In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—the gentle young scholar who could have stayed at home with his books and his Bible, the pacifist who wept at war movies, the privileged young man who could have easily avoided danger—the answer can only be a resounding “yes.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My first thank-you goes to Rev. Anna Levy-Lyons of the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, who introduced me to the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a sermon before the United States’ invasion of Iraq. At a time when I was questioning how I could protest the actions of my government, she told the story of a young minister who said that to do nothing in the face of evil was evil itself. I would also like to thank the authors Eric Metaxas and Charles Marsh, who wrote compelling narratives of Bonhoeffer. Their work was so important that I thought it had to be brought to the young readers and activists of today. Professor Marsh was exceptionally generous and encouraging about this book when I interviewed him about his work. I would also like to thank Dr. Ruth Tonkiss Cameron, the archivist at the Union Theological Seminary, for her warmth and kindness in talking to me about Bonhoeffer’s time in the United States. Rev. Gottfried Brezger was welcoming and informative when I visited him at the Bonhoeffer home and gathering center in Berlin. And the docents at the Flossenbürg concentration camp pointed me to an obscure piece of scholarship suggesting that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the first person to document the mass deportation of the Jews. I would especially like to thank Dr. David Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, for his meticulous review of this manuscript before publication.
I am exceptionally lucky to have Alessandra Balzer as my editor and champion. Her impeccable editorial judgment and high standards inspire me to write books worthy of her list. Kelsey Murphy of HarperCollins was also enormous help: She worked tirelessly to find just the right images for the book and steered the manuscript through a painstaking process to ensure its accuracy. And I am just as lucky to have Heather Schroder as my agent. She is in my corner no matter what. I would also like to heartily thank Maya Packard and Bethany Reis for their rigorous and respectful copyediting. Rick Grand-Jean, my friend and a World War II aficionado, provided invaluable expertise.
As always, thanks to my husband, Paul, who played “groupie” when we traveled to Germany to research this book and who has always made my work possible, and my children, Brandon, Meaghan, and Matt, who make me want to do work that will make them proud.
TIMELINE
July 28, 1914—World War I begins.
June 28, 1919—The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending World War I.
July 29, 1921—Adolf Hitler is elected leader of the new National Socialist Party, nicknamed the Nazi party.
April 1, 1924—Hitler is sentenced to prison for five years after the Nazis try to take over the German government. While in prison he writes his autobiography and his blueprint for the future of Germany, Mein Kampf.
1930–1931—Dietrich Bonhoeffer studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
January 30, 1933—Hitler wins election as chancellor of Germany after vowing to restore Germany to its former glory.
February 27, 1933—Hitler suspends the constitution, giving his storm troopers emergency powers to intercept private mail, listen in on phone conversations, and round up opponents, with no regard for legalities.
March 1933—The first concentration camp for “political prisoners” is established in Dachau.
April 1, 1933—Hitler announces a boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses.
April 22, 1933—Jews are banned from practicing medicine or law in state agencies.
April 25, 1933—Limits are put on the number of Jewish children who can attend school.
May 6, 1933—Jews are banned from teaching at universities.
May 10, 1933—Students burn thousands of “un-German” books.
September 28, 1933—Spouses of “non-Aryans” are banned from state employment.
September 29, 1933—Jews are barred from working in theater, film, and entertainment.
October, 1933—Jews are prohibited from being journalists, and all German newspapers are placed under Nazi control.
June 30–July 2, 1934—Night of the Long Knives. Hitler’s men round up political opponents in midnight raids.
September 15, 1935—The Nuremberg Laws are passed, safeguarding the purity of “German blood and German honor.” Marriage between “Aryans” and Jews are prohibited. Jews are stripped of their German citizenship.
December 1, 1936—All German children are required to join the Hitler Youth.
September 30, 1938—Germany takes over Czechoslovakian territory.
July 1939—Bonhoeffer flees to New York but immediately decides to return to Germany.
September 1, 1939—Germany invades Poland.
September 3, 1939—Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. World War II begins.
September 27, 1939—Poland surrenders. Hitler announces Germany will attack Belgium.
June 22, 1940—France surrenders to Germany.
April 1941—Germany conquers Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, North Africa.
June 22, 1941—Germany invades Russia.
October 21, 1941—Bonhoeffer is one of the first to report the mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps.
September 1, 1941—Jews are required to wear the yellow Star of David.
January 20, 1942—The Final Solution for the extermination of the Jews is adopted.
June 1942—Bonhoeffer meets Maria von Wedemeyer.
August–September, 1942—Bonhoeffer assists in Operation 7, the escape of fourteen Jews to Switzerland.
November 2, 1942—British troops defeat German army in North Africa.
March 21, 1943—Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff attempts to assassinate Hitler with a pair of bombs hidden in his overcoat. Hitler leaves before the bombs can go off.
April 5, 1943—Bonhoeffer is arrested for financial irregularities associated with Operation 7.
July 1943—Allied troops land in Sicily.
September 1943—Allied troops land in Naples.
September 1943—Soviet troops defeat German troops in Kiev.
June 6, 1944—Allied troops land in Normandy, open a second front against Germany.
July 20, 1944—Claus von Stauffenberg places a bomb under the map table at Hitler’s headquarters. The bomb goes off, killing four people; Hitler escapes relatively unhurt.
August 25, 1944—Paris is liberated. Allied troops arrive at German border.
December 1944—The Germans mount a final offensive, the Battle of the Bulge.
January 1945—The German retreat intensifies.
March 1945—Allied troops cross the Rhine and enter Germany.
April 1945—The Soviets encircle Berlin.
April 9, 1945—Bonhoeffer is executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp.
April 23, 1945—Flossenbürg is liberated.
April 30, 1945—Adolf Hitler commits suicide.
May 7–9, 1945—Germany surrenders.
ENDNOTES
Chapter Two: War Breaks Out
1.Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers: Portrait of a Family (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1994), 18.
Chapter Three: Bonhoeffer Seals His Destiny
1.Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 37.
2.Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 17.
3.Ibid.
4.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 37.
Chapter Five: The Trip That Changed Everything
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 30.
2.Ibid.
Chapter Eight: From Faith to Action
1.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 109.
Chapter Nine: Grappling with the Existence of God
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 94.
2.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 143.
Chapter Ten: A Decisive Experience: Visiting the United States
1.Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. Clifford J. Greene, trans. Douglas W. Stott, vol. 10, Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1982–1931 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 294.
2.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 116.
3.Ibid., 117.
4.Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2010), 109.
5.Ibid., 114.
6.Marsh, Strange Glory, 120.
7.“After Ten Years,” essay by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christmas 1942.
8.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 203.
Chapter Eleven: Heil, Hitler!
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 151.
2.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 125.
3.Ibid., 134.
Chapter Twelve: Speaking Out against the Führer
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 160.
2.“Nazi Camp System,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007720.
Chapter Thirteen: The Aryan Paragraph
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 165.
2.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 154
3.Ibid, 143.
4.Marsh, Strange Glory, 176.
5.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 257.
Chapter Fourteen: Committing Treason
1.“Timeline of Events: Anti-Jewish Boycott,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/anti-jewish-boycott.
2.Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, 75.
Chapter Fifteen: Bonfire of Hatred
1.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 259.
2.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 159.
3.“Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, Introduction,” quote from Adolf Hitler (1939), Facing History and Ourselves, https://www.facinghistory.org/for-educators/educator-resources/readings/school-barbarians.
4.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 162.
5.Ibid.
6.Marsh, Strange Glory, 174.
Chapter Sixteen: A Nazi Church
1.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 168.
2.Ibid., 165.
3.Ibid., 166.
4.Ibid., 193.
5.Ibid., 174.
6.Ibid., 171.
7.Ibid., 180.
Chapter Seventeen: A Different Kind of Resistance
1.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 326.
2.Marsh, Strange Glory, 199.
Chapter Eighteen: Night of the Long Knives
1.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 259.
2.Ibid., 248.
3.“Nuremberg Race Laws: Translation,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007903.
Chapter Nineteen: A Breakaway Church
1.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 411.
2.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 259–60
3.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 45.
4.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 273.
Chapter Twenty: A Conspiracy Begins
1.“Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of the ‘Unfit,’” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled.
2.Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: The Life and Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014), 59.
Chapter Twenty-One: The War Hits Home
1.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 389.
2.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 241; Marsh, Strange Glory, 213.
3.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 242.
Chapter Twenty-Two: A Dark Night of the Soul
1.Ibid., 331.
2.Ruth Tonkiss Cameron (archivist, Union Theological Seminary), in discussion with the author, June 12, 2015.
3.Marsh, Strange Glory, 281.
4.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 332.
5.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 653.
6.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 330.
Chapter Twenty-Three: From Clergyman to Courier
1.Ibid., 341.
2.Ibid., 343.
3.Ibid.
4.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 6.
5.“Stopping Genocide: The Responsibility to Protect,” Thor Halvorssen, Human Rights Foundation, http://humanrightsfoundation.org/news/stopping-genocide-the-responsibility-to-protect-00263.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Undercover
1.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 377.
2.Ibid., 404.
3.Ibid., 387.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Sounding the Alarm
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 321.
2.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 745.
3.Marsh, Strange Glory, 320–21.
4.“Reinhard Heydrich,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Heydrich.html.
5.Ibid.
6.Roseman, Mark, The Wansee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration (New York: Picador, 2003), 148.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Love in Wartime
1.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 393.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Noose Grows Tighter
1.Marsh, Strange Glory, 338–39.
2.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 771.
3.Marsh, Strange Glory, 332.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Caught
1.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 436.
2.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 831.
3.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 439.
4.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 811.
5.Ibid., 24.
6.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 456.
Chapter Thirty: Another Attempt on Hitler’s Life
1.Ibid., 481.
Chapter Thirty-One: Evidence of Treason
1.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 939.
2.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 486.
3.Ibid., 492.
4.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 832.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Eternity at Last
1.Flossenbürg Concentration Camp 1938–1945: Catalogue of the Permanent Exhibition, 41.
2.Author notes, visit to Flossenbürg concentration camp, March 2015.
3.Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 928.
Epilogue
1.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 537.
Author’s Note
1.Elizabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern, No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters Against Hitler in Church and State (New York: New York Review Books, 2013), 102.
2.The King Center, http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive.
3.Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, 154.
4.Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans. Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, Nancy Lukens, vol. 8, Letters and Papers from Prison (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 52.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Biography. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. New York: Touchstone, 1997.
Facing History and Ourselves: www.facinghistory.org.
Flossenbürg Concentration Camp 1938–1945, Catalogue of the Permanent Exhibition. Flossenbürg, Germany: Flossenbürg Memorial Foundation, 2009.
Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, Sabine. The Bonhoeffers: Portrait of a Family. Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1994.
Marsh, Charles. Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010.
Sifton, Elizabeth and Fritz Stern. No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters Against Hitler in Church and State. New York: New York Review Books, 2013.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: www.ushmm.org.
INTERVIEWS
Cameron, Ruth Tonkiss, archivist, Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY. In discussion with the author. July 2015.
Marsh, Charles, author, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and professor of religious studies, University of Virginia. In discussion with the author. June 17, 2015.
Scheffler, Rev. Burckhard, director, Bonhoeffer Ha
us, Berlin. In discussion with the author. March 17, 2015.
OTHER SOURCES
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives
Berlin State Library
Flossenbürg concentration camp archives
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Roberto Ligresti
PATRICIA McCORMICK is a former journalist and a two-time National Book Award finalist. Her books include Cut, Never Fall Down, Sold, Purple Heart, and the bestselling young readers edition of I Am Malala. Based on McCormick’s research in the brothels of India, Sold is also now a feature film.
To write this book, Patricia visited Bonhoeffer’s original home and retraced his journey all the way to the grounds of the concentration camp where he was killed. You can visit her online at www.pattymccormick.com.
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BOOKS BY PATRICIA McCORMICK
Never Fall Down
Purple Heart
Sold
My Brother’s Keeper
Cut
CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by Sam Spratt
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
COPYRIGHT
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