Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Conspirator Against the Hitler Regime: The Motivation of a German Protestant Revolutionary

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer as ConspiratorAgainst the Hitler Regime: The Motivation

of a Gertnan Protestant Revolutionary

John A. Moses

The name Dietrich Bonhoeffer is certainly one of the most well known todaythroughout theological circles around the world. There is an extremely activeinternational Bonhoeffer society which has been conducting conferences every fouryears ever since the early 1970s,and as well, there are regular regional meetings ofBonhoeffer scholars in Europe and North America. In almost every country, thereare devoted Bonhoeffer followers, especially in Asia, southern Africa and SouthAmerica. Bonhoeffer, who was murdered by the Nazis for his part in the con-spiracy of 20 July 1944to eliminate Hitler, was also the theological guiding star forthe 'church in socialism', that is for those pastors in the late German DemocraticRepublic who had to confront the communist dictatorship and its oppressivechurch policy. Paradoxically, however, there were other GDR theologians who usedthe legacy of Bonhoeffer as an opponent of fascism to add legitimacy to the regimeof 'actually existing socialism'.!

So Bonhoeffer, who was not yet 40 when he was killed, has provided theinspiration for many different kinds of political theology: some advocate the use ofviolence, such as in liberation theology; others passive resistance and absolutepacifism. Apart from the strictly political dimension to Bonhoeffer's thought andaction there are those who admire Bonhoeffer's theology for its relevance to thepresent, the so-called "world-come-of-age' which is a society ripe, so they say, for a'religionless Christianity', a concept about which the theologians themselves arenot completely clear.2

This paper focuses on the link between Bonhoeffer's theology and hispolitical action as an opponent of the Nazi regime. A pre-condition for this wasBonhoeffer's adoption of a new theological paradigm under the influence of KarlBarth going back to the mid 1920swhen Bonhoeffer was still a student. This led tohis distancing himself from the nationalistic theology of his mentors, chiefly Adolf

1. John A. Moses, 'Bonhoeffer's Reception in East Germany', in John. W. de Gruchy (ed.), Bonhoefferfor a New Day: Theology in a time of transition (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eardmans, 1997),278-97.

2. Ralf K. Wiistenberg, Glauben als Lemen: Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die nichtreligiose Interpretation biblis-cher Begriffe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996).

WAR & SOCIETY, Volume 17, Number 1 (May 1999)© The University of New South Wales 1999

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26 WAR & SOCIETY

von Harnack, and particularly Reinhold Seeberg, his doctoral supervisor. It wasalso simultaneously the basis for his critique of the values of his own class. Inshort, an investigation of Bonhoeffer's career and of his development into a revolu-tionary during the Third Reich throws a searching light on to the mentality of theeducated German bourgeoisie, the Bildungsburgertum. It is this class which, likeThomas Mann, once its most articulate representative, has had the greatestdifficulty in finding a way to modernity, if by that is meant a pluralistic societywith democratic parliamentary institutions and all its mediocrity. Thomas Manndid it by becoming an American citizen which he said made him a citizen of theworld.3 This, so he argued, enabled him to remain loyal to the cosmopolitan strandin the German spirit while deploring the violent dimension, because there were nottwo Germanies but one. As he stated at the very end of the war in Washington:

Wicked Germany is merely good Germany gone astray, good Germany in mis-fortune, in guilt, and in ruin. For that reason it is quite impossible for one bornthere simply to renounce the wicked, guilty Germany and to declare: 'I am thegood, the noble, the just Germany in the white robe; I leave it to you to extermi-nate the wicked one.' Not a word of all that I have just told you about Germanyor tried to indicate to you, came out of alien, cool, objective knowledge, it is allwithin me, I have been through it all.4

This, essentially, was Bonhoeffer's position too, but he wanted to find aspecifically theological, as distinct from an overall cultural, reason for Germany's'going astray', and offer a solution. Like Thomas Mann, Bonhoeffer also left Ger-many for America, in June 1939, initially with the intention of promotingopposition to the Nazi regime from outside, but in contrast to the great man ofletters, he elected after a few weeks to return and continue opposition from within,despite the risks it involved. Thomas Mann raised a problem about his class butcould only solve it for himself personally by adopting us citizenship, indeed byopting out. Bonhoeffer, by way of contrast, developed a theology of 'righteousaction', which led to his active participation in the conspiracy to overthrow theFuhrerstaat.5 The latter was an aberration of the 'German spirit' and was

3. Thomas Mann, 'Germany and the Germans', in his Addresses Delivered at the Library of Congress1942-1949 (Washington: Library of Congress, 1963),48.

4. Ibid., 64-5.5. Dirk van Hoogstraten, 'The Enemy and Righteous Action: A Hermeneutical Reassessment', in de

Gruchy (ed.), Bonhoeffer for a New Day, 175-89. 'When Bonhoeffer decided to join the resistancegroup which planned to assassinate the FUhrer, he had a clear image of Hitler as the enemy of theGerman people, of humanity, and of God. It was, of course, very dangerous to communicate hisopinion that the "generally honoured and worshipped German Leader," the "representative of theGerman people and race, the Volksgemeinschajt," had to be radically reinterpreted as the incar-nation of evil' (pp. 175-6). Instructive concerning the overall political implications of Bonhoeffer'stheology is Rene de Visme Williamson, Politics and Protestant Theology: An Interpretation of Tillich,Barth, Bonhoeffer and Brunner (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1976) 65-199.Williamson stresses on p. 82 that 'Bonhoeffer's opposition to Hitler should not lead us to forgetthat Bonhoeffer was a very patriotic German'.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 27

undoubtedly the end product of false developments in the thought of the Bildungs-biirgertum which were attributable to distortions in Lutheran theology. Bonhoeffer,in the course of his experience during the Third Reich, rigorously unmasked these.6

Here is where, according to Bonhoeffer, Germany 'went astray'. It is aremarkable passage which calls the Germans to repentance and back to trueunderstanding of the Gospel of Christ. Given this analysis of the defect in theGerman 'soul' it is not surprising that Bonhoeffer plotted for the downfall of theregime and Germany's military defeat at the hands of the Allies in order to atonefor the sin perpetrated in Germany's name on the world.

With all the prominence given to Bonhoeffer over the last 40 years or so,one tends to assume that he was always regarded a leading figure in the Germanresistance. This was not the case. It is only since the publication in 1951 of Bon-hoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison (in German, Widerstand und Ergebung) by hisformer student and friend Eberhard Bethge that Bonhoeffer's work became at allwell known. Then, with the appearance of the monumental biography by Bethge in1967 (English translation in 1970) the significance of Bonhoeffer in German andworld history began to be appreciated. Up to then, only Bonhoeffer's formerintimate friends and collaborators such as the English Bishop George Bell ofChichester had assessed Bonhoeffer as one of the great men of our time.7 This viewwas, of course, not shared by the German legal profession until quite recently.Officially, Bonhoeffer was guilty of high treason; postwar German courts saw nogrounds for re-habilitating Bonhoeffer and the other conspirators against thecriminal regime of National Socialism, something which reveals much about their

6. See in particular Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship [in German, Nachfolge, 1937](London:SCM Press, 1959), 44-5. In a savage indictment of the misuse of the central point of Lutherantheology, namely that of Jtistification, Bonhoeffer attacks what he calls cheap grace as follows:

We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcase of cheap grace, and there we havedrunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ. It is true, of course, that wehave paid the doctrine of pure grace divine honours unparalleled in Christendom, in fact wehave exalted that doctrine to the position of God himself. Everywhere Luther's formula hasbeen repeated, but its truth perverted into self-deception. So long as our church holds thecorrect doctrine of justification, there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified Church! Sothey said thinking that we must vindicate our Lutheran heritage by making this graceavailable on the cheapest and easiest terms. To be 'Lutheran' must mean that we leave thefollowing of Christ to legalists, Calvinists and enthusiasts-and all for the sake of grace. Wejustified the world, and condemned as heretics those who tried to follow Christ. The resultwas that a nation became Christian and Lutheran, but at the cost of true discipleship. Theprice it was called upon to pay was all too cheap. Cheap grace had won the day.But do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back on us like a boomerang? The price weare having to pay to-day in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only theinevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too Iowa cost.

7. See the 'Publisher's Note' to the English language version of the biography by Eberhard Bethge,Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary (London: Collins, 1970).

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28 WAR & SOCIETY

understanding of justice. They, too, are a part of the problem posed by the men-tality of the Bildungsburgertum.8

The article proceeds by outlining the stages by which Bonhoefferdeveloped into a theological revolutionary because, once we better appreciate hisparticular motivation for resistance to National Socialism, in contrast to themotives of the other conspirators in the failed July plot of 1944,we come to a moredifferentiated understanding of the mentality of the Bildungsburgertum, namelythat element in the Prussian-German tradition which made it so distinct, indeed soself-aware as the most superior manifestation of the human spirit yet to appear inhistory, and for that reason so difficult for non-Germans, especially of Westernliberal formation, to comprehend and come to terms with.9

BONHOEFFER'S FORMATION

Bonhoeffer was born 4 February 1906with a twin sister, who is still alive, into adoctor's family, the third and fourth in a family of seven children in Breslau. In

8. Heribert Prantl, 'Bonnhoeffer, vorbestraft-iiber die Frage, wer Rehabilitierung notig hat', Sud-deutsche Zeitung, 10/11 February 1996. Prantl noted that in 1956 the Federal Court of Germanypronounced that the Nazi judges and executioners who condemned Bonhoeffer and his fellowconspirators to death had acted strictly according to the law and they considered that theiractions were justified. In this regard the murder was legitimised and those murdered once moreretrospectively condemned. However, in November 1995 the same court distanced itself, rathercautiously, from that pronouncement, stating that a number of Nazi judges should have beenrequired to answer for their judgements. This, of course, is no longer possible, so at least theirjudgements ought to be repealed, demanded Prantl. On 6 August 1996 the State Court in Berlin(Landgericht) did actually repeal the death sentences against BQnhoeffer and the other conspiratorson the basis of a Bavarian law enabling compensation for National Socialist crimes. See also thenewsletter of the Bonhoeffer Freundeskreises (Region Mitte, Berlin, 1998) by Wilfried Schulz, 'Diejuristische Rehabilitierung Dietrich Bonhoeffers 1945-1996', and Christoph U. Schminck-Gustavus, Der 'Prozess' gegen Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Freilassung seiner Marder (Bonn: Dietz,1995) in which the question now of proceeding against the SS lawyers who implemented theexecution of the conspirators is investigated. They were effectively absolved from any crime bythe 1956 Federal Court pronouncement. This still stands.

9. Most instructive on the formation of the Bildungsburgertum is Fritz Ringer, 'Bildung: The Socialand Ideological context of the German Historical Tradition', History of European Ideas 10: 2 (1989),193-202. The work of D. Blackbourn and G. Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: BourgeoisSociety and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), is oflittle help in evaluating the peculiarities of the educated German middle class since the authorsdisregard the mental and spiritual formation of individuals, groups and classes as ultimatelyrelevant in the explanation of events. However, it is precisely the peculiar mentality of this classwhich made 'the Germans' so different from the bourgeoisie of other industrial countries, as FritzRinger so brilliantly demonstrates. For an incisive and accurate analysis of the peculiarities of theBildungsburgertum, see also Martin Travers, 'A German Catastrophe?: Thomas Mann, FriedrichMeinecke, the Bildungsburgertum and the Third Reich', Australian Journal of Politics and History(1988), supplementary edition, 54-73.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 29

1912Bonhoeffer's father was appointed to the chair of psychiatry at the Universityof Berlin, and so Dietrich received his early schooling in the select suburb ofBerlin-Griinewald. If ever a family merited the designation Bildungsbiirger it wasthe Bonhoeffers. In every facet of his education, especially in languages, ancientand modern, and in music, Dietrich was exemplary. He began theological study inTiibingen in 1923,slotted in a cultural semester in Rome the next year and resumedtheological studies in Berlin where he finally took his doctorate in 1927-at the ageof twenty-one. He then served a year as Vikar in the German church in Barcelona,Spain, where he developed his outstanding gifts as a preacher. In 1929he returnedto Berlin to become Assistent to a leading professor, Wilhelm Liitgert, and com-pleted his Habilitation, that is, a post-doctoral thesis to qualify for a lectureship. InSeptember 1930 the young systematic theologian left for Union TheologicalSeminary in New York for a year, and learned from the famous Americantheologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, something extremely influential, namely, that'Obedience to God's will may be a religious experience, but it is not an ethical oneuntil it issues in actions which can be socially valued'.l0

Apart from that, however, Bonhoeffer developed a highly critical opinionof what he later called Anglo-Saxon theology while in the us. What he did learnwas a great deal about the then race problem and lack of social justice, from blackfellow students. He also became very friendly with a French student, Jean L~sserre,from whom Bonhoeffer learned to take seriously the biblical injunction of peaceand that one had to take concrete steps against the warlike impulses of thenations.ll The basis of Christian belief is not the nation but the one holy, universalchurch, the community of saints. So Bonhoeffer early learned that it wasimpossible to be both a Christian and a nationalist.12This signified an importantrejection of one major facet of the values of the Bildungsbiirgertum, namely theunequivocal rejection of nationalism.

On his return to Germany in July 1931,Bonhoeffer had his first personalencounter with Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian, then in Bonn. Their associationwas to become crucial for Bonhoeffer's future development. He was confirmed inhis rejection of both the so-called orthodox and liberal streams in Protestantacademic theology in Germany.13 Both these dominant schools shared thewidespread assumption in the philosophy, which derived from Johann Gottfriedvon Herder and G.W.F. Hegel, that nations were 'ideas of God'. It was the conceptalso at the basis of the very influential historical profession as established in Ger-

10. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 119.11. On Bonhoeffer's development into a pacifist, albeit of a particular type, see Martin Heimbucher,

Christusfriede, Weltfrieden: Dietrich Bonhoeffers kirchlicher und politischer Kampf gegen den Krieg Hitlers(Giitersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1997).

12. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 112-13.13. For a lucid introduction to this important subject, see John S. Conway, 'The Political Role of

German Protestantism 1870-1990',Journal of Church and State 34 (Autumn 1992):819-42, especially836.

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30 WAR & SOCIETY

man universities by Leopold von Ranke in the 1830s.Indeed, the ideas of both thetheological and historical professions were mutually reinforcing and becameparadigmatic for the Bildungsburgertum.

Central to this was the view that if nations were 'ideas of God', and that itwas in the nature of States to compete through waging war with each other fordominance of the earth, then God must sanction force in history. Eternal peace, asenvisaged, say, by the other German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1722-1804),wascertainly not a possibility in this world. So, theologically speaking, most GermanProtestant thinkers focussed their attention on the existing world as the venue ofAlmighty God's self-revelation rather than on Christ as the one and only source ofrevelation. This meant that their theological orientation was determined by theirunderstanding of world history. Indeed, it was not so much the record of God'sactivity in Scripture that commanded their attention but rather His more tangibleand visible accomplishments with and for the German people, especially between1871 and 1914.14 God, as Hegel had demonstrated, 'had been dissolved intohistory'. The author of the universe could only be conceived of in relation to Hisself-revelation, indeed His Reich on earth. And for Bonhoeffer's mentors, thatReich was undoubtedly the Prusso-German empire. IS Following Barth's example,Bonhoeffer emphatically rejected this kind of theology.

Barth's difficulties with German 'liberal theology' had already begunduring the early part of the First World War because the vast majority of Germantheologians, and other academics for that matter, all agreed that in going to war,Prussia-Germany was the 'Hammer of God', meting out justly deserved punish-ment to the decadent peoples allied against her. It was, of course, a seductivetheological view that most fearfully took revenge on its advocates, because allalong they had been saying that with God on our side, how can we lose? But evendefeat in the Great War did not bring a sobering to the theological profession.There then developed the phenomenon of Ordnungstheologie. This assumed that thenow defunct Hohenzollern Empire had been destroyed by disloyal, non-Germanelements from within, namely liberals, Jews, Social Democrats and Communists,certainly non-Christian Germans who were not really members of the Yolk, at leastspiritually. It was the theological version of the stab-in-the-back legend. And it wasthe essential, racially pure Yolk that was the enduring order of God's creationwhich should concern theology. The racialist implications are, of course, veryplain.

14. Instructive in this context is Arlie J. Hoover, 'The Dangers of Religious Nationalism: A GermanExample', Restoration Quarterly 29: 2 (1987), 87-95.

15. There was a distinct notion of 'chosenness' in German Protestant theology that was far moresystematised than the notion of 'chosenness' to be found in other nations. See Hartmut Lehmann,'''God our old Ally": the Chosen People Theme in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-CenturyGerman Nationalism', in William R. Hutchison and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), Many are Chosen:Divine Election and Westenz Nationalism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994),85-107.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 31

Barth, and then Bonhoeffer, came to see that this approach was irreconcil-able with Holy Scripture if only for the fact that it claimed arrogantly to com-prehend the inscrutable mind of God, something which man cannot do, bydefinition. Instead, the approach should be from the revealed Word of God towhich men should listen and should obey. So, both Bonhoeffer's experience in theus and the theological encounter with Karl Barth contributed essentially to his dis-tancing himself from mainstream German theology even before Hitler's seizure ofpower and the rise of the racially-inspired German Christian movement withinGerman Protestantism.

It needs, of course, to be noted also that Bonhoeffer's first close friend fromstudent days was· the half-Jewish pastor, Franz Hildebrandt. As well, his twinsister's husband, Gerhard Leibholz, was a baptised Jew, and a lawyer. Additionallyvery important was the fact that Bonhoeffer's brother Klaus and his brother-in-law,Hans von Dohnanyi were also lawyers. These had come, already before Bon-hoeffer, via their legal training and republican mind set, to see Hitler and hismovement as essentially criminal.I6

Finally, in this discussion of Bonhoeffer's fprmation, it is crucial thatalready in 1931 he had become involved in the then ecumenical movement andthat at a conference in Cambridge in September of that year he had beennominated youth secretary of the 'World Alliance for Friendship between theChurches'. Thereafter Bonhoeffer laboured to integrate the German Protestantchurch into the ecumenical movement in order, in part, to overcome its previouslyvery nationalist orientation.17

THE STAGES OF BONHOEFFER'S RESISTANCE

Two things should be kept in mind here. First, Bonhoeffer and his entire familywere patriotic Germans. One brother had fallen in the Great War, and when Bon-hoeffer was in America he lectured on the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles.18

Secondly, the family was immune from anti-Semitism as the marriage of Sabine

16. Dohnanyi, for example, as an official in the Reich ministry of justice, had kept a diary of all ofHitler's criminal, that is, non-constitutional, acts with a view to using them to indict Hitler atsome appropriate time when the opposition had wrested political power. See Christoph Strohm,Theologische Ethik im Kampf gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Der Weg Dietrich Bonhoeffers mit den/uristen Hans von Dohnanyi und Gerhard Leibholz in den Widerstand (Miinchen: Chr.Kaiser/Giitersloher Verlagshaus, 1989), 243-6; Elisabeth Chowaniec, Der "Fall Dohnanyi" 1943-1945. (Miinchen: R. Oldenbourg, 1991), 11-12.

17. See the English translations of a selection of Bonhoeffer's statements in this regard ('The Fan0Conference 1934' and 'The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement') in No RustySwords, Letters, Lectures and Notes from the Collected Works 1928-1936 edited and introduced byEdwin H. Robinson (London: Collins 1965), 279-96, 326-44.

18. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 106.

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Bonhoeffer to Gerhard Leibholz indicates.19 Certainly, they were not cultural anti-Semites as was the vast majority of their class. So,when the Nazi Party had arrivedas a mass party with 112 seats in the Reichstag at the September 1930 elections,Dietrich had noted the dangerous implications of its programme, especially, in thefirst instance, its 'leadership principle'. Quite remarkably, before Hitler'snomination as Chancellor on 30 January 1933,Bonhoeffer had been scheduled togive a talk on the Berlin radio on the subject 'The Leader and the Individual in theYounger Generation'. This was set down for 1 February, just two days after Hitlerassumed the officeof Fiihrer. Bonhoeffer was at pains to point out the characteris-tics of a true leader. He had to be a person who operated within the establishedstructures of authority, aware that all earthly authority was ultimately answerableto Almighty God, and thus was always limited, and responsible to the people herepresented. Bonhoefferwrote:

The Leader will have to be conscious of this clear limitation of his authority. Ifhe understands his function in any other way than as it is rooted in fact, if hedoes not continually tell his followers quite clearly of the limited nature of histask and of their own responsibility, if he allows himself to surrender to thewishes of his followers, ,who would always make him their idol-then theimage of the Leader will pass over into the image of the misleader, and he willbe acting in a criminal way not only towards those he leads, but also towardshimself.2o

This quotation suffices to illustrate that Bonhoeffer would reject inprinciple the Hitlerian idea of government. The management of the radio stationquickly saw the subversive intent of the talk and so cut off the broadcast before itwas ended.21 The next month, however, Bonhoeffer was able to deliver the entireaddress at the Berliner Hachschule fUr Palitik, then under the direction of ProfessorTheodor Heuss, the first postwar Federal President. It concluded:

The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, be it ofthe Leader or of an office,we forget that man stands alone before the ultimateauthority, and anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternallaws and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventuallycrush him. The etemallaw that the individual stands alone before God takesfearful vengeance where it is attacked and distorted. Thus the leader points tothe office, but the Leader and office together point to the final authority itself,before which Reich or state are penultimate authorities. Leaders or officeswhich set themselves up as gods mock God, and the individual who stands

19. Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, Vergangen, erlebt, ilberwunden: Schicksale der Familie Bonhoeffer(Giitersloh: Giitersloher Verlagshaus, 1995). Here Bonhoeffer's sister recounts her life togetherwith a baptised Jewish husband ~ecause of whom the family were forced in the summer of 1938to emigrate to England (pp. 93-117).

20. No Rusty Swords, 198.21. Ibid.,186.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 33

alone before him must perish. Only the leader who himself serves the penulti-mate and the ultimate authority can find faithfulness. 22

So Bonhoeffer had already ventured in the first days to the Third Reich todenounce the Nazi leadership principle as not only irreconcilable with thePrussian-German tradition of authority under Almighty God, he predicted itsviolent end. But we note that he did this with essentially theological arguments.The regime was godless and therefore illegitimate.

Bonhoeffer's criticism of the Third Reich as a false state that would have tobe replaced was intensified in his analysis of the 'The Church and the JewishQuestion' which,dates from April 1933. This was in reaction to the Nazi legislationof 7 April, called the Civil Service Reconstruction Law, which disqualified anyone ofJewish origin, regardless of whether they had been baptised, from holding office inthe state. It obliged all civil servants not of Aryan descent to retire unless they hadfought in the GreatWar or had lost fathers or sons in the war. This prohibition alsoapplied to baptised Jews who could no longer serve as pastors in the state church.23

Bonhoeffer judged this to violate not only the historical tradition of theProtestant church in Germany, but also the precepts of Holy Scripture. Heacknowledged that the church had no prior right in the scheme of things to tell thestate its business. But the church was there to

affirm the state to be God's order of preservation iri a godless world; it has torecognise the state's ordinances, good or bad as they appear from ahumanitarian point of view, and to understand that they are based on the sustainingwill of God amidst the chaotic godlessness of the world.24 [emphasis added]

Here is Bonhoeffer's indebtedness to Luther and the doctrine of the two kingdomseasily recognisable. But this was far from allowing the state, quite literally, to getaway with murder. He went on to observe:

History is not made by the church, but by the state; but of course only thechurch, which bears witness to the coming of God in history, knows whathistory, and therefore what the state, is. And precisely because of this knowl-edge, it alone testifies to the penetration of history by God in Christ and lets thestate continue to make history ... [but individual Christians may feel called] ...to remind the state of the moral side of any of its measures, i.e. on occasions toaccuse the state of offences against morality.25

What Bonhoeffer was leading up to was an indictment of the Nazi state forbeing derelict in its duty as a legitimate government with respect to the way it wastreating citizens of Jewish origin. So, here, again, is the implication that the Nazistate was not a legitimate state. A true German state might act rigorously but it

22. Ibid., 199-200.23. Ruth Zerner, 'Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews: Thoughts and Actions, 1933-1945', Jewish Social

Studies 37:~ (1975):,235-6.24. No Rusty Swords, 218.25. Ibid., 219.

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34 WAR & SOCIETY

must always act morally and responsibly in fulfilling its divinely appointed role asGod's agency on earth for the guaranteeing of order in a chaotic world. So, thechurch is not a disinterested bystander in political matters. Indeed, it 'must cont-inually ask the state whether its action can be justified as legitimate action of thestate, i.e. action which leads to law and order, and not to lawlessness anddisorder'.26

Further on, Bonhoeffer observed that the state may not develop its powerto the extent that it stifles proclamation of the Gospel-a grotesque situation-because it is from the Gospel that the state ultimately derives its legitimacy.Indeed, 'the state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself'.27Thisis crucial in Bonhoeffer's reasoning. He fully endorsed the Lutheran doctrine of thestate which most observers have seen as anticipating the Nazi dictatorship or atleast inculcating a subservient attitude among loyal subjects towards princelyauthority, and used it to discredit the Nazi regime, indeed to de-legitimise it.

The question which Bonhoeffer then posed is what must the church do inthe present situation with regard to the Jews? First, it must clearly admonish thestate. And then, because th'e church must fulfil the precept of 'doing good to allmen', it had 'an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society,even if they do not belong to the C;hristian community' [emphasis added].28Thirdly,though, and here is the very first instance of physical resistance being required,Bonhoeffer wrote:

The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but toput a spoke in the wheel itself. Such action would be direct political action, andit is only possible and demanded when the church sees the state fail in itsfunction of creating law and order.29

With regard to the enforced exclusion of baptised persons of Jewish ancestry fromthe ministry of the church, Bonhoeffer saw an instance of too much law beingapplied, indeed, an unjustified intrusion into the defined and established sphere ofthe church. In this situation, then:

The Christian church would find itself in statu confessionis and here the statewould be in the act of negating itself. A state which includes within itself aterrorised church has lost it most faithful servant.3D

Some commentators on this very early admonition to resistance havecomplained that it is far too conservative, that Bonhoeffer is actually mildly anti-Semitic himself since he uses such phrases as 'this mysterious people', 'the rejectedpeople', 'both loved and punished by God'. Against this has to be held Bonhoeffer's

26 Ibid., 220.27. Ibid., 221.28. Ibid.29. Ibid.30. Ibid., 221-2.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 35

private solidarity with individual baptised Jews.31Those who, like Saul Friedl-ander,32suspect Bonhoeffer of harbouring anti-Semitic sentiments need to bear inmind that this early publication was being addressed to very conservative contem-poraries, cultural anti-Semites, though Christians, whom Bonhoeffer was trying toreach in language they would comprehend. They could not be reached as if they wereWestern liberal humanists, so the conservative character of his formulations isreally not surprising. His concern was with ordinary church people, culturalProtestants and Bildungsburgertum. As he wrote to his Swiss friend Erwin Sutz, on14 April 1933: 'The Church is much concerned with the Jewish question, which hascaused the most sensible men to lose their heads and forget their Bibles'.33Indeed,the honest theological confrontation of the Jewish question by German Protestantsis expressly demanded by Bonhoeffer in his famous paper on the subject where hewrote:

What is at stake is by no means the question whether our German members ofcongregations can still tolerate church fellowship with the Jews. It is rather thetask of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and Germanstand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church isstill the church or not.34

Indeed, what we encounter here with Bonhoeffer is a systematic evaluationof Luther's version of the doctrine of the two kingdoms, which lies at the basis ofthe German Reformation, as an imaginative formulation of an acceptable theory ofresistance for his class. But this was not received by the vast majority of GermanProtestants because although what becomes the Confessing Church refused toacknowledge the Nazi right to interfere in the church, considerable sections of thatchurch, much to Bonhoeffer's disgust, insisted on still recognising the Nazi state asa true authority, eine Obrigkeit, and even agreed to declaring an oath of loyalty tothe Fuhrer as correct Christian behaviour.35 At that time Luther's legacy was

31. Zerner, 'Dietrich Bonhoeffer', 240-1.32. Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. I, The Years of Persecution, 1933-193, (London:

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997),45-6. If Bonhoeffer was guilty of 'theological anti-Semitism' then itwas very quickly overcome in the early stages of the Third Reich. See the discussion in Bethge,Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 205-10.

33. Zemeri 'Dietrich Bonhoeffer', 243-4; Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 205.34. No Rusty Swords, 225. Bonhoeffer's solidarity with the Jews is indeed theologically based and it is

the essential core of his doctrine of resistance to the criminal Nazi regime. Of course, he did notalways hold this position as indicated by his refusal in April 1933 to give the non-baptised Jewishfather of his brother-in-law, Gerhard Leibholz, a Christian funeral. Bonhoeffer later deeplyregretted his weakness on this occasion and wished he had behaved differently (Bethge, DietrichBonhoeffer, 209). But the point is that he felt a growing compulsion to repudiate Nazi criminalityand the absurdities of their racial doctrines with radical theological argument, and did so withincreasing courage and tenacity which was unique among his contemporaries, most of whomremained cultural anti-Semites.

35. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 504-8. See footnote 4. Bonhoeffer attributes such self-centredbehaviour on the part of his class to the misuse of the Lutheran doctrine of grace. The failure ofthe Confessing Church, indeed, all baptised Protestant Christians in Germany to rise up in

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36 WAR & SOCIETY

ambiguous and more of a hindrance to resistance than an aid. So, in a real senseBonhoeffer's attempt to get the majority of his .co-religionists to interpret thedoctrine of the two kingdoms in his way was frustrated. This, nevertheless, re-mains the theological basis of Bonhoeffer's resistance. He opposed Hitler becausethe Fiihrer did not have a true Reformation understanding of the role of politicalleadership!

THE PROBLEM OF THE GERMAN CHRISTIANS

The rise of this certainly heretical group of German Protestants to challenge themain stream church for dominance in Nazi Germany is an illustration of agrotesque distortion of Luther's doctrine of the state. The German Christians were apost-Versailles phenomenon resulting from the over-evaluation of the Volk and thestate in the course of Christian history. They believed it theologically feasible toharmonise National Socialismwith Christian teaching. To do so of course, they hadto eliminate every remnant of Jewish tradition from the Bible, discard the entireOld Testament and an th~ Pauline Epistles and attempt an Aryanisation of thefigure of Jesus. They regarded Hitler as a latter day saviour, indeed Messiah, theincarnation of so-called 'positive Christianity'. Indeed, shared ideas about race,religion and gender linked German Christianity with National Socialism. In otherwords, German Christianity was an outgrowth of deep-seated trends long present inGerman society. It would exclude all those deemed un-German and embrace onlythose of the right blood in the one true fatherland, and form a Volkskirche, agenuinely national church.36 Bonhoeffer and his friends were appalled by theGerman Christian movement and its anti-Semitism, and he wrote prophetically in1933 that the expulsion of Jews from Europe would result in the expulsion ofChrist because Christ was a Jew.37

Now the German Christians made a concerted attempt to get control of theadministration of the entire Protestant church in Nazi Germany and no doubtwould have succeeded but for a small group of theologians and pastors aroundKarl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller. For them it was notChristian to endorse the Aryan paragraph which excluded baptised Jews, but ofcourse the German Christians did. And in the struggle for control of the church,Bonhoeffer, Barth and friends, insisting on the integrity of the Bible, found they

solidarity with the Jews must ultimately have been because they had been brought up on cheapgrace.

36. Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross-The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC:University of North Carolina Press, 1996),1.

37. See Andreas Pangritz, 'Dietrich Bonhoeffers Begriindung der Beteiligung am Widerstand',Evangelische Theologie 55 Jg. Heft 6 (1996): 508, fn 35. Pangritz affirms that the basis forBonhoeffer's resistance was essentially theological in his paper, 'Sharing the Destiny of HisPeople', in de Gruchy (ed.), Bonhoeffer for a New Day, 258-77. Pangritz also re-affirms that thequestion of solidarity with the Jews, especially non-Christian Jews, was of fundamentalsignificance.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 37

had no alternative but to form a new church altogether for which they had to writea Confession.

The 'Barmen Confession' (Barmen Synod 29-31 May 1934) which wasfinally hammered out as the basis for the new Confessing Church may best bedescribed as a consensus of all those pastors who refused to join the GermanChristians because they had destroyed the unity of Holy Scripture which was theonly true basisfor the Christian church, and also, they wanted to merge the churchinto the state. Both these aims were inconsistent with the original Reformationsettlement in Germany. So, the Confessing Church saw itself as the legitimate con-tinuation of traditional German Protestantism and fought to be recognised as suchby the ecumenical movement. The German Christians, on the other hand, saw them-selves as the true Reichskirche, and so the 'church struggle' in Germany began.

Through his existing connections with the ecumenical movement Bon-hoeffer succeeded eventually in winning at least partial recognition of the Con-fessing Church as the 'true' German church,38 and Hitler finally gave up supportingthe German Christians partly because it would have been politically imprudentovertly to persecute the majority of German Protestants. This is because it wouldmake the regime look bad internationally, and, of course, it was clear that he couldrely on the political subservience of the vast majority of the pastors in the Con-fessing Church anyway39

In October 1933 Bonhoeffer accepted an appointment as pastor of twoGerman parishes in London. From here he waged a campaign on behalf of the Con-fessing Church against the German Christians and forged strong links with theChurch of England and the ecumenical movement. He also began a correspon-dence with Gandhi, hoping to go to India to study passive resistance. But in April1935 he was back in Germany to run an illegal theological college on behalf of theConfessing Church in Finkenwalde, Pomerania.

The Finkenwalde experience was very important because there Bonhoeffernot only influenced some outstanding future church leaders, he also reflecteddeeply on what true discipleship of Christ meant for a Christian in a country inwhich the church was under existential threat. It was clear that here Bonhoefferwas pondering the next stage of Christian resistance. The book he wrote whilethere, The Cost of Discipleship, indicates the level of his disquiet with the state of

38. Heimbucher, Christusfriede, 159-62. At the famous ecumenical conference at Fan0 in Denmark,August 1934, the following declaration of sympathy for the Confessing church was passed: 'TheCouncil desires to assure the brethren in the Confessional [sic] Synod of the German Evangelicalchurch of its prayer and heartfelt sympathy in their witness to the principles of the Gospel, and ofits resolve to maintain close fellowship with them' (p. 162).

39. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 300, and John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches (London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968),210. Here Conway refers to the oath of allegiance proposed toHitler for the Anschluss in April 1938. Pastors were called upon to swear allegiance to the Fiihrerin the same way as army officers were required to do. Only a handful refused, but they were not,in the event, persecuted for their stand. See above fn 30.

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Christianity in Germany and at the same time with the mentality of the Bildungs-biirgertum. This text must occupy a high place in the literature critical of thementality of this class.40

Then, on 1 July 1937, Hitler gave the order to have Martin Niemollerarrested as his personal prisoner, and by the end of September the FinkenwaldeSeminary was finally closed down. Bonhoeffer managed to secure a parish postingin Berlin but was then banned from Berlin in January 1938. The next month hemade contact with leaders of the resistance around Admiral Canaris. The time forendorsing some 'ethical action' had arrived. But that was all it was at this stage. Hekept up his contact with Bishop Bell in England, and then decided to return to theus to continue the church struggle from outside. This "fNasa difficult decision. Heleft Germany on 2 June 1939 but was back again on 27 July. Prior to his departurefrom New York he wrote to his old American professor, Reinhold Niebuhr:

I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life inGermany after the war if I do not share in the trials of this time with my people... Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing thedefeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willingthe victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know whichof these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make the choice in security.41

Bonhoeffer now became literally a double agent, seconded to the militarycounter-intelligence office in Munich through his family connections. This enabledhim to travel officially to Sweden and Switzerland where he maintained contactwith the ecumenical movement. The activity in which he and his associates nowengaged was designed to bring about the defeat of Nazi Germany and the down-fall of the regime they all considered to be criminal. Indeed, the catastrophe forGermany lay in Hitler's early military successes, not in his defeat. And here thechurch had been derelict in its duty. Not long after the most spectacular of Hitler'svictories, the defeat of France in 1940, Bonhoeffer could write:

The church confesses that it has witnessed the lawless application of brutalforce, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people,oppression, hatred and murder, and that it has not raised its voice on behalf ofthe victims and not found ways to hasten to their aid. It is guilty of the deaths ofthe weakest and most defenceless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ ... thechurch confesses that it has witnessed in silence the spoilage and exploitation ofthe poor and the enrichment and corruption of the strong.42

Eberhard Bethge has termed this a 'confession of guilt' and claims it placesbeyond doubt that the chief motive for Bonhoeffer's step to active political con-spiracy was the treatment of the Jews in the Third Reich. So the position takenalready in April 1933 on the Jewish question was radically confirmed. Bonhoeffer

40. See footnote 4.41. Dietrich Bonheoffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 6 vols (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1965-74), I: 320.42. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (eds), Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Testament to Freedom (San Fran-

cisco, CA: Harper, 1995), 363.

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Moses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Against the Hitler Regime 39

prayed for the defeat of his country because he believed that it was the only way topay for the suffering that Germany had caused in the world.43

With this particular attitude Bonhoeffer was at odds with the other con-spirators. They informed Bishop Bell as the go-between via Stockholm with theBritish government that they wanted an assurance from the British governmentthat the policy of unconditional surrender or 'fight to the finish' would beabandoned, because without such an assurance the German generals could.not bepersuaded to join a putsch against Hitler. Bonhoeffer insisted that preciselyunconditional surrender 'was necessary because Germany had incurred the judge-ment of God. He wanted the conspiracy and the defeat to be seen and understoodas an act of penitence by the German people.44

CONCLUSION

Sufficient has been said to indicate that Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Third Reichcan only be understood in terms of his theological formation. Although clearly hewas aware of the Anglo-Saxon and Swiss traditions of parliamentary democracy atno stage did he see these as models for Germany to emulate. Certainly, in order topersuade his co-religionists, the last thing that would impress on them would bean appeal to the Western liberal tradition because they had been educated to-despise it. Rather, he criticised the Nazi dictatorship solely in terms of its rejectionof the German tradition of the Rechtstaat and hoped thereby to win support for hisconcept of righteous action. But this was a virtually impossible task in view of thehistory of German Protestantism's traditional and unconditional support of theObrigkeit, the powers-that-be, as spelled out in St Paul's epistle to the Romans,chapter XIII. It had become so embedded in German political culture that it becameimpervious to criticism, and so Bonhoeffer's heroic attempt to revise that cultureunder the Hitler regime failed.

Of course, Bonhoeffer was acutely aware of this, as his books andespecially his Letters and Papers from Prison indicate. Most Germans of Bonhoeffer'sclass were not ready for his entirely logical and radical form of Christianity which,in his view, had no alternative but to resist with all means available the evil ofNational Socialism.A final example suffices:

Bonhoeffer was appalled by the Nazi doctrine that the individual had tosurrender his or her conscience to the Fiihrer. This would be unconditionallyabandoning one's will or individual autonomy to an alien agency, that is,allowing one's will to be determined by something other than the moral law.For a Christian to do this would be like substituting Hitler as the person inwhom one seeks personal integrity for Christ. So, to allocate to the man Hitler

43. Pangritz, 'Dietrich Bonhoeffers theologische Begrundung', 509.44. As recorded by Bishop Bell, 'The Church and the Resistance Movement' (1957) in Bonheoffer,

Gesammelte Schriftell, I: 405.

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the function of one's redeemer would be to submit to the most devastating con-tradiction to Christian truth.45

The grotesqueness of this idea would surely have had to turn all Christiansinto opponents of the system. Because it clearly did not, it means that historians ofmodem Germany still have to furnish a satisfactory explanation for the doctrinaireracism and nationalism of a class, the Kulturprotestanten and Bildungsburger, forwhom the German state and the Volk were 'orders of creation' and thusinstruments of salvation history-Heilsgeschichte. If Bonhoeffer's lonely andfrustrated struggle to convert his countrymen and women to a more humaneworld view, with values rigorously derived from the Gospel, is to be understood,then his 'revolutionary' theology needs to be fully investigated.

But, to conclude on a positive note, Bonhoeffer may be regarded as havingsucceeded posthumously in discrediting the notion so dear to the Bildungs-burgertum that true Christian behaviour was fulfilled for the German subject incomplete and uncritical loyalty to the state. This was the consequence of thedomination of 'historical theology' in Germany from F.D.E. Schleiermacher (1768-1834) to Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). Bonhoeffer, with the encouragement ofKarl Barth, through his witness, effectively replaced that paradigm to contribute tothe shaping of a new theology that saw the state, not in relation to history as taughtby Hegel, but solely in relation to the revealed Son of God. Confronted with theGodless Hitler dictatorship, this theology was the basis for revolutionary action.

45. See Pangritz, 'Dietrich Bonhoeffers theologische Begriindung', 505.