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As we approach April 9, 2020, we approach the 75th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's execution. If you know Bonhoeffer, you likely know him as the pacifist turned would-be-assassin. This episode explores the evidence for and against Bonhoeffer's participation in assassination attempts against Hitler, as well as Bonhoeffer's life and example.
A podcast focusing on issues related to nonviolence, and a member of the Kingdom Outpost.
Welcome back to the 4th Way podcast. Today's episode is part 1 of a special edition, which is about the man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Since Bonhoeffer was executed on April 9, 1945, and this April 9th, 2020 will mark the 75th anniversary of his execution. I thought that it would be a fitting episode to, dedicate to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So many of you probably know that, the name Bonhoeffer.
Derek Kreider:He is famous as, the pacifist who turned assassin in order to confront one of the greatest evils of our age, Hitler and the Nazi regime. Due to his rebellion, Bonhoeffer was executed by the regime shortly before liberation of, the extermination camps in Germany and the defeat of Nazi Germany. In a book that I just read, Stanley Herawas wrote the foreword. And, Herawas talks about how, Bonhoeffer is one of the most famous, pacifists or former pacifists as some as many would see it, is often the first issue brought up to him when he talks about pacifism. People will say, yeah.
Derek Kreider:Well, what about Bonhoeffer? And to the majority of people, Bonhoeffer represents a hero in his wake up call to reality and his renunciation of idealistic pacifism. And they they see Bonhoeffer as being just, you know, in theory, a pacifist. But then when he's faced with a great evil like Hitler, you know, he chooses to actually do something about it. And that's the way Bonhoeffer's viewed.
Derek Kreider:I always accepted that narrative, of Bonhoeffer's life even after I became a pacifist. To me, the story was interesting, but Bonhoeffer's actions just seemed irrelevant to a logical case. The way that I saw it was that it's kind of like, monogamy being proven false by Christian leaders who have affairs or, or getting a divorce. Even though those things might go against their, their ideology and convictions, they do it anyway. They they perform those sins.
Derek Kreider:And we wouldn't say that that disproves the Bible's teaching of monogamy just because they fail at it. And that's how I how I used to see it. Now who cares if Bonhoeffer failed to live perfectly? But after, this is actually my second go through of this episode, because I sent it off to one of the authors of the book that I just read on Bonhoeffer, entitled Bonhoeffer the Assassin. And he critiqued this aspect by saying that, well, actually, it's it's a little bit more significant than that.
Derek Kreider:And so he's with the anti pacifist here, where he he said, the problem with Bonhoeffer is, you know, if if somebody has an affair, if a pastor has an affair, he wouldn't say that he changed his moral ethic, his his belief about whether or not having an affair was good or not. He just failed at the standard. However, what what people are arguing here with Bonhoeffer is that Bonhoeffer did not merely, compromise the ethic, but his theology changed. So he actually thought that, doing violence was good. That's the way that it's it's generally portrayed.
Derek Kreider:So this is not a a moral compromise. This is an ideological shift, and that's a bit more significant. Now we could still argue and discuss, you know, well, he shifted his ideology because, he felt like he needed to justify himself. You know, he he was a weak pacifist, and so he said he changed his ideology, but, he just did that to in in order to be able to to do this action. And people do that all the time with sins.
Derek Kreider:You know, people might have a conviction about pornography, and then justify it like, well, you know, if I this is better than, going out and actually having sex, or this is to help me calm my urges so I don't do something worse, or whatever the excuse is and whatever the sin is. People people, justify themselves in the moment when they want to do something. Now another way that you could look at at what Bonhoeffer did, instead of self justification, you could make a case that Bonhoeffer thought he was doing something wrong but did it anyway. Parents do this with kids sometimes. Parents will say, I know I shouldn't lie to my kids, but and then fill in the excuse.
Derek Kreider:Right? You you find that there's maybe some greater good that you want to uphold even though you know you shouldn't do an evil to accomplish that. So one could make the case that maybe that's what Bonhoeffer did. But that's not the case that these authors are going to make. These authors are going to say that Bonhoeffer's life was actually, once he converted to pacifism, it was lived out in a pacifist manner.
Derek Kreider:Now, consequentialists aren't going to like this. They are going to argue that, Bonhoeffer changed his idealism. They want to co opt Bonhoeffer really badly because, consequentialists view pacifism as idealistic. They think Bonhoeffer's life shows, how real trials and reality, change people's minds in the face of of great evil. And Bonhoeffer is their case in point, so they like him.
Derek Kreider:But in this new book called Bon it's not really new, it's from 2013. But in this book, entitled Bonhoeffer the Assassin, the authors are going to argue that Bonhoeffer maintained his pacifism and they use both historical reasons for this as well as internal reasons from Bonhoeffer's own writings. And that's one thing I've I've found particularly good about this book is that it's a holistic case. They try to get inside Bonhoeffer's head by showing his explicit writings and what he said, but they also show historical detail to show why it seems, unreasonable to believe that Bonhoeffer could actually, have have made an assassination attempt on Hitler. So this case will be laid out in 2 parts.
Derek Kreider:The first part will be external evidence like historical facts and such, and the second part will be I'll label internal evidence, which will be from Bonhoeffer's writings mostly. So let's take a look at the external evidence. Bonhoeffer had a major ideological transformation between 1929 and 1931. In 1929, Bonhoeffer gave a lecture in Barcelona, which justified murder, particularly murder for the state, as well as some other, he discussed some other conundrums, the, moral conundrums. But at some point in the years between, 1929 and 31, Bonhoeffer made a very big transition and actually began to identify as a pacifist.
Derek Kreider:And he actually explicitly identified as a pacifist. He called himself that. Bonhoeffer began to push back against the Nazis and support the oppressed people while he was a pacifist. Interestingly, the, the majority of the church in Germany who weren't pacifists sided with Hitler and the war machine. But Bonhoeffer, the pacifist, who, you know, supposedly pacifism is passive, he actually was one of the few voices pushing back against the Nazi regime, getting himself into trouble being called an enemy of the state and all that.
Derek Kreider:A little bit later, Bonhoeffer even created a community where he discipled leaders and taught explicitly pacifism and advocated conscientious objection, Being a conscientious objector. This is the community from which, the book Life Together came out. And you have to recognize that that advocating, being a conscientious objector was a really big deal back then. Because if you said, I'm not going to join the army, it's not like you just had, you were just looked down upon. You were executed.
Derek Kreider:It's, it's an executable offense. Bonhoeffer, recognizing that he was going to get drafted most likely, ended up joining the German intelligence agency through the close contacts that he that he had in order, we believe, to avoid conscription. Because if he joined the German intelligence agency, he did not have to go and, and fight. So it seemed evidence seems to indicate that, Bonhoeffer did not do this to get at Hitler, but actually he did this in order to avoid conscription. And we'll we'll come back to some of the evidence that shows that in a little bit.
Derek Kreider:During his time in the German intelligence agency, Bonhoeffer helped a number of Jews to flee. He used his position to help Jews escape Germany. Because, the intelligence agency was kind of a known hotbed of, of spies and such. At one point, the, the the Germans began to look really closely and sift through documents and and watch, what was going on. And they discovered, Bonhoeffer's helping of the Jews to flee and and some missing money and such that that he was able to use to help that happen.
Derek Kreider:And so Bonhoeffer was explicitly convicted for avoiding military service and helping others to do the same. That's what he was charged with. And the irony is that, if you do believe that Bonhoeffer remained a pacifist, that he ended up being killed for his moral consistency, yet today we praise him for the opposite. We praise him for, his moral inconsistency and and changing his his position on the topic. During Bonhoeffer's time in the German intelligence or closely tied to it, there are only 5 assassination attempts which would be reasonable to assume Bonhoeffer could have been a part of.
Derek Kreider:There was, there were 2 attempts done before Bonhoeffer joined the German intelligence, and we we think that he knew of or or at least had a strong possibility of knowing of, most of, if not all of these attempts because of his close connection, with with some family who was in the intelligence agency who were parts of the plots. So there were two plots before Bonhoeffer joined the German Intelligence. And even though maybe he knew about those, it is it doesn't seem like he would have really been able to have much of a hand in them because he didn't have a position where he could help. There were 2 attempts on Hitler's life, connected to Bonhoeffer's agency, an agency of 12,000 workers here. So there were there were plenty of other people who were, spies and such.
Derek Kreider:I think they estimate around 50. But there were 2 attempts on Hitler's life while Bonhoeffer was at the agency, but both of those fell through and were not discovered. In one of them, an individual, replaced some bottles of wine that were gonna be transported on Hitler's plane. He replaced those with explosives, but for whatever reason, the fuse did not go off. And so when the plane landed, the guy quickly figured out how to how to get the bombs out and replace it with wine, and it was not discovered.
Derek Kreider:There's another one where Hitler was getting a tour of some some place, and the guy giving the tour had a suicide bomb vest on. Well, Hitler something came up, and Hitler left, like, 2 minutes into the 10 minute tour. And the the guy quickly went to the bathroom and defused the vest. So nobody no German, army official or anybody found out about those 2 attempts, and so nobody was arrested for that. Nobody found that out.
Derek Kreider:So Bonhoeffer definitely was not charged with or arrested or executed for those 2 attempts. And then the last attempt, would have been one that transpired after Bonhoeffer's arrest, and that is the the, the incident that the movie Valkyrie is is, with Tom Cruise is famous for. So there were 2 that happened, like, way back in 1939 before Bonhoeffer joined the German intelligence, 2 that were never discovered while Bonhoeffer was in the German intelligence, and one which happened after Bonhoeffer, was arrested and put in jail. So it it really seems like they're just you cannot link Bonhoeffer's execution to, to any of those assassinate assassination attempts on Hitler because there was no opportunity there, but also because Bonhoeffer's explicit charges were that he was subverting the government, subverting the government by avoiding conscription and by helping others to, avoid Germany as well. Now he did have relationships with very close relationships with some of the conspirators, And we also know that he was using his influence to seek guaranteed peace.
Derek Kreider:So we know that because Bonhoeffer was out of the country and he had close connections with the United States and Britain, and some other countries and Karl Barth in where is he? Sweden, maybe. We know that Bonhoeffer had connections elsewhere and that he was trying to use those to guarantee peace. So he was saying, hey. Look.
Derek Kreider:People are trying to take Hitler down. If Hitler goes down, can you can we have an understood guarantee for peace? Because we don't want people to come in here and take advantage of us, etcetera. So what we do know of Bonhoeffer's involvement was that he was working on the peace aspect. We have no evidence of Bonhoeffer condoning, planning, or participating in violence whatsoever.
Derek Kreider:No charges from the government. We have, no just nothing, that that would nail Bonhoeffer down to having participated in or proved of violence. Now, we don't really know Bonhoeffer's conversations with all of the conspirators, but we do have a framework for what that that might have looked like. 1 of Bonhoeffer's former students talks about how he felt so ashamed when he came back from the front and he talked with Bonhoeffer. Because Bonhoeffer knew the terrible things that they they had to do or that were done because his students wrote him letters about what was going on, executing civilians and such.
Derek Kreider:And this guy just he could barely look Bonhoeffer in the eyes, but he said that Bonhoeffer was gracious to him in his context. He talked to him, asked him how he was doing, didn't condemn, and just loved him and met him where he was at, even though the the student knew Bonhoeffer's convictions. So we can we can imagine that it may have been somewhat the same while Bonhoeffer is working with these other people who are good, who have different convictions about, and are in a different situation and are seeking to undermine Hitler and this evil regime. Bonhoeffer and his conversation may have held his convictions and met them where they were at. He may have not approved of what they were doing or may have said, I'm not going to do that myself, but I do want to work peace.
Derek Kreider:And he went and and, and worked within his context of conviction. Now some people might say that is a compromised position, and his refusal to, out those individuals who were seeking the death of Hitler, maybe that makes him culpable, and maybe it does. But if Bonhoeffer was trying to do the best that he knew how in a very difficult situation. And the most you can pin on him is that he didn't tell on people he knew were plotting Hitler's death. I mean, it's it's hard to argue that he then threw off his ideal of pacifism.
Derek Kreider:Maybe you would say that he was an imperfect pacifist, but to argue that his whole ideal shifted is just not something that you're gonna be able to do from the evidence. Let's go ahead and take a look at the internal evidence then. The majority of the book, is actually dedicated to this aspect and goes very deep. And I'm just gonna scratch the surface. Bonhoeffer considered that he had a true conversion when he fully saw and embraced Christ in the Sermon on the Mount sometime post 1929.
Derek Kreider:So Bonhoeffer said he really only became a Christian. He converted after he was already a a pastor, after 1929 when he truly saw Christ. After his conversion, he began to label himself as a pacifist explicitly and taught against joining the army, advocated loving enemies. He subverted German injustices. He railed against the church's nationalism, and he himself avoided military service.
Derek Kreider:In 1944, by his own admission, just, a year or less before his death, he held a, he made the statement that I have held a consistent trajectory since my conversion. And that's what he said. He said that he his trajectory has been consistent since his conversion. Now, we can say, well, what exactly does that mean? Does that mean he's remained a Christian, or does that mean his core beliefs?
Derek Kreider:And that's what it seems to indicate, that his core beliefs have remained the same since his conversion. The place where people like to try to convict Bonhoeffer of his changing ideals is, in what they argue is a shift from Bonhoeffer's idealism to more of a, Nybarian realism. So, in in one of Bonhoeffer's last works that wasn't completed, he he emphasizes his disdain for absolutism. And the this disdain for absolutes seems to some, to many, to be indicative of his acceptance of, Niebuhr's realism and this idea that we live in a fallen world. We just kinda have to do what we have to do, and, so, therefore, don't throw these absolutes in my face.
Derek Kreider:But what people fail to understand is that Bonhoeffer was not throwing off objective morality and pacifism, but rather he was just he was talking about the grounding of those things. And the grounding of those things, rather than being in some list that is absolute, is found in an individual who is absolutely real. So Bonhoeffer grounded morality not in some objective standard of laws outside of God, but he grounded them in God himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Absolute ideals produce legalism and don't require grace to complete. But, being in a relationship with Christ and being like him requires grace and produces community and life.
Derek Kreider:You know, you can be a moralistic pacifist who hates enemies and condemns former students who join the army, all while not harming other people. Right? That would if Bonhoeffer was a moralistic pacifist who based absolutes on, just this list of things, then Bonhoeffer could have been a pacifist that didn't harm people while hating enemies and judging his students and not meeting them where they were at. Or, like Bonhoeffer did, you can be a a declared pacifist because you follow Jesus Christ whose pacifism isn't just some ideal outside of himself, but is a fruit of walking with Jesus Christ. And that's what Bonhoeffer is doing.
Derek Kreider:He wasn't saying there aren't things that are absolutely true and absolutely moral. He's saying that Jesus Christ is the absolute, and whatever is like him, whatever is relationally with him is what's good. And Bonhoeffer would say that harming other people, doing violence to other people, is something that does not look like Christ. Unfortunately, this this talk, of absolutes and a disdain for it makes people say, well, Bonhoeffer was just just a realist who recognizes, like, his 1929 self that, there are all these moral conundrums, and we we can't know, morality. It's not this this absolute thing.
Derek Kreider:But that's not what Bonhoeffer himself seems to indicate. The authors of the book spend much, much more time on this case than I have spent here. You should definitely check it out. I learned a lot about Bonhoeffer, Bart, Niebuhr, history, ethics, Germany, and a lot more. The point is that you you really can't get Bonhoeffer the assassin from the evidence.
Derek Kreider:It's not something that that sticks out so clearly, yet everybody seems to be so sure of it. It might be true. Maybe. But, but the evidence seems to indicate that it's very unlikely. Seems to me that the surety we have of Bonhoeffer the assassin, of of that narrative, shows us more our preconceived ideas than than truth.
Derek Kreider:You know, we want to self justify our violence and our, refusal to recognize nonviolent action as being Christ like. And so Bonhoeffer is a nice notch in our belts to to help us feel better about continuing in that in that ideology. Bonhoeffer is a hero for failing to assassinate Hitler violently because he held to his convictions, and he was one of the only people who spoke out because he recognized that truth right, the sword from our mouths, and and our testimony is what Christ calls us to. Unfortunately, Bonhoeffer is rarely recognized for helping Jews, for creating community, for discipling, young people, and for being a voice in the darkness. It's just really sad to me that that we feel the need for Bonhoeffer to be violent for us to elevate him.
Derek Kreider:I hope you take a deeper look at Bonhoeffer's life, and, coming directly from a friend who studied, at at, Bonhoeffer's place over in in Germany and, and talked with a lot of the Germans who were there and who are experts on him, they said, whatever you do, don't read Metaxas' version of Bonhoeffer because it's just so bad. But that's the only one anyone knows. So make sure you you do some research and figure out some good sources to get. In part 2, I am going to explore some of the author's and Anne Bonhoeffer's specific ideas that stood out to me in relation to our topic of consequentialism. And I wanna pull those out and expound on them, and, show you a little bit more about Bonhoeffer and his ideology, and how that impacts our lives.
Derek Kreider:That's all for now. So peace. And since I'm a pacifist, and I say it, I mean