Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

Author:Eric Metaxas [Metaxas, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Religion, ebook, General, book, Biography & Autobiography, Religious
ISBN: 9781595551382
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2009-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

MARS ASCENDING

1938

Confirmands today are like young soldiers marching to war, the war of Jesus Christ against the gods of this world. It is a war that demands the commitment of one’s whole life. Is not God, our Lord, worthy of this struggle?

—DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

My dear lady, we have fallen into the hands of criminals. How could I ever have imagined it!

—HJALMAR SCHACHT, FORMER HEAD OF THE GERMAN REICHSBSBANK

The year 1938 was hugely tumultuous for Germany and for Europe. It was certainly so for the Bonhoeffers, and for Dietrich it did not begin well at all. On January 11 he was arrested at a Confessing Church meeting in Dahlem. Gestapo officers appeared, arrested all thirty people, and interrogated them at the Alexanderplatz headquarters for seven hours before releasing them. But the biggest news of the day was that Bonhoeffer learned he was henceforth banned from Berlin. The Gestapo put him and Fritz Onnasch aboard a train bound for Stettin that evening.

The first term of the collective pastorates had begun, and Bonhoeffer was grateful he had not been banned from continuing that work. But to be cut off from Berlin now, when political developments were beginning to look encouraging, was devastating. He expected to commute between Berlin and Pomerania, much as he had been doing since 1935. His parents’ home was the center of his universe, and at this moment, with the Nazi government beginning to wobble and raise everyone’s hopes that Hitler might be on his way out, it was a terrible time to be kept away.

But knowing many people in high places, Bonhoeffer was almost never without recourse. He made a plan to meet his parents to discuss what might be done. He obviously couldn’t travel to them, so in early February they came to Stettin and met him at the home of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. Karl Bonhoeffer’s eminence was somehow brought to bear on the situation, and he persuaded the Gestapo to make the ban exclusively related to work. So Dietrich could still travel to Berlin for personal and family matters.

Bonhoeffer had many reasons to hope that Hitler’s luck would suddenly run out. From his position in the Ministry of Justice, Hans von Dohnanyi saw and heard things before they were filtered by the Nazi propaganda machine, and he conveyed what he learned to his extended family. The previous fall, Hitler’s government was put in a difficult spot when Hjalmar Schacht, the architect of Germany’s booming economy, resigned in a public protest. In January 1938, events began to unfold that would lead to another major crisis. Perhaps they were all on the threshold of the departure of the irascible vegetarian who had been destroying their country for the previous five years.

Hitler’s troubles began on November 5, 1937. He summoned his generals to a meeting in which he spelled out his plans for war. As anyone paying attention had known, Hitler had been intent on war from the beginning. Now it was at hand. He told the stunned generals that

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