TWENTY-FIVE
SOUNDING THE ALARM
1941
On October 5, 1941, Jews in Berlin began receiving letters telling them their homes had been scheduled for what was being called an “evacuation.” On the night of October 16, they were taken from their homes and gathered at a local synagogue for deportation. One of the people who received such a notice was a sixty-year-old woman who had been a longtime friend of the Bonhoeffer family. She was told to leave her home and report to a nearby train station. There, she was herded, along with hundreds of others, onto a cattle car.
EVENTS OF 1941
•September—Jews are required to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.
•October—Bonhoeffer is the first to report the mass evacuations of Jews from Berlin, Cologne, and other cities.
•December—Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The United States enters the war.
As soon as he heard this, Bonhoeffer set to work gathering information. He found that some 1,600 Jews had been rounded up and deported by train from Berlin, some at a train station just a mile from his house. Jews who worked at the Siemens munitions plant were taken straight from the factory floor to the transit depots. In just three weeks, sixty thousand Jews had vanished from Berlin.
“Exact numbers are not known at this point,”1 Bonhoeffer wrote in a report to his coconspirators. But as more and more notices went out to Jewish families, he said, they knew what was in store for them. “The despair is unprecedented.”2 He also included information about mass deportations from elsewhere in Germany: Jews from Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Elberfeld were being sent to Poland.
A few days later, he added to his report, warning that more deportations were scheduled for the nights of October 23 and 28. Soon, flyers began going up in neighborhoods near the Bonhoeffer home: “Every German who in any way supports a Jew . . . even through friendly encounter, commits a betrayal of our people.”3
Sick with pneumonia, Bonhoeffer stayed up through the night, working on documentation for Dohnanyi to pass on to the conspirators in the military. He also found a way to sneak a copy of the report out of the country, to one of his contacts in Geneva. It was high treason. It was written proof of Hitler’s plans to rid the country of non-Aryans. And, according to the Berlin State Library, where the original letter is kept, it was the first time anyone had told the outside world what was happening to the Jews of Germany.
A young man, writing from a small, cramped study in his parents’ home, was likely the first to ring the alarm about what would become the Holocaust, a genocide that would kill six million men, women, and children. Reports of the systematic deportation of Jews would not appear in the press for another year. By then, it would be too late for millions of people.
The first report on the mass deportation of Jews was likely a letter written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, dated October 18, 1941
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Bonhoeffer wrote his report in October 1941. In early 1942, Hitler’s men met at a villa in Wannsee to further refine a plan in which Europe would be “combed through from west to east for Jews.”4 But the Nazis were too careful to spell out their plans for the extermination of all eleven million men, women, and children in Europe. Instead, they said Jews would be “eliminated by natural causes”5—coded language for starvation and hard labor. It would be, they decreed, the “Final Solution.” In 1942 alone, more than 4.5 million people would be killed in concentration camps. It was one of the “most astounding years of murder in the whole history of mankind,” according to historian Mark Roseman.6
TWENTY-SIX
LOVE IN WARTIME
1942
On April 10, 1942, a dense, soupy fog shrouded the coast of Norway as Bonhoeffer paced the ferry terminal. It was his third trip out of the country as a double agent. He had come to Norway a few days earlier, ostensibly on a mission for the Abwehr; in reality, he was there to meet with foreign officials and convince them that the plot to assassinate Hitler was real. Bonhoeffer was eager to get home and report to the conspirators, but the fog meant that no boats would be leaving that day.
The delay, however, would prove fateful. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, a wealthy German landowner and military man, was also stranded at the same ferry terminal. Moltke had already expressed misgivings about what he saw in the streets of Berlin. Every day, he said, “Jews are being rounded up. Then they are sent off with what they can carry. . . . How can anyone know these things and walk around free?” He grappled with his conscience, wondering, “What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time?”1
But Moltke, like many in the aristocracy, was morally opposed to assassinating Hitler. He was more interested in preparing for a democratic Germany after Hitler fell. As they waited for the fog to lift, the two men took a long walk on the beach to the chalky cliffs of a nearby town. Moltke said he objected to a violent removal of Hitler; Bonhoeffer, the former pacifist, argued that the conspirators needed to take up arms. God would forgive them.
After the weather broke and the two men sailed home, Moltke brought Bonhoeffer’s words to a gathering of military and civilian leaders at his country estate in Kreisau a few weeks later. It was at that meeting that the Kreisau Circle was formed. The members of this group found the soldiers who would carry out the assassination attempt.
EVENTS OF 1942
•January—The Final Solution for the extermination of the Jews is adopted.
•May—The British begin bombing Germany.
•June—Bonhoeffer meets Maria von Wedemeyer.
THE KREISAU CIRCLE
There were several resistance groups in existence in Germany by 1942. Each cell operated underground, often without contact or awareness of the others. The Kreisau Circle was a group of aristocrats mostly interested in forming a government after the fall of the Nazis. The Oster-Canaris ring was a group of military men who, after witnessing some of Hitler’s atrocities, vowed to take up arms against him. Hans Oster was an army general in charge of counterespionage at the Abwehr; he and Wilhelm Canaris, an admiral who led the Abwehr, gave Dohnanyi the freedom to collect evidence against the Nazis and to hire Bonhoeffer as a spy.
When Bonhoeffer returned from Norway, his brother and brothers-in-law were waiting for him at their parents’ home. They didn’t say much, but invited Dietrich to sit down at the piano and play a few songs. The whole family, including the wives and children, gathered around the piano and sang. Meanwhile, Dohnanyi leaned over and whispered in Dietrich’s ear. He had bad news: The Gestapo was watching Dietrich. Dohnanyi’s own phone had been tapped and his letters were being intercepted.
Bonhoeffer drew up a will and gave it to his friend Eberhard Bethge; he didn’t want to alarm his parents. But the conspirators would use these family musical evenings for some time to come—as cover for their meetings.
Back in Berlin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer strolled beneath the linden trees, smoking cigarettes. He put on his tuxedo and went to the opera. He went to the ballet, to the movies, and out to dinner with friends. He had even managed to visit his favorite haberdashery when he was in Geneva.
Meanwhile, friends began to wonder: How was he able to travel to Switzerland, England, and Norway during wartime? How was he able to enjoy himself while his former students had been drafted and were fighting and dying? What had happened to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the firebrand pastor? He was working for the Abwehr. Had he sold out to the Nazis?
Bonhoeffer could confide in no one, not even his closest friends. He wasn’t free to write about this agony in his diary, for fear it would fall into the wrong hands. In fact, he kept up a steady stream of letters to Sabine with bland and cheerful descriptions of his travels and writings. He couldn’t even tell his twin sister how he really felt.
In the middle of this lonely and dangerous time, Bonhoeffer fell in love.
He had gone back to the Pomeranian hills to continue his writing and to see an old friend who had supported the seminary of the Confessing Churc
h when it was in existence nearby. While he was at the home of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, her eighteen-year-old granddaughter arrived for a visit. Could this be the little girl Bonhoeffer had taught in confirmation class years ago? Pretty and vivacious, Maria von Wedemeyer was confident, sunny—and opinionated. She told Bonhoeffer she read his book before bed at night—but said she could barely finish a sentence before falling asleep!
Her passion for life was contagious. And it was just what the disheartened young theologian needed. He was smitten.
Because of their age difference—Dietrich was thirty-six and Maria was eighteen—her mother didn’t approve of the two marrying right away. Besides, it was wartime, her mother said, and the future was uncertain. They should wait a year. And so the two wrote letters to each other almost every day.
What no one knew was that the Gestapo had already found an accounting entry relating to the smuggling of currency to Switzerland for Operation 7. They interrogated an Abwehr employee who gave them three names: Hans von Dohnanyi, Hans Oster (one of Dohnanyi’s superiors at the Abwehr), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The conspirators didn’t know it yet, but they were running out of time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE NOOSE GROWS TIGHTER
1942
Servants were removing the dinner dishes and serving coffee at a country parsonage where Bonhoeffer was visiting a friend. One of the dinner guests, a young staff lieutenant in the army high command, had been oddly silent all night. Now, he turned to Bonhoeffer and asked a question.
“Shall I shoot?” he said. “I can get inside the Führer’s headquarters with my revolver.”1
EVENTS OF NOVEMBER 1942
•Hitler’s troops suffer defeats in Russia.
•British troops defeat German army in North Africa.
It was November 1942, and the conspiracy was at a low point. Here was a young man, Werner von Haeften, offering to undertake the most dangerous mission imaginable. The conspirators had been gathering evidence against Hitler and plotting to kill him now for two years. They were playing a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the Gestapo, their every move monitored, their mail opened, their phones tapped. They spoke in code because they knew that Nazi spies were everywhere. This hotheaded young man could bring the conspiracy crashing down and send Bonhoeffer and the others to their deaths.
Bonhoeffer tried to dissuade him. Any attempt on Hitler’s life had to be well planned, and the conspirators needed to have new leadership in place ready to run the country. An unplanned assassination might only make things worse, or it could turn Hitler into a martyr. And surely Haeften would die in the attempt.
But the young officer wouldn’t be pacified. What does one life matter compared to all those who might be saved by getting rid of the madman? he asked Bonhoeffer. So, he said, “Shall I shoot?”
Bonhoeffer said he couldn’t make the decision for him. He simply said what he had told Dohnanyi and Moltke. No one would emerge from Hitler’s reign without guilt—those who did nothing or those who took action.
Haeften returned to his military duties. Later, he would play a key role in an attempt on Hitler’s life.
Meanwhile, Bonhoeffer kept up his dangerous overseas trips as a spy and courier. He snuck into Italy, Switzerland, and Sweden, pleading for help from his contacts there. By now Dohnanyi’s Chronicle of Shame included more evidence: films of concentration camp atrocities in Poland, a copy of the instructions for the campaign against the Jews. Surely, Bonhoeffer thought, this would be enough to open the eyes of the world to Hitler’s cruelty. Each time he traveled abroad, the Gestapo kept an eye on him. And each time, his pleas for help were met with complete silence.
It was his faith in the righteousness of their mission that kept Bonhoeffer from total despair. “I am hopeful that the day might not be too far when the bad dream will be over and we shall meet again,”2 he wrote to Sabine. It was the last letter she would receive from her brother as a free man.
Meanwhile, the noose was tightening. Bonhoeffer knew he was being followed; he had even heard a rumor that he was going to be arrested any day. And so he began to keep a bogus diary about his travels—to confuse and mislead the Gestapo.
The fake diary was filled with boring descriptions about the weather and the sights in the towns he visited. He also slipped in little messages he hoped the Nazis would see. He called an especially dull Nazi official “a very . . . smart old world officer,” and described another officer, a well-known bore, as a “bon vivant.”3
Whenever he went out, he left the diary open on his desk—in case the Gestapo searched his parents’ home. A few months later, when the two Nazi officials came to his study, it was lying there.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS
1943
One night in March 1943, Hans von Dohnanyi asked if he could borrow his father-in-law’s car. The car had a special permit, available only to doctors, that allowed it to be driven at night. Dohnanyi raced to catch a train to the German border, where Hitler was visiting to survey the war effort. Inside Dohnanyi’s suitcase was a special fuse, a silent detonator that he would deliver to another member of the conspiracy.
With the Gestapo on their trail, the plotters had decided the time had come to act—whether they had the support of the Allies or not. They would assassinate Hitler now—and then send Bonhoeffer to ask foreign governments to work peacefully with the new German leadership.
By this time, the resistance had grown to include several high-ranking military men. One of them, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, was waiting for the arrival of the fuse. He would rig it to a bomb disguised as a bottle of cognac, and the next day he would sneak the “cognac” onto Hitler’s plane. After the bomb exploded and Hitler’s plane went down, generals connected to the plotters would stage a coup.
Dohnanyi hurried back home and waited. By midday, he got word that the bomb had been placed in the plane’s cargo hold. Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer, and his parents sat by the radio and waited for the news of the explosion. But two hours later, they heard the unbelievable: The bomb had failed to go off. The conspirators were devastated—but relieved that they hadn’t been discovered. And they quickly came up with another plan—which they executed just a few days later.
This time they used two bombs, not one, strapped inside the overcoat of a conspirator in the military, an army officer named Major Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff. Hitler was coming to Gersdorff’s barracks to review some captured weaponry; when he arrived Gersdorff would break a tiny vial of acid that would light the fuse. It would take ten minutes for the bomb to go off; Gersdorff would die in the effort.
The Bonhoeffer family was gathered around the piano at home on March 21, 1943, practicing a song that they planned to sing at their father’s seventy-fifth birthday party. Dietrich was at the keyboard; Ursula’s husband, Rüdiger Schleicher, also a member of the conspiracy, played the violin. As they all sang, Hans von Dohnanyi and Klaus Bonhoeffer kept their eyes on the clock. The bomb would go off—just six miles away—at any minute.
They waited for the phone to ring. Finally, Gersdorff sent word. He’d hit the button releasing the acid as soon as Hitler had arrived; the acid was eating its way toward the fuse when the Führer unexpectedly left! Gersdorff ran into a restroom and tore the bomb apart. Hitler had escaped again.
Gersdorff was never caught. But there was bad news from Dohnanyi’s sources a few days later: Hitler’s men were onto the conspirators.
TWENTY-NINE
CAUGHT
1943–44
On April 5, 1943, when Bonhoeffer called Dohnanyi’s home, a strange voice answered the phone. Bonhoeffer hung up. He knew then that the Gestapo had finally caught up with them. They were searching Dohnanyi’s house right that very minute. His parents’ house would be next.
Calmly he went next door, where his sister Ursula lived. He told her the Gestapo would soon arrive and arrest him. She made him a hearty lunch. It was the last home-cooked meal he would ever have.
; Meanwhile, Hans von Dohnanyi was being arrested, along with his wife, Dietrich’s sister Christel.
Bonhoeffer’s fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, far away in the countryside, wrote in her diary that day, describing a terrible feeling of dread. “Has something bad happened?” she wrote. “I’m afraid it’s something very bad.”1
When a black SS Mercedes pulled up outside his parents’ home, Bonhoeffer was ready. He had opened his diary to a page with a handful of fake entries and hidden his important papers in a secret panel in the attic. His papers would remain there, untouched, for years. He kissed his parents good-bye and left with the two Gestapo agents, his brother Walter’s Bible in his hand.
The next morning, a heel of bread was thrown into Bonhoeffer’s small, dirty cell at Tegel prison. He had to pick it up from the floor to eat it. In the cell next to his, a man was weeping. As Bonhoeffer’s eyes grew used to the dim light, he saw some graffiti on the wall, evidently written by someone who’d been held there before him. “In a hundred years,” it said, “it’ll all be over.”2
For the next twelve days, Bonhoeffer was shackled hand and foot. There was nothing in his cell except a wooden bed, a stool, and a bucket. The door to his cell opened once a day, to bring the food in and the slop out.
His captors soon realized that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was from a prominent family—indeed, the warden was his uncle. Meanwhile, Bonhoeffer had won over the guards with his good behavior. And so they allowed his family to send him small gifts—slippers, shaving cream, writing paper, ink, and tobacco. He and Maria kept up their correspondence, although Bonhoeffer had not told her about his role in the conspiracy as a way of protecting her. He also wrote to his parents. “I do want you to be quite sure that I’m all right. . . . Strangely enough, the discomforts one associates with prison life, the physical hardships, hardly bother me at all.”3