Hello, dear readers!
Welcome to the first episode in a series of pieces we’re calling Partisan Heroes. Our goal is introducing you to individuals of profound moral courage who had enormous impact on our lives. With hope, you too will be inspired by their example.
In typical fashion we’re kicking this off with both barrels. It is no exaggeration to say our subject today altered the course of my life forever. And so, to business.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Christian pastor. He was born February 4th, 1906 in Breslau, Germany. He died April 9th, 1945 in Flossenberg, Germany. Hanged for crimes against the Nazi regime. He was one of the first examples I ever saw of a person living the partisan ethos:
When they poured across the border
I was cautioned to surrender
This I could not do
Bonhoeffer is known for his work with the Confessing Church, who stood against the fascist regime in Nazi Germany. If you are unfamiliar, in the lead up to World War II the Nazis sought total control. This included the proclamation of a new faith, installing leaders sympathetic to the regime, and even eliminating the Old Testament.
To which our hero must have said, “Scheiß drauf!” because he instantly went hard on defending Jews and denouncing Nazi machinations, being the first pastor to do so in Germany. Driven by a powerful faith, he called for protest by halting church services like baptism, weddings, and funerals. Talked off the ledge by fellow Confessing Church leader Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer was then tasked with helping create the Bethel Declaration in support of the church, which ended up so watered down anyway he refused to sign it.
While it’s clear our subject wasn’t playing around, through the course of his life you can see doubt manifest. He traveled to England and the United States at various times, seeking support for the Confessing Church. Telling Barth his efforts in Germany failed and so, “it was about time to go for a while into the desert.” He was even invited to study non-violence with Gandhi, a most rare and prestigious honor.
But in reality, I suspect the truth is less flattering. Bonhoeffer learned from his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi (who worked in German intelligence) war was imminent. As a committed pacifist, Bonhoeffer would not fight for the German Army, a potentially capital offense. Beyond that, refusal to fight would’ve further splinted the already tenuous Confessing Church. Barth saw through all this and dismantled his friend completely with this single question:
“And what of the German Church?”
Barth’s words weighed heavy. Before his final return to Germany, Bonhoeffer was in America preparing to join Union Theological Seminary in New York. Despite immense pressure from his friends, he couldn’t stay. After two weeks, he left for home writing the following to Reinhold Niebuhr:
I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security.
I took my gun and vanished
His activities during World War II were extraordinary. He ran secret seminaries “on the run” all over Germany and Western Poland. Thanks to his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, he got in with German intelligence as a double agent serving as a courier between the resistance and the Allies. Through this, he learned much about the full scale of German atrocities and eventually broke with his pacifism, stating:
When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it. Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.
After the most famous attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler by briefcase bomb, Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer were arrested. With Dohnanyi accused as the “spiritual father” of the plot, their fates were known. The final acts of Bonhoeffer included ministering to his guards so compassionately it lead to the smuggling of the works that would become Letters and Papers from Prison.
That’s his story, as I can recall it. Not much else to say of such an extraordinary life, is there? Well, there’s a little more, as I turn the story to my own personal experience with Bonhoeffer (such as it can be).
I spent the last three months of 2021 in a small town called Koszalin, located in Poland just east of the German border. The reason for my journey there is a story all its own, but imagine my overwhelming shock when researching the town I discovered Dietrich Bonhoeffer secretly worked there too.
In fact, there’s a memorial marking where he lived. It’s a small thing of little importance, attached to some building off some street in a backwater town. Here’s my photo of it:
As you can probably guess, I hunted it down not for the photo but in homage to a great personal hero and martyr to our world. I didn’t expect to cry, but I did, nearly collapsing from the weight of it all. In retrospect, spending long years of my life meditating on his example could only have caused that reaction.
But in any case, here we cut to the quick.
You see, dear friends, we are fast approaching a similar situation to Bonhoeffer’s. All of us nearing choices we will justify to our fellows by dire need, of which our consciences acquit us, and of which in front of our gods we hope only for grace. Whatever our fates from this, I trust you all to make the right ones. Just make sure you’ve got examples to pull from, because it won’t be easy and there’s no guarantee any of us will make it.
But take heart, there is virtue in the fight. In the effort. You never know how your actions will echo through history. Who might gain strength and wisdom from them at just the right time? Bonhoeffer, and the countless others like him, didn’t know just like we don’t know but they acted anyway from that same place of faith.
Consider this, meditate on it, and let it echo in your mind. As you do, I conclude our time here with a simple benediction.
Thank you, Dietrich. For everything. Godspeed, all of us who follow.
Pauvre Bonhoeffer, this is the first I hear of him, but he did what was right and sought to do more than resist the Nazis', he strove to redeem Germany from the hole she had fallen into because of Hitler.
This.
“You never know how your actions will echo through history. Who might gain strength and wisdom from them at just the right time?”
It’s been a very long time since I read Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship.” Thank you for reminding me of his remarkable example.