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The Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
Extract
Early in April 1945 a little collection of political prisoners, including a British secret agent, a Russian air force officer and a German general, were driven by their guards across the diminishing face of the Third Reich. Among them was the thirty-nine year old theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was curious company for a German pastor. Bonhoeffer had joined the group at Buchenwald concentration camp on 7 February. In April he and his new friends were moved to Regensburg, and from there to Schönberg. On 8 April 1945 Bonhoeffer was abruptly separated from the other prisoners. As he was about to leave, he turned to the British agent, Captain Payne Best, and said a few words. The next day he was hanged at Flossenburg with the former head of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Canaris, and Colonel Hans Oster. An SS doctor saw the execution, and was struck by the religious devotion, and the spiritual trust, of the victim.
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References
1 See Bethge, Eberhard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: theologian, Christian, contemporary, New York 1970, 830–1Google Scholar.
2 See Hampson, Daphne, ‘The British response to the German church struggle, 1933–1939’, unpubl. PhD diss. Oxford 1973Google Scholar.
3 Bell, to Bonhoeffer, , 13 03 1939, Bell Papers 42, fo. 65Google Scholar.
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5 Bonhoeffer to Bell, 13 Apr. 1939, ibid. fo. 64.
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7 Bell to Bonhoeffer, 6 Sept. 1939, ibid. 9, fo. 357.
8 Lang Papers 83, fo. 188.
9 Bell Papers 42, fos 252–71.
10 Bonhoeffer to Bell, 1 June 1942, ibid. fo. 72.
11 Bonhoeffer to Bell, 28 Aug. 1942, ibid. fo. 73.
12 See Hansard, Debates of the House of Lords, 5th ser. xxvi, 10 03 1943, cols 535–45Google Scholar. Bell received support from Lord Cecil (cols 545–9), Lord Faringdon (cols 561–7), and a qualified support from Cosmo Lang, no longer archbishop of Canterbury, but now Lord Lang of Lambeth (cols 556–61). He was opposed by a particularly truculent Lord Vansittart (cols 549–56). On behalf of the government, the lord chancellor, Viscount Simon, assured the House that the government did seek, ‘in every way’, to encourage opposition to the Hitler regime inside Germany; that the hope of the German people lay not in Hitler, but in their abandonment of his ‘monstrous claims and crimes’; and that Germany would have a place in the future Europe (cols 573–81).
13 Leibholz to Bell, 2 April 1943, Bell Papers 40, fo. 162. Pastor Erwin Sutz was a friend of Bonhoeffer's, then involved in ecumenical work at Geneva.
14 Bell to Leibholz, 26 June 1943, ibid. fo. 191.
15 Durham Cathedral Library, journal of Bishop Henson 93, entry for 22 July 1944.
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17 Bell to Leibholz, 17 Aug. 1944, Bell Papers 40, fo. 258.
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22 Sabine Leibholz to Bell, 23 July 1945, Bell Papers 40, fos 303–4.
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24 Cutting from the Evening News for 23 July 1945, ibid. 42, fo. 76.
25 Ibid. fos 78–83.
26 Bell to Gerhard Leibholz, 31 Aug. 1945, ibid. 40, fo. 324.
27 Bishop of Rochester to Bell, 11 Dec. 1945, ibid. 42, fo. 110.
28 Payne Best to Bell, 17 Sept. 1946, ibid. fo. 122.
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30 Bell to Payne Best, 21 Sept. 1953, Bell Papers 42, fo. 150.
31 Payne Best to Bell, 23 Sept. 1953, ibid. fo. 151.
32 Payne Best to Bell, 13 Oct. 1953, ibid. fo. 154b.
33 The friend was Peter Walker, then Principal of Westcott House, Cambridge. The conversation took place at Canterbury, before the enthronement of Michael Ramsey as archbishop of Canterbury in June 1961. The author would like to express his thanks to Dr Walker for this recollection.