Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. In this episode, I had the privilege of talking with Doctor. Mark Nation, author of a number of books, discussing Bonhoeffer's Theology and Pacifism. Now, if you've paid any attention to the titles that I've put on these episodes throughout this season, you'll notice a common similarity up until this episode. I talked about Bonhoeffer's dark days or dark thoughts and all of that stuff.

Derek: 00:57

And all of that was just kind of trying to show this cloud, this darkness that that surrounds Bonhoeffer, the darkness of the Nazis and the evil that he fought against, you know, the darkness of some of his his prison letters and things as he's going through dark times himself, as he's sitting in prison, the darkness of just some of his legacy and the things that his name has been used to promote. So there's this this whole darkness that surrounds Bonhoeffer. And as a pacifist myself, I would say the darkness of, you know, coming to a point of potential compromise. You know, this idea that a lot of people have that Bonhoeffer essentially compromised at the end of his life on on his convictions. So there's just a whole lot of darkness that surrounds the story of of a lot of World War Two and such, and particularly in regard to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life.

Derek: 02:07

And we even explored some of this darkness when we took a look at some of the contention surrounding Bonhoeffer in regard to some people claiming that he's anti Semitic because of some of the the supersessionist views that he held and whatnot. So there's there's a whole lot of controversy that surrounds Bonhoeffer. But I wanted to end with this episode in particular and the change of the episodes, know, Bonhoeffer's light, not because I think Bonhoeffer was a perfect person. In fact, in Doctor. Reggie Williams interview, discussed kind of hinted at some of Bonhoeffer's problematic problematic thoughts.

Derek: 02:46

And in another episode talked about Bonhoeffer's idea that God is possibly continuing to judge the Jews for deicide. Right? There are some things there that are really uncomfortable and dark and problematic. So when I when I titled this episode Bonhoeffer's Light, it is not at all to elevate Bonhoeffer as somebody without problem or somebody who avoids all darkness. But hopefully what we do in this episode is we get at kind of a core kernel of the Bonhoeffer story and talking about just a consistency of integrity and thought.

Derek: 03:37

Not a person who was completely without problems, but a person who in the face of great evil, when a lot of people, including people who we might think had better ideology than Bonhoeffer, right? Some people who might not have been as compromised by imperialistic thought, who might not have been who might not have held the idea that maybe the Jews are being judged by God. Right. Things that would we would align more with, but didn't stand up. Here you've got Bonhoeffer, who, regardless of who who his enemies are or what he thinks about God's judgment or any of this other stuff, he is choosing to stand up to evil and to fight with and for the oppressed.

Derek: 04:30

And so Bonhoeffer's light here is not perfection, but Bonhoeffer's life light is an example of the way that we are to act in the world. If perfection were the call, then, you know, a story of perfection could not inspire us. We would never be able to to live up to that. But, you know, then again, isn't the Christian story the story of a model of perfection, the story of Jesus Christ? And that possibly gets at something that Doctor Nation is going to talk a little bit about in this episode.

Derek: 05:09

One of the reasons that people say that Bonhoeffer couldn't have maintained pacifism is because or couldn't have even held to pacifism was because he was against these ideas of just, you know, blanket principles. Ethics is not made up of blanket principles. And while that's true to a certain extent, the notion that ethics is made up of a relationship isn't necessarily easier when that relationship is modeled around the perfect one of Jesus Christ. But that's the beauty. When our example is Jesus Christ, who is perfect, even though we cannot attain that perfection, we can strive for the ideal because the ideal is not something that is attainable or something that we're meant to attain.

Derek: 06:05

But relationship is a it's like a living organism. It's a it's a living thing that is is constantly being formed over time. And so, sure. Jesus as my perfect model, I will never be able to live up to that. But just like Peter walking on the beach when Jesus comes up to him after Peter's denied him and betrayed him and Jesus says, Peter, do you love me?

Derek: 06:33

Do you agape me? You know I phaleo you Jesus. Right? Peter, do you agape me? Jesus, you know I phaleo you.

Derek: 06:42

Peter, do you phaleo me? Yes, Jesus, I can meet you there. I can phaleo you. And that is the beauty of relationship, right? We will not attain to perfection, but we are walking with the One who is perfect and who is our model and who will show us mercy and grace and meet us where we're at.

Derek: 07:07

Bonhoeffer encourages us not because he's perfect, but because he models a growing relationship with the One who is perfect, with the One who shows us mercy and grace as we seek Him out and try to walk with Him ourselves. So in this episode, we are primarily going to just look at what was Bonhoeffer's consistent ethic and consistent trajectory in pursuing the ideal, not necessarily the ideal ethic, right, an abstract idea, but the ideal walk with the savior? What does it look like to love enemies, to be consistent, to pursue the ideal? And what is that light that Bonhoeffer shows to us? Yes, there are dark things in Bonhoeffer's life or ideas or whatnot.

Derek: 08:02

But what is the light that Bonhoeffer gives to us? What can we learn as we incorporate him into our cloud of witnesses? So as usual, I will put links in the show notes for pertinent topics for Doctor Nation's books and other content that you might find useful. So enjoy the discussion. Doctor Nation, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Nation: 08:29

My pleasure to be with you, Derek, and you can call me Mark if you want.

Derek: 08:32

Oh, thank you. So what I would love for you to do first is to just introduce yourself and your work and maybe tell us a little bit about how you came to write so much about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dr. Nation: 08:47

Yes. So I tell this story in some detail in appendix number one in my newer book, Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis. To give a brief version of it, so I was not raised in a Christian home. I was raised in a very small town within a relatively poor, uneducated family. My father was a World War II veteran, so I just turned 71.

Dr. Nation: 09:13

So my generation has two wars to deal with World War II, which most of our fathers participated in, and then the Vietnam War, which was underway when I turned 18. So as I said, I wasn't raised in a Christian home. I became a Christian in a Baptist church in 1970, just after I had turned 17. So within a year, about a year of becoming a Christian, I had to register for the military draft during Vietnam War. And during that year, these Baptists told me I should read my New Testament.

Dr. Nation: 09:52

And I did. It was a dynamic church. It was a wonderful church. I was very grateful to be a part of it for the few years I was there. And in that first year of my Christian life, I became a conscientious objector because I had to register for the draft.

Dr. Nation: 10:07

Was reading the New Testament, and I read that my Lord, who these people had told me I not only should worship, but should be faithful to, my Lord said that I should love my enemies. And I didn't see how loving people in the way I was beginning to understand love within the Christian faith equaled killing the people that I loved. So I wasn't going to go thousands of miles away and kill people in Vietnam. It wasn't really because of the Vietnam War in particular, it was about killing your enemies. So I became a conscientious objector.

Dr. Nation: 10:45

I didn't know the word pacifism. I didn't know the term conscientious objection till I received it from the draft board. And I didn't know the word pacifism at the time. But I learned that language, and it gave me an orientation to the Christian life that I've lived with ever since then. I, in general, became convicted that Christian discipleship is about all of life.

Dr. Nation: 11:10

It should be about all of the ways in which we live our lives, including whether or not we go to war, including how we live with our sexual lives, and how we live with money, the jobs we choose, the vocations we enter into, and so forth and so on. I wasn't planning to go to college, but I went to college, mostly in the beginning because I wanted to know more about the Christian faith. So I was in a religious studies program first year of college. Anyway, moving way ahead. Five approximately five years after becoming a Christian, I met other Christian pacifists for the first time in Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. Nation: 11:52

And I also then discovered who I had maybe heard of Mennonites about three years after I became a Christian. I had never heard of them growing up. But in Louisville, Kentucky, I met Mennonites, some Mennonites for the first time. But more importantly, for me in my journey, I read The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder. I had already read The Cost of Discipleship about four years earlier.

Dr. Nation: 12:18

So one of my religious studies professors in my first two years of college did his doctoral thesis on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I don't remember him speaking a lot about Bonhoeffer, but he may have been the reason why the bookstore of the college carried the book, The Cost of Discipleship. So I read it in about probably 1972. And then, as I said, several years later, I discovered the book, The Politics of Jesus. When I read that book, it helped to begin a journey at least of integrating my commitments to peace and social justice into the Christian faith as a whole.

Dr. Nation: 12:58

So one of the ways I've come to name what was beginning to happen is I was moving from being a Baptist to being an Anabaptist. And then I attended the Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, and studied with John Howard Yoder while I was there, along with some other interesting and helpful professors. I directed a peace and justice organization for six years, an ecumenical peace and justice organization. I did a master's degree in peace studies before I started doing that. And then moving well, while I was at the Mennonite Seminary, sorry, before I yeah, I shouldn't move any further ahead before I go back there.

Dr. Nation: 13:40

In 1980, I wrote a master's thesis on Christian forms of nonviolent resistance within the Third Reich. So this was my first introduction to Christians in Nazi Germany. It was a 10 page master's thesis. I did a whole lot of reading for it. I read for the first time the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eberhard Betke, not because I was focusing peculiarly on Bonhoeffer, although he was certainly relevant, but because it had a lot of information about the confessing church and what was going on in Nazi Germany.

Dr. Nation: 14:17

So it was one of the many things I read for that master's thesis. The same semester, I also wrote a 70 page paper on the Confessing Church for John Howard Yoder and a course at the University of Notre Dame. So that began my serious journey of exploring these kinds of issues. About ten years later, there was I was doing a Master of Divinity degree at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. There was a visiting Bonhoeffer scholar who taught there for, I think, one year, and I did a directed studies course with him on Bonhoeffer and pacifism.

Dr. Nation: 14:52

So that was in 1989. An abbreviated version of that essay was published in the Journal of Theology for South Africa. So that was one of my first academic essays that was published, and it was on Bonhoeffer and pacifism. The longer version of that essay was Sorry, this is just to give a little history background to those who only see my books. That the longer version of that essay, abbreviated version of which was published in the journal I mentioned, was named as being outstanding within the International Bonhoeffer Society newsletter.

Dr. Nation: 15:30

It's about the only part of my work that's been praised by Bonhoeffer's scholars very much, partly because at that time, I did not believe Bonhoeffer was a consistent pacifist from 1931 to the end of his life. I wasn't convinced of that yet. I wasn't convinced of that for about thirty years, mostly because of being under the influence of Eberhard Beitke, but also because of Larry Rasmussen's book, which I read for the essay I wrote in 1989. I did a second essay on Bonhoeffern pacifism in 1994 with Ray Anderson as a directed studies course again at Fuller Theological Seminary, where I was doing my PhD. And again, I wasn't convinced when I did that essay that Bonhoeffer was a consistent pacifist.

Dr. Nation: 16:22

When I reread that essay today, I can see that that essay is full of greater tension than the one written in 1989. That essay was published in 1999. So 10 after I had written the first one. Go ahead to my sabbatical, and then I did a sabbatical while I was teaching here in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and I taught a course on Bonhoeffer. During my sabbatical of 02/2010.

Dr. Nation: 16:49

I did serious fresh research on Bonhoeffer, on attempts to kill Hitler, lining up attempts to kill Hitler along with the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And then I, for various reasons, deep readings in Bonhoeffer, deep readings in the attempts to kill Hitler, I came to the convictions, but only then, that Bonhoeffer, in fact, was not meaningfully involved in attempts to kill Hitler, and he was a consistent pacifist from 1931 to 1945, as far as we can tell.

Derek: 17:21

Yeah. And all of that gets me very excited to get to kind of the end conclusion. But I think it would be helpful, especially for people who haven't really dug into this, to kind of rewind a little bit and start back at the beginning and dig into a few key points. So I know for me, when I came to pacifism, I felt very alone because I come from a reformed denomination and we were usually the ones killing the pacifists, not the ones, you know, being the pacifists. So there weren't too many people in my group that I felt like I could turn to.

Derek: 17:52

And even like when I would go and just try to research, you know, other Christian pacifists. A lot of them ended up being like Unitarian Universalists or people that I wouldn't identify with theologically. But Bonhoeffer was somebody who consistently came up as being a pacifist. And so, when I was latching on to Bonhoeffer, obviously, you know, the whole narrative about the plot to kill Hitler came up. And I remember when I did my first episodes on Bonhoeffer, actually reached out to you via email and I said, Hey, is this right?

Derek: 18:25

It doesn't like, is it that big of a deal that, you know, if he tried to kill Hitler because there are a lot of people, you know, pastors have affairs and run off with a secretary or whatever else. And that doesn't mean that they're that they are agreeing that that's the right thing to do. They're just weak. They're sinful. People mess up.

Derek: 18:49

So couldn't Bonhoeffer have just messed up? And you said, No, no, no, that's not the position at all, because really what people are arguing is that Bonhoeffer changed his ideology. And, you know, so what you're saying about Bonhoeffer, his consistent ideology, is something that is really, really important to understand. And you're coming up against somebody who's very reputable. Bette Gy was a very close associate friend of Bonhoeffer's, who wrote a seminal work on Bonhoeffer, whose narrative has stood for, you know, over fifty years.

Derek: 19:33

So I'd love for you to kind of unpack the importance of the ideological shift, supposed ideological shift, and how that narrative got ingrained into our culture.

Dr. Nation: 19:49

Yeah. Yes. So, you're right that, as I say in, again, the first chapter of my newer book, Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis, Eberhard Bechke's biography, which is about 1,000 pages, is certainly the central source for understanding Bonhoeffer's life. No question about it. It's very good in many ways.

Dr. Nation: 20:12

It has obviously, being that long, has a lot of details about a short lived life. So, Betke is the source for this, what I have come to believe is a myth, not only that Bonhoeffer was personally involved in attempts to kill Hitler, he doesn't say that straight out. Again, I deal with this in my first chapter of the newer book. But he implies it throughout his narrative, particularly in the section, which is about, I think, a little over 200 pages on Bonhoeffer's involvement in the resistance. But what he does say, he says two things that are related to the question you asked, in addition to what I've just said.

Dr. Nation: 20:56

One is that he says Bonhoeffer was never a pacifist, which is very strange, because Bonhoeffer said he was a pacifist. Bonhoeffer, in January of nineteen thirty six, wrote a letter to his longtime friend, Elizabeth Zinn, saying that sometime before Hitler, he came to see pacifism as self evident. So he's writing this letter three years after Hitler came into power at the January 1933. And he this is January 1936. So he is simultaneously, while he's writing this letter, in the process of giving lectures on discipleship that become the book, The Cost of Discipleship, or what now in a new translation is simply called Discipleship.

Dr. Nation: 21:49

And in that book, he makes an approximately 15 page direct argument for why Christians should be committed to nonviolence. So again, that was published in 1937. I assume he gave those same lectures the whole time he was training seminary students from 1935 to the spring of nineteen forty. So he's teaching that for five years from '35 to '40. He also gives public lectures from 1931 through 1934, in all of which he says Christians should not kill in war.

Dr. Nation: 22:27

And he says this to a variety of Christians in a variety of countries, beginning in Mexico, but most of them in Europe. So the other point from Bettke, and this is basically adopted by most people, most biographers, it's said differently by different people, is he implies that Bonhoeffer shifts sometime between 1939 and 1940. I mean, again, well, let me back up again. He says Bonhoeffer was never a pacifist. On the other hand, later in Bettke's writing, in a couple of his essays, I don't know that he says this exactly in the biography, but in a couple of his essays, Batke says that Bonhoeffer did not advocate for pacifism after he got involved in attempts to kill Hitler.

Dr. Nation: 23:17

He no longer discussed violence and nonviolence, so Batke claims. So Bonhoeffer makes I mean Bonhoeffer. Bettke makes a number of claims about Bonhoeffer that are just obviously not true when you compare it to Bonhoeffer's writings. He says that he was not a pacifist, never a pacifist. He claims that after 1939, he didn't discuss violence versus non violence.

Dr. Nation: 23:43

Both of those claims are simply not true, because I show again in one of my chapters in my newer book on ethics, where he does discuss violence and non violence, and again affirms non violence, affirms loving enemies, and affirms how important the Sermon on the Mount is for shaping Christians. This is an ethics written between 1940 and 1943. And in letters and papers from prison in the summer of nineteen forty four, Bonhoeffer explicitly affirms the basic thrust of the book The Cost of Discipleship. Becky knows all of that, and unlike a few other biographers, he doesn't straight out lie about it. I mean, he says things that are at best intention, I think they're contradictory.

Dr. Nation: 24:33

But he gives the evidence where one can wonder why he's saying Bonhoeffer was never a pacifist. Because he quotes the letter in January of nineteen thirty six, quotes it in full. And so he quotes where Bonhoeffer says, I came to see pacifism as self evident. I don't remember exactly what he quotes from the lectures on war that Bonhoeffer gave where he was always saying that Christians shouldn't kill in war, but he probably has quotes from those that are also honest. So all of that stands in tension with what he claims.

Dr. Nation: 25:06

I don't think he gives any of the quotes from the book ethics, what we call ethics, an unfinished set of manuscripts that Bonhoeffer was working on when he was arrested. I don't think he quotes from ethics in a way that contradicts his claim that Bonhoeffer didn't address violence and non violence. So, Bettke is basically arguing that after Bonhoeffer becomes more conscious, this is somewhat consistent with the new Bonhoeffer film, not in the same sort of superficial, totally non theological way as the new film, but nonetheless somewhat consistent with the new film on Bonhoeffer. The claim is that once Bonhoeffer became more conscious of what was happening to the Jews, the more he became aware of how horrible that was, and the extent of it, then he sort of proclaims sort of claims that Bonhoeffer becomes a realist, somewhat in line with his former teacher at Union Theological Seminary, Reinhold Niebuhr. Because that's Niebuhr's kind of approach.

Dr. Nation: 26:17

So he becomes a realist, and he realizes that if if all this horrible violence is going on against the Jews, and the Nazis are doing all these horrible things, then you've got to engage in the acts that will be effective in ending the Hitler regime. So Bonhoeffer was from early in his life. The Bonhoeffer family was connected to lots of people in high places. So he was certainly connected to people who were involved in the resistance. The most important one is his brother-in-law, Hans van den Dani.

Dr. Nation: 26:52

Hans von Danihni, his brother-in-law, was earlier working for the Ministry of Justice in the Nazi regime beginning in 1933. And beginning in, I believe it's fall of nineteen thirty nine, Denani starts working for the ABVARE, Military Intelligence Agency. And Bonhoeffer in October of nineteen forty starts working for the same agency. And so he certainly has contact with those involved in the resistance movement, again, especially his brother-in-law, but also probably some other people who are involved in the resistance movement. I don't have any question about that.

Dr. Nation: 27:30

I think it's clear that that's true. And I don't doubt that he was close to his brother-in-law. The Bonhoeffer extended family was very close period, but he was especially close to his brother-in-law. But we have no textual evidence that Bonhoeffer shifted his views in the way that Betke is claiming. We have no texts whatsoever that substantiate that claim.

Dr. Nation: 27:55

One can find some passages in ethics that might vaguely be pointing in that direction. I've tried to argue, in one of my chapters in the newer book, that I don't think that's what he's arguing. But one can make that argument, but it's not clear, certainly. And there's no so that's in terms of him shifting his theology. In terms of involvement in attempts to kill Hitler, it's highly unlikely Bonhoeffer was personally involved in any attempts to kill Hitler, despite this new movie, and despite what most biographers I couldn't think of one biographer that doesn't really imply that if they don't say it straight out.

Dr. Nation: 28:37

They all do, basically. So the movie in that sense is not brand new. It's just different when you see it depicted on the screen, and you see him meeting with a guy who then tries to kill Hitler. Clifford Green, who's the Executive Director of the Collected Works of Bonhoeffer, has said that no serious student of Bonhoeffer really believes that he was personally involved in attempts to kill Hitler. So that's not just me saying this, it's people like Clifford Greene.

Dr. Nation: 29:08

The evidence just doesn't substantiate that he was involved in any attempts to kill Hitler in a personal way. And then, as I point out in my, again, my first chapter on Becky and the myth of Bonhoeffer's involvement in the attempts to kill Hitler, I do think he was involved in this one, well, two different times he was involved in an effort to ask his friend Bishop George Bell in England to be a mediator with the Germans like himself that were against Hitler. And he was connected with people who were trying to bring down Hitler, some of them trying to kill Hitler or thinking about trying to kill Hitler. And he was meeting with his friend, Bishop George Bell, because Bell being in the House of Lords, at least I'm pretty sure he was, at least he knew people high up in the English government. They wanted Bonhoeffer to mediate with George Bell to ask Bell to try to get the English government to not take advantage of Germany if Hitler is removed from power, because Germany would be very weak.

Dr. Nation: 30:13

And don't take advantage of Germany at its weakest moment if Hitler is removed from power. Bonhoeffer was involved in those efforts. We have on record another two people who were involved in those same efforts who said explicitly that they didn't believe in killing Hitler. So they didn't think this had anything to do with killing Hitler. It just had to do with trying to get the Brits, maybe the Allies generally, not to take advantage of Germany in its weakest moment.

Dr. Nation: 30:44

To my mind, that's not violating his commitment to pacifism. It's not shifting his views. It's consistent. It's just trying to be responsible, given that you have this ability to make this kind of connection because he was friends with Bishop George Bell. Sorry, I'll pause there.

Dr. Nation: 31:04

I've been going on for quite a while.

Derek: 31:06

No, so that's really important. Now we have the case against Bonhoeffer, basically, you know, bringing up Becky, and we understand the importance of ideology and the idea of an ideological shift. So right now, you had mentioned the movie, which is part of what kind of got us together here. But I would love to use the movie to maybe help you build the case for getting a vision of who Bonhoeffer was, some continuity in his life. And I think we can break it up into kind of four parts.

Derek: 31:40

You know, Bonhoeffer's union days, like, you know, up his childhood up to 20s, and then his time in union, and then his time with the resistance, or in that position associating with those people in the abver, and then his time in prison.

Dr. Nation: 31:58

So, yes, go ahead. Let me begin with his a little bit about his childhood, his theological education, and then his time in New York City. Begin there and then I'll pause so you can ask the next question you want to ask. So again, obviously, I'm only going to focus on things that are relevant to the things we're addressing. Mean, Bonhoeffer is from an interesting family, fascinating times, there's so many things one could talk about.

Dr. Nation: 32:29

Bonhoeffer, I think he was from an upper middle class family that it seems to me on both sides of the family basically had aristocratic kinds of connections. He had a very rich family heritage on both sides of his family. As I said, he was connected to many people in high places throughout Germany. His father became a famous neurologist and psychiatrist at the University of Berlin Hospital, or the hospital in Berlin. I think in terms of thinking about Bonhoeffer and peace and assassination and all of that, Bonhoeffer grew up in a somewhat conservative family, but a traditional conservative family.

Dr. Nation: 33:12

So the whole family was totally repulsed by Hitler when he came to power. But in Bonhoeffer's childhood, they were typical patriots in many ways. So when the military wanted to recruit their older sons who were the right age to be recruited for World War I, it doesn't seem like they blinked about sending their sons to serve in the military in World War I. They were typical patriotic German family. One of the things that's not in the film, it shows that one of his brothers dies.

Dr. Nation: 33:49

That's shown in the film. What isn't shown is the Bonhoeffer family was devastated by that death. Bonhoeffer's mother was basically out of commission for more than a year as a mother. She was I think she moved to somebody else's house for more than a year. That's my memory.

Dr. Nation: 34:09

She was incapacitated. She was in grief for so long about the death of her son, Walter. This made a deep impact on Bonhoeffer for the rest of his life. It is true that he and his sister would go to his twin sister, Sabina, and he would often fall asleep thinking about eternity. This is reflected in a couple of ways in the film.

Dr. Nation: 34:34

They did do that when they were very young. And this was at Dietrich's initiative. Anyway, that's a little bit of the impact of World War I. World War I also created a lot of chaos and disorder in German society. There was a youth movement that was very interesting in that period, but I won't go into that.

Dr. Nation: 34:54

Then announces to his family at age 14 that he's going to become a theologian, which was quite a surprise to his family and not thought of very highly by his father and at least one or two of his brothers. Because they were scientifically oriented, they didn't really respect the church. The family was not a churchgoing family. And they thought he would be wasting his life because they could see he was a very gifted, talented young man. But he announced he was going be a theologian.

Dr. Nation: 35:29

Then he starts at the University of Tubingen when he finishes what the equivalent of high school in Germany. He studies theology, writes his first doctoral thesis, and then he writes what's called a habilitation thesis, so he can be qualified to teach in a German university. And one of the things that happens in the midst of that study, I mean, he's a very serious student, he's very inquisitive. But one of the things that happens is he encounters the thought of Karl Barth in the winter of nineteen twenty four-nineteen twenty five. Karl Barth will have a huge influence on his theology for the rest of his life.

Dr. Nation: 36:10

Okay, I'll end that naming his education and so on at that point. In 1930, September of '19 '30, just after his doctoral thesis was published, called Sanctorum Communio on a theological account of the church, but also a sociological account of the church. He goes to Union Theological Seminary in New York City in September of nineteen thirty. He is there for a school year. And he has very mixed feelings about Union Theological Seminary.

Dr. Nation: 36:41

He certainly, obviously, gets a lot from his time there, studying there, but probably more significant than Union itself are several friendships and his time at the large African American church, Abyssinian Baptist Church. As is shown in the film, I think it's very accurate to say he was deeply influenced by Abyssinian Baptist Church. I think in more ways than is shown in the film, but nonetheless, he was deeply influenced. The man who was the lead pastor at that time was a powerful preacher. He himself had had a dramatic conversion experience as an adult on his I think it's his stepfather.

Dr. Nation: 37:21

His stepfather, I believe, was born in slavery, if I remember correctly. He was from West Virginia originally. He had an interesting background. He was a fascinating man. He was a powerful preacher.

Dr. Nation: 37:35

Bonhoeffer loved his sermons, loved the worship services. He was actively involved in church. He taught classes as is shown in the film. I'm not sure he ever taught Pinocchio in a Sunday school class, but he taught children, and I think he taught a women's Bible study. He was very actively involved.

Dr. Nation: 37:54

It was deeply influential. And one of the ways it was influential, which is accurately portrayed in the film, is helping him to come to grips as much as he could as a white guy with the racism that existed in The United States, and in New York City and in Washington DC. He saw that he experienced it somewhat as much as he could, at least vicariously through his friend Frank Fisher, and it moved him deeply. He also studied about racism at Union Theological Seminary, which isn't shown in the film. So I have no doubt that that's true, and that that activated him to speak out and act out on behalf of social justice issues, and especially what began to happen to Jews back in Germany.

Dr. Nation: 38:39

What isn't shown in the film at all, and is often not shown Sometimes it's denied in biographies such as Eric Metaxas' biography. He also became a pacifist through Jean Lucerre, who was a French international student, contemporary with him. He and Jean Lucerre, in fact, traveled to Mexico after the school year at Union and gave lectures advocating for pacifism. And Loeserre has testified, has said in interviews that Bonhoeffer advocated for pacifism as passionately as Loeserre did in the summer of nineteen thirty one.

Derek: 39:19

If I can stop you at that, because I think that's a really important aspect. In your books, you also, I mean, you have another a bunch of other people, I think Franz Hildebrandt is one as well, who talks about how, you know, only former pacifists are respectable. But you have a number of interactions with Bonhoeffer where people seem to indicate that he at least was a pacifist at one time. Why does Betke get all of the credit for his view, but people like Le Serre aren't listened to?

Dr. Nation: 39:58

Yeah, that's again well, Le Serre, of course, went back to France. I don't know how much he and Bettke interacted with each other throughout Le Serre's life. There's a new book of Le Serre's essays coming out in English that has just come out in English. I haven't seen it yet. I should be getting my copy pretty soon.

Dr. Nation: 40:16

But he was a lifelong pacifist. But more important than him, as you were indicating, Franz Hildebrandt, who was a fellow student with Bonhoeffer in their doctoral program, that's where they met. Betke says in his biography that Franz Hildebrandt was Bonhoeffer's closest and most like minded friend. He and Eberhard Betke were Bonhoeffer's two closest friends as adults. But I met Franz Hildebrand in the spring of nineteen eighty four.

Dr. Nation: 40:49

I talked with him briefly. I heard him lecture. In 1984, I heard him say from the platform where he was giving a lecture, this was an extemporaneous comment. He said, If there is any one book that every pastor should read, it's the Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder. Franz Hildebrand, unlike Bettke, was a lifelong pacifist.

Dr. Nation: 41:12

My sense is Bettke was never a pacifist himself. So I think he didn't appreciate Bonhoeffer's pacifism. It's my sense. I don't know that that's true. But Franz Hildebrand was a pacifist, and they were like minded in that regard.

Dr. Nation: 41:27

Yes, I have a quote in maybe both of my books. I think I have a couple of quotes from Hildebrand in my newer book, where he is clear as a Jewish Christian. So he had to leave Germany in 1937 or he likely would have been killed. And as a Jewish Christian, he was committed to non violence, just as Bonhoeffer was. My sense is that everybody after a while respected the that is, circle of people who knew Bonhoeffer, who had known Bonhoeffer in various segments of Bonhoeffer's life, respected very much the authority of Eberhard Betke.

Dr. Nation: 42:07

So my sense is that they submitted their views to the authority of Betke. That's my impression. Can maybe elaborate on that a bit. But yes, one of the things I name in my book is that in every segment of Bonhoeffer's short life, there were those who said that he was a pacifist. Jean Lucer in nineteen thirty-thirty one, when he was with him.

Dr. Nation: 42:34

As I said, Bonhoeffer gave lectures on peace from 1931 to 1934. There is a church official who in fact was the one who appointed him to be a pastor in England. He referred to Bonhoeffer in 1936 as a pacifist and enemy of the state. And he said that because he didn't think Bonhoeffer should be training pastors. So he was trying to get him removed from directing the Finke and Waldo seminary.

Dr. Nation: 43:02

So he's another one. Karl Barth, with whom Bonhoeffer met six times between 1940 and 1942 when he was working for the Abwehr. Barth said years later that when he met with Bonhoeffer during these meetings from forty to '40 '2, that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist because he was convinced of pacifism from the New Testament. I could go on. There were people there are several students, I have quotes particularly from one of them, who studied with him both at the University of Berlin and at Finkenwalda Seminary.

Dr. Nation: 43:39

He said that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. There are several of his students who said they taught him pacifism. And Betke in one of his essays says that when Hitler reintroduced conscription to the military in the spring of nineteen thirty five, soon after Finkenwalda Seminary began, the students were excited about this because they were perceived to be not patriotic. They wanted to be perceived as patriotic. So they were happy that conscription was being reintroduced, but not their director.

Dr. Nation: 44:10

Becky says this in this essay. He says, When they looked over at their director, they realized he wasn't excited at all, and then he encouraged them to be conscientious objectors. Eric Metaxas specifically says that was not true, but it is true. There are several students who have said that. And a couple of them, only one of them do I quote, but several of them I mentioned their names, and I could point people to the sources where they've said this.

Dr. Nation: 44:40

So there were people, yes, who saw him as a pacifist through different stages of his life.

Derek: 44:47

So then not to beat a dead horse, but perhaps what gives Becky more weight in most people's mind? I mean, he wrote the first biography, so that's probably, what does Proverbs say? The first person to give an account of something generally is the one who's believed. But also, maybe he has more continuity than everybody else. If Franz Hildebrand left at some time, if LaSerre was only with him for a year, if Bart, you know, was kind of sporadic off and on meetings, Becky, did he have maybe the most continuity of everybody?

Dr. Nation: 45:22

Yes, and he was very close and yes, he had the greatest amount of time with him. And they were together a lot. So there is that. But we have texts, we have texts, and we have the testimonies of other people. And I just think the texts and the testimonies of all the other people outweigh Betke's what seems to me to be a biased interpretation, especially when he says Bonhoeffer was never a pacifist, even though Bonhoeffer at least twice explicitly said he was a pacifist.

Dr. Nation: 45:53

And then in I don't think he uses the word in cost of discipleship, but he argues for 15 pages as to why Christians should be committed to non violence. Yeah. So, but I do think, yes, I think his other friends, after a while, simply gave Becky the authority to define Bonhoeffer's life in general. And now that we have 16 volumes of collected works, as I say in my newer book, I think there will be more people who will question some of Becky's judgments. One of the things also, there's another book on that's the one in English that comes closest to my two books, is a book called Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance by Sabina Drom.

Dr. Nation: 46:41

And it's a good book. She hasn't come quite to the same conclusions I do, although there's a lot of overlap. But she disagrees with Becky in some ways. She convinced me after reading her book, which came out just before I wrote the manuscript for my first book. After reading her, I decided that Becky probably didn't do much research on the Obver or the various assassination attempts.

Dr. Nation: 47:11

That's my impression. I don't know that that's true, but that's my impression because she gives like, for instance, when I read Becky back in for the first time about 1980, I assumed almost all of the people in the Obver, the Military Intelligence Agency, were a part of the conspiracy. Well, what Drom points out is there were 13,000 employees in the Abwehr, and she says only about 50 of them were in the resistance movement. So, it certainly wasn't almost everybody. It was a small portion of the people who worked at the Abwehr.

Dr. Nation: 47:46

But to be fair, as I say, again, in my newer book, I do think Bonhoeffer probably knew a handful of those people at least. Like I said, he didn't remove himself from them. But at least one of the other people who was somewhat involved in the resistance was a woman in the Munich office, which is where Bonhoeffer was located rather than Berlin. She has stated in person, I didn't hear her speak, I read her lecture that she gave in the late 70s. And she was a lifelong pacifist, and she was a pacifist at the time that she was working for the Advair.

Dr. Nation: 48:20

Yes, there were various I mean, obviously, pacifism was extremely rare. And the pacifist organizations that existed were run out of existence in 1933 after Hitler came to power. So Gertrude Lochner is this woman's name. And being a woman, it doesn't certainly then, it didn't mean the same thing as it did as a man because you weren't conscripted into the military as a woman. But she nonetheless considered herself a pacifist after World War I, and she was working for Abwehr.

Dr. Nation: 48:52

Helmut von Moltke, who wasn't a pacifist, but he was involved in the Obver, and he was involved in a resistance movement. In fact, he was head of a resistance movement, which is fairly well known among those who study the resistance movements. But he has said explicitly that he did not affirm the killing of Hitler. So, some people imagine because they haven't read much about the resistance movement that everybody involved in the resistance movements were willing to kill Hitler. It's just not true.

Derek: 49:22

Yeah. Well, so that covers really well the first two kind of stages that I think are really important. Maybe we could talk about the last two stages then. And that would be probably the turning point in the movie for me, where I know that they took some cinematic liberties in the first portion. I mean, I think they did.

Derek: 49:46

I haven't read all of Bonhoeffer's works, I don't know that Bonhoeffer was up on stage, like, you know, playing the sax or piano. But he did play the piano, we know. But

Dr. Nation: 49:58

And he loved jazz music.

Derek: 49:59

Yeah. So it possible. Like, I'm okay with those liberties.

Dr. Nation: 50:03

Yeah.

Derek: 50:03

What sort of got me was when he was in this upper room with Hans being shown images and being told stories of what was happening to the Jews, which probably happened. He was told what was happening. But then he, all of a sudden, like in a moment in the movie, he supposedly renounces his pacifism and even makes a statement, and maybe he did make this statement, but because I know he was okay with lying at certain times. But he made the statements something to the extent of like, we have to beat the father of lies at his own game. And I'm like, that just some it seemed a little bit I don't know.

Derek: 50:42

He could have said something like that, but it seemed almost like sacrilegious at that point where all of a sudden have this 180 degree turn, especially about an issue that seems at best ambiguous, like we know very little about. Can you talk about that part of the movie, that kind of shift and maybe what issues you might have and what you think they might leave out?

Dr. Nation: 51:06

Yes. Before I do that, do want to mention something else that I haven't mentioned at this point, because it's become very important to me, and it's related to the reason why a few people dismiss my writings. And I'll say this briefly because it's quite complicated to go into, so I won't try to do that. But I do want to name it just so that it has been named. Bonhoeffer was against a principled approach to ethics.

Dr. Nation: 51:40

He maybe probably acquired this largely from Barth, but it could be that he wanted to oppose a kind of Kantian rooted in Immanuel Kant's philosophy of approaching ethics. For whatever the reasons were, he was opposed to a principled approach to ethics. This is true for Bonhoeffer from early in his adult life, the late 1920s, I think to the end of his life. So some people assume that because he was against principles that he couldn't be a pacifist, because by definition, a pacifist is someone who's committed to the principle that you never commit violence. Well, this is tricky business.

Dr. Nation: 52:24

Again, to deal with this, and one of my co authors in my first book does a terrific job of dealing with this in some ways. In Bonhoeffer's transition from his lectures in Barcelona, Spain, to his writing of the cost of discipleship, which is a good way to name this. And the book Discipleship or Cost of Discipleship expresses exactly what I'm talking about. In that book, Bonhoeffer is not dealing with principles. He's dealing with Christ.

Dr. Nation: 52:56

He's dealing with the Christ Jesus the Messiah who is not just a teacher, but he's the Word of God made flesh. He's the Word of God who changes our lives, who transforms our lives, and therefore empowers us to live faithfully, and also commands us to live faithfully. So all of that is hugely important for understanding Bonhoeffer's ethics. And he names us in a theoretical way in what our guests at as being the first three chapters of ethics, which again is why I have a chapter in my newer book on the first four chapters of Bonhoeffer's book Ethics, because that's all related to his being opposed to ethics as principles. So I just wanted to say that before I talk about this stuff.

Dr. Nation: 53:48

So yes, looking at Bonhoeffer, so he comes back from well, let me make a couple of general comments about the film. I think Komoraniki, the writer and director of the film, is a very gifted director. I don't know what you thought. I'm not, of course, a professional film critic. I thought it was very well done.

Dr. Nation: 54:12

I thought it's very persuasive, compelling as a story. I thought he did a very good job in a number of ways. The scenes look very real. The acting is good. If you've listened to interviews with him, I've listened to six interviews with him.

Dr. Nation: 54:26

He went out of his way to choose German actors, and they do a great job. I think the guy who plays Bonhoeffer does a wonderful job. So it's good in that way. But there's so many ways in which there's so many facts that are inaccurate. And I know you take some liberties with this sort film.

Dr. Nation: 54:44

And I know you have to compress things. But it's often confusing in the film what year you're in. And sometimes that matters considerably. And I'll say more about that in a minute. And you don't know who these different characters are often, you're not really told who they are.

Dr. Nation: 55:02

So I think both of those things and inaccurate quotes from Bonhoeffer, and quotes placed at the wrong time in the wrong place. All of those things are problematic in the film. So anyway, going back to where we were. So Bonhoeffer comes back Germany in the summer of nineteen thirty nine, only stayed in back in New York City for a few weeks. Another thing that, of course, is not mentioned is he went to New York in 1939 specifically to avoid serving in the military.

Dr. Nation: 55:34

That, of course, is not mentioned in the film. It's not mentioned in Eric Metax's biography, but it's true. He said it to George Bell. He comes back from New York City. And when he gets back to Germany, he knows that he has to deal with conscription.

Dr. Nation: 55:51

He was born in 1906. By this time, people his age are being drafted into the military. And he is committed. He's been teaching conscientious objection for a long time. He's committed to not serving in Hitler's army.

Dr. Nation: 56:03

He's committed to not giving an oath of allegiance to Hitler also. So he's going to have to try to avoid that. How's he going to do that? When he first goes back to Germany, he's still directing a seminary. One of the things that's not he's not shown being a pastor in the film.

Dr. Nation: 56:18

He's not shown directing pastors at the seminary. He is not shown teaching theology. In fact, they put on his lips, which he never said anything like this, I'm basically done with theology. He says this soon after he comes back from America in the film. Bonhoeffer was preoccupied with theology from, I don't know, age 14 on maybe, but certainly after he became an adult, until the day he was executed.

Dr. Nation: 56:45

So he's training seminary students in the seminary in exile. So they're moving the seminary around, but he's still training students up through the spring of nineteen forty. By the spring of nineteen forty, Sabine Drum, the German theologian that I mentioned earlier, who wrote the book Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Resistance, she and I apparently have come to the same conclusion. That in the spring of nineteen forty, when the Gestapo once again shut down his seminary, so he's not going to be able to teach students anymore, and they're after him to conscript him into the military, that he meets with officials from Abwehr. In the film, this is totally inaccurate, and it's distorting, I think, that he's shown, if you remember, he goes with his brother-in-law to the Abwehr, that's apparently the building they're in, and one of the officials comes there and taunts Hans to make sure that he's loyal to Germany more than Jews.

Dr. Nation: 57:46

And then he wants to get Bonhoeffer to give an oath of loyalty to Hitler. And Hans van den Ani, Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, had already told him he would have to do that. None of that happens in real life, in Bonhoeffer's life, because the top officials in the Abwehr are very favorable toward the resistance movement. So the top person, Canaris, who's the head of the Obver, he is not himself involved in the resistance movement, but he is sheltering those who are because he's totally in line with them. So is Oster, who's under Canaris.

Dr. Nation: 58:26

And is involved in the resistance, and he just brings his brother in. He meets with Bonhoeffer in the spring of nineteen forty with Oster. And they apparently tell him, if you come to work for the Abwehr, if you become one of our intelligence agents, we will make an argument to the officials that your work for the Abwehr is essential for the welfare of Germany. That's the those are the key words. And if they can make that argument, then he will not be eligible to be drafted.

Dr. Nation: 59:02

That's what they do. That's what happens. And Becky mentions this in his biography, that repeatedly while he's working for the from October 1940 to April of nineteen forty three, his UK status, as it's called, is threatened, and they keep having to make arguments to the officials as to why his work for the Abwehr is essential for the welfare of Germany. So that's why he's working for the Abwehr is to avoid being conscripted into the military. Nobody I know of imagines that he was really collecting intelligence for Germany.

Dr. Nation: 59:38

He's not doing that. And he's not doing anything for the resistance. Mostly, he's avoiding serving in the military. And he also is continuing to do church work. He's writing the ethics manuscripts.

Dr. Nation: 59:50

He's writing some other essays for the church. And he often is making arguments to try to protect the church as he can. And in his position,

Derek: 01:00:03

he did assist at least that one group of Jewish people financially.

Dr. Nation: 01:00:10

He's getting ready to get to that. Sorry, but thank you. Yes, so then let me move to why he was arrested, why he was put in prison and why he was executed. He was arrested on 04/05/1940 Well, let me back up. There are many who believe that he was arrested because he was involved in one of the two attempts on Hitler's life in March of nineteen forty three.

Dr. Nation: 01:00:34

I understand why people might believe that because those happened in March of nineteen forty three, and he's arrested on April five of nineteen forty three. But no one was arrested in relation to the two attempts in March of forty three, because they were not discovered by the officials. The one assassination attempt that's shown in the film is from March of nineteen forty three. In the film, it appears to be from the summer of nineteen thirty nine while he's in New York City. Well, that's kind of crazy.

Dr. Nation: 01:01:05

One of the things that's problematic about that is you're telling me that you're affirming the killing of Hitler, the attempt to kill Hitler in 1939, before World War II has started, before the systematic attempt is undertaken to eliminate all Jews from Europe, if not the world, and before Germans generally hate Hitler. Nobody very few people. I mean, people in Bonhoeffer's circle, yes. But most people love Hitler in 1939 in Germany. Nineteen Thirty Nine, he's very popular.

Dr. Nation: 01:01:40

1940, he's still quite popular. So you're wanting to say that they were trying to kill Hitler, this is a good thing in 1930, the summer of nineteen thirty nine, that's what appears to be shown in the film. But again, the chronology is so confused, it's hard to know when this is happening. But that attempt, which is real, the one that's shown in the film, actually happened in March of nineteen forty three. There is no reason to imagine that Bonhoeffer had anything to do with that attempt.

Dr. Nation: 01:02:10

Yeah, nobody owned well, one or two people who secured bombs may have been connected to those two attempts in March of 'forty three. But nobody else in Abwehr was involved. This was mostly happening from another entity connected to the military. So Bonhoeffer was arrested on 04/05/1943, because he and his brother-in-law and a few others were involved in this successful effort to save the lives of 14 Jews. It was originally seven, it was called Operation Seven.

Dr. Nation: 01:02:40

It expanded to 14. They used a lot of money to relocate these Jews and they used the money from Abwehr. And so the two accusations that are given in the film, the first one is somewhat accurate. It says money laundering, if you remember. He's accused of money laundering.

Dr. Nation: 01:03:00

Well, they might have thought it was money laundering. They at least thought they were pocketing some money, and they knew that they'd use some of this money to relocate Jews. And because they're anti Semitic, they hated them for doing this. So they arrested them on 04/05/1943, because of saving the lives of 14 Jews and relocating them to Switzerland. And then after he was arrested in April of nineteen forty three, then when he went before the judge in September, we now have a transcript of his trial, which is in volume 16 of the collected works.

Dr. Nation: 01:03:35

And what was the judge angry about? Bonhoeffer's work for the Abwehr was obviously not essential for the welfare of Germany. He was simply trying to avoid military service. That's what the judge names. So he was effectively imprisoned because he was attempting to avoid military service successfully.

Dr. Nation: 01:03:58

And then we don't know why he was executed explicitly. There was no real trial. But he was certainly perceived to be an enemy of the state. As I said earlier, there was an official in the church who already in 1936 was referring to Bonhoeffer as a pacifist and enemy of the state. But Bonhoeffer had knowledge of people who were attempting to kill Hitler.

Dr. Nation: 01:04:20

That in itself was treasonous as far as Germany was concerned. And he was involved, as I said, in this effort to put out peace feelers, as it's been called, to England to ask them not to take advantage of Germany in its weakest moment. Any of those things and others would have gotten Bonhoeffer executed as an enemy of the state. So he was executed. But it says in the film explicitly, the second reason they give for why he was executed was because he was involved in the attempt on 07/20/1944, which is bizarre.

Dr. Nation: 01:04:52

He was in prison in April of nineteen forty three, more than a year earlier. And the man who tried to kill Hitler in July of nineteen forty four was not even given that assignment yet when Bonhoeffer was arrested.

Derek: 01:05:06

Was this the Von Stauffenberg?

Dr. Nation: 01:05:09

Yes. Von Stauffenberg was still an active soldier when Bonhoeffer was arrested. Just shortly, think I have my dates right. I think he was seriously injured just after Bonhoeffer was arrested. And then he was in the hospital for a while, then when he got out of the hospital, people convinced him to get involved in the attempt to kill Hitler and then to do it himself.

Dr. Nation: 01:05:36

Because there weren't many who had access to Hitler, he was one of them. But that happened, like I said, he wasn't even involved in that effort till after Bonhoeffer was arrested. There's Yeah, he wasn't involved in that attempt. And I don't know whether they mean to be referring to the attempt that's shown on the screen, which certainly isn't in '44. So I don't know.

Dr. Nation: 01:05:57

Anyway, neither of those two attempts that they mentioned was Bonhoeffer connected with. He wasn't connected with any of the attempts. There were two attempts in March, the one in July, those are the three most famous, and the ones that came closest to succeeding. But Bonhoeffer wasn't involved in any of those three.

Derek: 01:06:14

So it's interesting that you mentioned General Canaris a little bit earlier, because one of the things, and maybe you can speak to the potential validity of this, but I had thought for a while, and I heard it said that, Okay, so maybe Bonhoeffer was not arrested for conspiracy to kill Hitler. And in fact, he probably wasn't, because he wouldn't have lasted for two years in a prison. They killed people pretty quickly for those types of things. So he probably wasn't arrested for that. But somehow, later on, they discovered the extent of what was going on.

Derek: 01:06:53

They followed the money and then they started to dig deeper. And eventually they discovered that Bonhoeffer was complicit. And somebody had mentioned it was General Canaris. He had a diary or something to that extent that was discovered. And in fact, General Canaris was executed on April 9, the same day Dietrich Bonhoeffer was.

Derek: 01:07:11

And so what they had said is that, you know, in General Canaris' diary, Hitler and the leadership was they were like, Oh my goodness, The Abwehr is just so corrupt, like, we're gonna just kind of anybody who's in the prisons who's associated with the Abwehr, we're just gonna get rid of them because we know that this goes deep. Can you speak to the validity of that either finding something that incriminates Bonhoeffer in his diary or being responsible for his execution and the connection between Bonhoeffer's execution and the discovery?

Dr. Nation: 01:07:47

Yeah, I've never heard that about Canaris's diary, so that's a new thing that I'd like to pursue. This might be related, I don't know, or might be somebody doing some translating that didn't quite come out right. Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, Hans von Danihni, this is mentioned from time to time, I've had it mentioned to me before, he was keeping a record of all of the acts of injustice on the part of the Third Reich, from the time he was in the Ministry of Justice in 1933. So he had a significant file of all of the horrible things that the Nazis had done. And he wanted to use this to well, early let me back up and give this a little context.

Dr. Nation: 01:08:39

One of the things I discovered in my research back already in 1980 is that a lot of the generals who wanted to do away with Hitler, take Hitler out of power, before 1939, most of them did not want to kill Hitler. They wanted to arrest him and put him on trial. And so Van Denani was keeping this record, I think so that Hitler could be put on trial and would be found guilty, because this was so obvious. The file that he kept was put in somebody's backyard, and then it was moved somewhere else, and it came to be called the Zawson Files. Now, the Zawson Files are, as I said, from time to time referred to.

Dr. Nation: 01:09:23

Becky, in his large biography, has a brief essay on the Zawson Files. So I've looked into the Zaasen files. The only thing I can tell is somewhat similar maybe to what you were saying is I can easily imagine that anyone who was perceived to be an agent for the obverse would have been suspicious. One of the reasons they discovered the irregularity in the books that led them to this rescue effort of these 14 Jews was because the other officials and other agencies kept the Abwehr under surveillance for a long time, because they did not trust Canaris or Oster or Donati. So they thought they were doing things that they did not think were in Germany's well-being.

Dr. Nation: 01:10:12

So they were surveilling them. So I don't doubt that if they found a list of agents for Abwehr, or if they found all of Bonhoeffer's connections, I mean, he could have been, like I said, there would have been a number of things connected to him that would have caused them to see him as worthy of death. And as I quote in my, again, books, I think, after the attempt in April of nineteen forty four, the Third Reich legal system simply went on a rampage, executing lots of people, almost all of whom had nothing to do with trying to kill Hitler. They were simply determined to be enemies of the state. There is at least one DVD that shows a lot of the films from the trials.

Dr. Nation: 01:11:01

They are an absolute mockery of any form of legal justice.

Derek: 01:11:12

All right, we've explored quite a lot. I've just got one more question for you then. Sure. One of the I remember when I read your first book, it was I was like, Okay, this is very nice. Like it wasn't some conspiracy theory sort of case.

Derek: 01:11:29

I thought it was very well backed and it made a lot of sense. But it was still hard for me to imagine how do you run-in those circles without being implicated in it. You know, one one bad apple spoils the whole bunch type of thing where it's, okay, if you're involved while they're planning to assassinate Hitler, how do you not get involved in that over the years? And one the stories that has been very helpful for me, somebody that you talked a little bit about so far, is Von Moltke. And it's helpful for me because he very explicitly says he does not want to kill Hitler.

Derek: 01:12:08

And even in letters to his wife, he talks about how he's very thankful that he was caught when he did, so that his name would not be associated with that. And, you know, that's such explicit written evidence to a trusted keeper, you know, his own wife. Like, can't deny that those are his true sentiments. So would you mind kind of using Von Molkie's story as a framework to show us how is it possible to run I think it was the is it called the Kreisau Group?

Dr. Nation: 01:12:41

Kreisau Circle.

Derek: 01:12:43

Kreisau Circle. Could you talk a little bit about that and use that as a framework to help us envision with the case that you've made, how is it possible to believe that?

Dr. Nation: 01:12:54

Yeah, well, I'm not, I mean, I understand why you would ask that in a way. I mean, it's just, it's a corroborating story, which is why I used it as the introduction to my first book. It's a corroborating story in a way because it's another man with a different skill set. I mean, he was an international lawyer. Bonhoeffer was a theologian.

Dr. Nation: 01:13:13

So as an international lawyer, he used his international law skills to try to stop the Nazis from doing whatever he could stop them from doing. He tried to reroute trains that were taking Jews to certain areas. He would try to reroute them to areas where he thought they might be safe. He was trying to put into effect rules, laws of war, to try to encourage generals to obey them. One of the things that happened by, certainly by 1942 or '43, there were a lot of officers, particularly on the Eastern Front, who were if they had if they had a conscience, if they had much of a moral commitment, they were grossly offended by what they were being asked to do.

Dr. Nation: 01:14:05

Because they were being asked, not just with Jews, but with Polish people were considered to be second class human beings at best. And so they would just kill them and slaughter them in mass in in large numbers, and just throw them in mass graves. So that was happening over and over again, and a lot of the officers were rebelling against that. And so given that probably Moltke saw that sort of thing, he would try to help them to do something about this, and try to get them to respect international laws, try to get them to, just out of self interest, to look at the situations and say, look, if you're gonna do this, don't you know that they will see that they have a right to do that as well? So hold back from what you've been asked to do.

Dr. Nation: 01:14:58

But yes, I mean, what strikes me about Moltke, and there are some parallels, and again, Sabina Drom compares Moltke and Bonhoeffer, she mostly contrasts them, I think some for contrasts, may be right, but I'm not sure they're right. Moltke and Bonhoeffer both seemed like men of deep convictions. Yes, when you read some of the letters that Moltke write, I quoted from one or two of them, he wrote to one of his friends in England, it was clear that he was doing what he was doing because of his Christian faith. And he thought that he needed to stay the course. And as you said, I mean, you're surrounded by people who aren't doing that.

Dr. Nation: 01:15:40

I mean, most of the people in Abwehr are probably just going along with what Germany wants them to do, just like most of the soldiers are doing what the officers tell them to do. And sometimes they're being told to do horrible things. Bonhoeffer was certainly a man of deep conviction. I mentioned this conference I went to in Seattle, Washington, in the spring of nineteen eighty four. The conference was the fiftieth anniversary of the Barman Declaration.

Dr. Nation: 01:16:11

The confession that became sort of the rootage of the confessing church. And it was intriguing to me that Bonhoeffer, who was not even at the Barman conference in May of nineteen thirty four, was the name that was mentioned more often than any single name. And two of his students were present, his two best friends were present, and Bonhoeffer's name was just all over the place. This man was a man of deep conviction. But one of the things that seemed true, and I think it's because he came from the family he came from largely, from the time he became a, maybe became a theologian, but certainly from the time he was in New York City, his convictions were undoubtedly out of sync with most of his family members.

Dr. Nation: 01:17:02

But they had very close relationships, and he didn't cut them off because they had different convictions. He loved them, he cared for them, and he continued to relate to them in healthy ways. So I think he had learned to do that for a long time, and yet, in the midst of that, he could clearly differentiate himself. Because when he came to some of his convictions, especially pacifism, but not just pacifism, clearly, he didn't hold to the same convictions that a lot of his family members held to. Had a there's a family eight children, So it was a large family.

Dr. Nation: 01:17:38

And two or three of them were agnostics or atheists. But he loved these people so he could hold his own convictions in the midst of a community where his convictions were even not respected, but certainly not affirmed, because it's who he was. And so he could live with that kind of integrity in the midst of Abwehr, in the midst of being connected to people who were willing to kill Hitler. I think because his convictions were deep, and one of those convictions was you love your neighbors as yourselves, even if those neighbors think you're silly, stupid, immature, whatever. I certainly know from having been a pacifist for most of my adult life now that lots of people think pacifists are naive and can't think straight about the real world and so forth and so on.

Dr. Nation: 01:18:30

And I've known a lot of naive pacifists over the years. Bonhoeffer wasn't one of them. I think I'm not one of them. Because if you want to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that matters to you a lot, it doesn't mean you check out of the world. One of the things sorry, I know you want to probably bring this to a close, but one of the reasons why I'm passionate about trying to change the dominant narrative about Bonhoeffer is pacifists keep being told that if we adhere to non violence, then we can't engage the real world.

Dr. Nation: 01:19:06

That like the film really is implying, you can't speak out against evil, you can't act out against evil. But Bonhoeffer was doing that from 1931 forward. He gave all these lectures against war. War was a very real and painful reality after World War I. Bonhoeffer knew that at a deep level.

Dr. Nation: 01:19:28

When Hitler came to power within a few months, he writes one of the few straightforward essays that was written against anti Semitism that call for Christians to respond in four different ways to what was beginning to happen to Jews. And he not only articulated that essay and gave it as a lecture a couple of times, but he also tried to live that out in his real life for the rest of his life. And then for all of '33, he was trying to keep the church, the Protestant church, from being co opted by Nazism. And this, again, it seems irrelevant in the movie, but I heard Komarnyky say in an interview that one of the reasons why Hitler wanted to take over the church early was because he knew the church was the most powerful institution in Germany. Well, if Bonhoeffer is working tirelessly in 1933 to try to keep this powerful institution from being taken over by the Nazis, then he's not being silent.

Dr. Nation: 01:20:33

He's not being inactive. He was in fact the opposite. He was speaking out, he was acting. And he did that for the rest of his life. But he was not called to England to be a spy, unlike what the film says.

Dr. Nation: 01:20:46

No, he went to England to be a pastor. And that's what he did while he was there. But while he was there, he had two choices to make before he went back to Germany. At about the same time, he received an invitation to start a seminary back in Germany, or to study with Gandhi in India, which he really wanted to do, because he wanted to learn how to resist Hitler in a Christian manner. In other words, through nonviolent resistance.

Dr. Nation: 01:21:19

He wanted to do that. He decided he couldn't do both of them. So he didn't go study with Gandhi, even though he wanted to. He's the one that tried to secure this invitation from Gandhi. And finally, he had gotten it in the fall of thirty four.

Dr. Nation: 01:21:32

But he decides he can't do both, so he goes back to Germany to direct a seminary. None of that equals a man who is not engaging the real world, is not speaking out and acting out on behalf of the Jews against violence, and in a variety of ways, including trying to keep the church, being the church, being a witness for the Christ that he thought it should be.

Derek: 01:21:59

I think there are a lot of good words there. And I think what what you hit on with his family and being able to be around differences is I think that's probably why it's especially hard in our culture today for people to understand this, because there is so much polarization and there is so much cutting one group off and putting ourselves into echo chambers. And Bonhoeffer was able to do that. And interestingly, I would argue, probably because he was a pacifist who believed in enemy love and, you know, he had those convictions. And I love the movie as well.

Derek: 01:22:43

But like you said, the romanticization of things, think is unfortunate because now I'm reminded like Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem, she talks about the banality of evil. How just this, the banality of this evil that seems so harmless can do so much evil. But people don't flip that and say, Well, I wonder how much power the banality of good, just the day in, out, faithful decision making over the course of years. And what they're wanting is this explosive decision, this amazing cinematic decision, as opposed to at the decade long banality of good that Bonhoeffer lived Is there anything else that you want to say? Because I'm out of questions at this point.

Dr. Nation: 01:23:34

No, I mean, I'm sure as soon as we stop, I will think of things I probably should have said. But for now, I think, yeah, I think I've covered most of the things I wanted to cover. I think you've asked good questions. So no. Yeah.

Dr. Nation: 01:23:51

I just hope yeah. I I mean, one of the things that's yeah. It's like I said, I think the film is very powerful, very compelling, and it grieves me so much because it's unlike what it says at the beginning, it is not the true story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is loosely based on a true story, but it's not the true story. And it's too bad, and it will convince a lot of people.

Dr. Nation: 01:24:22

One thing I wanted Yeah, this is probably worth saying. There are comments out in the social media and Facebook I've seen in various places that try to connect this film with promoting Christian nationalism and connected closely to Eric Metaxas. And I think that's just not true. When I listened to six interviews with the writer and director, he explicitly denied having based the movie on Metaxas' biography. But beyond that, when you hear what he says in interviews, he just doesn't sound like that's who he is, number one.

Dr. Nation: 01:24:59

And number two, I don't think there's anything in the film that's promoting Christian nationalism. As you said, I mean, as you implied, it's a rather strange message, however, particularly when, what was it, last week, when a CEO of a health company, a health insurance company, was assassinated. And thousands of people affirmed him being assassinated. Trump, an attempt was made on Trump's life through an attempted assassination. Really, in this kind of divisive culture, the message you want to give is saying that assassination is a good thing if you think something evil is going on at the top.

Dr. Nation: 01:25:44

And as I've said before, in the few times I've had discussions about the film, I don't think that's the message most people will take away from the film. I think the message most people will take away is the sort of standard anti pacifist message, which is, yes, when you're pacifist and maybe a pastor or Christian, you're naive about evil, but once you really deal with the real world and see how horrible some evils are, you will know that you have to use violence against people when you have to do it. You just have to do what you have to do. I think that's the message a lot of people take away from the film. But what it directly seems to communicate is, yeah, summer of nineteen thirty nine, you could think about assassinating somebody that's very popular, who hasn't started a war yet, and so forth and so on.

Dr. Nation: 01:26:36

Anyway, seems like a strange message at this divided time in the American culture.

Derek: 01:26:41

Well, you so much. I appreciate your valuable time. And I will make sure to put links to your books as well as anything else you think is pertinent that you send me. I'll make sure to put those in the notes so that everybody can find them easily. So

Dr. Nation: 01:26:55

you Well, you, Derek. You've done a good job of interviewing me. So thank you very much.

Derek: 01:26:59

Thanks.

Dr. Nation: 01:26:59

Appreciate it.

Derek: 01:27:01

That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.