Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In 1939 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a German Lutheran theologian made the dramatic decision to return from America to Nazi Germany to be with his people in the tragic times that he saw ahead. He was opposed to the “German Christian Movement,” which advocated the removal of all Jewish elements from the Christian faith and he challenged Christians to reject a complacent, immature and compliant faith. Instead Bonhoeffer believed that the Christian walk requires a costly involvement in the modern secular society.
On April 6, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested for involvement in the political resistance against Hitler. On April 9, 1945, just three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the capitulation of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer was hanged.
The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”