In the midst of saying all of this, Bethge interjects that Bonhoeffer never became “a convinced pacifist.”195 This claim flies in the face of Bonhoeffer’s own words, as Bethge well knew.196 For after all, Bethge quotes the January 1936 letter from Bonhoeffer to his long-time friend Elizabeth Zinn. Bonhoeffer acknowledges in that letter that he truly became a Christian only a few years before Hitler came to power (most likely while living in New York). And what facilitated this transformation? More than likely, Bonhoeffer’s deep involvement in the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a large and dynamic African American church in Harlem, was crucial to his “conversion.” However, what Bonhoeffer himself names in this letter as crucial to his “great liberation” is “the Bible, especially the Sermon on the Mount.” Among the many changes in his life and thought that flowed from this transformation was the belief that “Christian pacifism, which a brief time before . . . I had still passionately disputed, suddenly came into focus as something utterly self-evident.”197

Seems pretty clear from this statement

And what do they say in this catechism? Having framed the discussion a little earlier by talking about “self-preservation,” they begin this section by asking: “But doesn’t one have to destroy life in war?” The answer: “For that very reason the church knows nothing of the sanctity of war. For in war, the struggle for existence [Dasein] is fought with a dehumanized means. The church that prays the Lord’s Prayer calls to God only for the cause of peace.” They continue, “But isn’t that unpatriotic?” Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt answer that God uses the state for the service of God. And in the midst of daily life, Christians must not remain aloof from political struggles. For “the commandment of love urges the Christian to stand up for his neighbor.” However, Christians must also recognize “the irreconcilable conflict between the peace of Christ and the hate of the world.”211

the peace demanded by God has two boundaries: first, the truth; second, justice. A community of peace can exist only when it does not rest on a lie or on injustice.

The church forsakes obedience whenever it sanctions war.

“The commandment, ‘You shall not kill,’ the word that says, ‘Love your enemies,’ is given to us simply to be obeyed. For Christians any military service, except in the ambulance corps, and any preparation for war, is forbidden.

Pure love, however, would rather see a defenseless brother be killed than to see his soul, or our own, stained with blood. Pure love, in obedience to the fifth commandment, gives up its life for a brother, whether he is on this side or the other side. Pure love quite simply cannot lift up a sword against a Christian, because that would mean to lift it against Christ.248

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence. . . . Christianity has adjusted itself much too easily to the worship of power.”

“If one really wanted to raise a lively discussion [with Bonhoeffer], one had only to touch on the subject of divorce or pacifism. His opinion against the former and in favour of the latter was so marked and clear in his mind that the discussion soon developed into an argument, presumably as we thought the opposite. Nevertheless, we still remained good friends.”254

unity in the body of Christ is violated by war. “They cannot take up arms against Christ himself—yet this is what they do if they take up arms against one another.”256 However, Bonhoeffer does not want followers of Jesus to confuse the call of their Lord with safety. “There is no way to peace along the way of safety,” Bonhoeffer says.

The Christian Church answers: (a) The human will must be confronted with the commandment: Thou shall not kill. God does not exempt us from obeying His commandments. Man by his transgressions will be guilty before God. The God of the Sermon on the Mount will judge him. To the objection: The State must be maintained: the Church answers: You shall not kill. To the objection: War creates peace: the Church answers: This is not true, war creates destruction. To the objection: The nation must defend itself: the Church answers: Have you dared to entrust God, in full faith, with your protection in obedience to His commandment? To the objection: Love for my neighbor compels me: the Church answers: The one who loves God keeps His commandments. To the question: What shall I do then? The Church answers: Believe in God and be obedient. But to the secular pacifism the Church answers: The motives of our actions are not the welfare of humanity, but obedience to God’s commandments. Even if war meant the good of humanity, God’s commandment would remain steadfast.259