The theologian who chose the gallows over silence

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was 27 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933. He was already a theologian of some reputation, having completed his doctoral dissertation at 21 and a second thesis at 24. He had studied in New York at Union Theological Seminary and had contacts and options that most German pastors did not.

Within two days of Hitler's rise to power, Bonhoeffer gave a radio address questioning the cult of leadership building around the new chancellor. The broadcast was cut off mid-sentence. It was the beginning of a sustained and increasingly dangerous engagement with the regime that would not end until his death.

He helped found the Confessing Church, the branch of German Christianity that refused to subordinate itself to Nazi ideology. He ran an illegal seminary at Finkenwalde from 1935 until the Gestapo shut it down in 1937. The Cost of Discipleship was written during this period. His students were being drafted, watched, and in some cases arrested.

In 1939, with war approaching, Bonhoeffer was persuaded to travel to the United States. He was safe. He had lectures to give and colleagues who wanted him to stay. He lasted two weeks. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr explaining why he had decided to return: "I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."

He returned, joined the Abwehr resistance network as a double agent, and participated in the plot against Hitler. He was arrested in 1943. On April 9, 1945, three weeks before Germany surrendered. He was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was 39. The doctor who witnessed his death later wrote that he had never seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.