By Dennis Lund

Editor’s note: Second of two parts. Part one was published Sept. 2; it can be read BY CLICKING HERE.

“I shall 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” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WAS A GERMAN THEOLOGIAN whose faith and duty to God was challenged as the Third Reich came to power. In part one we looked at his background, his strong Christian faith, and his internal conflict over what he saw arising in Germany. We saw, too, how a man of Christ was brought to the point of conspiring to assassinate Hitler.

In January 1939, all German men born in 1906-07 were ordered to register for conscription; by May of that year, Pastor Bonhoeffer was required to report for military service.

By securing a position at Union Seminary in New York in the intervening months, however, he was granted permission to leave Germany. It is likely he intended never to return. That intention, however, was thwarted by principle, which overrode the urgings of friends and family.

Searching for answers, for direction, Bonhoeffer found them in signals he interpreted as directed at him: a sermon on facing fear, another from the book of Revelations, and in his daily readings of the Bible: from Timothy 4: “Do thy diligence to come before winter.” And from Isaiah 28.16: “The one who believes does not flee.”

To Bonhoeffer, the signals were clear. He set sail for home, not knowing his destiny but knowing he had to “share the trials” of the German people.

Among the burdens he carried was information collected by his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi, in the “Zossen files” that documented the accumulating atrocities of the Third Reich.

THE BETHEL COMMUNITY, COMPRISED OF ABOUT 1,600 PATIENTS with varying disabilities, was one such pending atrocity. Bonhoeffer, who had spent time there, thought this Christian charity in northwest Germany to be a Godsend for its patients.

Shortly after Hitler ascended to power, Bethel, like all such facilities, was required to submit the names and details of all its patients, ostensibly for record-keeping purposes. But Dohnanyi knew the truth, that inside the Reich terms like “useless eaters” and “life unworthy of life” were common in reference to the patients of Bethel and other mental institutions. And he had access to documents revealing that the Reich was preparing for war, that food shortages were expected as a result — and that priorities for survival were being prepared that did not include the patients of Bethel.

But Bethel was merely the start, as the Zossen files revealed. The Reich was about to descend to an unimaginable level of inhumanity.

THE CONSPIRATORS WITH WHOM BONHOEFFER ASSOCIATED were not the only group contemplating action against Hitler. In fact, in 1939 some members of the inner circle of the German Supreme Command seriously discussed a coup, a story related after the war to OSS Captain Lidell Hart by General Edgar Röhricht, who in 1939 assisted in preparing for the invasion of France. Röhricht told Hart the General Staff thought such an invasion was an act of insanity.

Recognize that the General Staff was filled with old-school Prussians with an unfavorable view of Hitler, for a number of reasons: Prussian pride and arrogance (two sides of the same coin), disdain for Hitler’s origins in Austria and his military rank in World War I (corporal), and the invasion of Poland, which itself convinced many of der Führer’s insanity. In fact, some on the General Staff had confirmed a diagnosis of Hitler’s madness in consultation with one of Germany’s most eminent psychiatrists at the University of Berlin — Karl Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s father.

But the coup was ultimately nixed by Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces General Friedrich Fromm for, among other reasons, an inability to assure the participation by the infantry.

IT IS NOT KNOWN WHEN BONHOEFFER DECIDED to cross the line from consulting to actively aiding the Abwehr, a military intelligence organization actively involved in resistance to Hitler.

By June 1940, Germany had already invaded the Netherlands and Belgium. On June 14, Bonhoeffer and his friend Eberhard Bethge were at a café in Memel, Prussia (now Lithuania), when they heard a broadcast announcing the capitulation of France.

The café erupted in cheers and song. Bethge was shocked to see Bonhoeffer joining in the singing — and in giving the Nazi salute.

Bonhoeffer, apparently jubilant, whispered to his friend: “Are you crazy? Raise your arm! We’ll have to run risks for many things, but this silly salute is not one of them.” Bethge realized Bonhoeffer was trying to blend in unnoticed, so as “to be left alone to do the things God was calling him to do.”

Bonhoeffer had crossed the line.

AS THE WAR RAGED AND THE YEARS PASSED, Bonhoeffer, in the guise of an Abwehr agent, approached his well-placed English contacts, first in Geneva, then in Norway and Sweden, to deliver messages intended for England’s leadership. But his entreaties were rebuffed. After the failed diplomacy, it became clear to his friend Bethge that Bonhoeffer had reconsidered his role as a conspirator.

It is difficult to imagine how one makes a decision of this magnitude, more so because of how his action conflicts with Biblical teachings. But we are talking about a set of extraordinary circumstances with no parallel in my lifetime. If, knowing what we know, we were able to traverse the years to confront a young Hitler, would any rational person not support killing him to prevent war and Holocaust?

The Nazis led millions of those deemed undesirable — Jews, homosexuals, Christians of Jewish ancestry, dissenters and others — to a fate unknown to them. But Bonhoeffer knew their fate; he had seen the Zossen files. Such a realization of pending events required acting to prevent them at any cost.

The cost was steep: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, arrested in April 1943, spent two years in prison before he was executed April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg concentration camp.

In his book “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” Eric Metaxas quotes the camp doctor, H. Fischer-Hullstrung, who had met Bonhoeffer only the day before.

“I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer … kneeling on the floor praying most fervently to his God. I was deeply moved by the way this most lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. In the almost fifty years I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

Two weeks later, Allied troops entered Flossenburg.

Dennis Lund graduated from California State University-Long Beach with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1981 and has resided in Benicia since 1992.