If Only My Opa Met Bonhoeffer

Last week I told the story of my Opa. As a soldier in Hitler’s army, he played a part in the systemic racism and genocide that took place in Europe during WWII. Whenever he shared his memories with us, he always made sure to mention that his attitudes toward other races changed after he encountered them in real life and realized that they were just as human as he was.

It took me a long time to reconcile my Opa’s past with the person I grew up knowing. I realized that the stories he heard about Hitler, Germany, and people who were different than him had prejudiced his views of humanity. The stories blinded him to the oppression and violence that was going on around him. That is why we cannot take stories for granted.

If only my Opa heard other stories. If only he met Bonhoeffer. That name might sound familiar to you. Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become well-known for his involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. From the beginning of Hitler’s reign, Bonhoeffer was a part of the counter-narrative (an alternative story) in Germany, which eventually cost him his life.

Born to an upper-middle class family in 1906, Bonhoeffer spent most of his formative years in Berlin where his father taught at the university. The Bonhoeffers were aware and engaged in the political and social climate of their day. Not only did they lose a family member during WWI, but they saw the German attitudes change because of the limits to progress placed on them by the Treaty of Versailles.

The devastation and despair felt after WWI was strong among the German people; so, when a charismatic leader came along who promised to pick them up from the rubble and return them to prosperity, it was no surprise that he was quickly embraced. By the time Adolf Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, Bonhoeffer had already completed both of his doctorates. He was a pastor, theologian, teacher, and writer. From the start, Bonhoeffer noticed and criticized the narrative of the Nazi party and their leader.

The day after Hitler was named Reich Chancellor, Bonhoeffer took to the radio with his talk, The Führer and the Individual in the Younger Generation. He warned the German people that the way Hitler was portrayed as the Führer was idolatrous. Hitler, in the highest position of the nation, was granted unprecedented authority and power.

Bonhoeffer’s predictions came true. Hitler was idolized in Germany and thought of as more than human. Most of the German churches were likewise consumed by this narrative. In their own pursuit for power within Nazi Germany, they decorated their communion tables with swastikas and hung Hitler’s picture in their sanctuaries. Accepting Nazi policy as church policy was an inevitable next step.

Three months after becoming Führer, Hitler introduced the Aryan Paragraph which limited the rights and freedoms of Jews in German society. Most Germans believed the Nazi idea that Jews were at fault for Germany’s loss. Some may not have agreed, but they didn’t want to stand in the way of the law. Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, wrote The Church and the Jewish Question, in which he implored the Church to stand up against the government.

Bonhoeffer and his seminary students in Finkenwalde.

Bonhoeffer wasn’t alone in countering the stories told by the Nazi state. There were other Christians who joined together to form the Confessing Church. Whereas the German Christians were happy to accommodate Hitler in order to share in his power, the Confessing Church opposed the Nazi regime, even though it meant personal and professional alienation. Bonhoeffer became the director of an illegal seminary of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde, until it was shut down by the Gestapo in September of 1937.

By 1938, the stories Germans believed blossomed into overt racism, discrimination, and violence. The narrative that had been fuelled by Hitler for so long ignited into willful hate. November 9th was known as Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass.” Hitler told Germans to raid and burn Jewish synagogues, homes, businesses, and schools. They did as he said, believing they were right to do so. Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, saw the evil of this night and lamented with the rest of the world. The only thing he ever wrote in his Bible was the date of Kristallnacht in the margins of Psalm 74:

“They burned your sanctuary to the ground;
They defiled the dwelling place of your Name.
They said in their hearts, ‘We will crush them completely!’
They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.”

As the war went on, the Confessing Church crumbled and Bonhoeffer was banned from most of public life. Through family connections, he joined the Abwehr (military intelligence) as a double agent. He used his ecumenical connections to inform those on the outside about what was going on within Germany. He got involved in a conspiracy, Operation 7, to smuggle Jews out of Germany. He was also part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler - a plan that eventually failed.

Bonhoeffer had multiple opportunities to leave Germany, but he kept returning in order to fight against the tyranny of his own country. In April of 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his involvement in Operation 7. He spent the rest of his life in prison. On April 9, 1945, a month before the fall of the Nazi state, he was executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and my Opa were two very different people. It’s not that one was wholly bad and the other wholly good, but they both had a fundamentally different narrative about Germany. Bonhoeffer didn’t believe what most Germans were told about the Jews, the Church, or Hitler. I often wonder what would have happened if my Opa ever met Bonhoeffer. Would it have made a difference? Why did so many Germans believe the stories they were told? How was Bonhoeffer able to see things most Germans didn’t? Why was my Opa willing to give his life for Germany when Bonhoeffer gave his life to fight against it? What does that teach us about how we should handle the stories we listen to and tell other people? That’s the topic for next week’s blog.