Bonhoeffer’s early warning about the inevitability of idolatry was well founded. Himmler was head of the SS, and in 1935 he ordered every SS member to resign from any religious organisation. Later the same year Himmler and Heydrich met with Hans Gisevius, a military leader, a Christian, and someone who would later be involved with the conpiracy against Hitler. ‘Just you wait’, he was told, ‘You’ll see the day, ten years frmo now, when ADolf Hitler will occupy precisely the same postion in Germany that Jesus Christ has now’ (Metaxas, 2010, p.170).
This was no idle (idol?) theory. The Nazi party made strident attempts to control and neturalise the German Church. Their plans included the cessation of publishing and disseminating the Bible in Germany; that a copy of Mein Kampf was to be displayed - along with a sword - on Church ‘altars’; that the Christian cross must be removed from all Churches, to be replaced by the swastika (Metaxas, 171).
Hitler’s contempt for the Church, and it’s leaders, soon became more evident: ‘You can do anything you want [to Christians] … they will submit … they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them’. It wasn’t long before pastors who dissented were being arrested, exiled, or forbidden to preach. They began to see Gestapo officers in their congregations. Some were audacious. Niemoller (another leader in the Confessing Church) would ask his congregation to pass ‘our policeman friend’ a Bible. Bonhoeffer - with his usual prophetic prescience - saw that ‘the question at stake in the German Church is no longer an internal issue. It is the question of the existence of Christianity in Europe’.
It didn’t take long before most serious Christians understood the situation they were in. The famous theologian, Karl Barth, spoke for many when he declared that Christianity was separated ‘as by an abyss from the inherent godlessness of National Socialism’. In such a context it is perhaps unsurprising that Bonhoeffer found himself identifying with the propeht Jeremiah. In early 1934, he preached a famous sermon on this Jewish prophet. That in itself was inflammatory. Bonhoeffer painted a picture of a reluctant prophet, held captive by the call of God. God will not let him go, and he will never be rid of God. It’s hard to see whether Bonhoeffer is explaining the mind of Jeremiah, or of himself. ‘[His] path will lead right down into the deepest situation of human powerlessness… [He] is taken for a fool, but a fool who is extremely dangerous to people’s peace and comfort, so that he must be locked up, if not put to death right away. That is exactly what became of the man Jeremiah, because he could not get away from God’. It is also what became of the man, Deitrich Bonhoeffer.
In 1939, Bonhoeffer’s course was set: ‘There is no way to peace along the way to safety … Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment … battles are won not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross’.
It becomes apparent that for Bonhoeffer the way of the cross is not the way of passivity. It is the way of death, but not passivity. He remained in Germany in spite of the opportunity to escape, he worked tirelessly training and supporting pastors for the Confessing Church, he established semi-monastic communities in which Christians could find the strength to remain faithful in the face of increasing hostility, he preached, and he established international relationships with the Church elsewhere in Europe. And at some point, he became involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. It is unclear when or how this happened, and for many it has seemed an enigmatic decision. But Bonhoeffer himself seems to have had little doubt that it was the right thing to do, or at least the less-wrong thing to do. When the decision was made to plant a bomb close to Hitler, Bonhoeffer gazed pensively out of the window. Finally he muttered ‘Those who live by the sword…’ (a reference to Matt.26:52). Rather than hearing Jesus’ words as a prohibition, he took them to mean that he needed to be willing to live (die?) by the consequences of his decision to take up the sword. He was. ‘Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it’. He confided to his diary:
‘I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion, of inner dishonesty, or is it a sign that we are guided without our knowing..? The reasons one gives for an action to others, and to one’s self are ceratinly inadequate. One can give a reson for everything. In the last resort one acts from a level which remains hidden from us. So one can only ask God to judge us and to forgive us … ’.
As we have seen, Bonhoeffer believed the very existence of the Church was imperilled. Such a situation brought unprecedented obligations for Christians. In such a situation to confess Christ is to resist the State. Failure to appreciate this equation was to cooperate with the State - a State that Bonhoeffer considered to be criminal. Bonhoeffer’s decision to join the conspiracy had some unexpected conseqeunces. Among them was a startling change in his behaviour. At a superficial level, he shifted from being an antagonist, to being a model citizen. He knew such behaviour was open to misinterpretation, but he also had bigger fish to fry. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself and so risk the larger conspiracy.
This opens for us a deep question about ‘truth’ and ‘deception’. It’s worth saying up-front that many of his contemporaries, even in the Confessing Church, felt unable to follow Bonhoeffer in his convictions. He didn’t ask them to. Each must make up their own mind.
Bonhoeffer felt that truth should not be reduced to the easy legalism of only saying and doing that which accorded with fact. He wrote an essay whilst in prison, exploring what it means to tell the truth. Our obligation is not fulfilled simply by ‘not lying’. There is, argued Bonhoeffer, a deeper level of truth, a way of being true to God that was relational. Being a Christian in the midst of the Reich meant going beyond the inadequate ‘rules and regulations’ version of Christianity into a living faith. Sometimes truth and deciet were perilously close, and a truthful way to behave could only be discerned by considering the wider context. Many Christians felt Bonhoeffer was trying to justify the unjustifiable. Bonhoeffer’s response was that being true to the Church’s call to take direct action against a manifestly criminal State, embodied a truth that ran deeper than the deceptive pretense of political subserviance the State demanded. And so he raised his hand to salute, and worked in Military Intellegence, whilst helping Jews escape to Switzerland, and plotting the death of the Fuhrer.
The conspiracy failed.
On 5th April 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested, initially on the charge of corruption. But following the failure of the attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944, documents were discovered that linked Bonhoeffer directly with the conspiracy. He was hanged 9th April 1945. His final words: ‘This is the end—for me, the beginning of life’.