Theologian: Christian: Man For His Times

"I pray for the defeat of my counrty, for I think that is the only possibility of praying for all the suffering that my counrty has caused in the world." Dietrich Bonhoeffer: September 1941.

I am reading the mammoth sized biography of Dietrich Bonoeffer by his close friend Eberhard Bethge. Bonoeffer was the Theologian who took part in the plot to kill Hitler and was then hung buy the Gestapo. His biography is a profound, moving and inspiring story. It paints a picture of a Germany that we so often forget existed. He belonged to a happy family, and moved in the upper social circles of religious, cultural, and political Berlin. His family and all of his friends where anti-Hitler from the begining. Thus, many of his childhood friends had been making plans to depose or kill Hitler from 1/31/33 on. Many of those same friends also faced their deaths at the hands of the Gestapo for their actions. In fact in the book there is a list of Bonhoeffers friends, and brothers in-law, and the reader cannot help but notice that so many of them died in 1945.

Bethge, the author, again and again makes a distinction between Germany (and the German people), and Hitler (and the Nazis). These two where never the same. The whole book is a testement to how wrong the theses of books like Hitler's Willing Executioners are. More than that the true nature of Germany during the war stands as an indictment to the west. Churchill never made the distinction; he only called for victory. This had very negative affect on the oppositon inside of Germany, and forced the war to be prolonged until its inevitable end. The combatent death toll alone from such a policy of the west is unacceptable. Then if you consider that without such a policy Hitler would not be in power by 1941 (which means no Russian war and no Final Solution). It is somewhat understandible that Churchill would not want to see such a distinction, but how is it we still don't make the distinction? 60 years later we still consider, at least in American pop culture, that to be a German in the 30's was to be a national socialist. One of the best stories in the biography is about a pastor who would chastize the nazis during his sermon, and wow to the S.A. member who wore his brown shirt in church! Well sometime in 38, over a year before the war and three years before the Final Solution, the Gestapo arrested this pastor and beat him to death. What I want to illustrate with this story is that in our modern world we need modern saints (a point made offten by the late great pope), and this pastor and Bonhoeffer are such saints. Granted they where protastant, but still Unam Sanctum, Catolicum. What is more, these saints need a modern hagiography, and Bethge's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography is a step in that direction.