Abstract
Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking
Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. Umbel
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013. 272 pp. $29.99
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's association with the conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime and kill Hitler is a stumbling block for many Christians who find it difficult to reconcile this with his book Discipleship and his writings on peace. This book, written for general and academic audiences by a professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, a professor at Prairie Bible College, and an Eastern Mennonite graduate now serving in the ministry, attempts to address this issue historically and theologically. The book will arouse controversy because of its claim that Bonhoeffer did not really support the conspiracy and its plans to assassinate Hitler.
The most valuable sections of the book examine how Bonhoeffer's peace writings, especially his extensive reflections on the Sermon on the Mount, remained foundational for his theology up to the end of his life. This is not new territory, but the authors’ analysis of the continuities between Discipleship and Ethics is sound, and their reading of Bonhoeffer through the lens of a peace tradition is interesting. Despite their internal coherence, however, these writings cannot be read in isolation from other equally central aspects of Bonhoeffer's thought, particularly the development of his thinking on church and state issues, which is crucial for understanding Ethics, his wartime writings, and his attitudes toward the resistance. The authors do not address these aspects and their tensions with the peace writings.
Moreover, there are passages throughout Bonhoeffer's theological lectures that complicate a purely pacifist reading. To cite two striking examples from the Discipleship period, in Bonhoeffer's 1935 lectures on the Augsburg Confession, he systematically reviewed the theological foundation for tyrannicide (using that very word), and in 1936 Bonhoeffer told his seminarians that there was no “final answer” as to whether a Christian could participate in war, warning them equally against militarism and what he called “doctrinaire pacifism.”
It is perfectly legitimate to offer new theological interpretations, and readers can decide whether the authors have made their case here. Challenging an established historical narrative, however, requires either new evidence or a very convincing argument. The book's provocative title sets up a “straw man” argument. Responsible scholars (including his biographer Eberhard Bethge) have never claimed that Bonhoeffer was an “assassin,” although as the authors note, this myth has made its way into the American popular understanding. But there is certainly evidence—from surviving family members, documentation in the Bonhoeffer Works, and the work of historians like Winfried Meyer, Klemens von Klemperer, Marijke Smid, and others—that Bonhoeffer supported the overthrow of the Nazi regime and understood that this would entail the assassination of Hitler, and Bethge himself recalled a conversation in which Bonhoeffer actually affirmed this. And while Eberhard Bethge downplayed it, he had firsthand knowledge of the conspiracy and Bonhoeffer's attitudes; some of the resistance meetings described in the biography are, in fact, eyewitness accounts by Bethge.
The authors offer no evidence or coherent argument to refute this. Rather, they dismiss the existing historical consensus with the argument that no one knows what Bonhoeffer was really thinking, but that as a pacifist he could not possibly have supported killing Hitler, and that when Bethge claimed otherwise, his memory was playing tricks on him. This is wishful thinking, not scholarship. The main reference work consulted was Sabine Dramm's Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance (Fortress, 2009). As Dramm notes, Bonhoeffer's entry into the resistance was the outcome of family connections to help him evade military service; his role in the resistance was marginal and not the reason for his 1943 arrest. Yet nowhere did Dramm actually contradict the historical account given in Bethge's biography. On the contrary, she included a chapter (dismissed by the authors) that deals explicitly with how Bonhoeffer came to support the resistance, politically and theologically.
These historical complexities do not necessarily mean that Bonhoeffer abandoned his central theological convictions, but they illustrate why ideologically purist interpretations of him are so problematic. There is indeed continuity between the early peace writings and the wartime material, as parts of this book usefully remind us. Yet, Bonhoeffer's life and writings leave us a complicated record that defies oversimplified conclusions. He is not unique in this; even within peace traditions such as the Quakers’, there have been individuals who supported the use of violence in exceptional cases and as an act of conscience, notably during the slavery era in this country. A critical examination by the authors about whether Bonhoeffer presents a similar case, as a possible avenue for understanding both his resistance and his pacifism, would be an important contribution to the literature.