Both Eberhard Bethge and Sabine Dramm, in her book Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance, note this. We now know that at both his trial and his brother-in-law’s trial, a key issue for the judge was that Bonhoeffer was effectively living as a conscientious objector, which after 1939 was a capital offense. For the judge suspected that his work was not essential to the welfare of Germany and thus his “work” with the Abwehr was a ruse to keep him “entirely, partially, or temporarily from fulfillment of military service, [which] subverts military power.”
