Leading courageously means facing challenges head-on with bravery and conviction, even when facing opposition or uncertainty. It involves making tough decisions, taking calculated risks, and embracing challenges as opportunities for growth and learning. Courageous leaders also show empathy, engage in tough conversations, and empower their teams. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was such a leader.
Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany. By 1920, Hitler and the Nazi Party were on the rise, spreading their poisonous message of antisemitism and genocidal persecution of Jews and the superiority of the Aryan race. Bonhoeffer strongly opposed Hitler and the Nazi regime. He believed that stupidity is worse than evil because stupidity can be manipulated and used by evil.
Two days after Hitler was installed as chancellor (January 30, 1933), Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be Ver Fuhrer (misleader, seducer). His address was abruptly cut off before he could finish.
In July 1933, Hitler imposed new church elections, resulting in a pro-Nazi Deutsche Cristen (German Christian) church in which all Protestant churches were to be aligned with Nazi ideals, which Bonhoeffer adamantly opposed. Bonhoeffer responded by affirming God’s fidelity to Jews as His chosen people. The Nazi’s responded by demanding that all church officials of Jewish descent were to be removed from their post and further demanded the removal of the Jewish Old Testament from the Bible, declaring it heresy.
In response, Bonhoeffer became a founding member of the Confessing Church that opposed the government’s efforts to unify all the Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi church. Bonhoeffer began forming underground seminaries to train and unite like-minded, anti-Nazi pastors.
By August 1937, SS leader Heinrich Himmler decreed that the education and examination of Confessing Church ministry to be illegal, and the Gestapo closed seminaries and arrested pastors and former students. Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly traveling from one eastern German village to another to conduct a “seminary on the run.” His writings on Christianity’s role in the secular world were widely influential; his most notable writing was his 1937 book “The Cost of Discipleship,” In this book, Bonhoeffer contrasts “cheap grace” (you have sinned, but are forgiven, no need to change yourself) and “costly grace” (which calls us to confess and become a true disciple).
The Gestapo banned Bonhoeffer from Berlin in 1938, he was forbidden to speak in public and had to report his activities to the police. In 1941 they clamped down further on him, forbidding him to print or publish anything. So, Bonhoeffer joined the Abwehr.
The Abwehr was an intelligence organization that was founded by the German Ministry of Defense. It was initially intended for counterintelligence but evolved into an intelligence gathering and sabotage agency. When Wilhelm Canaris was placed in charge of Abwehr, he surrounded himself with a hand-picked staff, many of whom were not members of the Nazi party. Canaris and his like-minded staff began to plot and sabotage to overthrow the Nazi regime from the inside and were accused of plotting assassination hits on Hitler. Under the cover of the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer served as a courier for the German resistance movement. On April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested and imprisoned at Tegel Prison. He was engaged at the time to Maria von Wedemeyer, whose grandmother was a supporter of Bonhoeffer and contributed generously to his “seminary on the run.” Because Maria was Bonhoeffer’s fiancé, she was able to visit him in prison and smuggle in food and messages. Bonhoeffer used his time in prison to do religious outreach to fellow prisoners and guards.
On April 4, 1945, the bulk of the diaries of Admiral Wilhem Canaris (the head of the Abwehr) were discovered by the SS. Hitler ordered that Abwehr members be executed.
Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death on April 8, 1945, by an SS judge. There were no witnesses called, no evidence against him, and no records of a defense. He was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp by hanging at dawn on April 9, 1945. A man who witnessed the execution wrote that, “I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
Bonhoeffer lived for God, died for his courage. He led. He stood up to the powers of evil to proclaim what was right. He was a courageous leader. –Carol Zars