January 16, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Dietrich Bonhoeffer left the safety of American soil to oppose Hitler—at any cost. Eric Metaxas, the New York Times best-selling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy joins us to tell Bonhoeffer's remarkable life story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Ley Habib and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and large numbers of Americans cite faith is one of
the drivers of their life.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And this is one heck of a faith story. It's
about a.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
German citizen who left the safety of American soil in
order to sacrifice his own life by opposing Adolf Hitler.
Eric but Texas is the New York Times bestselling author
of Bonnaeffer Pastor Martyr, Prophet Spy.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Here's Eric with the story of Dietrich Bonhaeffer.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Bonhoeffer in a Nutshell was born in nineteen oh six
into what must fairly be described as an absolutely spectacular family.
For there's some great men that arise out of a vacuum.
Not Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes out of a truly great family.
His father was the most famous psychiatrist in Germany for
the first half of the twentieth century, a very famous
(01:09):
doctor and scientist. Bonhoeffer's mother was a genius, and all
the brothers and sisters there were four boys and four girls,
all geniuses, all married geniuses. His brother, called Friedrich, goes
into physics and for a Bonhoffer. Going into physics means
you will split the atom with Max Planck and Albert Einstein.
That's exactly what he did. Bonhoeffer's other brother became the
legal head of Luftanza. His sisters were geniuses, They married geniuses.
(01:31):
On and on it goes. So he grows up in
this family and at age fourteen he shocks the family
by announcing to them that he wants to be a theologian.
They weren't so happy about this. Most of them, the
mother's father and the mother's grandfather were theologians. The grandfather
was quite a famous theologian, but the father, as a scientist,
wasn't so keen on this. He was more of an agnostic.
(01:52):
But he had trained his kids rather strictly to think clearly,
to think like a scientist, to follow the facts and
the evidence and the logic where it leads, so that
you know what you believe. That you don't think with
your emotions. You don't express yourself in cliches. You think clearly.
(02:12):
You express yourself clearly. At the Bonheffer dining room table.
You know, if you didn't have something to say, you
would absolutely shut up. Now that the family not only
put a premium on thinking clearly and on expressing oneself clearly,
but also on living out what one said one believed.
In other words, you could not say something and not
live it. If you didn't live it, you were a hypocrite,
(02:34):
a liar, phony. You have to actually live out what
you say you believe. They put a premium on this,
and I think this is very important for Bonhoeffer as
he grows up. His mother always made that clear that they,
well both parents, I should say, expected the children to
behave a certain way to live out what they claim
to believe. Very very important going ahead. So he decides
(02:56):
at age fourteen he's going to be a theologian. He
decided it, I should say, at age thirteen, but kept
his mouth shut for a year because you know the
Bonnheffer house, you wouldn't just cavalierly announce things like this,
because if you said, at age thirteen you want to
be theologian, you know they would hold you to it
for at least one lifetime. So you'd be very careful
about declaring anything foolishly. But he announces it at fourteen.
He knew that he was going to be a great
(03:17):
academic theologian. He knew that, and he was that he
was in fact a theological genius. He gets his doctorate
in theology from Berlin University at age twenty one, and
so he gets his doctorate, and the question he's asking
and answering in his two dissertations is what is the Church?
(03:39):
He had an epiphany in Rome at Saint Peter's where
he saw a raid on the altar celebrating Mass on
Palm Sunday, men of all different races, and this moved
him to think about the church, the church beyond Germany,
the church beyond the Lutheran Church. He was always thinking
of this, and so he wrote his dissertation on this
question what is the Church? But he finds in answering
(04:02):
the question on this very high theological level what is
the Church, that he has a love for the church
itself and decides that not only does he want to
be an academic theologian, he also wants to be ordained
as a Lutheran minister. But you had to be twenty
five at that time to be ordained, And so, at
age twenty two, he spends a year in Barcelona, Spain
as an assistant vicar and a German speaking congregation, he
(04:25):
picks up Spanish in a weekend. I think he then,
at age twenty four, decides to go to America. And
now his brother Carl Fredrich the physicist, had been to America,
but he decides at age twenty four to go to
New York to have this experience of living in New York.
And I don't get the impression that he was going
there for theological reasons. The ostensible reason you always read
about is that he studied at Union Theological Seminary for
(04:48):
that year. But he wasn't expecting to find much by
way of theology at Union Theological Seminary, and it's safe
to say he was not disappointed. He really writes in
his life, Let it's funny. I quote the letters copiously
because it's so funny to write what he writes. He's
very generous, very gracious, but nonetheless clearly sneering in what
his phrase passes for theology, because he found it to
(05:10):
be very shallow theology. He was not theologically liberal, but
he was impressed by the theological liberals at Berlin University.
They were fine minds and he could learn from them,
even though ultimately he ends up disagreeing with them, he
could learn from them, learn to speak their language. Now
he comes to New York and the theological liberalism that
he encounters is quite shallow as far as he's concerned.
(05:31):
He says, it's just, you know, knee jerk anti fundamentalism.
If whatever the fundamentalists are for, there against it. So
it really is a warmed over social gospel. And so
one Sunday in September of nineteen thirty, when he arrives,
one of his fellow students, an African American student from
Alabama named Frank Fisher, invites Bonheffer to go up to
Harlem to visit Abyssinian Baptist Church. Bonhoeffer is thrilled to
(05:55):
be invited and he goes again culturally curious, he goes
and what he expect speriences in this African American church
in September of nineteen thirty, to cut to the Chase,
changes his life forever. He is profoundly moved by seeing
a congregation, a huge congregation, by the way of people
who are not strangers to suffering. These people somehow take
(06:17):
what they're doing here in this church seriously. They're worshiping God.
It's palpable. The worship is not just music, but it's
clearly worship. They're worshiping Jesus Christ with everything they have.
Bonhoeffer was impressed by the preaching, fiery gospel preaching that
exhorted people to live out the Gospel in their lives.
So was everything together. Bonhoeffer had not really seen much
(06:41):
of this, if any of this kind of vibrant, full
throated Christian faith. He'd experienced a lot of I would say,
fussy Lutheranism. We've all been to churches where they do
church very well. Bonhoeffer had seen a lot of that.
He had not seen anything like what he saw at
Abysinyan Baptist. So it touched him so profoundly that he
(07:02):
makes a decision to go back to this church every
Sunday that he's in New York. And I just imagine
the idea of this toeheaded, bespectacled Berlin academic going up
to Harlem every Sunday to worship in this extraordinary church.
But it really did change him.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And you've been listening to Eric Mataxis tell the story
of Dietrich Bonheffer. America has changed Bonhaeffer. How does Bonhaeffer
go back and change Germany. That story continues here on
Our American Stories. Lihabibe here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
(07:38):
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
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Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
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to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and give. And we returned to our American
(08:11):
Stories and to Eric Mattaxa's sharing his story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
and it comes from his New York Times best selling
book Bonhoeffer Pastor, Martyr, Prophet and Spy.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
An extraordinary read.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I urge you to pick it up, go to Amazon
or the usual suspects.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Let's return to Eric.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
He got involved in the lives of the congregation. He
ended up teaching Sunday School there and he traveled with
a number of these prominent African Americans down to Howard University.
And I know Thurgood Marshall would have been a student
at Howard at the time and he traveled to the
nation's capital and was very involved in the idea of
this nascent civil rights movement. So he goes back to
(08:52):
Germany and his friends noticed he's somehow different. He seems
to take Christianity somehow more seriously. He gets the Gospel
spectacularly well. But somehow his heart was touched in this
experience of this African American church. Somehow he had seen
true faith in a way that was new to him,
(09:13):
and over the course of those months it changes him.
And his friends can see this that he is in
fact different. When he's teaching from behind the lectern at
Berlin University or when he's preaching from the pulpit, he's
saying things that you wouldn't ordinarily hear. For example, from
behind the lectern, he talking about the Bible is the
word of God through which a living God wishes to
speak to his children, an amazing thing to hear in Berlin.
(09:36):
At Berlin University during this period you wouldn't. But he
was brilliant enough he could sort of get away with it.
He asked one of his students at one time, do
you love Jesus. It was clear that that Bonhoeffer had
had an experience with God somehow, and he was communicating
this to his students. Now we have to say that
Germany during this period had also changed. When Bonhoeffer left
(09:56):
for New York, the Nazis for the ninth largest political
party in the reichs when he returns to the second
largest political party in the Reichschtog. And Bonhoeffer can see this,
he can smell this, He can sense that Germany is
turning toward Nazism, and we can understand why. If we're
fair minded, we can understand that probably we would have
done the same thing. The Nazis are not exactly advertising
(10:18):
themselves as evil incarnate political figures don't do that, right,
And so you've got somebody who is extremely canny politician
was not about to tell the German people that he
despised Christianity as a weak faith, which is exactly what
Hitler said and what his top lieutenants believe, but pretend
to be a churchgoer and so on and so forth.
But Bonhoeffer can see through this, and he sees Germany
(10:40):
turning toward national socialism, and he begins now to speak
out against it publicly. He says, for example, in Germany
Christians can only have one savior, and that is Jesus Christ.
Very pointed thing to say when most Germans are looking
with a messianic fervor to Hitler. In nineteen thirty three,
of course, Hitler becomes Chancellor. Two days later, Bonheffer goes
(11:02):
on the radio and gives a famous speech in which
he dissects the bad idea, extremely popular idea of the
Furer principle. Feurer, of course, is German for leader, and
there was this idea in Germany between the wars especially
that what we need is strong leadership. They'd had that
under the Kaiser. They lost it at the end of
(11:23):
World War One when the Kaiser abdicated, and most Germans thought,
we need that again. We had that once and we
were great. We lost that. Now we're crushed, we're miserable,
we're rudderless. We have the Weimar Republic. We have this
kind of democracy that we don't know what to think
of it. We've never had it before. It's not working
for us, and we'd like a strong leader. Well, we
(11:43):
know they got a strong leader. If you'd ask them
what kind of leader you're looking for, they would say
a leader who leads. That's what they were looking for.
They got one of those. They weren't really terribly specific
about it. And of course Hitler comes right into this vacuum.
And Bonhoeffer again he sees this, and on the radio
two days after Hitler becomes the Bonheffer dissects this idea
for the nation on the radio, and he talks about
(12:05):
God's idea of leadership, the idea that true leadership, true authority,
is by definition submitted to a higher authority. And we
know that Hitler was submitted to no one. The German
idea of leader, the furr was well, it was a tautology.
It's a snake swallowing its own tail. He's submitted to
no one. Where does he get his leadership from no one?
(12:27):
Somehow it's just his and he takes it as almost
as a demonic aspect to it. Well, Bonheffer sees this.
He dissects this idea on the radio. He also says
that a true leader must be a servant leader. That's
what a leader does. Leader doesn't lord it over his subjects. Well,
Bonheffer says this, and from the beginning two days after
Hitler's rise to power, Bonhoeffer's on the record as seeing
(12:50):
what's going on and speaking out publicly against this. The
first way Bonhoeffer gets involved really in what is happening
is in what's called the cushen komf the church struggle.
The Nazis, being good totalitarians, weren't just taking over every
part of society. They were also taking over the church
because they thought that's a legitimate part of society for
us to take over to reshape in our own monstrous image.
(13:13):
And so they were trying to do that and trying
to change Christianity from the inside. Now, it was not
to abolish it, of course, they want to abolish it,
but they wouldn't do that publicly. They'd rather just sort
of hollow it out and fill it with their own ideology.
And that's exactly what they were doing. And Bonhoeffer was
one of the leading figures who saw this happening and
saw that Christians must stand up and fight this together.
(13:38):
And he was one of the leaders in what came
to be known as the Confessing Church. And they make
a break. These about six thousand pastors signed the Barman
Declaration a year after the Nazis came to power, and
these six thousand pastors break away from the nazified Reich's Kirsha,
the state Church a victory, but Shoeffer could see that
(14:01):
the Nazis are gaining more and more power and that
this victory ultimately won't mean so much because the Nazis
kept getting power. They knew how to use the laws
to make it tougher and tougher for the church to
be the church. But it's an extraordinary thing how using
legality you can sort of out maneuver people. The Nazis
were masterful at this, at dividing this one from that one.
(14:24):
And I have to say that Bonhoeffer somehow was able
to see with his fine mind and his finally trained mind,
and with I think, on some level a mystical prophetic sense,
be able to see way past what others were seeing
at where this was going. Even into the mid thirties,
you have many solid Christians who seem to think that
the Nazis are okay, maybe they're not perfect, but we
(14:45):
can work with them. They won't be here forever. Bonhoeffer
was never fooled, and he was frustrated in trying to
wake the church up, in trying to get the church
to be the church, to see what is happening to
fight against it now because it'll be too late, which
is of course exactly what happened. He was praying diligently,
always asking the Lord to lead him, to show him
what to do next. In nineteen thirty five, the Confessing
(15:08):
Church leaders deputized Bonhefer to lead an illegal seminary because,
of course the German reichs kersche they were not raising
up men of God, and the Confessing Church realized, we
need real seminaries where our young men will be trained properly.
So Bonhoeffer continues to do this. Of course, the Gestapo
finally shuts down Fink and Valda. They know what's going on,
(15:30):
so it's shut down. But Bonhoeffer, being the canny man
that he was, sort of takes this education underground. It becomes,
I always think, like a floating craps game. The Nazis
don't know where it's happening. In vicarage here, in a
farmyard there, you know, in a farmhouse there. It's just
very funny to me that. But Bonhoeffer had no problem
with fooling the Nazis, with deceiving the evil Nazis, and
(15:52):
so this theological training continues for some time, but around
nineteen thirty eight the Gestapo shuts that down. They forbid
Bonhoeffer from doing this, and they also forbid him from
speaking publicly, and then finally from publishing because the temerity
to write a book on the Psalms, which are located
(16:12):
in the Old Testament. But the reason I say that
is because the Nazified Church in Germany was trying to
redefine Christianity, as I said, along Nazi lines, which means
that German Christianity was supposed to be purely German and
(16:33):
therefore devoid of all Jewish elements. Good luck with that project.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And you've been listening to Eric Mattaxis tell the story
of Dietrich Bonaffer and Boneffer's very short time in America
changed him, but he came back to a changed Germany.
The Nazi party, that's National Socialists. By the way, I
always remember that with a National Socialist, he knew what
they were up to. Particularly he understood quickly who Hitler
(17:01):
was and what attacks he was going to make on
his beloved church in Germany. Christians can only have one savior,
he said on the radio not long before Hitler took power.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Jesus Christ is our Savior.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Two days after Hitler takes power, Bonheffer goes on the
air to talk about God's idea of leadership. True leadership
is submitted to a higher authority. And by the way,
what Erictaxis said about Nazism was dead on. It was
a tautology, a snake swallowing its own tail. And then
of course Hitler's move for the church itself, hollowing it
(17:39):
out by filling the churches with their own political orthodoxy
and ideology. When we come back more of the story
of this remarkable man, Dietrich Bonhaeffer, and this remarkable storyteller
Eric Metaxas here on our American stories, and we continue
(18:09):
with our American stories and with Eric Mattaxa's author of
the New York Times best selling book Bonoffer Pastor Martyr
Prophet Spy.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Some of it's quite funny and so sick and tragic
at the same time that they actually seem to think
that we can dispense with the Old Testament because it's
too Jewish, but we'll invent our own Aryan Christianity. And
so Bonhoeffer has the temerity or maybe the chutzpa to
write a book on the Old Testament's psalms and is
for this forbidden from publishing further. And he's continually praying
and asking the Lord, what do I do now? What
(18:44):
do I do now? Lord? Lead me? How can I
serve you? In the Third Reich? Of course, now the
war is coming and he would be forced to participate
in the war. He would not fight in the war,
not because he's a pacifist in the way that we think,
but the reality is that he was a pacifist the
way he Christian is a pacifist, where you say, I
will not fight in a war of aggression. And he
could see that Hitler was leading Germany to a hypernationalistic
(19:07):
war of aggression, and there was no way he would
allow himself to participate in this. Nonetheless, he knew he
could not fight in Hitler's war. So what's he going
to do now the war is coming? Where does he go?
He can't say I want to be conscientious objector So
basically what happens is he decides to effectively escape to
New York. To go back to New York, he has
friends pull strings. It was not easy. Reinhold Nieber gets
(19:29):
involved and Bonhoffer is able to go to New York
before the war starts, with the idea that he will
stay there and kind of ride things out safely in America.
But no sooner does he get off the ship in
June of nineteen thirty nine than he has a keen
sense that he has missed God. He does not have
the peace of God. He's praying assiduously and you can
see him wrestling with the Lord and saying, Lord, lead me,
(19:51):
you must lead me. There's no magic scripture that tells
me the answer. You've got to show me in the scriptures.
What do you have for me? Knew that he had
to hear from God, and he does, and he feels
keenly that he must go back. Now when you think
about this as an extraordinary thing to go back to
Nazi Germany, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the summer of nineteen
(20:14):
thirty nine, but he felt the Lord was calling him
to this, and so he went, obedient disciple of Jesus
Christ that he was. Now the question is what was
he going to do when he got there? And this
is where the story, of course, gets exceedingly strange. His
brother in law, donang Ye was a leading member of
German military intelligence, the ABVER. The ABVER was the center
(20:35):
of the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler. So Bonhoeffer is hired
by his brother in law. His brother in law says,
how would you like to come to work for me
in the ABVER. That way you look like you're serving
the Third Reich in time of war. We can use
your great brain and your contexts throughout Europe to work
for the German military intelligence. But we know, and the
family knows, what you'll really be doing. You'll be working
(20:55):
for me in the conspiracy to defeat Adolf Hitler and
then Nazis. And what he was supposed to do, of course,
was travel around Europe to neutral countries, which you certainly
could not do unless you're a special member of military intelligence.
But he could travel to Sweden and to Switzerland, travel
to these countries in the hopes of making contact with
members of the Allied governments. Imagine talking to the enemy
(21:18):
during time of war. This is exactly what he set
out to do. He continued writing and being a pastor
during this time in some ways, but actually his family
was practically at the center of the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler.
It's an amazing The whole family, from before the beginning
of the Nazi rise, knew who the Nazis were and
(21:40):
what they were, and were against them from the beginning.
There's some natural explanations for that. They were in Berlin,
they were very highly connected. I alluded to that, but
I have to say they were very connected in high circles,
so they knew everyone who was anyone, and they had
all the secret information that your average German absolutely would
have not been privy to. And they knew that nineteen
(22:02):
thirty three, they're already having secret conversations in their home,
this huge home, and closing the door so that the
help doesn't hear. In nineteen thirty three, two months or
three months after, in April of thirty three, after Hitler
has become chancellor, they're having sort of secret meetings. So
in some ways their home and their network, their wider network,
was a center of the conspiracy against Hitler, and they
(22:26):
knew many of the players, and of course Bonheffer's brother
in law, Donani, was one of the key players. So yes,
they were at the center of it. And on the contrary,
not only did they have no problem with it, but
Bonaheffer's brother Klaus was murdered by the Nazis for his
role in the conspiracy. Bonhoeffer's brother in law. Two of
his brother in laws were murdered by the Nazis, so
(22:47):
they were at the very center of the center of
the conspiracy. I don't think that there was any Bonheffer
that had any problems with us. In nineteen forty two,
Bonheffer gets engaged, but no sooner as get engaged. Then
finally Gestapo catches up with him and arrests him. Not
for his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler, because
they hadn't yet discovered that, but for his involvement in
(23:08):
something called unter name and Zieben Operation seven, so called
because it was a plot to get seven German Jews
out of Germany and into Switzerland to save their lives.
There was some financial irregularities and things that went on.
The Gestapo picked up on it and some names came up.
Bonhoeffer was arrested and taken to Tagel military prison, but
he had every hope of getting out. He is writing
(23:30):
these wonderful letters to his fiancee and to his family.
He's expecting to get married. He's thinking that he's going
to be able to fool the prosecutor and convince the
prosecutor that he's just a wooly headed academic, but of
course didn't turn out that way. He well, I should
say that he hoped that he could win the case,
that things would come to trial soon, that he would win.
(23:52):
Or he thought the Allies will defeat Germany and this
night where it will be over and I'll get out
of prison that way, Or the conspirators who haven't yet
been discovered will succeed in killing Hitler and things will
end that way. So we had every hope of getting out,
but we know that he was still in Tagel military
prison in the summer of forty four when the Valkyrie
plot happens, where the briefcase is put under the table
(24:12):
and the vector of the blast is divided. Hitler survives.
But not only does Hitler survive, but for the first time,
the conspiracy is exposed. So in July of forty four,
this huge conspiracy is exposed, thousands are arrested, tortured. Names
come up. One of those names, of course, top of
the list is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so he has now transferred
(24:32):
to the dreaded Gestapo prison on Prince Albrechtstras in Berlin,
and then as the Allies are bombing Berlin, he's moved
from there to Bukenvald and in April of forty five,
so close to the end of the war, weeks from
the end of the war, weeks from the suicide of
Adolf Hitler. On the express orders of Hitler, Bonheffer's transferred
to Flossenberg concentration camp. At dawn on April ninth, he
(24:54):
is executed. So we're tempted to think of this story,
I think initially as merely tragic, but I have to
say that Bonhoefer would be the first in line to
rebuke Us in the same way that Jesus rebukes Peter.
When Peter says, oh, no, Lord, you can't die that way.
You can't, he says, get thee behind me, Satan, because
you're not thinking the thoughts of God, but the thoughts
(25:15):
of man. It's clear that Bonhoeffer was such a devoted
disciple of Jesus Christ that he was resigned to the
will of God with the peace that comes from being
resigned to the will of God. Resigned is really not
the right word. That he rejoiced in the will of
God for whatever it was for his life. He wrote
a sermon in nineteen thirty three, twelve years before his death,
(25:36):
where he talks about death, and in that to I
think a fairly stayed Lutheran congregation, he says death is
the most terrible thing imaginable unless it is transformed by faith,
and who knows but that your death can be the
most wonderful thing imaginable. Actually, he says that if you
(25:57):
have ever glimpsed the Kingdom of Heaven, truly, if you've
ever come to know him and ever seen him on
any level, you are homesick from that hour. You long
to be with him. You know that that is your
true home. You're created for that. So Bonhoeffer plainly clearly
had no fear of death. He understood it for what
it was. He knew that Jesus had in fact defeated death,
(26:23):
and death was the last station on the road to freedom.
Bonhoeffer knew this, and he believed it, and so Bonhoeffer
went to the gallows.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
With that piece and a terrific job on the production
and editing by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks
to Eric metaxas author of Bonheffer, pastor, martyr, prophet and spy.
Pick up this book you will not put it down.
In June of thirty nine, Bonheffer comes to America. He
seeks safety, but he's so uncomfortable, and God's calling him
(26:55):
back to Germany, and he goes, and in April nine,
nineteen forty five, no, not long before V Day, he's
put to death by Hitler. But Bonhoeffer wouldn't have wanted
to see this story as a tragedy. Death, Bonhaeffer said,
is the most terrible thing imaginable unless it is transformed
by faith. And indeed his life was the story of
(27:18):
Dietrich Bonhaeffer, how America changed him and now he changed
the world.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Here on our American Stories.
This is Ley Habib and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and large numbers of Americans cite faith is one of
the drivers of their life.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And this is one heck of a faith story. It's
about a.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
German citizen who left the safety of American soil in
order to sacrifice his own life by opposing Adolf Hitler.
Eric but Texas is the New York Times bestselling author
of Bonnaeffer Pastor Martyr, Prophet Spy.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Here's Eric with the story of Dietrich Bonhaeffer.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Bonhoeffer in a Nutshell was born in nineteen oh six
into what must fairly be described as an absolutely spectacular family.
For there's some great men that arise out of a vacuum.
Not Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes out of a truly great family.
His father was the most famous psychiatrist in Germany for
the first half of the twentieth century, a very famous
(01:09):
doctor and scientist. Bonhoeffer's mother was a genius, and all
the brothers and sisters there were four boys and four girls,
all geniuses, all married geniuses. His brother, called Friedrich, goes
into physics and for a Bonhoffer. Going into physics means
you will split the atom with Max Planck and Albert Einstein.
That's exactly what he did. Bonhoeffer's other brother became the
legal head of Luftanza. His sisters were geniuses, They married geniuses.
(01:31):
On and on it goes. So he grows up in
this family and at age fourteen he shocks the family
by announcing to them that he wants to be a theologian.
They weren't so happy about this. Most of them, the
mother's father and the mother's grandfather were theologians. The grandfather
was quite a famous theologian, but the father, as a scientist,
wasn't so keen on this. He was more of an agnostic.
(01:52):
But he had trained his kids rather strictly to think clearly,
to think like a scientist, to follow the facts and
the evidence and the logic where it leads, so that
you know what you believe. That you don't think with
your emotions. You don't express yourself in cliches. You think clearly.
(02:12):
You express yourself clearly. At the Bonheffer dining room table.
You know, if you didn't have something to say, you
would absolutely shut up. Now that the family not only
put a premium on thinking clearly and on expressing oneself clearly,
but also on living out what one said one believed.
In other words, you could not say something and not
live it. If you didn't live it, you were a hypocrite,
(02:34):
a liar, phony. You have to actually live out what
you say you believe. They put a premium on this,
and I think this is very important for Bonhoeffer as
he grows up. His mother always made that clear that they,
well both parents, I should say, expected the children to
behave a certain way to live out what they claim
to believe. Very very important going ahead. So he decides
(02:56):
at age fourteen he's going to be a theologian. He
decided it, I should say, at age thirteen, but kept
his mouth shut for a year because you know the
Bonnheffer house, you wouldn't just cavalierly announce things like this,
because if you said, at age thirteen you want to
be theologian, you know they would hold you to it
for at least one lifetime. So you'd be very careful
about declaring anything foolishly. But he announces it at fourteen.
He knew that he was going to be a great
(03:17):
academic theologian. He knew that, and he was that he
was in fact a theological genius. He gets his doctorate
in theology from Berlin University at age twenty one, and
so he gets his doctorate, and the question he's asking
and answering in his two dissertations is what is the Church?
(03:39):
He had an epiphany in Rome at Saint Peter's where
he saw a raid on the altar celebrating Mass on
Palm Sunday, men of all different races, and this moved
him to think about the church, the church beyond Germany,
the church beyond the Lutheran Church. He was always thinking
of this, and so he wrote his dissertation on this
question what is the Church? But he finds in answering
(04:02):
the question on this very high theological level what is
the Church, that he has a love for the church
itself and decides that not only does he want to
be an academic theologian, he also wants to be ordained
as a Lutheran minister. But you had to be twenty
five at that time to be ordained, And so, at
age twenty two, he spends a year in Barcelona, Spain
as an assistant vicar and a German speaking congregation, he
(04:25):
picks up Spanish in a weekend. I think he then,
at age twenty four, decides to go to America. And
now his brother Carl Fredrich the physicist, had been to America,
but he decides at age twenty four to go to
New York to have this experience of living in New York.
And I don't get the impression that he was going
there for theological reasons. The ostensible reason you always read
about is that he studied at Union Theological Seminary for
(04:48):
that year. But he wasn't expecting to find much by
way of theology at Union Theological Seminary, and it's safe
to say he was not disappointed. He really writes in
his life, Let it's funny. I quote the letters copiously
because it's so funny to write what he writes. He's
very generous, very gracious, but nonetheless clearly sneering in what
his phrase passes for theology, because he found it to
(05:10):
be very shallow theology. He was not theologically liberal, but
he was impressed by the theological liberals at Berlin University.
They were fine minds and he could learn from them,
even though ultimately he ends up disagreeing with them, he
could learn from them, learn to speak their language. Now
he comes to New York and the theological liberalism that
he encounters is quite shallow as far as he's concerned.
(05:31):
He says, it's just, you know, knee jerk anti fundamentalism.
If whatever the fundamentalists are for, there against it. So
it really is a warmed over social gospel. And so
one Sunday in September of nineteen thirty, when he arrives,
one of his fellow students, an African American student from
Alabama named Frank Fisher, invites Bonheffer to go up to
Harlem to visit Abyssinian Baptist Church. Bonhoeffer is thrilled to
(05:55):
be invited and he goes again culturally curious, he goes
and what he expect speriences in this African American church
in September of nineteen thirty, to cut to the Chase,
changes his life forever. He is profoundly moved by seeing
a congregation, a huge congregation, by the way of people
who are not strangers to suffering. These people somehow take
(06:17):
what they're doing here in this church seriously. They're worshiping God.
It's palpable. The worship is not just music, but it's
clearly worship. They're worshiping Jesus Christ with everything they have.
Bonhoeffer was impressed by the preaching, fiery gospel preaching that
exhorted people to live out the Gospel in their lives.
So was everything together. Bonhoeffer had not really seen much
(06:41):
of this, if any of this kind of vibrant, full
throated Christian faith. He'd experienced a lot of I would say,
fussy Lutheranism. We've all been to churches where they do
church very well. Bonhoeffer had seen a lot of that.
He had not seen anything like what he saw at
Abysinyan Baptist. So it touched him so profoundly that he
(07:02):
makes a decision to go back to this church every
Sunday that he's in New York. And I just imagine
the idea of this toeheaded, bespectacled Berlin academic going up
to Harlem every Sunday to worship in this extraordinary church.
But it really did change him.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And you've been listening to Eric Mataxis tell the story
of Dietrich Bonheffer. America has changed Bonhaeffer. How does Bonhaeffer
go back and change Germany. That story continues here on
Our American Stories. Lihabibe here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
(07:38):
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and give. And we returned to our American
(08:11):
Stories and to Eric Mattaxa's sharing his story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
and it comes from his New York Times best selling
book Bonhoeffer Pastor, Martyr, Prophet and Spy.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
An extraordinary read.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I urge you to pick it up, go to Amazon
or the usual suspects.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Let's return to Eric.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
He got involved in the lives of the congregation. He
ended up teaching Sunday School there and he traveled with
a number of these prominent African Americans down to Howard University.
And I know Thurgood Marshall would have been a student
at Howard at the time and he traveled to the
nation's capital and was very involved in the idea of
this nascent civil rights movement. So he goes back to
(08:52):
Germany and his friends noticed he's somehow different. He seems
to take Christianity somehow more seriously. He gets the Gospel
spectacularly well. But somehow his heart was touched in this
experience of this African American church. Somehow he had seen
true faith in a way that was new to him,
(09:13):
and over the course of those months it changes him.
And his friends can see this that he is in
fact different. When he's teaching from behind the lectern at
Berlin University or when he's preaching from the pulpit, he's
saying things that you wouldn't ordinarily hear. For example, from
behind the lectern, he talking about the Bible is the
word of God through which a living God wishes to
speak to his children, an amazing thing to hear in Berlin.
(09:36):
At Berlin University during this period you wouldn't. But he
was brilliant enough he could sort of get away with it.
He asked one of his students at one time, do
you love Jesus. It was clear that that Bonhoeffer had
had an experience with God somehow, and he was communicating
this to his students. Now we have to say that
Germany during this period had also changed. When Bonhoeffer left
(09:56):
for New York, the Nazis for the ninth largest political
party in the reichs when he returns to the second
largest political party in the Reichschtog. And Bonhoeffer can see this,
he can smell this, He can sense that Germany is
turning toward Nazism, and we can understand why. If we're
fair minded, we can understand that probably we would have
done the same thing. The Nazis are not exactly advertising
(10:18):
themselves as evil incarnate political figures don't do that, right,
And so you've got somebody who is extremely canny politician
was not about to tell the German people that he
despised Christianity as a weak faith, which is exactly what
Hitler said and what his top lieutenants believe, but pretend
to be a churchgoer and so on and so forth.
But Bonhoeffer can see through this, and he sees Germany
(10:40):
turning toward national socialism, and he begins now to speak
out against it publicly. He says, for example, in Germany
Christians can only have one savior, and that is Jesus Christ.
Very pointed thing to say when most Germans are looking
with a messianic fervor to Hitler. In nineteen thirty three,
of course, Hitler becomes Chancellor. Two days later, Bonheffer goes
(11:02):
on the radio and gives a famous speech in which
he dissects the bad idea, extremely popular idea of the
Furer principle. Feurer, of course, is German for leader, and
there was this idea in Germany between the wars especially
that what we need is strong leadership. They'd had that
under the Kaiser. They lost it at the end of
(11:23):
World War One when the Kaiser abdicated, and most Germans thought,
we need that again. We had that once and we
were great. We lost that. Now we're crushed, we're miserable,
we're rudderless. We have the Weimar Republic. We have this
kind of democracy that we don't know what to think
of it. We've never had it before. It's not working
for us, and we'd like a strong leader. Well, we
(11:43):
know they got a strong leader. If you'd ask them
what kind of leader you're looking for, they would say
a leader who leads. That's what they were looking for.
They got one of those. They weren't really terribly specific
about it. And of course Hitler comes right into this vacuum.
And Bonhoeffer again he sees this, and on the radio
two days after Hitler becomes the Bonheffer dissects this idea
for the nation on the radio, and he talks about
(12:05):
God's idea of leadership, the idea that true leadership, true authority,
is by definition submitted to a higher authority. And we
know that Hitler was submitted to no one. The German
idea of leader, the furr was well, it was a tautology.
It's a snake swallowing its own tail. He's submitted to
no one. Where does he get his leadership from no one?
(12:27):
Somehow it's just his and he takes it as almost
as a demonic aspect to it. Well, Bonheffer sees this.
He dissects this idea on the radio. He also says
that a true leader must be a servant leader. That's
what a leader does. Leader doesn't lord it over his subjects. Well,
Bonheffer says this, and from the beginning two days after
Hitler's rise to power, Bonhoeffer's on the record as seeing
(12:50):
what's going on and speaking out publicly against this. The
first way Bonhoeffer gets involved really in what is happening
is in what's called the cushen komf the church struggle.
The Nazis, being good totalitarians, weren't just taking over every
part of society. They were also taking over the church
because they thought that's a legitimate part of society for
us to take over to reshape in our own monstrous image.
(13:13):
And so they were trying to do that and trying
to change Christianity from the inside. Now, it was not
to abolish it, of course, they want to abolish it,
but they wouldn't do that publicly. They'd rather just sort
of hollow it out and fill it with their own ideology.
And that's exactly what they were doing. And Bonhoeffer was
one of the leading figures who saw this happening and
saw that Christians must stand up and fight this together.
(13:38):
And he was one of the leaders in what came
to be known as the Confessing Church. And they make
a break. These about six thousand pastors signed the Barman
Declaration a year after the Nazis came to power, and
these six thousand pastors break away from the nazified Reich's Kirsha,
the state Church a victory, but Shoeffer could see that
(14:01):
the Nazis are gaining more and more power and that
this victory ultimately won't mean so much because the Nazis
kept getting power. They knew how to use the laws
to make it tougher and tougher for the church to
be the church. But it's an extraordinary thing how using
legality you can sort of out maneuver people. The Nazis
were masterful at this, at dividing this one from that one.
(14:24):
And I have to say that Bonhoeffer somehow was able
to see with his fine mind and his finally trained mind,
and with I think, on some level a mystical prophetic sense,
be able to see way past what others were seeing
at where this was going. Even into the mid thirties,
you have many solid Christians who seem to think that
the Nazis are okay, maybe they're not perfect, but we
(14:45):
can work with them. They won't be here forever. Bonhoeffer
was never fooled, and he was frustrated in trying to
wake the church up, in trying to get the church
to be the church, to see what is happening to
fight against it now because it'll be too late, which
is of course exactly what happened. He was praying diligently,
always asking the Lord to lead him, to show him
what to do next. In nineteen thirty five, the Confessing
(15:08):
Church leaders deputized Bonhefer to lead an illegal seminary because,
of course the German reichs kersche they were not raising
up men of God, and the Confessing Church realized, we
need real seminaries where our young men will be trained properly.
So Bonhoeffer continues to do this. Of course, the Gestapo
finally shuts down Fink and Valda. They know what's going on,
(15:30):
so it's shut down. But Bonhoeffer, being the canny man
that he was, sort of takes this education underground. It becomes,
I always think, like a floating craps game. The Nazis
don't know where it's happening. In vicarage here, in a
farmyard there, you know, in a farmhouse there. It's just
very funny to me that. But Bonhoeffer had no problem
with fooling the Nazis, with deceiving the evil Nazis, and
(15:52):
so this theological training continues for some time, but around
nineteen thirty eight the Gestapo shuts that down. They forbid
Bonhoeffer from doing this, and they also forbid him from
speaking publicly, and then finally from publishing because the temerity
to write a book on the Psalms, which are located
(16:12):
in the Old Testament. But the reason I say that
is because the Nazified Church in Germany was trying to
redefine Christianity, as I said, along Nazi lines, which means
that German Christianity was supposed to be purely German and
(16:33):
therefore devoid of all Jewish elements. Good luck with that project.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And you've been listening to Eric Mattaxis tell the story
of Dietrich Bonaffer and Boneffer's very short time in America
changed him, but he came back to a changed Germany.
The Nazi party, that's National Socialists. By the way, I
always remember that with a National Socialist, he knew what
they were up to. Particularly he understood quickly who Hitler
(17:01):
was and what attacks he was going to make on
his beloved church in Germany. Christians can only have one savior,
he said on the radio not long before Hitler took power.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Jesus Christ is our Savior.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Two days after Hitler takes power, Bonheffer goes on the
air to talk about God's idea of leadership. True leadership
is submitted to a higher authority. And by the way,
what Erictaxis said about Nazism was dead on. It was
a tautology, a snake swallowing its own tail. And then
of course Hitler's move for the church itself, hollowing it
(17:39):
out by filling the churches with their own political orthodoxy
and ideology. When we come back more of the story
of this remarkable man, Dietrich Bonhaeffer, and this remarkable storyteller
Eric Metaxas here on our American stories, and we continue
(18:09):
with our American stories and with Eric Mattaxa's author of
the New York Times best selling book Bonoffer Pastor Martyr
Prophet Spy.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Some of it's quite funny and so sick and tragic
at the same time that they actually seem to think
that we can dispense with the Old Testament because it's
too Jewish, but we'll invent our own Aryan Christianity. And
so Bonhoeffer has the temerity or maybe the chutzpa to
write a book on the Old Testament's psalms and is
for this forbidden from publishing further. And he's continually praying
and asking the Lord, what do I do now? What
(18:44):
do I do now? Lord? Lead me? How can I
serve you? In the Third Reich? Of course, now the
war is coming and he would be forced to participate
in the war. He would not fight in the war,
not because he's a pacifist in the way that we think,
but the reality is that he was a pacifist the
way he Christian is a pacifist, where you say, I
will not fight in a war of aggression. And he
could see that Hitler was leading Germany to a hypernationalistic
(19:07):
war of aggression, and there was no way he would
allow himself to participate in this. Nonetheless, he knew he
could not fight in Hitler's war. So what's he going
to do now the war is coming? Where does he go?
He can't say I want to be conscientious objector So
basically what happens is he decides to effectively escape to
New York. To go back to New York, he has
friends pull strings. It was not easy. Reinhold Nieber gets
(19:29):
involved and Bonhoffer is able to go to New York
before the war starts, with the idea that he will
stay there and kind of ride things out safely in America.
But no sooner does he get off the ship in
June of nineteen thirty nine than he has a keen
sense that he has missed God. He does not have
the peace of God. He's praying assiduously and you can
see him wrestling with the Lord and saying, Lord, lead me,
(19:51):
you must lead me. There's no magic scripture that tells
me the answer. You've got to show me in the scriptures.
What do you have for me? Knew that he had
to hear from God, and he does, and he feels
keenly that he must go back. Now when you think
about this as an extraordinary thing to go back to
Nazi Germany, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the summer of nineteen
(20:14):
thirty nine, but he felt the Lord was calling him
to this, and so he went, obedient disciple of Jesus
Christ that he was. Now the question is what was
he going to do when he got there? And this
is where the story, of course, gets exceedingly strange. His
brother in law, donang Ye was a leading member of
German military intelligence, the ABVER. The ABVER was the center
(20:35):
of the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler. So Bonhoeffer is hired
by his brother in law. His brother in law says,
how would you like to come to work for me
in the ABVER. That way you look like you're serving
the Third Reich in time of war. We can use
your great brain and your contexts throughout Europe to work
for the German military intelligence. But we know, and the
family knows, what you'll really be doing. You'll be working
(20:55):
for me in the conspiracy to defeat Adolf Hitler and
then Nazis. And what he was supposed to do, of course,
was travel around Europe to neutral countries, which you certainly
could not do unless you're a special member of military intelligence.
But he could travel to Sweden and to Switzerland, travel
to these countries in the hopes of making contact with
members of the Allied governments. Imagine talking to the enemy
(21:18):
during time of war. This is exactly what he set
out to do. He continued writing and being a pastor
during this time in some ways, but actually his family
was practically at the center of the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler.
It's an amazing The whole family, from before the beginning
of the Nazi rise, knew who the Nazis were and
(21:40):
what they were, and were against them from the beginning.
There's some natural explanations for that. They were in Berlin,
they were very highly connected. I alluded to that, but
I have to say they were very connected in high circles,
so they knew everyone who was anyone, and they had
all the secret information that your average German absolutely would
have not been privy to. And they knew that nineteen
(22:02):
thirty three, they're already having secret conversations in their home,
this huge home, and closing the door so that the
help doesn't hear. In nineteen thirty three, two months or
three months after, in April of thirty three, after Hitler
has become chancellor, they're having sort of secret meetings. So
in some ways their home and their network, their wider network,
was a center of the conspiracy against Hitler, and they
(22:26):
knew many of the players, and of course Bonheffer's brother
in law, Donani, was one of the key players. So yes,
they were at the center of it. And on the contrary,
not only did they have no problem with it, but
Bonaheffer's brother Klaus was murdered by the Nazis for his
role in the conspiracy. Bonhoeffer's brother in law. Two of
his brother in laws were murdered by the Nazis, so
(22:47):
they were at the very center of the center of
the conspiracy. I don't think that there was any Bonheffer
that had any problems with us. In nineteen forty two,
Bonheffer gets engaged, but no sooner as get engaged. Then
finally Gestapo catches up with him and arrests him. Not
for his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler, because
they hadn't yet discovered that, but for his involvement in
(23:08):
something called unter name and Zieben Operation seven, so called
because it was a plot to get seven German Jews
out of Germany and into Switzerland to save their lives.
There was some financial irregularities and things that went on.
The Gestapo picked up on it and some names came up.
Bonhoeffer was arrested and taken to Tagel military prison, but
he had every hope of getting out. He is writing
(23:30):
these wonderful letters to his fiancee and to his family.
He's expecting to get married. He's thinking that he's going
to be able to fool the prosecutor and convince the
prosecutor that he's just a wooly headed academic, but of
course didn't turn out that way. He well, I should
say that he hoped that he could win the case,
that things would come to trial soon, that he would win.
(23:52):
Or he thought the Allies will defeat Germany and this
night where it will be over and I'll get out
of prison that way, Or the conspirators who haven't yet
been discovered will succeed in killing Hitler and things will
end that way. So we had every hope of getting out,
but we know that he was still in Tagel military
prison in the summer of forty four when the Valkyrie
plot happens, where the briefcase is put under the table
(24:12):
and the vector of the blast is divided. Hitler survives.
But not only does Hitler survive, but for the first time,
the conspiracy is exposed. So in July of forty four,
this huge conspiracy is exposed, thousands are arrested, tortured. Names
come up. One of those names, of course, top of
the list is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so he has now transferred
(24:32):
to the dreaded Gestapo prison on Prince Albrechtstras in Berlin,
and then as the Allies are bombing Berlin, he's moved
from there to Bukenvald and in April of forty five,
so close to the end of the war, weeks from
the end of the war, weeks from the suicide of
Adolf Hitler. On the express orders of Hitler, Bonheffer's transferred
to Flossenberg concentration camp. At dawn on April ninth, he
(24:54):
is executed. So we're tempted to think of this story,
I think initially as merely tragic, but I have to
say that Bonhoefer would be the first in line to
rebuke Us in the same way that Jesus rebukes Peter.
When Peter says, oh, no, Lord, you can't die that way.
You can't, he says, get thee behind me, Satan, because
you're not thinking the thoughts of God, but the thoughts
(25:15):
of man. It's clear that Bonhoeffer was such a devoted
disciple of Jesus Christ that he was resigned to the
will of God with the peace that comes from being
resigned to the will of God. Resigned is really not
the right word. That he rejoiced in the will of
God for whatever it was for his life. He wrote
a sermon in nineteen thirty three, twelve years before his death,
(25:36):
where he talks about death, and in that to I
think a fairly stayed Lutheran congregation, he says death is
the most terrible thing imaginable unless it is transformed by faith,
and who knows but that your death can be the
most wonderful thing imaginable. Actually, he says that if you
(25:57):
have ever glimpsed the Kingdom of Heaven, truly, if you've
ever come to know him and ever seen him on
any level, you are homesick from that hour. You long
to be with him. You know that that is your
true home. You're created for that. So Bonhoeffer plainly clearly
had no fear of death. He understood it for what
it was. He knew that Jesus had in fact defeated death,
(26:23):
and death was the last station on the road to freedom.
Bonhoeffer knew this, and he believed it, and so Bonhoeffer
went to the gallows.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
With that piece and a terrific job on the production
and editing by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks
to Eric metaxas author of Bonheffer, pastor, martyr, prophet and spy.
Pick up this book you will not put it down.
In June of thirty nine, Bonheffer comes to America. He
seeks safety, but he's so uncomfortable, and God's calling him
(26:55):
back to Germany, and he goes, and in April nine,
nineteen forty five, no, not long before V Day, he's
put to death by Hitler. But Bonhoeffer wouldn't have wanted
to see this story as a tragedy. Death, Bonhaeffer said,
is the most terrible thing imaginable unless it is transformed
by faith. And indeed his life was the story of
(27:18):
Dietrich Bonhaeffer, how America changed him and now he changed
the world.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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