Demythologizing Bonhoeffer

ROB_Episode7.mp3
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[Music]
Inside Germany, as we go to print the sensational news breaks of the attempted assassination of Hitler.
Here are previously unpublished pictures of the theatre, with some of his Juncker yes men,
who have had last rebelled against war strategy directed on intuitions, and thrown a bomb at the dictator.
[Music]
The rift between the generals and Hitler has split the nation into factions.
In this crisis the Gestapo clashes with the armed services of the Reich.
Hitler's days are numbered, and Dr. Goebbels has to do some fast-thinking in this life and death struggle of the Nazi party machine.
Now in open conflict with the military hierarchy.
[Music]
How the Hitler gang enjoyed a good funeral.
Whatever happens inside Germany, it will not deflect us from our purpose of destroying German militarism.
Prussian Juncker's onats is they're all the same to us. Let dog by dog.
We're going to defeat Germany the way we plan it.
[Music]
Hello everyone, this is Trip and I'm here with Jeff Repu.
And we're back for episode 7 of the Rise of Bonhoeffer.
In this episode Jeff we're going to get to take a little journey from the end of the seminary experiment for Bonhoeffer
all the way to a prison cell with the conspiracy in his participation in it, some failed assassination attempts this ongoing struggle for integrity in a very complicated and complex story.
This episode is one where the unfinished nature of Bonhoeffer as a hero finds complexity.
One that's real important for us to attend to if we want to get to meet the historical Bonhoeffer and not just the one that parades around as fantasy and hero.
This is a time in which all things are in flux, one of the most difficult periods of Bonhoeffer's history and of the church.
The end of 37 Bonhoeffer's is in a dire situation. Hitler and the Nazi, they've consolidated all power, the seminaries been closed by the Gestapo.
His former students are arrested, his teaching credentials have been revoked, he has no ability to carve out a life it's just being suffocated.
And the one community that he had hoped would be the ones to effectively resist Hitler had fragmented broken on the rocks of self interest and to be honest actually centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.
So he's both an internal and external exile he's banned from Berlin and Brandenburg in January of 1938.
He can't enter the city unless he's to visit his parents, his twin sister, Sabina and Eradzbinnen. Gerhard Leibholtz, they were preparing to leave the country.
He's working with those collective pastures where churches were taking students of his after the collapse of Finkenbalta.
In Bonhoeffer kept up communications with these groups he was running retreats and things also up north and hanging over everything for him is the issue of will he have to serve in Hitler's army.
And in the past that was a theoretical question but now if he refuses service, he in a sense exposes his students most of whom were not involved in his position they didn't share his pacifism, his position on military service.
But if he refused he exposed them the charges of being taught by an enemy of the state.
Pacifism was punchable by death. Bonhoeffer is a drift he's without moorings.
The question is was there a community that would help him resist?
One of the things about that is important to capture is that Bonhoeffer is struggling with his own convictions, having come to take the sermon on the mount seriously.
And then he has this cross-brushing of what happens to his students and what about their lives and then there's the additional element of what happens to his family.
When you start to think about the web of relations and the way in which the Nazi regime could punish you by punishing those you care about.
The question of service in the army becomes one where it is hard to imagine a clear conscience and your loved ones being safe.
Yeah, we're going to even see a more pointed threat to his loved ones later on in this session.
But for right now the argument could be made as very harvy at Baylor, does make that Bonhoeffer is facing failure on every front, personally and institutionally.
Bonhoeffer for the most part failed at every major objective he set to do. Upon his return from New York he tried to keep the German Christian movement from taking over the Protestant Church in Germany did not succeed in that.
He was part of the orgles of the Confessing Church was very disappointed and didn't associate himself with it. He couldn't get the Confessing Church to see that there was a state in the social witness particularly with regard to the Jews.
He put it the head of a seminary started by the Confessing Church. That's quickly dismantled by the Gestapo.
The beginning of the war is drawn into the conspiracy. I maintained that he became part of the conspiracy initially because he was trying to avoid serving in the army. He did a very brave thing. He returned back to Germany in 1939 even though nothing was set.
There was no such thing as conscientious objection in Germany to resist or refuse, service or induction, the military was in death.
And so the offer on the part of the military intelligence office through his brother-in-law to join them as an unpaid agent never the last.
He shows us at each step along the way that for successful resistance to happen it's got to be grounded in something more substantial.
You got to have an understanding of what you're resisting on behalf of.
If you think about the chaos of 1938 it's exacerbated on November the 9th, Luther's birthday with the sounds of breaking glass and the smell of burning synagogues as crystal knocks swept through Germany and Austria.
Signalina, new intensity of Jewish persecution.
Ministers of the right church were printing pamphlets of Martin Luther's 1545's greed against the Jews and that only intensified the pressure on dissenting pastors.
It's odd that the cultural hero of German Christianity himself Luther was being employed to stir up hatred and persecution.
But this is the situation that Mount offer is facing.
There he is, a man in exile.
He's trying to figure out how to avoid the draft and his American friends end up throwing him a lifeline.
Ronhold Nieber had followed Bonhoffer's life since he had left Union was one of his staunchest supporters in America and he extended an offer from America to return there in Bonhoffer accepted.
In May of 1939 he received a summons to military service but he was preparing to leave for London and then America.
And on June 12th 1939 he landed in New York City.
This time in New York City though he was torn by the heaviness that fell over him about Germany and he was struggling with what to do and he was visiting Henry Salone Kauf and Edges Summer home and an allettered Nieber Bonhoffer writes.
Sitting there in Dr. Koffen's garden I have had time to think prayerfully about my situation and the situation of my nation and to arrive at clarity about God's will for me.
I am convinced that I have made a mistake in coming to America.
I must live through the difficult period of our national history with the Christian 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.
My brother-in-and-the-confessing church synods wanted me to go. Perhaps they were right to urge me but it was wrong of me to leave.
Everyone has to make a decision of this kind for himself.
Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternatives of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby this trial.
I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice in security.
On a hot July evening, Dietrich along with his brother Karl Friedrich left New York City and arrived in Germany on July 25, 1939.
He returned to increase surveillance, danger of call-up to military service and entrants into the circle of conspirators when he joined the German military intelligence unit, the Adver.
It was his family relationships with his brother and his brother-in-law that eventually brought him back into the circle.
But there were other men like Hans Ulster, William Canaris and Ludwig Beck. They were all men of military background who believed that unless Hitler removed Germany was in peril.
It must be noted here that the rescue of the Jews was not the most important factor motivating that resistance.
But well, let Victoria Barnett talk a little bit about the situation that Bonhoeffer comes back to.
When he comes back from Union in 1939, he doesn't know what's going to happen yet. He knows certain people because of his brother-in-law, Hans von Denonni.
So he has met Hans Ulster in 1938 and Ulster is a key figure and becomes probably the closest contact outside the family.
And Ulster is the only outside person to whom after 10 years is dedicated. So he's part of that of family conversations.
But Bonhoeffer comes back because his family was asked him to, and he comes back together with his brother.
The only thing he wants to do is say out of the military.
So he initially offers to serve in the military chaplaincy which would have been a very complicated role for him to play.
There's a wonderful new book by Doris Bergen on military chaplains in Germany that really shows the ways in which chaplains were co-opted.
And in some cases really participated in promoting Nazi Germany's war. The draft board refuses to consider him for the chaplaincy.
Eventually he does get into the upfier office as an assignment which is an official designation that they manage to carve out for him which means that he's essential for the war effort at home.
He's one of eight pastors in the confessing church who get that. So this is not just Bonhoeffer.
There are seven other people who are likewise who pastors were also assigned to the upfier.
And Bonhoeffer is instrumental in getting those. He just sort of gives Hans Widenani a list and says these are clergy who really need to stay out of the military.
And that's one of the charges against him when they arrest him that he has helped people evade the draft.
So he's assigned to the upfier and they come up with this reason in quotation marks why he's important, why he's essential.
The reason they come up with is that he's going to be conveying messages and using his foreign constructs despite on behalf of Nazi Germany.
I think it's a much more complicated picture than bake out lots of snow about because in the meantime I looked at a lot more research on this.
And one of the things is that the person who was directly supervising Bonhoeffer is a sapoperson.
I mean he's part of the system now, which is one reason why when he goes to Switzerland the first time Karl Bartz or looks at him and says what do you think you're doing Bonhoeffer sells that he's secretly comparing these viewers at Bartz.
So something like you're getting this off you've been played.
The reason that Bart is in Switzerland is because he was removed from Germany.
He was asked to give a oath of loyalty to Hitler and he said that he could only give that oath if it was qualified in such a way that he did not have to abdicate his responsibilities as a evangelical Christian.
And by evangelical he means Protestant.
His proposal was presented to the appropriate authorities.
He was turned down and then a march of 1935.
He was returned to Basel under the police escort.
It is reported that he had a friendly chat with them about the gospel but in March of 1935 then he is back in Switzerland.
And this is where he encounters Bonhoeffer and we'll hear more about this later on.
This time is a intense period of transition.
We see the re-armament of Germany.
We see the closing of the seminaries and the kind of theological questions that Bart.
Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church are raising.
Get more and more intense and there are more and more variations of compromise and accommodation because the demands by the Nazis are getting larger.
And this leads Bonhoeffer to this transition point.
What Michael D. Young who has been guiding us throughout the series sees as a third stage of Bonhoeffer's resistance.
At the beginning he talked about this desire for the church to witness to the state in the early stages and to care for the victims of the state.
And then he talked about what happens in stage two where the recognition of a failed state, what is the church's goal, what is its mission.
And there it's to have these communities of intense discipleship that embody and preserve the gospel in times of total transition.
But they are after the closing of Finkenvolda, the accommodation increasing within even the Confessing Church.
What happens next when you're without a community of disciples to be faithful, what does the individual do?
And then you find different communities as Michael D. Young talked to us.
The question is about whether or not he is so thoroughly disenchanted with the church.
In my mind, Mark's the big break from the second to the third phase of his resistance is that the agent of resistance has now changed.
First two phases he was talking about the church and how the church speaks with political authority.
And in the third phase he's thinking much more about how individuals should act.
So that in itself suggests a certain kind of disenchampment with the church.
Although what's interesting is if you read what he says about the church in that third phase, sort of the church, I hate to say an abstraction, but sort of what the church should be or what the church ought to be, that remains very much the same.
It's not as if he changes his account of what the church should be, but I think he recognizes that the church in Germany at that point has been so thoroughly co-opted by the third Reich.
And the confessing church has been largely closed down and rendered powerless.
So then he moves into this phase where he's thinking more now about his action as an individual and as an individual in a group of other individuals who are trying to decide how to act.
But I think what's happening in the third phase of his resistance is he's picking up on that threat of what do individuals do.
And now he's picking up that threat in a much much worse situation in which as he sees it, it's much clearer that the state is not operating the way that a state should be.
And it's much clearer that the church is largely rendered powerless and so much more falls to the individual.
But what he sees in that later period then is a thoroughly corrupted state which is bringing down all these other spheres of life with it.
If you sort of get inside his brain, it really is a total catastrophe at that point.
And there's very little ground under his feet as he puts it, or moral action in that context.
It's a combination of reading the times, reading how bad the situation with a state has gotten, and then also seeing that it's so to speak pulling down everything else with it.
And that's a real situation where you have very few options left.
What is a theologian who has a strong crystallological center to do when the church is failed?
And we find here a situation in which his family, who are the closest people to him, actually constitute one of the many circles of resistance to Hitler.
So he ends up finding Christ, not just in the concrete community of the church, but in other places as well.
Elinormic Laughlin, who is a theologian in author of unconscious Christianity in Bonhoeffer's late theology, she helps us see exactly how Bonhoeffer's transition into this third stage reoriented his understanding of the church in participation in the body and life of Christ beyond the bounds of Christianity.
It's very clear in the early 1930s that people who are self identifying as Christian are doing things which Bonhoeffer really does not think are Christian things to do.
We have the right church, which is little by little getting more and more involved with the Nazi regime, which is clearly something that he thinks is totally un-Christian.
And that's when we get the split with the confessing church and their whole struggle around getting international and ecumenical recognition for the confessing church, but there's already a seed planted there about the difference between Christianity and saying that you're a Christian.
And that I think develops later in the mirror image because when he starts working with the resistance movement for the first time in his adult professional life.
He is working alongside people who don't self-identify as Christian, a lot of his co-resistance and are not self-identifying as Christian.
But he clearly think that there's something Christian going on here in what they are doing. And by Christian to be more precise, he would say Christ's like the kind of willingness to be for others that he sees in his co-conspirators.
To him is a being like Christ type attitude. For example, the people who are willing to put themselves at risk to get Jews across the border into Switzerland.
That's a classed example of being for others, which he sees people around him willingly doing.
And so he's starting to think, "Okay, well, my previous assumptions about church confession and all of those types of things need to be challenged."
And that's one of the things he's starting to do. And perhaps in a more pastoral light, he's trying to also say to people who do identify as Christians, it's not just us who bear Christ in the world.
There are other people who are doing this too. The pressure isn't just all on us.
So there he is, basically homeless. He does spend some time in Klein Crossen, home of his Finkinvaltus supporter, Ruth von Kleistratzau. He had met a woman there before Maria von Vietermier, who will become important in the Bonhoffer story later on when he first met her. She was 11, 12 years old.
And he actually didn't let her think his confirmation class because she was too immature, but he comes back as he's writing ethics and he re-engages her. And at some point they develop a rapport and become engaged.
This is preceding the story that as he enters into the family circle that is involved in the conspiracy, they have to find out what are they going to let him do, what is going to be his role.
And it was decided that his cover story was that he would be serving as a church liaison with the ecumenical churches throughout their headquarters based in Geneva as well as national European churches. That was his official explanation.
That was an explanation that was also very attractive to the Nazi party as they were going to use him to serve as a conduit for their particular agenda. Vicki Barnett helps walk us through that.
The Protestant Ecumenical Movement comes out of the missionary movement in the early 20th century. They form international organizations of the late 1920s which create offices in Geneva, Switzerland.
And eventually after the war in 1948, that becomes the World Council of Churches. And there's an ecumenical movement in the United States as well.
And so these are clergy, former missionaries, church leaders who really believe in sort of a universal Christianity and an international former Christianity that transcends borders and cultures.
So there are already figures from the former and still to be liberated British colonies, for example. There are several people from India there.
It's a mix of people, but they're all driven by in that era were sort of the liberal values of a progressive kind of Christianity.
My sense is that many of the people who end up in the ecumenical movement are sort of lone rangerous. They would not have been a good set at a church.
There are interestingities, larger questions. They want to be statesmen. They want to speak to the great issues of the day.
The ecumenical movement emerged during the 1920s when you've got the League of Nations being founded when you've got this interwar period where there's a lot of action around this kind of activity.
It's interesting that they hate the ecumenical movement coincides with the Nazi era. So it's in the 1920s until the early 1950s.
The tougher was initially not part of that. He becomes involved in it in the early 1930s in Berlin. First in terms of the German offices and the German people who are involved.
It's interesting because I think that this is one of the key factors that kind of moved him out of a certain kind of nationalism that he was involved in the late 1920s to a broader view.
And one of the people who was really responsible for doing that was a mentor out of Dysman, Max Diesel, who was his superintendent and his supervisor in Berlin.
Diesel was the one who pushed him to come to the United States for a year, robbing his horizons and discovering that you could have these conversations.
He's a young German of his generation. So the chance to go to a meeting in Holland where you have French people and Dutch people with people who were tenures before they were fighting each other.
And then suddenly you can have conversations that seem to be building new bridges of understanding based on Christian faith.
And this is also what he discovers in Union where he becomes friends with Shalma Sear, who's a French palcentist and Irwin Schwarz, a man from Switzerland.
That broadening of his horizons changes him theologically. But it also uses his entry point into the ecumenical movement.
And because of these various encounters and because he was just a very brilliant young German scholar and he shows up in Union Semiter in New York and takes a class from right-holt neighbor and he goes to meetings in Geneva and meets Bishop George Bill.
And he meets people from the American offices. They know who he is.
That's his calling card throughout the 1930s. But suddenly that's part of why they could make the case in the upfair for him being an important figure who could carry these peace of yours.
Because he knew George Bill and he knew Henry Leapur in New York. And right-holt neighbor who knew who he was.
So the idea that this German has street credibility among these people, that worked.
And in terms of saying this is why we need him there. And so it's much more complicated than just our idea of Bauthoffer being the sole figure.
Bauthoffer was definitely sharing the messages that were coming from the resistance circle around Hans Ooster and Christoph Ern, Hanswund Denonni.
The intrigue of all of this is the fact that they're trying to hide certain realities from the Gestapo, from the SS, from the other figures in the German bureaucracy that wanted territory that the Ebbur had.
And that's a reality that we find in a deceptifletter that Bauthoffer composes. They backdate it in November 1940.
And Bauthoffer writes that his justification for becoming part of military intelligence would be that precisely that he has his ecumenical contacts.
So that was the cover story, but the real story was that the conspirators actually wanted Bauthoffer to inform other governments through their church leaders how the conspirators were trying to overthrow Hitler.
They hoped to gain assurance that you had such an outcome happen. The Allies would allow Germany rebuild recover from the reign of the Nazis.
That's a hard-line to walk, appearing to support Germany's aims in his public facing work and yet seeking to garner support for Germany should the overthrow succeed.
And that's what led to so much suspicion about what he was doing. How is this implacable foe of the Nazi regime working in military intelligence that raises questions that raised questions as we saw earlier with Karl Bart, who was now living in Switzerland.
And every time that Bauthoffer went to Bauthoffer, he would drop in on Bart and form him of what was going on. But even then, there were issues that came up between them that were difficult to resolve.
When last week in Zurich, I first heard someone say that you found my stay here disturbingly mysterious in its objectives. I simply loved.
When shortly thereafter I ran up against this purported statement of your second time in Zurich, I thought it would be best simply not to respond.
Now I have heard the same thing twice in Geneva and having pondered the matter for a few days, I simply wish to let you know of it.
In a time when so much simply has to rest on personal trust, everything is lost if mistrust arises. I can of course understand that his curse of suspicion gradually affects us all.
But it is difficult to bear when for the first time it affects oneself personally.
So it is not just in relationship with Bart that Bauthoffer is experiencing difficulty. This is a particularly difficult time for anybody who is trying to morally work their way through this process.
Thicky Barnett helps us understand how incredibly difficult it was for anybody in this particular moment and especially for Bauthoffer.
We have to realize that I think this is something that people often lose sight of when we are looking at Bauthoffer because we see him so clearly as a hero. There is never a clear line in Nazi Germany between the good guys and the bad guys.
Everybody is part of this picture and you are seeing things, you are personally witnessing things, you are making compromises along the way.
During that period the Bauthoffer was there. There are 38 people from Poland who have been forcibly brought in his forced labor. And the Benedictine monks have presumably contacted the Gestapo to help us work.
And said we could use people to work in our fields and in our household they get these people so they are house there. They are not there of their own free will.
So Bauthoffer is seeing this and in fact the head of the Etoll monastery after the war finally made the trek to Poland to find the people who have been forced laborers and then apologized to him.
But the German Protestant and Catholic churches did not even acknowledge this until about 2004.
So that is a long time to say that you didn't know about something.
But one of my questions along the way has been so as he is writing ethics, his ethics manuscript. He is surrounded by all this more complexity and depravity.
That is what he is seeing as he is talking about the grey zones and the integrity of bodily life, things that are not just academic topics.
And I mentioned that especially because there is passages from ethics that find their way into after ten years.
And this is one of the interesting things about Bauthoffer because you don't have computers, you don't have cotton bait.
And so he has presumably all these papers that he goes through and says, "I think I could use this passage here."
And so their passages throughout the Bauthoffer works to pop up in various places.
And after ten years his thermal such passages, that is how to where he is between 1939 and when he comes back.
And 1942 when he writes after ten years. And by 1942 Germany is beginning to lose the war.
And Hutsf undenahdi still doesn't have a completely clear signal yet from the generals that they are willing to move on this.
But they are reaching that point because Hitler is going to lose the war for them.
So one of the things, the peace feelers that Bauthoffer is carrying abroad to the British and the people in Switzerland and diplomats in points of contact,
are basically deals that these generals want to make with the allied forces.
In that sense they want to keep pulling, they want to keep Austria, they want to keep the territory that they've reclaimed.
They are not making any guarantees about the genocide of the Jews.
It's a very ethically murky world that he has found himself in. I mean it was ethically murky before.
This is an important background as you read after ten years.
He's really looking at tenures under national socialism, looking at where he finds himself.
And looking at all the values and traditions as he was growing up.
He was told were full of integrity.
These were the people in Germany who were holding up the banner of culture and ethics, noble behavior.
By 1942 I think it just hits him. This is really a sham. We really shale.
And so he's addressing it to his church because he's already been there with a conversing church.
He's kind of given up on the Protestant church.
I think Hans van Denon is probably one of the really truly honorable ones in this history because he stays in the system not to work from within but to document things and see if he can do what he can.
These are torturous months.
1943 Bonhovers mission is taking him to places like Norway and Siktuna Sweden in the summer of 1942. His missions are different wherever he's going.
It's Xiktuna he met with his friend and Anglican Bishop of Chisiceur George Bell and conveyed to him the latest information about removing Hitler.
Both he and Bell had high hopes that the British government was going to actually respond favorably upon offers information about the conspirators intentions. Maybe Germany would be spared the full wrath of the Allies when the tide turned but Bell was not able to convince his contacts in the UK.
Especially those like Anthony Eden British foreign secretary they were skeptical of any news about Hitler's overthrow from German sources they had heard it all before so they were thinking it was a misinformation disinformation kind of campaign.
So many conspiracies against Hitler that had failed who a British didn't have any really reason to believe in them.
Bonhover continues to work on ethics he's trying to still do what he can do in the ad bar and this leads us to what Bonhover's real role was in certain things that were going on.
In one of those does rather infamous is operation seven and it's infamous because there is indeed real history behind his participation in it but so often in kind of popularized tellings of his life.
It's dolled up for the hero that is Bonhover and the history behind it is a bit more complicated so I think it's important for us to get clear about just how he participated in operation seven and what it reveals about the nature of resistance within the conspiracy at this time.
One of the most important parts or operation seven is that it is the sort of beginning of the in for Bonhover in that particular circle of conspirators but there's a history behind it that will once again turn to Victoria Barnett to enlighten us on.
Having done some research recently on this I want to go back and re-wintered Meyer is wonderful book on this because that's the definitive story.
Operation seven and make this says this in his biography when he talks about it he says that Bonhover was peripheral and what he doesn't say is that he was the person who took some of the money across the border secretly because he kept himself out of things.
But operation seven was from the up here they had people in their wider acquaintance who needed to get out most of them were Jews or Christians that Jewish descent three of them.
Fritz Arnold that his wife and daughter were secular Jews so these were all people who knew somebody so this is their wider circle of friends they know they need to get out.
They talk about way to do that and they have the idea that if they secretly get money across into Switzerland so that they've got people in Switzerland who can guarantee for them and offer to support them that this might work.
And so they got partners on Swiss side they've got people throughout Germany in this may be part of what Bonhover was actually involved in terms of traveling around there were people throughout Germany who were hiding people providing rationing cards helping them get from one place to another.
And many cases when somebody got out of Nazi Germany it was because of several people who helped them not just one and that seems to be the case with the some of the people in operation seven I would add that the Holocaust Museum has the American
French service committee records which were the records the Quaker records American French service committee was a major refugee organization in the world at that time and so this collection consists of over 25,000 folders of individuals documenting the letters that were saying all the documentation pertaining to their rescue.
In a lot of cases wasn't just the Quakers who were involved it was somebody in France it was somebody in Switzerland it was somebody else when you look at somebody's purpose and the files are like a set I mean they're big files and it shows how difficult it was for people to get out.
And it shows how many people along the way had to help out and that's true in operation seven there is a large folder on the federal his family and the Quaker records in the Holocaust Museum.
And he had been trying to get out for several years so this is his last chance one of his friends in the up for says yeah I think we can get you on to this one and so they send the money over in Switzerland no Gestapo notices these large money transfers and follows the money trail and thinks this is money laundry.
And that is why Bonhoeffer and Huntsman did not hear a rest because the Gestapo was discovered there's somehow connected to this but they have no idea that this is a rescue organization and in the meantime other people are helping them get across the border.
So what I found in the Germanic archives in Geneva in the Fritz Arnold file was that I don't find the refugee official at the World Council of Churches in 1945 says Fritz Arnold who helps you get out.
And Fritz Arnold sends them 14 names of all these individuals who helped in some way or other of our Germany Bonhoeffer is not there nobody from the upstairs there and is went from my window to his work probably some of these people had no idea that their rescue was connected in some way to the up there.
The film version not just in the new film but there are other shows that do the same thing Bonhoeffer personally driving the car up in Swiss border and helping you do across the border. That's famous.
When I edited the works I looked through at some point just systematically and kept a list of people reached out to him for help and I came up with 37 names all of them but one are people were baptized and that raises other issues in all these cases.
And so is the rest you were these are people who either approach him directly or somebody else those can you help this person and Bonhoeffer writes a letter he puts them in touch with somebody he does what he can and that's how rescue worked in so many cases I think he deserves respect for that but it's not the lone ranger that we often think about.
Vicki really helps us understand the historical context and just how Bonhoeffer participated in operation seven from a distance throughout this episode Jeff we've looked at a number of different places that the mythological account of Bonhoeffer has been expanded and expressed in a way that it doesn't get to the complexity his theological wrestling his political intuitions in the web of relations that he was said in so often here spy.
But is it that complex space within the ecumenical community here operation seven he's saving Jewish people but it's mostly bad ties Jews and he's connecting the dots not driving the truck with people across the border.
Behind each of those there are these places in reality that you can see that love and appreciation for Bonhoeffer sees it and it grows into a myth.
But the one that's most troubling and most problematic I think in the modern consciousness of Bonhoeffer is labeling him an assassin.
There's someone who spent so much time wrestling with Bonhoeffer and trying to parse through the historical details to see just in what ways his participation in the conspiracies connected to this assassination plot against Hitler what does it move towards clarity in history there look like.
It is one of the most egregiously erroneous perspectives to attach that title to Bonhoeffer it certainly has generated a cottage industry of books and speakers and conferences about was Bonhoeffer an assassin or how did he give up his pacifism.
Historical accuracy probably should allow us to say that Bonhoeffer was in jail since April of 1943 so anytime we're talking about assassination attempts we have to look at him as far far out on the periphery and maybe to the point of not even knowing this is another place where Vicki Barnett can help fill out some of the details and give us understanding of exactly what was happening in the oyster circle.
Disarr with the assassination so Hansel is the contact within the Bonhoeffer circle who conceived of the final version of that as you probably know there are multiple attempts on Hitler's life beginning in 1938 all of them failed including the final one.
Ones also actually made a list of thirty seven or thirty eight people the leading cadre of the people around Hitler so to the room where the levels got in because he thought you we've got to eliminate all of them if this is going to have a chance because what he worried about of course was the good and her him was sort of steps in after the others death and says I will continue and so that they wanted to really.
Make sure that they had cut the hell out of the Nazi regime and by that time by nineteen forty five.
There was enough.
Just satisfaction throughout the ranks of the Nazi party and especially the military there was a growing census that Hitler was taking the country over the cliffs that something had to be done that's kind of the vision that they had and it was very precise there were code words and close Bonhoeffer was not arrested until September of nineteen forty four initially got the news.
And thought that they had a succeed with it was this twenty four hour period where you know people thought that they had actually managed to kill Hitler and some of the leaders Bonhoeffer was in prison at that point but he knows about the Bonhoeffer family as a whole seems to have been agreed that there was really no other way to end the Nazi tear except for doing this.
I interviewed amy bonhoeffer whose plowsponhoeffer's would also from my first book and she told me that and ever her makeup says that as well there was consensus within the family that this had to be done.
And that census emerge pretty early maybe from before the second world were started because they first meet with on so stirred nineteen thirty eight.
Bonhoeffer does have this interesting conversation with his seminarians and think and ball them about whether to ran assigned the killing the tyrant.
It is justified theologically that's intriguing to its assort of signal that maybe Bonhoeffer is even wrestling with this kind of question even before then and no point is he designated the south and he's not going to be the one to put the bomb under the table or whatever but he is reported to have said somewhere that he would be willing to do it when you get beyond the family and you look at the broader resistance circles.
If there really were differences of the thing there were several members of the Christ out circle for example said we cannot use by was to do this mold code said that for example that's not a perspective shared by everyone.
But when I asked you for her bake in the first interview I did with him which is back in the nineteen eighties about how Bonhoeffer theologically justified this he sort of looked at me said he didn't he didn't try to make a theological argument to each other person.
Because he understood the dangers of that and of course he had the example of the German Christians around him who were constantly just to find various things that the Nazis were doing.
And so for Bonhoeffer this I think ties in with his writings and ethics about the responsible person making a decision and taking responsibility for that.
Darius and who we've heard from before in the series has a word of caution for us if we are to make violence into a redemptive move she has something to say that might help temper that triumphalistic perspective each of us have the risk of being Bonhoeffer in our own image right.
We can read into Bonhoeffer what it is that we we're hoping to find in so is academics that's the caution that we travel with every day as researchers and those of us who do the work in this space.
It's a very very bold move to speak on behalf of God isn't it to imagine the mind of God in any given situation which is why for me Bonhoeffer searching for where is Christ where is the heart of Christ in this story.
That's a much safer way to go roads and imagine that we can speak on behalf of God so that's the first thing I would say the second thing I would say is that for Bonhoeffer and the other conspirators it wasn't a matter of using violence to achieve a particular end.
It was a group of people who had for almost 10 years attempted to dress into this space and change what was going on in Germany without success.
And so the assassination plots were absolutely the end of the road the very last choice left available to them as far as they could see it.
And to those people in that situation this was the last resort there were no other options open to them particularly after the discussions with Bishop Bell had not led Britain to support them.
It was an active desperation as they said at the time we know this is a grave sin we know that to take the life of this tyrant is a grave grave thing to do and all we can do is fall on the mercy of God and expect that should we be eternally punished for this grave sin.
Then we are still prepared to do this for the sake of the masses.
So in some ways it was an enactment of the still retreatal standing in the place of others and being willing to even forfeit their own eternal life for the sake of Germany and the world.
So me that's such an extreme moose and the torment that those men must have gone through to come to that place is not something that we can take widely or to simply replicate into another context.
Bon hopper himself paces the difficulty and moral complexity of what he's dealing with and one of these words from ethics.
There is no calculating here I must acknowledge that my own sin is to blame for all of these things.
I am guilty of inordinate desire I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy and the face of threatening violence I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors.
I am guilty of disloyalty and falling away from Christ.
One of the things we've hoped to do in this episode is demathologize the mythological version of Bon hopper around a host of these different moments that have been exaggerated and complicated because of their popularity.
When we start to go through that historical sifting and want to understand just how Bon hopper himself was thinking and wrestling with his faith in this particular pressure cooker of a historical moment there is a place to place our feet in trying to understand Bon hopper situation.
Once again, Vicki Barnett starts us out on our journey as we try to understand his letter to his family after 10 years.
That's the document he writes and pulls together apart from other writings that he's thinking about, but just the opening where he says, have there ever before been people in history was so little ground beneath her feet.
A question sets the stage for the argument that under national socialism every institution every level every factor of German society has collapsed and become corrupt in not the evil and then he goes step by step through the process by which that happens he asks why nobody seems to have any civil courage.
He has the backbone to stand up and then comes to that that final moving section about the view from below where he says at least for once we understand what this looks like their fast settings sections that sense of quality where he talks about the ways in which modern society is disintegrating and people don't read newspapers anymore and they don't really know how to read anymore.
He also says at the door and then he talks about nobility nobility arises from an existence by sacrifice courage and a clear sense of what owns what so.
At the self evident expectation of the respect one is you I mean that's where we hear his upbringing talking no he comes from a family in a sector of society that raises its children to understand that they are a sense of no less of the use that they are expected to be innocent away.
They are expected to expect respect from others and they have to carry certain values forward he chills that both because of the pressures of national socialism and the failures of human beings like himself that's been lost.
I sometimes you want to read after 10 years is so he's trying to give himself a pep talk he reaffirms his faith he affirms that God at the end of time will read us in history that our job is to remain faithful.
The after 10 years letter was written for the family is it turns out as well as on the store I got to know several years ago a physician who's now retired in the United States who's not part of the world and he actually he bond with what of the cause talks back in the eighties.
And going to be close friends with him and so he did several interviews with make a they shared with me and one of them make a tell some that the family read this entire document over Christmas nineteen forty two every night they read a different section and discuss so this is something that your families did.
And it's interesting to think about the entire family reading through this and thinking about it and talking about the points he's raising and of course you know his brother clouds was involved in the resistance to his brothers and all were involved the family knew about it and Hansel's true was also present.
So just the coin you see of the conversations in the family and of course that would be the last Christmas they were all together in Hanswenda not a were arrested only several months later.
So imagine a family a family who had decided Hitler had to be removed before the war even started one where multiple members are intimately connected to different parts of the conspiracy and their most religious member the theologian in the group sends a letter they decide to read this letter bit by bit having conversations as a family as if he was in their midst.
We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds we have become cunning and learned the arts of obviacation and equivocal speech.
Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings and often we have failed to speak to them the true and open word unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical are we still of any use.
We will not need geniuses or cynics people who have contempt of others or cunning tacticians but simple uncomplicated and honest human beings will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough and our honesty with ourselves blend enough to find our way back to simplicity and honesty.
One of the things that after ten years as a letter to so many of his most intimate family and friends reveals is that the mythological bond offer is one that fails to capture just how concrete his theological and ethical reflection was at a time of deep deep pressure complicitcy running a bound.
And bomb offers tenacious commitment to considering integrity in the midst of it probably one of the most powerful quotes from this letter and once again like you said think about sitting around the fire drinking your.
And you hear it remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below from the perspective of the outcasts the suspects the maltreated the powerless the oppressed and reviled in short from the perspective of the suffering.
If only during this time bitterness and envy have not corroded the heart that we come to see matters great and small happiness and misfortune strength and weakness with new eyes that our sense for greatness human is justice and mercy has grown clearer freer more incorruptible that we learn indeed that personal suffering is more useful a key a more fruitful principle that personal happiness for.
Exploring the meaning of the world in contemplation and action but this perspective from below must do not lead us to become advocates for those who are perpetually dissatisfied rather out of a higher satisfaction which in its sense is grounded beyond what is below and above we do justice to life in all its dimensions and in this way affirm it.
This letter after 10 years begins with Bonhoeffer raising the question to his closest friends and family whether not they even have a place to put their foot on the ground to think about reality in all the tumult and it ends with this intuition of just how the gospel invites us to see and interpret the world something that he's developed throughout his entire life coming to see the world from below from.
Christ not just in glory but on the cross not just in the past but in that very moment in the complexities of a horrible situation and once again Bikibarnett helps us understand that these decisions that are being made spaces that we put
ourselves in when social pressures are profound are all through this letter the process by which people begin to conform and a lot of times that begins with the small step that you don't even think of as conformity but that leads to the next thing in the next thing and along the way what you begin to do is justify things to yourself because we all want to think that we're doing the right thing for the right reasons and so you decide why it was you decided not to speak out on this occasion.
Or why you became a member of the Nazi party or why you decided not to address something as things intensify as a persecution of German Jews becomes more and more open why you decide you deserve your neighbor why you decide not to talk to them or help them anymore decisions which come step by step.
It's not a radical moment and I think that's one of the things he's thinking about in after 10 years that is so powerful because he's addressing those two people who are at the top of the
ladder. These are leading diplomats military officials they have high ranking position they've got power they could have done something they have privileged they're the ones who have the option and the ways in which they decide they can't take that risk.
And I look around our prison situation struck by the number of people who's backbone dissolved several years ago and why that is when you got the chance to do some when you have the power is that because they're afraid they're
points in the history of Nazi Germany early in the regime where occasionally somebody pushes back and he were backs down he's not going to have that fight right now.
So what would have happened if the entire Protestant church is said we're not going along with this we're going to break away from the German Christians we are not going to be that kind of church they didn't do that this constant attempt to smooth things over to
appease things and every time Hitler gets what he wants he doesn't need to lift a finger and that's the scandal of it that's the shame but I think that's the shame of so many things are
own political moment where we have a chance to speak out and especially people in a certain position and that's on us.
Shortly after Bonhoffer sent this letter to his friends and family in the beginning of 1943 an investigation was launched in Prague about financial irregularities in the Munich office of the
of the ever this investigation would reach down and reveal the operation the workings of operation seven which the money under investigation had been used for there was some suspicion of money laundering and so the entire circle surrounding can are as in the
that bar was now brought under suspicion as investigations surrounding military intelligence intensified and it was against the background of these probes that there were two failed attempts on Hitler's life in the March of 1943 there's no historical record that Bonhoffer had anything to do with these attempts although some people try to place him among the
members so the operation to investigate military intelligence the SS the Gestapo they were rivals in that bureaucracy they want only ready to discredit con her and so in that scrutiny Danyani and others they knew that surveillance has been increased they tried to back date papers for Bonhoffer and including that letter of
investigation where he said it would be good to help in the ecumenical movement but all efforts to cover their tracks failed by April the Gestapo was ready to make their move to destroy their rivals can are Scott word ulster tried to destroy all the documents who could
implicate them but they didn't expect to be arrested immediately which was a fatal mistake the authority showed up in the Berlin office shortly thereafter announced the arrest of Danyani and in the
office holster tried to take the blame and shield Danyani but to know avail Bon Danyani was arrested on April of 5th 1943 and taken to prison and on that same day the others in the circle were arrested in Munich and Berlin Bon Danyani's wife was also taken prisoner
and about four o'clock in the afternoon the Gestapo pulled up in front of Bonhoffer's family home he was not unaware of what was to happen he had been working in his ethics that morning
he knew his sister's home was being searched things were falling apart he went next door to a sister and brother in the house
everhard bet gay was also present
on the late afternoon of April of 5th Bonhoffer was taken to take prison
and as the door closed behind him Bonhoffer probably had no idea that the rest of his life would be smitten confinement
he probably did realize that his days is an active participant in the resistance of Hitler were over
one of the ironies of history is that even though his time as a devil agent was over Bonhoffer would write some of the most incentrary theology of his life as he continued to struggle with how Christ is made known in the material world in reality
in this episode we've looked at a number of places where the often popularized vision of Bonhoffer turns out not to be history
whether it's the exaggeration of his connection to operation 7 calling him a spy or an assassin the way those labels miss represent his own role, his own history and his own wrestling
Bonhoffer was in hero yes but an unfinished one and it's precisely there in that unfinished space in his own wrestling with what it's like to be faithful to a Christ you find in the midst of material concrete reality
at least for me Jeff he becomes an inspiration in him next week we're gonna explore his wrestling and reflection with faith from prison before his ultimate demise but this week
I think it's worth imagining the living room with his family when the reading that letter after 10 years in this unfinished hero the one they know is detric asked the question
who stands for only the one whose ultimate standard is not his reason his principles his conscience his freedom or his virtue
only the one who is prepared to sacrifice all of these when in faith and in relationship to God alone he is called to obedience and responsible action
such a person is the responsible one whose life is nothing but a response to God's question and God's call
where are these responsible ones?
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