Strange Glory

by Charles Marsh

  78. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 333.

  79. Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1955), p. 193.

  80. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, pp. 22–23.

  81. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 103.

  82. Ibid., p. 126.

  83. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 330.

  84. As Jørgen Glenthoøj, et al., wrote in the “Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition” (in ibid., pp. 657–58): “Subsequent scholars have debated whether those at the center of the conspiracy should have taken such a risk, since precisely this action did indeed prove to be the undoing of its initiators through a series of fateful developments. Bonhoeffer’s defense letters to the lead investigator, Dr. Roeder, during his imprisonment show the role that Operation 7 played in the interrogations. However, there is no doubt that both Dohnányi and Bonhoeffer felt that what they were able to do in this regard was too little rather than too much. The motto of 1933, ‘Open your mouth for the dumb,’ is countered at the end of 1942 by the admission, ‘We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds.’ ”

  85. Mark Brocker, the scholar who edited the eight-hundred-page English translation of Bonhoeffer’s writings in and around the conspiracy, explained, “During Dohnányi’s arrest, interrogator Manfred Roeder found notes that discussed plans for a journey on April 19, 1943, by Bonhoeffer and Josef Müller to Rome, where they would explain to church leaders why the assassination attempt on Hitler in March had failed. Roeder’s initial interrogations of Dohnányi focused on these notes, which were evidence of highly treasonous behavior. Dohnányi, Oster, and Canaris successfully argued that these papers were official coded Military Intelligence materials, and Roeder temporarily dropped this line of interrogation. Roeder’s interrogations then turned to Operation 7. The fourteen ‘non-Aryans’ in Operation 7 had been smuggled into Switzerland under the pretext that they were working for Military Intelligence,” Brocker, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” in ibid., vol. 16, p. 14.

  86. Ibid.

  87. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, pp. 352–53.

  88. Ibid., p. 231.

  89. Bonhoeffer’s recommendation letter for Dohnányi did, however, come into Koechlin’s possession. See Marikje Smid, Hans von Dohnanyi, Christine Bonhoeffer: Eine Ehe im Widerstand gegen Hitler (Munich: Gütersloher, 2002), pp. 301–2.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Killing the Madman

  1. The recent publication of his Prayerbook of the Bible had provoked the attention of the Reich Chamber of Literature.

  2. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, pp. 228, 226.

  3. Ibid., p. 228.

  4. Ibid., pp. 225–26.

  5. Ibid., pp. 230, 212.

  6. Ibid., pp. 226–27.

  7. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 227.

  8. Roger Moorhouse, “Germania: Hitler’s Dream Capital,” History Today 62, no. 3 (2012).

  9. Ibid., p. 240.

  10. Ibid., pp. 224, 253.

  11. Orte der Erinnerung 1933–1945, “House of the Wannsee Conference: Memorial and Education Site,” http://www.orte-dererinnerung.de/en/institutions/institutions_liste/house_of_the_wannsee_conference_memorial_and_educational_site/ (accessed February 20, 2013).

  12. Jewish Virtual Library, “Reinhard Heydrich,” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Heydrich.html (accessed February 20, 2013).

  13. Mark Roseman, The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (London: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 55.

  14. Mark Roseman explains, “What we have is the Protocol, or in other words Eichmann’s glossary of the notes, which he claimed was in turn heavily edited by Heydrich.” Cited in ibid., p. 109.

  15. The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of the European Jews, trans. Caroline Pearce (Berlin: House of the Wannsee Conference, Memorial and Educational Site, 2007), p. 1.

  16. Roseman, The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting, p. 67.

  17. Ibid., p. 1.

  18. Ibid., p. 101.

  19. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, pp. 52, 38.

  20. Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 233.

  21. Dramm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance, pp. 6, 233.

  22. See Victoria Barnett’s review of Sabine Dramm, V-Mann Gottes und der Abwehr? Dietrich Bonhoeffer und der Widerstand (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005). (The review appeared first in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 2007/2.)

  23. Dramm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance.

  24. Both scholars find support for their intuitions in Bethge’s 1969 biography, which, while it may have helped to shape the heroic picture in its various forms, at the same time offered only the most modest statements on Bonhoeffer’s role in the resistance, and which today, in Sabine Dramm’s view, should for this reason be noted “all the more carefully.” “Bonhoeffer’s position in the Resistance Movement was of no great importance politically,” Bethge later explained—although his modest estimation of Bonhoeffer’s resistance activities was largely ignored until recent years. “Regarding the planning for a future Germany and its constitutional forms Bonhoeffer’s share in the conspiracy was comparatively small.” In ibid., p. 234.

  25. Bethge cited in ibid., p. 234.

  26. Lovin, “Biographical Context,” p. 88.

  27. Glenthoøj et al., “Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition,” pp. 654–55.

  28. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, pp. 278.

  29. Glenthoøj et al., “Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition,” p. 655.

  30. Brocker, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” p. 10.

  31. Busch and Bowden, Karl Barth, p. 315.

  32. Cited in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 279.

  33. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 289–90.

  34. Bonhoeffer cited in ibid. This is also found in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 286.

  35. Winston Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat,” speech to the House of Commons, May 13, 1940, cited in Memoirs of the Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company Reprint, 1991), p. 245.

  36. Victoria Barnett, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Resistance and Execution,” http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/dietrich-bonhoeffer/resistance-and-execution (accessed November 2, 2013).

  37. Bonhoeffer’s 1936 visit to Sweden with the students of Finkenwalde introduced him to friends and contacts who would continue playing roles in his ecumenical and resistance work throughout the years—for example, Erling Eidem, the Swedish archbishop of Uppsala, and Nils Kalstrom, who facilitated the diplomatic necessities of getting Bonhoeffer and friends to Sweden.

  38. Björn Ryman, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sweden,” unpublished paper, Sigtuna Bonhoeffer Conference, p. 7.

  39. Ibid., pp. 2–3.

  40. Dramm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance, pp. 190–91.

  41. Ryman, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sweden,” p. 11.

  42. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 318.

  43. Bell cited in Ryman, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sweden,” p. 11: “It was a definite attempt to secure an early peace. It would have never been made if there had been no ecumenical movement.”

  44. Ibid., p. 12.

  45. Mark Brocker explains further: “On March 18, 1957, Eberhard Bethge sent these diary fragments to Bishop Bell with an accompanying letter, saying: ‘I enclose the pretended diary of 1942 which Dietrich wrote that the Gestapo should find it on his desk. They did’ (Bell Papers, vol. 42). The fictitious diary fragments apparently played no role in the cases against Bonhoeffer, Dohnányi, and Oster.” In Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 400.

  46. Ryman, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sweden,” p. 12.

  47. Bonhoeffer cited in Lovin, “Biographical Context,” p. 96.

  48. Bonhoeffer in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, pp. 402–3.

  49. Bethge, “Dietrich and Maria,” p. 12.

  50. Bonhoeffer in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 329.

  51. Ibid., pp. 329–30. He said he “sen
sed how an opposition to all that is ‘religious’ is growing in me. Often into an instinctive revulsion—which is surely not good either. I am not religious by nature. But I must constantly think of God, of Christ; authenticity, life, freedom, and mercy mean a great deal to me. It is only that the religious clothes they wear make me so uncomfortable.”

  52. Ibid., pp. 374–75.

  53. Ibid., p. 376.

  54. In Bethge’s biography of Bonhoeffer, January 17, 1943, is identified as the date of the engagement. Since Wedemeyer accepted Bonhoeffer’s proposal of marriage in writing on January 13, 1943, that date is now considered the day of the engagement. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 790.

  55. Bonhoeffer in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, pp. 91–92.

  56. Brocker, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” p. 21.

  57. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 375.

  58. De Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, p. 66. Bonhoeffer kissed Maria on the cheek, in front of the public prosecutor, Manfred Roeder, on her second visit to Tegel prison. That appears to be the only time they kissed. After a later visit, Maria told Dietrich it made her sad that he did not leave his hand on hers. “And it was so good, your warm hand, I wished that you would leave there.… A stream flowed from it all over me, it filled me completely, leaving no space for thought. But you took it away. You don’t like being romantic, do you?” Cited in Margarete Nürnberger, “Maria von Wedemeyer: Fiancée [sic] of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, no. 127 (March 2007): 123.

  59. Wedemeyer-Weller, The Other Letters from Prison, pp. 103–13.

  60. Maria von Wedemeyer cited in Bonhoeffer cited in Brownjohn, trans., Love Letters from Cell 92, p. 30. In September 1977, before her death two months later, Maria von Wedemeyer imposed the condition that these manuscripts might be consulted after her death or after twenty-five years, whichever would come later. Having contemplated publishing the correspondence with Bonhoeffer herself, she gave copies of the manuscripts and other papers, including her own letters to Bonhoeffer, to her sister, Ruth-Alice von Bismarck. Bismarck collaborated with Ulrich Kabitz, and in 1992 the German edition of the correspondence was published and eventually translated and published in Britain in 1994 as Love Letters from Cell 92: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Maria von Wedemeyer 1943–45. A slightly revised American edition was published in 1995. As implied by its title, the book was confined to the correspondence with Bonhoeffer “during his imprisonment.”

  61. Ibid., p. 27.

  62. Scott Paradise, “Eulogy for Maria Friedricka von Wedemeyer Weller, 18 November 1977,” International Bonhoeffer Newsletter: English Language Section, no. 82 (summer 2003): 4.

  63. Bethge, “Dietrich and Maria,” p. 12.

  64. De Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, p. 66. More than sixty thousand German Jews immigrated to Palestine during the 1930s, most under the terms of the Haavara (Transfer) Agreement.

  65. Bethge cited in de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, pp. 66–67.

  66. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 240.

  67. Bethge cited in de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, p. 66.

  68. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 248.

  69. Zimmermann, “A Meeting in Werder,” p. 191.

  70. Ibid., pp. 191–92.

  71. Cited in Dramm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance, p. 214.

  72. Ibid.

  73. On August 15, 1944, Haeften’s older brother, Hans-Berndt von Haeften, a diplomat in the Foreign Office in Berlin and member of the Kreisau Circle, suffered a similar fate, only hours after he was pronounced guilty by the People’s Court as a conspirator. Zimmermann and Smith, eds., I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 190–93.

  74. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 52.

  75. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 6, pp. 181–82.

  76. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, p. 25.

  77. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 52.

  78. Ibid., p. 37.

  79. Ibid., pp. 38–39.

  80. Ibid., pp. 42–44. Bonhoeffer’s remedy began not with the acquisition of knowledge, however, in education or instruction, but in the proper “fear of the Lord.” The spell can be broken—and “liberation from stupidity” achieved—only from a source beyond the individual, the community, the Volk, the nation. The wisdom gleaned from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament proclaims “that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God” is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity. Liberation from stupidity enlivens the moral senses.

  81. Ibid., p. 48.

  82. Ibid., pp. 48–49.

  83. Ibid., p. 50.

  84. Bethge, Costly Grace, p. 114.

  85. Scholl, The White Rose, pp. 22, 86.

  86. Schlabrendorff managed to retrieve the intact bomb the next day without being caught, but he was arrested on July 20, 1944, following the failure of the July 20 assassination attempt on Hitler at Wolf’s Lair, and sent to a Gestapo prison. Between February and May 1945, Schlabrendorff was moved from the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse to the Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Innsbruck concentration camps. In late April 1945, he was transferred to Tyrol, together with about 140 other political prisoners, but the SS left the prisoners behind shortly before the Fifth U.S. Army liberated the camp on May 5, 1945.

  87. Brocker, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” p. 15.

  88. Bishop of Chichester, “The Background of the Hitler Plot,” Contemporary Review 16 (July/December 1945): 208.

  89. Victoria Barnett writes, “[Bonhoeffer’s] role in the actual resistance may have been minor, and his colleagues in that resistance may have been nationalists and monarchists. But his theological reflections on the challenges that confronted Christians under Nazism, including his reflections on the role of the Church in an ideological dictatorship and the consequences this has for the Church’s very identity, are powerful reminders to all Christians of the dangers of an alliance between Christianity, state authority, and ideology.” Review of Sabine Dramm, V-Mann Gottes und der Abwehr? Dietrich Bonhoeffer und der Widerstand (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005). (This review appeared first in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 2007/2, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author.)

  90. Bethge cited in Mehta, The New Theologian, p. 198.

  91. Bonhoeffer and Bethge cited in ibid., p. 201.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN “The Greatest of Feasts on the Journey to Freedom”

  1. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906–1945, p. 435.

  2. Eberhard Bethge, cited in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 194, note 1. “These prayers belong to the most profound expressions of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality. They were not jotted down spontaneously but were composed after extended meditation and experienced discipline.” De Gruchy in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 94.

  3. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 56.

  4. John de Gruchy, “Editor’s Introduction,” DWB, vol. 8, p. 13. No first name is given for Knobloch in the scholarly literature. According to de Gruchy, “These, together with a photograph of Bonhoeffer taken in the yard of Tegel prison, were kept by Bethge’s mother in her home in Kade until after the war. At the same time, Bonhoeffer gave the letters Bethge had sent him to his parents during their prison visits. Nonetheless, several letters, both from Bonhoeffer and from others, were lost; some had never reached their destination in the first place, some were misplaced in the chaos of the times, and others, notably Bonhoeffer’s letters to Bethge in September 1944, were destroyed for security reasons.” Three photographs from Tegel survived. Another guard, Linke, who brought the baptism letter to the parents, was also familiar to the Bonhoeffers, although, unlike Knobloch, Linke had to be bribed. Dietrich’s gold watch was the cost for the delivery of Bonhoeffer’s baptism letter for young Dietrich Bethge on May 21, 1944. Renate and the family knew he was receiving letters from Dietrich. In January 1944, Bethge’s unit was sent to Rignano, north of Rome.

  5. I
bid.

  6. De Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, p. 76.

  7. On Christmas Day 1943, Bethge was garrisoned in Lissa, Poland, where earlier that year he had been briefly deployed with military intelligence.

  8. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 221.

  9. Since all his writings now had to be approved by the censors, they had to be readable, and he had to plan exactly what to write. Bonhoeffer composed Ethics in Gothic script or on a typewriter. Eberhard Bethge, interview with author, May 1992, Villiprot-Bonn, Germany.

  10. Hannah Arendt refers to Rahel Varnhagen’s remark that Goethe’s works are “fragments of a great confession.” See Arendt, “Berlin Salon,” p. 61.

  11. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 344.

  12. Cited in Zimmermann and Smith, eds., I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 222.

  13. Apocalypse is a series of fifteen woodcuts Albrecht Dürer made depicting various scenes from the book of Revelation, published in 1498. Bonhoeffer’s was a reproduction printed by the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of the woodcut St. Michael Battling the Dragon. See Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 66. St. Michael Battling the Dragon is Dürer’s rendering of Revelation 12:7, when war broke out in heaven; Michael leads the angels against the seven-headed dragon, all set against a peaceful landscape. “And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven” (Revelation 12:7).

  14. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 11/2, p. 318.

  15. In volume II/2, Barth turned his attention to the doctrine of the salvation, and in particular the contentious issue of predestination, that God elected some people to salvation and some to eternal damnation. Although Barth rejected the moniker of universal salvation, the effect was the same. Barth recast the doctrine of the salvation to show that all humanity has been saved by the vicarious work of Jesus Christ. No finite reality can finally resist God’s mercy and grace.

  16. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 16, p. 425.

  17. Bonhoeffer had written a number of letters and follow-up notes to Roeder related to his UK classification. Volume 16 of DBW also includes Bonhoeffer’s “camouflage letter” (Tarnbrief), which he wrote at Dohnányi’s request to disguise the true course of events.