Dietrich’s June 1939 decision to return to Germany as the darkness of war descended on Europe still holds my attention. The Bonhoeffers were a culturally refined and influential Berlin family. Previous generations had made significant contributions in academics, politics, church life, the military, and music. Dietrich’s father was Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Berlin. His oldest living brother was a noted physicist. Two brothers-in-law were well positioned in the legal field; an older brother, in the aviation industry. The Bonhoeffer men, women, and children did not fail to see the evil potential – especially for Jews and other minorities -- in Hitler’s January 1933 maneuver into political control. The family home quickly became a gathering place for information sharing and for daring conversation of resistance. Dietrich’s confrontational speech on Berlin radio the week after Hitler became chancellor prompted the Gestapo to open a file on him that led to his arrest a decade later.
Dietrich, in the early Nazi years, concentrated on attempts to mobilize into a phalanx of non-violent civil disobedience a remnant of Protestant pastors who were alarmed at Nazi enthusiasm within German Protestant churches. Until the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Hitler worked to consolidate his power while being careful to avoid internationally sensitive incidents. However, by 1938 the Nazis were secure enough to exploit the protesting pastors’ internal debates by reducing their choices to (1) making a public oath of personal allegiance to Hitler or (2) being imprisoned. The ranks of the pastors broke. Too few remained in place. Many were eventually swept up by patriotic fervor as Germany annexed one neighbor after another. Others huddled tightly to ride out the storm.
Dietrich had invested too much not to feel deep disappointment and loss of direction. He did know that being loyal to the collapsed strategy of non-violent civil disobedience looked futile and self-serving. As he would later observe in a December 1942 essay written for his family and fellow conspirators:
To talk of going down fighting like heroes in the face of certain defeat is not really heroic at all, but merely a refusal to face the future. The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.
But, as late as Spring 1939, Dietrich had not yet joined the ring of high-ranking political and military conspirators hidden within the Abwehr. Instead, with the conscription date – May 22 – for his birth year approaching and with efforts to stall his order to report for military service exhausted, a travel permit finally arrived by which he could accept an invitation from friends in New York City – including Union Theological Seminary’s Reinhold Niebuhr and William Sloan Coffin – who were intent on rescuing him. He crossed the Atlantic on the Bremen, accompanied by his older brother and noted physicist Karl-Friedrich.
A permanent address . . . exceptional libraries . . . the opportunity to do some serious writing . . . an engaging lecture schedule . . . . New York City was a safe place. But it was the wrong place. Dietrich felt keenly the dislocation. A letter written to Reinhold Niebuhr just a few weeks after arriving at Ellis Island reveals that he quickly recovered his sense of place in the world:
My thoughts about Germany have not left me since yesterday evening. . . . The whole weight of self-reproach because of a wrong decision comes back and almost chokes me. . . . I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history . . . I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of . . . Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. . . .
By 27 July 1939, Dietrich was back in Berlin. By October, the German army had invaded Poland. After his application to be a military chaplain was denied in February 1940, Dietrich crossed the threshold into covert resistance. By now he knew well the seasoned conspiracy circle hidden within the German Army’s secret intelligence that would finally on 20 July 1944 make its move to assassinate Hitler. Under this official cover, Bonhoeffer used his international connections for three years trying (without success) to convince the Allies there were reasons not to demand another crushing unconditional surrender. Eventually, circumstantial evidence fell into the long-suspicious Gestapo’s hands that led to his arrest and four others – including his brother-in-law Hans von Donanyi -- on 5 April 1943.
Dietrich, in the early Nazi years, concentrated on attempts to mobilize into a phalanx of non-violent civil disobedience a remnant of Protestant pastors who were alarmed at Nazi enthusiasm within German Protestant churches. Until the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Hitler worked to consolidate his power while being careful to avoid internationally sensitive incidents. However, by 1938 the Nazis were secure enough to exploit the protesting pastors’ internal debates by reducing their choices to (1) making a public oath of personal allegiance to Hitler or (2) being imprisoned. The ranks of the pastors broke. Too few remained in place. Many were eventually swept up by patriotic fervor as Germany annexed one neighbor after another. Others huddled tightly to ride out the storm.
Dietrich had invested too much not to feel deep disappointment and loss of direction. He did know that being loyal to the collapsed strategy of non-violent civil disobedience looked futile and self-serving. As he would later observe in a December 1942 essay written for his family and fellow conspirators:
To talk of going down fighting like heroes in the face of certain defeat is not really heroic at all, but merely a refusal to face the future. The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.
But, as late as Spring 1939, Dietrich had not yet joined the ring of high-ranking political and military conspirators hidden within the Abwehr. Instead, with the conscription date – May 22 – for his birth year approaching and with efforts to stall his order to report for military service exhausted, a travel permit finally arrived by which he could accept an invitation from friends in New York City – including Union Theological Seminary’s Reinhold Niebuhr and William Sloan Coffin – who were intent on rescuing him. He crossed the Atlantic on the Bremen, accompanied by his older brother and noted physicist Karl-Friedrich.
A permanent address . . . exceptional libraries . . . the opportunity to do some serious writing . . . an engaging lecture schedule . . . . New York City was a safe place. But it was the wrong place. Dietrich felt keenly the dislocation. A letter written to Reinhold Niebuhr just a few weeks after arriving at Ellis Island reveals that he quickly recovered his sense of place in the world:
My thoughts about Germany have not left me since yesterday evening. . . . The whole weight of self-reproach because of a wrong decision comes back and almost chokes me. . . . I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history . . . I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of . . . Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. . . .
By 27 July 1939, Dietrich was back in Berlin. By October, the German army had invaded Poland. After his application to be a military chaplain was denied in February 1940, Dietrich crossed the threshold into covert resistance. By now he knew well the seasoned conspiracy circle hidden within the German Army’s secret intelligence that would finally on 20 July 1944 make its move to assassinate Hitler. Under this official cover, Bonhoeffer used his international connections for three years trying (without success) to convince the Allies there were reasons not to demand another crushing unconditional surrender. Eventually, circumstantial evidence fell into the long-suspicious Gestapo’s hands that led to his arrest and four others – including his brother-in-law Hans von Donanyi -- on 5 April 1943.
