If you were a German citizen visiting America in September, 1939, how would you feel about returning to Germany, where Adolf Hitler had just attacked Poland and had just begun his destruction of Europe’s Jewish populations in concentration camps? Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer was such a person, and he was deeply troubled by being away from his native country as WWII began. After a fellow pastor asked him why he was so upset, he replied, “I must go home. If I don’t return, I will be living a lie and not living up to everything I believe in.”
Dietrich returned home to find his small theology school and his home were ransacked; every move he made and even every sermon he preached were scrutinized by the Nazis. He repeatedly preached that whether Germans were party members or not, “In the eyes of the Lord, all Germans are one.” After family members, friends, and some of his students were arrested for not signing a pledge of allegiance to the Third Reich, Dietrich became a member of the resistance. As the war expanded throughout Europe, he was asked to serve as a spy for the Allies; using his cover as a Lutheran minister, he began to uncover lies, propaganda, corruption, treacherous murders, and information on Germany’s master plan to exterminate all of Europe’s Jews in concentration camps. His dangerous double life continued as his fellow ministers feared for his life and that of the members of his congregations. His response to their fear was, “The party has nothing to fear from me. They need to fear the wrath of God.”
As more Germans were killed both in battles and as citizens in towns and cities, it became increasingly clear to Dietrich that he needed to live each day as if it were his last. He was arrested by the Gestapo and held in a Berlin prison where he was tortured for any information he could give. He was allowed to have books and to write his family and his fiance. When he was asked by the Gestapo agent who had arrested him why he resisted so much, he said, “I resist the state for taking over the church.” Very commonly, German church members were either party members or not; the party members showed their allegiance to their god, Adolf Hitler. While being imprisoned, he prayed for those who were awaiting their death sentences. Eventually, one guard saw how Christian he was by his ministering to all kinds of people, including the most violent people in the prison. Dietrich maintained that God’s truth would set Germans free to become a better people, even as the Allies were advancing on Berlin.
In his book, “The Cost of Discipleship,” Bonhoeffer questioned who and what he was. Whoever he was, Dietrich firmly believed that God knew his mind, spirit, and soul. He believed he became a man of worth in the depths of that prison cell, hearing the screams of dying men, the muffled cries of battered children, and the last prayers of brutalized women. As he looked at the shadow of the gallows in the courtyard of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp, he soon understood that Hitler’s henchman, Heinrich Himmler was also seeing the end of his life as he asked Dietrich to use his connections to ask for clemency with the Allies. Himmler offered him freedom if he would betray his values; Dietrich replied, “Hope, the last temptation, does not spring eternal.” In other words, “I will not make things right for you. Only God can do that.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer dreamed not only of a free Germany; he believed that true religion means sharing the suffering of others. In God’s new church, Christ would be at its center with Christians of strong faith, hope, and love. On April 9, 1945, Dietrich walked to the gallows as the same Gestapo agent who had arrested and imprisoned him spoke of the end of Dietrich’s life. Mocking Dietrich’s bravery, he said, “So this is the end.” Stopping to answer him, Christ’s disciple said, “It is only the beginning.” In the cloudy morning sky as dust from the crematorium floated down on him, Dietrich spoke his last words; “Father, give your servants peace that only You can give.” He was hung for political high treason less than one month before the end of the war, May 7, 1945.
The story that I have told about Dietrich Bonhoeffer was influenced by my viewing of the movie entitled, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer:Agent of Grace.” The real cost of being a true Christian, a true disciple of Christ, is that we share in each other’s pain and that we should never stop proclaiming God’s peace and forgiveness for all of the inhabitants of the world. My favorite adage, “I am because we are,” is at play again in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and yours.
In the end, the Third Reich did not last a thousand years, but it lasted long enough to almost extinguish freedom and truth in the German people. They allowed Hitler to become their idol, their twisted god, much like Donald Trump became the idol of extremists in America for the past four years. We must never allow God’s truth to be perverted into devil worship. We must, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, stand up and pay the cost of Christian discipleship so that we can return to our roots, to being “One Nation under God with Liberty and Justice for All.” Only then will we be truly free to say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Anna Hartt
