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It was said that when he prays it is as if he is really conversing with a God who is listening to him.

His family was rich and influential. He had aristocratic lineage both in the maternal and paternal side. Close relatives occupied high positions in the government, including the military.

He had a real talent for music, but he chose to be a theologian and a pastor of the Lutheran church where he belonged. But he was open-minded insofar as faith and salvation is concerned. He had wanted to visit India and talk to Mahatma Gandhi.

He was a well-read scholar and a poet. The poem "Powers of Good" which he wrote in prison has become famous throughout Germany and is included in many school textbooks. He had made monumental contributions to Christian thought.

He had fallen in love thrice, the last one to a young lady named Maria.

In saner times we would have seen him marry, raise children, write more books on philosophy and theology, grow old teaching and holding services for his flock. But no. He was a German. And it was the time of Hitler and the Nazis.

A gentle, kind, humble man of God in the most fucked up of times and places!

The extermination of the Jews and other people deemed undesirable by the Nazis, the killings of the sick, infirm and mentally ill, the suppression of free speech and other basic civil liberties, the systematic attack on religion and religious groups, the deification of Hitler and the indoctrination of the populace on the Nazi ideology--what cruel cosmic joke was it to present all these before a man like Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Long before the world came to know of the Holocaust, he already knew about it through his contacts within the German military. He loved his country, lost a brother fighting for it during world war one and had lost many friends, relatives and students in the current one. But he is face-to-face with evil incarnate. He had been praying that Germany lose the war but Hitler kept on winning battles and conquering territories. So what to do? Part of the enjoyment one can get out of reading this biography is to see the unraveling of this very fascinating moral conundrum.

If you have any real plans of someday reading it then stop here. But I tell you that it is a thick volume and if you have lots in your tbr then maybe you can disregard the coming spoilers and continue, for here I will tell you what Bonhoeffer did.

He joined the German resistance against Hitler and his Nazi cohorts. More than that, he was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and his closest henchmen. A devout follower of Christ conspiring to murder the head of state of his own country.

He had gone to the United States twice, and during the second time concerned friends had urged him to stay since the Gestapo was already hot on his heels. But he chose to go back to Germany. He was needed there, he felt, at the very least to speak up for the weak and defenseless, especially the Jews. In prison later, a plan was hatched for his escape and flight to another country but upon learning that such would further endanger some friends and relatives, he chose to remain behind bars. Fully aware of the dangers to his very life, he boldly looked forward, with complete trust, and proposed to Maria and they became engaged. He said that acts like this in times of great peril is "embracing God's earth."

He considered it as an act of faith in God to step out in freedom and not to fear future possibilities. As to killing Hitler as a sin or a violation of God's own commandment he said, confiding to a church colleague, that it is his moral conviction that:


"the structure of responsible action includes both readiness to accept guilt and freedom...(and that) If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility he detaches himself from the ultimate reality of human existence, and what is more he cuts himself off from the redeeming mystery of Christ's bearing guilt without sin, and he has no share in the divine justification which lies upon this event."


But fate was kinder. It was not guilt he suffered from. The opposition to Hitler was extensive, even right at the start of his ascension to power, and there had been many plots to oust him via coups or outrightly assassinate him, but all these had failed. Including the last one where Bonhoeffer was a participant--Valkyrie--recently made into a film starring Tom Cruise.

While Nazi Germany was already tottering, with allied bombs raining upon Berlin itself, Bonhoeffer was executed upon the orders of the Fuhrer himself. He was just 39, not able to marry Maria, and most likely still a virgin (so unlike Thomas Merton!)