CHAPTER 15
THE CHURCH BATTLE
HEATS UP
He is a prisoner and he has to follow. His path is prescribed. It is the path of the man whom God will not let go, who will never be rid of God.
The question at stake in the German church is no longer an internal issue but is the question of the existence of Christianity in Europe.
—DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
If Heckel and Müller thought letting Bonhoeffer go to London might mollify him somewhat or might keep him at arm’s length from Berlin, they were mistaken. In London, Bonhoeffer was five times the trouble for them than he ever could have been back home. London gave Bonhoeffer a freedom he didn’t have in Berlin, and he used it well. He deepened his relationships in the ecumenical world, and he made sure that whatever positive image Hitler’s Germany might have in the English press was quickly corrected with facts.
And given his extraordinary gifts as a leader, he was soon shaping the opinions of other German pastors in London. At this crucial time, he would guide their individual and collective responses to the Reich church. Because of Bonhoeffer, the German churches in England even joined the Pastors’ Emergency League and, later, the Confessing Church. Of all the countries with German congregations, only one country—England—would take such a stand, all because of Bonhoeffer.
One German pastor in England to whom Bonhoeffer grew especially close was Julius Rieger, then in his early thirties. Pastor Rieger would work closely with Bonhoeffer and Bishop Bell in the years to come, and after Bonhoeffer’s departure in 1935, he would become the principal German contact with Bell. Rieger was the pastor of St. George’s Church in London’s East End, which soon became the center for refugees from Germany. Bishop Bell became so involved in working with German refugees that he came to be thought of as the “bishop to refugees.” When Sabine and Gerhard Leibholz were forced to leave Germany, Bell, Rieger, and St. George’s Church were important connections for them. Rieger would also become close to Franz Hildebrandt, who became a pastor at St. George’s when he was forced to leave Germany in 1937.
In mid-November 1933, following the German Christians’ fiasco in the Berlin Sportpalast, the forces that had opposed the German Christians clamored for Müller’s resignation. He was scheduled to be consecrated on December 3 all the same. What’s more, the Reich church invited the German pastors in England to come home to attend the ceremony. The church government knew that a free trip home would be hard for the poorly paid pastors to resist, and their attendance would strengthen their ties to Müller and the Reich church, not to mention further legitimize the whole swastika-studded affair.
Bonhoeffer had other ideas. First he tried to convince all of the German pastors in England to stay away from the sham ceremony, and he succeeded with many of them. He persuaded those going to use the opportunity to deliver a document detailing their objections to Ludwig Müller. Titled “To the Reich Church Government,” it catalogued the absurd statements and actions of Müller over the last few months. They would get their free trip home and could still register an official and detailed protest. Müller’s consecration ceremony was eventually postponed, so the document was not delivered personally, but it was sent to the leaders of the Reich church nonetheless.
As a result of the outcry over the Sportpalast event, the German Christians were in an awful position, losing ground by the hour. The greatest proof of their rapid retreat was that Müller executed a shocking about-face and rescinded the Aryan Paragraph. Then the Janus-faced Heckel sent an epistolary olive branch to the German congregations in England, effectively saying there was nothing to fight about any longer, and mayn’t we all get along?
Bonhoeffer was not tempted by this offer. Nor did he believe for a moment that any of the recent gains were permanent, which they weren’t. In fact, they proved to be more temporary than he thought. In early January, Müller spun back around and bared his teeth again, rescinding his previous rescindment: the Aryan Paragraph was suddenly back on. Before he did this, though, he had given himself some cover. On January 4 of the new year, he enacted what came to be known as the “muzzling decree,” although Müller originally had given it the more cheerful and Goebbelsesque title, “Decree for the Restoration of Orderly Conditions in the German Evangelical Church.” This decree declared that discussions concerning the church struggle could not take place in church buildings or be conducted in church newspapers. Anyone who did so would be dismissed. And there was more to gasp at: he announced that all German church youth groups, called the Evangelical Youth, were to be merged with the Hitler Youth. Suddenly the battle was renewed.
Bonhoeffer knew that because they could threaten to leave the Reich church, the German congregations abroad had leverage that the churches inside Germany did not. The separation of the German churches in England from the official German church would be a serious blow to Germany’s international reputation. The threat became explicit in a letter sent by Baron Schroeder, chairman of the Association of German Congregations abroad. “I fear fateful consequences,” he wrote, “in the form of a secession of overseas German parishes from their home church which would deeply sadden me, on behalf of the past community of faith.” This was no hollow threat. On Sunday, January 7, the German pastors sent a telegram to the Reich church: “For the sake of the Gospel and our conscience we associate ourselves with [the] Emergency League proclamation and withdraw our confidence from Reich bishop Müller.” This was tantamount to a declaration of war. In the original version that Bonhoeffer drafted, it went further, saying they “no longer recognize[d]” the Reich bishop. That was too strong for some, so it was softened to the nonetheless electrically charged “withdraw our confidence.” In either case, to declare such things to the Reich church was as close to the Rubicon of a status confessionis as the opposition churches had ever come. As events were unfolding, they would cross that river soon enough.
In fact, the very next day began a weeklong double-time march in that direction. On Monday the eighth, the Pastors’ Emergency League planned to kick off its protest with a service at the magnificent and hugely important Berlin Cathedral, just across from the former kaiser’s palace. This colossal cathedral, nearly four hundred feet tall and conceived as a Protestant answer to St. Peter’s in Rome, was commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the 1890s on the site of the 1465 church that was the first Hohenzollern Court chapel. It was originally to be a visible and literal link between church and state, with a covered bridge connecting it with the palace, and was therefore a place of great symbolic significance for Germans. But the despotic Müller caught wind of their plans and decided to head them off at the pass by obtaining a police order to keep the massive doors shut. He had political power and was not afraid to use it.
But even Müller could not prevent the aggrieved faithful from gathering in the vast plaza outside the cathedral, which they did, and there they sang Luther’s Feste Burg.* The gloves had come off. On Thursday the eleventh, in an effort to lend some civility to the escalating ugliness, the aged Hindenburg shuffled into the fray and summoned Reich Bishop Müller to a meeting. Now eighty-six and only months from death, the titular president of the Reich represented a living, wheezing link with Germany’s glorious past under the kaiser. If anyone could influence Müller, surely he could. On the twelfth, Hindenburg met with Bodelschwingh and two other members of the Pastors’ Emergency League. And on the thirteenth came the declaration of peace. The opposition pastors retracted their imminent threat to secede from the Reich church—but only for the time being. The only reason that Hindenburg was able to pull off this miracle was that a meeting with the Great Man of Peace was scheduled in just a few days.
On January 17, both sides were to meet with the Reich chancellor, Adolf Hitler. In early 1934, many in the Confessing Church, including Niemöller, still thought of Hitler as the reasonable one in all of this, as the man who would settle things in their favor. They were sure the smaller-minded men below him were to blame. It was Reich Bishop Müller who was Nazifying the church, not Hitler—and when they could finally meet with him, all would be clarified. So everyone had been willing to stand down and abate their breath until that meeting, since it meant waiting only four more days.
In the meantime they would count the seconds, and the tension would again ratchet upward. But Hitler postponed the meeting. And postponed it again, till the twenty-fifth. The eight days of additional waiting were an eternity of strained inaction.
Bonhoeffer followed every detail of these hemorrhoidal isometrics from England via his mother’s almost daily updates. Because of the family’s connections, he received extraordinary inside information, even while at his parsonage in Sydenham. And Paula Bonhoeffer was not only reporting on the mounting intrigue; she was a player in it. She wrote her son that it was strategically important to let Müller know that the truce was indeed only a truce, and said that she had been trying to get this message to him via her brother-in-law, General von der Goltz. She added that “we hope that our man in Dahlem,” meaning Niemöller, “may get an audience” with Hindenburg.
Hindenburg seemed to be the key. He appeared to have a soft spot for the embattled Confessing Church and was thought to be of the opinion that Hitler should sack Müller. What they didn’t know was that Göring wanted to prop Müller up, the better to stick it to the troublemaking theologians. So the London pastors sent a letter to Hindenburg, and Bonhoeffer persuaded Bishop Bell to send one too.
Hindenburg even forwarded the pastors’ letter to Hitler. But with Göring and his other anticlerical henchmen whispering in his ear, Hitler was decidedly unreceptive. As far as he was concerned, the London pastors were merely spewing “internationalist Jewish atrocity propaganda.” They had better watch themselves. The fawning Heckel passed along Hitler’s gloomy impressions to them as a not-so-veiled threat, which they parried by calling it a threat. Meanwhile, everyone continued to wait for the meeting with Hitler.
God’s Captive
During this tense time of waiting, Bonhoeffer preached his now rather famous sermon on the prophet Jeremiah. It was Sunday, January 21. Preaching on a Jewish Old Testament prophet was quite out of the ordinary and provocative, but that was the least of the sermon’s difficulties. The opening words were typically intriguing: “Jeremiah was not eager to become a prophet of God. When the call came to him all of a sudden, he shrank back, he resisted, he tried to get away.”
The sermon reflected Bonhoeffer’s own difficult situation. It is extremely doubtful whether anyone in his congregations could understand what he was talking about, much less accept that it was God’s word to them that Sunday. If they had ever been puzzled by their brilliant young preacher’s homilies, they must have been puzzled now.
The picture that Bonhoeffer painted of Jeremiah was one of unrelieved gloom and drama. God was after him, and he could not escape. Bonhoeffer referred to the “arrow of the Almighty” striking down its “hunted game.” But who was the “hunted game”? It was Jeremiah! But why was God shooting at the hero of the story? Before they found out, Bonhoeffer switched from arrow imagery to noose imagery. “The noose is drawn tighter and more painfully,” he continued, “reminding Jeremiah that he is a prisoner. He is a prisoner and he has to follow. His path is prescribed. It is the path of the man whom God will not let go, who will never be rid of God.” The sermon began to get seriously depressing. What was the young preacher getting at? Perhaps he was reading too many books. A little fresh air and fun now and again, that’s what a man wants! As for Jeremiah, he could certainly use a little cheering up. But surely things would begin to look up for him soon! They continued listening, hoping for an upturn in Jeremiah’s fortunes.
But alas, Pastor Bonhoeffer delivered an unrelenting homiletic bummer. He marched farther downhill:
This path will lead right down into the deepest situation of human powerlessness. The follower becomes a laughingstock, scorned and taken for a fool, but a fool who is extremely dangerous to people’s peace and comfort, so that he or she must be beaten, locked up, tortured, if not put to death right away. That is exactly what became of this man Jeremiah, because he could not get away from God.
If Bonhoeffer wanted to ensure that his congregation would never dream of following God too closely, this sermon was just the ticket. He then spoke of God driving Jeremiah “from agony to agony.” Could it get worse?
And Jeremiah was just as much flesh and blood as we are, a human being like ourselves. He felt the pain of being continually humiliated and mocked, of the violence and brutality others used against him. After one episode of agonizing torture that had lasted a whole night, he burst out in prayer: “O Lord, you have enticed me and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.”
Bonhoeffer’s congregation was lost. God maneuvered his beloved servant and prophet into imprisonment and agony? Somewhere along the line they must have missed a crucial sentence! But they hadn’t.
And what none of them could know was that Pastor Bonhoeffer was talking, in some large part, about himself and about his future, the future that God was showing him. He was beginning to understand that he was God’s prisoner, that like the prophets of old, he was called to suffer and to be oppressed—and in that defeat and the acceptance of that defeat, there was victory. It was a sermon that applied to anyone with ears to hear, but few could actually hear it:
[Jeremiah] was upbraided as a disturber of the peace, an enemy of the people, just like all those, throughout the ages until the present day, who have been possessed and seized by God, for whom God had become too strong . . . how gladly would he have shouted peace and Heil with the rest. . . .
The triumphal procession of truth and justice, the triumphal procession of God and his Scriptures through the world, drags in the wake of the chariot of victory a train of prisoners in chains. May he at the last bind us to his triumphal carriage so that, although in bonds oppressed, we may participate in his victory!
The Meeting with Hitler
Finally January 25 came, and both sides met with Adolf Hitler. It did not go well for the opposition, who had come to the meeting hoping to be vindicated and to see the rough-necked Müller get his comeuppance from the Führer. But it was Niemöller, up to this point the most pro-Nazi figure in the Confessing Church, who got the worst of it.
Göring had had Niemöller’s telephone tapped, and he opened the long-awaited meeting by producing the transcript of a call in which Niemöller had spoken ill of Hindenburg’s influence on Hitler. Suddenly and unforgettably—and for the first time for many in the room—the true colors of Hitler and his lieutenants shone vividly. In the transcript, Niemöller had cracked wise about Hindenburg’s recent meeting with Hitler. Hitler was not amused. “This is completely unheard of!” he fumed. “I will attack this rebellion with every means at my disposal!”
“I was very frightened,” Niemöller said later. “I thought, what do I answer to all his complaints and accusations? [Hitler] was still speaking, speaking, speaking. I thought, dear God, let him stop.” In an attempt to put a better face on things, Niemöller declared truthfully, “But we are all enthusiastic about the Third Reich.” Hitler exploded. “I’m the one who built the Third Reich!” he fumed. “You just worry about your sermons!” In that painful, sobering moment, Niemöller’s fantasy that the Third Reich was a legitimate movement—something that existed in the world of reality, apart from Hitler’s mind—was dashed. He now saw that the only principles of the Third Reich were the desires and will of the man ranting in front of him.
The rest of the meeting was no less dispiriting. Naturally, everyone present vowed fealty to Hitler and his Third Reich. Niemöller was able to speak with Göring afterward, but he was now banned from preaching nonetheless. When the whole thing was over, there was no question who had won. Müller, the chuckle-headed chaplain, had again blundered upward.
Heckel’s position was strengthened too. Two days after the meeting, he sent a letter to all the pastors abroad, effectively reiterating what had been agreed to at the meeting, and then saying, “Just as the front-line soldier is not in a position to assess the overall plan but must carry out the duties that immediately concern him, so I expect the clergy abroad to distinguish between their own particular task and the task of the church authorities in shaping the German Evangelical Church at home.”
A major church figure was extending the Führer Principle to the ecclesiastical and theological sphere, and using a martial simile to do so. It must have been depressing. Worse yet, Heckel decided it was time to visit London.
The principal reason for Heckel’s visit was to stanch the bleeding of damaging information from Bonhoeffer and his ecumenical contacts. He knew that the disturbingly doughty Bonhoeffer would not get discouraged by a little bad news, such as what had happened at the meeting with Hitler. After all, when Niemöller was banned from preaching in his pulpit at Dahlem, Franz Hildebrandt—who was no less outspoken against the German Christians— would fill in.
On February 4, his twenty-eighth birthday, Bonhoeffer received letters from friends and family, but Hildebrandt’s brilliantly funny letter outshone them all. It was a parody written in the archaic German of Luther—whose legacy was at the center of the Kirchenkampf—and with extraordinary wit and wordplay it combined teasing inside jokes with serious, but still funny cracks about the church struggle and their theological enemies. One inside joke was about a naked photo of Bonhoeffer as a two-year-old in the bathtub, which Paula Bonhoeffer had erred in showing to the incorrigible Hildebrandt; another concerned Bertha Schulze, a Berlin student of Bonhoeffer whom Paula Bonhoeffer had hired as her son’s secretary and housekeeper in London, but who, because of what Hildebrandt referred to as “intentions” toward Bonhoeffer, had to find another job. She likely hadn’t realized that Bonhoeffer had not yet resolved his relationship with Elizabeth Zinn, to whom he sent his sermons each week. Hildebrandt’s high-spirited letter gives a real picture of the joy at the heart of their friendship and the hilarity of their constant teasing and bickering during the three months they were together in the London parsonage.
Bonhoeffer preached twice on his birthday, as he did every Sunday, but in the evening he gathered with a few friends and got a phone call from 14 Wangenheimstrasse, where the whole family had gathered, just to wish him a happy birthday. One of the letters he had received that day was from his father, who revealed something he had never said to his son before:
Dear Dietrich,
At the time when you decided to study theology, I sometimes thought
to myself that a quiet, uneventful pastor’s life, as I knew it from
that of my Swabian uncle . . . would really almost
be a pity for you. So far as uneventfulness is concerned, I was
greatly mistaken. That such a crisis should still be possible in
the ecclesiastical field seemed to me, with my scientific
background, to be out of the question. But in this as in many other
things, it appears that we older folks have had quite wrong ideas
about the solidity of so-called established concepts, views, and
things. . . . In any case, you gain one thing from
your calling—and in this it resembles mine—living relationships to
human beings and the possibility of meaning something to them, in
more important matters than medical ones. And of this nothing can
be taken away from you, even when the external institutions in
which you are placed are not always as you would wish.
Bishop Heckel Comes to London
The day after his birthday, Bonhoeffer gathered with the London pastors in anticipation of Heckel’s visit. They wrote a memorandum, detailing their problems with the Reich church to use in the meeting. It took issue with the Reich church’s use of force against its opponents and raised the general problem of Müller’s leadership, since he obviously agreed with much of the most inane heresy of the German Christians. The memo also declared that the Aryan Paragraph “contradicts the clear meaning of the scriptures and is only one symptom of the danger to the pure gospel and the confession that is posed by the ‘German Christians.’” It is significant that they put “German Christians” in quotation marks since the term must have especially nauseated them. It was offensive for its bold claim that those associated with it were Christians, which they could scarcely be from any theologically serious standpoint; and for the clear insinuation that those outside their fold were not true Germans. The memo ended by referring to Müller’s crude disparagements of his opponents: “The Reich bishop’s language, as reported even in the daily press, which is otherwise allowed to say so little, includes such expressions as ‘Pfaffen’ and ‘shriveled-up fellow citizens.’ For pastors who are already subjected to enough hostility in their daily work, such insults out of the mouth of their highest minister really do not allow any confidence to grow.”
Pfaffen was a combination of the German words Pfarrer (pastor) and Affen (apes). Hitler, too, was known to use the term Pfaffen to refer to the Protestant pastors. The other phrase was meant to malign his opponents as lacking in manly German vigor, which was the hallmark of true “positive Christianity” and one of whose chief manifestations was the use of crude, disparaging language.
When Heckel and his delegation arrived in London to meet the seven pastors, the lines between the two sides were drawn. Heckel thought he could achieve his aims nonetheless, which were not only to persuade them to fall in line, but to get them to sign an agreement he had drafted, in effect declaring their loyalty to the German Reich church. To obtain the signatures, he would use any means at his disposal, especially obfuscation and veiled threats. But he did not reveal the document until the end of the meeting. First Heckel presented the “General Plans” for the imminent “reorganization” of the Reich church.
When the meeting was opened for discussion, Bonhoeffer spoke first. He would not content himself with rebutting what Heckel said and implied, but characteristically leaped to the offensive, being aggressive, brilliant, and infuriatingly and yet earnestly polite as he did so. He described the Reich church’s actions, repeating the issues in the memo, and then said that the question at hand was not how to unify with such a church, but how to secede from it. In Bonhoeffer’s mind, the Reich church of Ludwig Müller was clearly and unrepentantly heretical. This was not something he was at liberty to overlook.
Heckel was not elected bishop that year for acceding to logic. He cleverly skated and pirouetted around every one of the memo’s objections, as though each was simply a silly misunderstanding. He explained that Müller—who had instituted, rescinded, and then reinstituted the Aryan Paragraph—was actually against it after all! And had he mentioned that the Reich bishop was particularly fond of the churches abroad? The Reich bishop was a cheerful and conciliatory fellow if one gave him a chance. He had been presented with difficult choices. As for his public insults and foul language, that was merely the “soldier’s slang” of the time! Müller was for many years a naval chaplain, and that sort of thing must be expected.
And what of the brazen attempt to combine all church youth groups with the Hitler Youth? Heckel said that no one else had difficulty with it, and as he now glided from obfuscation to veiled threats, he said that the beloved Führer gushingly described this conflation of church youth with the Hitler Youth “as the Christmas present that pleased him most.” How Bonhoeffer must have cringed.
But Heckel was not through. Continuing in this threatening vein, he brought up the evidence they had against certain opposition clergy, and he spoke of the disciplinary actions taken against them. Niemöller was among this group, and Heckel said that if Niemöller did not shape up, the whole thing might come to a “terrible ending.” Heckel did not neglect to mention the “treasonous” action of consorting with “foreign influences,” referring specifically to an “English bishop” and a “Swedish bishop,” but of course he did not say what he and everyone else in the room knew, that these were Bonhoeffer’s allies, George Bell and Valdemar Ammundsen. He preferred to rely on everyone’s powers of inference.
Bonhoeffer, however, seemed to have been strangely immune to intimidation. He continued to push back and do what he knew he must, but always in a respectful and measured way and at the appropriate times. This was not one of them, so he said little in response, and the meeting came to an end. But it was only the first of two that had been scheduled. They would meet again the next day.
Meanwhile, Heckel went to the Athenaeum Club, where he met with the “English bishop” to whom he had referred. Heckel was desperate to stop Bonhoeffer from working his ecumenical contacts, which was causing real trouble for the Reich church in the English press. But in case Heckel was not successful with the idealistic young pastor, he must try to get an agreement from the older and wiser Bishop Bell. Surely he would be more reasonable. At their meeting Heckel diplomatically suggested that Bell agree to stay out of the German church’s business for at least the next six months. Bell was not so reasonable and refused.
For Heckel it was all quite infuriating. When he met with the London pastors the next day, the stakes were that much higher. He had struck out with Bell, so he desperately needed to succeed here and must not fail to get their signatures on the document he brought. But the seven pastors weren’t signing anything. In fact, they had their own document, and they were brassy enough to push Heckel to sign it. If he wanted them to join the new Reich church, all he had to do was agree to their conditions. If the Reich church agreed that it was “founded on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,” if it abolished the Aryan Paragraph once and for all, and if it agreed not to dismiss any pastors who agreed to these first points, and so on, they would all be only too happy to join the new Reich church. It was that simple.
Pushed into a corner, Heckel again resorted to veiled threats. He dared to suggest that if they were not “obedient” on these issues, they might come to be numbered with the “Prague emigrants.” This was the pejorative term that the Nazis used to refer to their left-leaning political enemies, who had been forced to flee Germany when Hitler came to power, under threat of death. This went too far. Shortly after Heckel said that, Bonhoeffer and two others rose and left in protest.
Heckel returned to Berlin empty-handed and steaming. To say that he regretted having warmly promoted Bonhoeffer to his London pastorate was a great understatement. All it had done was give the high-handed hothead a protected and public platform from which to take potshots at the Reich church. A week later Heckel learned that Bonhoeffer had been invited to Lambeth Palace by the archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang. This must have been unbearably irksome, since just a few months earlier, the official Reich church delegation of Hossenfelder and Fezer had angled for such an invitation and were soundly rebuffed. Heckel had had enough. He now summoned Bonhoeffer to Berlin.
But before Bonhoeffer’s visit, the stakes in this battle rose significantly for both men. Heckel had just been rewarded for his good behavior with the office of bishop. The Reich bishop had also made him head of the church’s Foreign Office. This meant that he now answered not just to the church, but to the state too. So his failure to improve Germany’s image in the international press was more serious than ever. It was more serious for Bonhoeffer, too, since noncompliance with Heckel’s edicts was now disobedience to the state and could be considered treasonous.
Bonhoeffer arrived in Berlin on March 5. When he met with Heckel, the newly minted bishop did not mince words. Bonhoeffer must henceforth refrain from all ecumenical activity. And in what was becoming a cliché, Heckel produced another document to sign; and again Bonhoeffer was too smart to sign it and smart enough not to say so defiantly, but to say that he would weigh the matter and respond in writing very soon. He flew back to London on March 10, and on March 18 he wrote his predictable response to Heckel: he would not sign.
On the Banks of the Rubicon
In Berlin, Bonhoeffer met with Martin Niemöller, Gerhard Jacobi, and other leaders in the Pastors’ Emergency League. Their moment of truth had arrived. They saw that their efforts in the church struggle had largely been for naught, and as the leaders of the opposition, they planned to break ranks with the German Reich church. They agreed this was the status confessionis that Bonhoeffer had been saying it was all along, and they would hold the synod for a Free Church in Barmen at the end of May. It would be a watershed event and would officially and publicly separate them from the apostate Reich church. They had come to the banks of the Rubicon and were girding themselves for the crossing.
Now more than ever they would need the help and support of the churches outside Germany. Bonhoeffer felt the great urgency of the situation, and during the week in which he was formulating his response to Heckel, he contacted his friends in the ecumenical movement. On March 14 he wrote Henry Louis Henriod, the Swiss theologian who headed the ecumenical World Alliance. Bonhoeffer also wrote Bishop Bell. He wrote the letter in English:
My dear Lord Bishop,
. . . One of the most important things is that the
Christian churches of the other countries do not lose their
interest in the conflict due to the passage of time. I know that my
friends are looking to you and your further actions with great
hope. There is really a moment now as perhaps never before in
Germany in which our faith in the ecumenical task of the churches
can be shaken and destroyed completely or strengthened and renewed
in a surprisingly new way. And it is you, my Lord Bishop, on whom
it depends whether this moment shall be seized. The question at
stake in the German church is no longer an internal issue but is
the question of the existence of Christianity in
Europe . . . even if the information of the
newspaper is becoming of less interest, the real situation is as
tense, as acute, as responsible as ever before. I shall only wish
you would see one of the meetings of the Emergency League now—it is
always in spite of all gravity of the present moments a real uplift
to one’s own faith and courage—Please do not be silent now! I beg
to ask you once more to consider the possibility of an ecumenic
delegation and ultimatum. It is not on behalf of any national or
denominational interest that this ultimatum should be brought
forward but it is in the name of Christianity in Europe. Time
passes by very quickly and it might soon be too late.
On March 16, Henriod wrote Bell, underscoring the situation, and that same day Henriod replied to Bonhoeffer:
My dear Bonhoeffer, Thank you for your letter of March 14th. As you say, the situation is becoming more critical and some action should be taken up without any delay by the Oecumenic movement. . . . I have written a few days ago already to the Bishop of Chichester, urging him to follow up his correspondence with Bishop Heckel by a strong letter. . . . Those who stand for the Gospel in Germany should not get desperate. There are declarations and messages which are coming out from various countries by pastors and others, which will indicate how much deep feeling there is outside Germany with regard to the situation of the government of the German Church. I can only repeat that stronger action might have been taken earlier if our best trusted friends in Germany had not urged us again and again even these last few days, not to break relationships with the German Church, as it is our only means of influencing the situation by getting at the present government again and again with strong criticisms.
On March 28, Bonhoeffer traveled to Lambeth and was received by Cosmo Lang, the archbishop of Canterbury. Bonhoeffer wrote Henriod again on April 7. His urgency and frustration are typical of his dealings with both the ecumenical movement and his allies in the Confessing Church:
My dear Henriod!
I would very much have liked to discuss the situation with you again, since the slowness of ecumenical procedure is beginning to look to me like irresponsibility. A decision must be made at some point, and it’s no good waiting indefinitely for a sign from heaven that will solve the difficulty without further trouble. Even the ecumenical movement has to make up its mind and is therefore subject to error, like everything human. But to procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you’re afraid of erring, when others—I mean our brethren in Germany—must make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost to run counter to love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love. . . . [I]n this particular case it really is now or never. “Too late” means “never.” Should the ecumenical movement fail to realize this, and if there are none who are violent in order to take the kingdom of heaven by force (Matthew 11:12), then the ecumenical movement is no longer the church, but a useless association in which fine speeches are made. “If you do not believe, you will not be established”; to believe, however, means to decide. And can there be any doubt as to the nature of that decision? For Germany today it is the Confession, as it is the Confession for the ecumenical movement. We must shake off our fear of this world—the cause of Christ is at stake, and are we to be found sleeping? . . . Christ is looking down at us and asking whether there is anyone left who confesses faith in him.
In the midst of this whirlwind of ecumenical activity, Bonhoeffer served as the main pastor for two congregations, preaching twice each Sunday and carrying out his innumerable functions as a pastor. On April 11, he performed the funeral for a nineteen-year-old German girl in his parish.
On the twelfth he learned that Müller had nominated as Rechtswalter (legal administrator) over the German church a racist fanatic named Dr. August Jäger. In a speech the year before, Jäger had wackily declared, “The appearance of Jesus in world history ultimately represents a burst of Nordic light in the midst of a world tormented by symptoms of degeneracy.” On April 15 Bonhoeffer wrote Bishop Bell:
The appointment of Dr. Jäger . . . is an ostentatious affront to the opposition and . . . means in fact that all power of the church government has been handed over to political and party authorities. It was much surprising to me that the Times gave a rather positive report to this appointment. Jäger is in fact the man with the famous statement about Jesus being only the exponent of Nordic race etc. He was the man who caused the retirement of Bodelschwingh and who was considered to be the most ruthless man in the whole church government. . . . So this appointment must be taken as a significant step towards the complete assimilation of the church to the state and party. Even if Jäger should try to make himself sympathetic to the churches abroad, by using mild words now, one must not be deceived by this tactic.
Bonhoeffer knew Jäger’s appointment meant the Nazis were planning to be as brazen as possible; the ecumenical movement must act quickly and give them an ultimatum. The Reich church would do everything possible to curry favor with the churches abroad, so the ecumenical movement must remain strong and must refuse to recognize it as the true German church. It was also imperative that the ecumenical movement show solidarity with the pastors in the Emergency League.
In explaining the situation to his friend Erwin Sutz, Bonhoeffer showed a defiant side that we rarely see:
The church regime ordered me to fly to Berlin and put before me some sort of declaration that I would refrain from all ecumenical activity from now on, which I didn’t sign. This sort of thing is disgusting. They’d give anything to get me away from here, and for that reason alone I am digging in my heels. . . .
Nat[ional] Socialism has brought about the end of the church in Germany and has pursued it single-mindedly. We can be grateful to them, in the way the Jews had to be grateful to Sennacherib. For me there can be no doubt that this is clearly the reality that we face. Naïve, starry-eyed idealists like Niemöller still think they are the real Nat[ional] Socialists—and perhaps it’s a benevolent Providence that keeps them under the spell of this delusion.
The Barmen Declaration
All of Bonhoeffer’s ecumenical efforts were beginning to pay off. Bishop Bell wrote his “Ascension Day Message” on the crisis in the German church, and on May 10 he sent it to the members of the ecumenical Life and Work organization around the world. It brought worldwide attention to the opposition pastors in Germany and put great pressure on the Reich church. Of course this made Heckel and Müller—and the Nazis in general—look bad. As with most of what Bell wrote about the German church struggle, Bonhoeffer worked closely with him in shaping the message. “The situation,” it declared,
is, beyond doubt, full of anxiety. . . . [A] revolution has taken place in the German State. . . . [T]he present position is being watched by members of the Christian Churches abroad not only with great interest, but with a deepening concern. The chief cause of anxiety is the assumption by the Reich bishop in the name of the principle of leadership of autocratic powers unqualified by constitutional or traditional restraints which are without precedent in the history of the Church. . . . [T]he disciplinary measures which have been taken by the Church government against ministers of the Gospel on account of their loyalty to the fundamental principles of Christian truth have made a painful impression on Christian opinion abroad, already disturbed by the introduction of racial distinctions in the universal fellowship of the Christian Church. No wonder that voices should be raised in Germany itself making a solemn pronouncement before the whole Christian world on the dangers to which the spiritual life of the Evangelical Church is exposed.
On and on it went, spelling out the Nazi government’s effect on the German churches. Two days after Bishop Bell mailed it to his ecumenical contacts, the full text appeared in the London Times.
It was obvious from this victory that Bonhoeffer’s ecumenical activities alone were reason enough for him to be in London. He also continued his refugee work with Julius Rieger at St. George’s. More Jewish refugees from Germany were arriving all the time. Life in Göttingen was getting so difficult for Sabine and her family that, in a year, they would arrive as refugees too. Two years later Hildebrandt would do the same. Bonhoeffer’s work in London as a pastor and in the trenches of the church struggle held an appeal for him that was undeniable. On May 22, as he prepared for the Barmen synod, he wrote his grandmother:
Just now it is quite lovely here. We had a church excursion yesterday and were outdoors all day, in an area that is famous because at this time of year the whole forest floor is absolutely covered in blue, for hundreds of meters, by a kind of bellflower. Furthermore, I was greatly surprised to find wild rhododendrons in the woods, a whole lot of them, hundreds of bushes growing close together. . . . It’s still very uncertain how much longer I shall be here. I recently had a letter . . . confirming my current leave of absence. . . . I assume that I shall then have to make a final decision whether to return to an academic career. I’m not so tremendously keen on it anymore.
The Birth of the Confessing Church
On the last three days of May 1934, the leaders of the Pastors’ Emergency League held a synod in Barmen. It was there, on the Wupper River, that they wrote the famous Barmen Declaration, from which emerged what came to be known as the Confessing Church.*
The purpose of the Barmen Declaration was to state what the German church had always believed, to ground it in the Scriptures, and to differentite it from the bastardized theology that had been coming from the German Christians. It made clear that the German church was not under the authority of the state; it repudiated the anti-Semitism and other heresies of the German Christians and their “official” church led by Müller. The principal author of the Barmen Confession was Karl Barth, who claimed to have produced the final version “fortified by strong coffee and one or two Brazilian cigars.”
Since it was a watershed in the German church struggle of the Third Reich, and is a seminal document, we quote it at length here:
I. An Appeal to the Evangelical
Congregations and Christians in
Germany
8.01 The Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, May 29-31, 1934. Here representatives from all the German Confessional Churches met with one accord in a confession of the one Lord of the one, holy, apostolic Church. In fidelity to their Confession of Faith, members of Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches sought a common message for the need and temptation of the Church in our day. . . . It was not their intention to found a new Church or to form a union. . . . Their intention was, rather, to withstand in faith and unanimity the destruction of the Confession of Faith, and thus of the Evangelical Church in Germany. In opposition to attempts to establish the unity of the German Evangelical Church by means of false doctrine, by the use of force and insincere practices, the Confessional Synod insists that the unity of the Evangelical Churches in Germany can come only from the Word of God in faith through the Holy Spirit. Thus alone is the Church renewed.
8.03 Be not deceived by loose talk, as if we meant to oppose the unity of the German nation! Do not listen to the seducers who pervert our intentions, as if we wanted to break up the unity of the German Evangelical Church or to forsake the Confessions of the Fathers!
8.04 Try the spirits whether they are of God! Prove also the words of the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church to see whether they agree with Holy Scripture and with the Confessions of the Fathers. If you find that we are speaking contrary to Scripture, then do not listen to us! But if you find that we are taking our stand upon Scripture, then let no fear or temptation keep you from treading with us the path of faith and obedience to the Word of God, in order that God’s people be of one mind upon earth and that we in faith experience what he himself has said: “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”
II. Theological Declaration Concerning the Present Situation of the German Evangelical Church
8.05 According to the opening words of its constitution of July 11, 1933, the German Evangelical Church is a federation of Confessional Churches that grew out of the Reformation and that enjoy equal rights. The theological basis for the unification of these Churches is laid down in Article 1 and Article 2(1) of the constitution of the German Evangelical Church that was recognized by the Reich Government on July 14, 1933: Article 1. The inviolable foundation of the German Evangelical Church is the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is attested for us in Holy Scripture and brought to light again in the Confessions of the Reformation. The full powers that the Church needs for its mission are hereby determined and limited.
8.07 We publicly declare before all evangelical Churches in Germany that what they hold in common in this Confession is grievously imperiled, and with it the unity of the German Evangelical Church. It is threatened by the teaching methods and actions of the ruling Church party of the “German Christians” and of the Church administration carried on by them. These have become more and more apparent during the first year of the existence of the German Evangelical Church. This threat consists in the fact that the theological basis, in which the German Evangelical Church is united, has been continually and systematically thwarted and rendered ineffective by alien principles, on the part of the leaders and spokesmen of the “German Christians” as well as on the part of the Church administration. When these principles are held to be valid, then, according to all the Confessions in force among us, the Church ceases to be the Church and the German Evangelical Church, as a federation of Confessional Churches, becomes intrinsically impossible.
8.09 In view of the errors of the “German Christians” of the present Reich Church government which are devastating the Church and also therefore breaking up the unity of the German Evangelical Church, we confess the following evangelical truths:
8.10 1. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” (John 14.6.) “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. . . . I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” (John 10:1, 9.)
8.11 Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
8.12 We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.
8.15 We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.
8.17 The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and sacrament through the Holy Spirit. As the Church of pardoned sinners, it has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely his property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance.
8.18 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.
8.19 “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” (Matt. 20:25, 26.)
8.20 The various offices in the Church do not establish a dominion of some over the others; on the contrary, they are for the exercise of the ministry entrusted to and enjoined upon the whole congregation
8.21 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, apart from this ministry, could and were permitted to give itself, or allow to be given to it, special leaders vested with ruling powers.
8.22-5. “Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:17.) Scripture tells us that, in the as yet unredeemed world in which the Church also exists, the State has by divine appointment the task of providing for justice and peace. [It fulfills this task] by means of the threat and exercise of force, according to the measure of human judgment and human ability. The Church acknowledges the benefit of this divine appointment in gratitude and reverence before him. It calls to mind the Kingdom of God, God’s commandment and righteousness, and thereby the responsibility both of rulers and of the ruled. It trusts and obeys the power of the Word by which God upholds all things.
8.23 We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church’s vocation as well.
8.24 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus itself becoming an organ of the State.
8.26 The Church’s commission, upon which its freedom is founded, consists in delivering the message of the free grace of God to all people in Christ’s stead, and therefore in the ministry of his own Word and work through sermon and sacrament.
8.27 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.
On June 4—again, thanks to Bishop Bell and Bonhoeffer—the full text of the Barmen Declaration was published in the London Times. It was incendiary, announcing to the world that a group of Christians in Germany had officially and publicly declared their independence from the Nazified Reich church. When one read it, it was easy to understand why they had done so.
As Bonhoeffer took great pains to make clear, the Barmen Declaration did not constitute a secession from the “official” German church because calling it a secession would give an appearance of legitimacy to that “official” German church. It was not the Confessing Church that had broken away, but the Reich church. The Barmen Declaration signaled that a group of pastors and churches acknowledged, repudiated, and officially distanced themselves from that de facto secession. It reclarified what it—the legitimate and actual German Church—actually believed and stood for.
To Bonhoeffer, because of the Barmen Declaration, the Confessing Church had become the German church, and he believed that all true Christians would recognize that the Reich church of the German Christians was officially excommunicated. But as it turned out, not everyone saw this as clearly as Bonhoeffer had expected.
Indeed, even some of his closest allies, such as George Bell and Bishop Ammundsen, did not see it that way. This would lead to some difficulties, especially since Bonhoeffer anticipated the ecumenical conference to be held in Fanø, Denmark, that August. Bonhoeffer had been asked to give a speech at Fanø and to organize the youth conference that was part of the larger conference, but he soon realized that he had bigger issues to worry about.
The troubles began when Bonhoeffer discovered that some German delegates invited to the Fanø conference were part of the Reich church led by Müller. First of all, Bonhoeffer was determined that the youth conference he was organizing would not recognize any delegates with ties to Müller’s Reich church. Second, he was determined to prevent anyone from the Reich church from attending the larger Fanø conference. Either one was with those who had declared their separation from the Reich church, or one was with the Reich church. How had the ecumenical leaders failed to grasp that?
In June Bonhoeffer traveled to Berlin to meet with Niemöller and Karl Koch, president of the Confessing Synod. The three agreed that the powers that be in Geneva, where the ecumenical organization’s offices were headquartered, would be expected to acknowledge the new situation and invite members of the Confessing Church to the conference and keep away all others.
Bonhoeffer immediately contacted the Fanø organizers, making his position clear:
I have already written Herr Schönfeld that participation by our German delegation in Fanø will essentially depend on whether representatives of the present Reich Church Government are to take part in the conference. In any case the members of our delegation are agreed that they will stay away from those Fanø meetings that are attended by representatives of the church government. It would be a good thing if this alternative is generally and clearly realized. And I hope that you, too, will help us to get the ecumenical movement to state openly, before it is too late, which of the two churches in Germany it is prepared to recognize.
So Bonhoeffer’s participation was contingent on the understanding that the Confessing Church was now the true German church. If the leaders of the Confessing Church were not invited as such, no one from the Confessing Church would participate. If Heckel and the Reich church were there, they would be there alone. The silence of the Confessing Church would speak for itself.
But all of this would soon get awkward. Henriod wrote Bonhoeffer with bad news: an invitation had already been extended to Heckel and the Reich church’s Foreign Office. Even though he was on Bonhoeffer’s side, generally speaking, Henriod said that it was impossible to retract the invitation. It was also impossible for the ecumenical body to issue a second invitation to the Confessing Church, as such. The ecumenical leaders regarded the Confessing Church as a movement, not a church. But he added that if the Confessing Synod declared itself to be a second German church, that would be a different situation.
Bonhoeffer was exasperated. The Confessing Church had abundantly declared all that was necessary at Barmen. Furthermore, it was certainly not a second German church. It was the only German church. There could not be two. The Reich church had stepped away by being unrepentantly heretical, leaving the Confessing Church as the only remaining German church. Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology was quite crisp and clear, although those who didn’t see things his way might have thought him fussy. But for him these things were bound by the doctrines of the Scriptures and the dogmas of the historical church. One must not sloppily blur such things. Either the Confessing Church was the one and only German Evangelical Church, adhering to the Scriptures and to the spirit of the Reformation and to the Constitution of the German Evangelical Church—or it was not. The Barmen Declaration had clearly and loudly declared to the world that they were theologically and legally that church.
On July 12 he wrote Henriod:
There is not the claim or even the wish to be a Free Church beside the Reichskirche, but there is the claim to be the only theologically and legally legitimate evangelical church in Germany, and accordingly you cannot expect this church to set up a new constitution, since it is based on the very constitution, which the Reichskirche has neglected. . . . [T]he Confessional [sic] Church . . . [has] already once declared before the whole [of] Christianity, what their claim is. So, I feel strongly, that legally and theologically the responsibility for the future relationships between the German Church and the Ecumenic Movement rests with the Ecumenic Movement itself and its actions.
He asked Henriod to excuse his “lengthy explanation, but I should not like to be misunderstood by my friends.”
But Henriod, who was the head of the Ecumenical Federation, simply did not see it this way. And he felt bound by the protocols and statutes of his organization. To Bonhoeffer, the idea that Geneva was unable to retract the invitation to Heckel, or to extend an invitation to the Confessing Church as things stood, seemed ridiculous. He now turned to Bell. And Bell turned to Ammundsen. Ammundsen wrote a kind letter, in which, by referring to the Confessing Church as a “Free Synod,” he made it clear that he himself did not understand the situation as Bonhoeffer did. Even he still regarded the Confessing Church as some kind of alternative German “free” church. But he said that perhaps two members of the Confessing Church could be invited “in no official capacity,” thereby doing an end run around the strange rules. Bonhoeffer, Bodelschwingh, and Koch were thus invited, and now had to think about whether to accept under these strange conditions. Meanwhile, Heckel caught wind of their invitation and tried to stop it.
During that summer of 1934, during all of this back-and-forth, dramatic changes were taking place in Germany. Taken together, they powerfully altered the political landscape, which would have a direct bearing on everyone’s future for years to come and would immediately affect who would attend the ecumenical conference at Fanø.
The Night of the Long Knives
The terrible events that altered the political landscape of Germany that summer were Hitler’s response to what looked like very bad news. There were rumors that things were at last unraveling for Hitler and his criminal administration. Bonhoeffer heard from his brother-in-law Dohnanyi that Hjalmar Schacht, the head of the German Reichsbank, was on the verge of resigning. President Hindenburg’s doctors leaked the news that he was likely only months from death. Hitler feared that as soon as Hindenburg died, the conservatives and the army leaders would push hard for a return to the Hohenzollern monarchy. For them, the way forward to a greater and more unified Germany was away from the crass embarrassment that was Adolf Hitler and back to the golden days of the kaiser and aristocratic rule. But Hitler, having sniffed the political winds with typically canine sensitivity, would bound ahead of the situation. And with typical lupine ruthlessness, he would order a savage bloodbath that came to be known as the Nacht der Langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives). *
Hitler knew that he must keep the army generals from acting against him. And he knew that their greatest fear was losing their power to the SA. Ernst Röhm wanted his SA to become the new Nazi army, with him at its head, and since he had been at Hitler’s side from the earliest days of the Nazi movement, how could Hitler deny him? But Hitler was for Hitler, so if his old comrade Ernst Röhm was giving the generals concern, and thereby threatening Hitler’s own future, that was another bag of peanuts. To get the generals to cool their monarchist ardor, Hitler made a preemptive deal with them. He promised to keep Röhm at bay and prevent the SA from taking over. He had not built the Third Reich only to have that bull-necked pervert Röhm spoil everything!
Thus, on June 29, the extraordinary murder spree known as the Night of the Long Knives was unleashed, a ghastly tableau of blood-letting across Germany in which hundreds of people were slain in cold blood. Some were dragged out of bed and shot in their homes; some were killed by firing squads; others were sent to eternity sitting at their desks; wives were dispatched with their husbands; and ancient enemies from the failed putsch of 1923 were avenged, one with pickaxes. It was a foretaste of things to come. By far the most brazen act of all the carnage was the killing of two army generals, von Schleicher and von Bredow.
As for Ernst Röhm, he was awakened in his hotel room, dressed down personally by an irate Hitler, and then hauled off to a prison cell in Munich, where he was suggestively sequestered with a loaded revolver. But Röhm’s taste for butchery did not extend to suicide, and it fell to two of his own SA men to end his sordid life.
When it was all over, Hitler claimed that a Röhm putsch had been imminent, but with the help of Providence it had been avoided. He announced that 61 had been shot, although another 13 died while “resisting arrest.” Dohnanyi told Bonhoeffer that the Ministry of Justice put the figure at 207 who were methodically hunted down and murdered; in later years the figure was put at 400 or even 1,000. In any event, it was a long list, and no previous enemy of Hitler, Göring, or Himmler was excluded. It was an opportunity to sweep every traitorous scoundrel from the ranks of the living! Many more were hauled off to concentration camps. As usual, Hitler raged that he had been provoked to his actions—that a coup was in the works, that indeed his own life had been threatened, and that these murders were in the best interests of the German Volk, for whom no sacrifice was too great!
On July 13, Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag:
If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. . . . Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.
It all had a chilling effect on most Germans. Bonhoeffer’s student Inge Karding recalled the mood that followed this episode: “A crippling fear rose up like a bad odor within you.”
As for the army generals, they had landed in a difficult spot, someplace in Hitler’s pocket. To be fair, they had no idea that Hitler’s promise to keep Röhm from taking over the armed forces would mean a limitless massacre. Nonetheless, the plans to restore the Hohenzollern dynasty were off. After all, Hitler had kept his part of the bargain, even if he had done so through mass murder and rampant lawlessness. And as far as Hitler was concerned, that waxworks annoyance Hindenburg was now free to depart this world when he wished, and the sooner the better, since Hitler had some particular ideas about who might replace him.
Austria was also experiencing violence and political turmoil, which culminated in the July 25 assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss by Nazi agents. A staunch Catholic in a staunchly Catholic country, Dollfuss once said, “For me the fight against National Socialism is essentially a fight in defense of the Christian conception of the world. Whereas Hitler wants to revive the old Germanic paganism, I want to revive the Christian Middle Ages.” In the wake of his murder, further violence erupted in Austria, and many feared Hitler would send troops across the border. Mussolini sent Italian troops to prevent this, which they did. A week later, Hindenburg died.
When the war hero gave up the ghost on August 2 at the age of eighty-six, Hitler—lickety-split—announced his choice for Hindenburg’s replacement. He would be Hindenburg’s successor! As it turned out, he would remain chancellor too. The two offices of president and chancellor would be combined in one person (c’est moi), as this was the will of the German people. And if anyone doubted it, the object of their affection announced a plebiscite later that month when, as one might have foreseen, 90 percent of the German people voted Ja. How many did so with enthusiasm and how many out of fear cannot be known.
As for the army, they had been freed of the threat of Röhm and the SA, but the SS, under the superlatively despicable Heinrich Himmler, would give them far worse trouble. Hitler could have his cake and eat it too. Hitler was never content to contemplate gains when there was still more to be grabbed. Playing on the deeply patriotic mood that attended Hindenburg’s death, Hitler summoned the officers and troops of the Berlin garrison to the Königsplatz where, by flickering torchlight, they renewed their oath of allegiance. But when their hands were raised, they found themselves swearing an oath that was not what they had expected. It was not an oath to the German constitution or to the German nation, but to the fellow with the mustache. According to what they were swearing, Hitler had become the living embodiment of the German will and law. The oath came quite to the point: “I swear by God this sacred oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath.”
They pronounced these words en masse, frozen in their formations and unable to scratch their heads at what had just happened. But what had happened was that in their hour of grief and honor, they had been magnificently snookered. Germans in general, and military men in particular, took obedience and oaths extremely seriously, and these few words, assented to under some duress, would pay handsome dividends for the Führer in the years ahead. They would make executing any plans to remove him from office, whether via assassination or otherwise, very difficult indeed, as we shall see.
General Ludwig Beck was horrified. The noble tradition of the German army had been outwitted and defrauded, duped into dragging its colors through the mud. Beck called it “the blackest day of his life.” He would resign in 1938 and become one of the leaders of the plots to assassinate Hitler, culminating in the final plot that would take place on July 20, 1944, the day before Beck took his own life.
With Hindenburg’s death, the German people’s connection to the comfort and stability of the old order under the kaiser was severed. Hindenburg had given many a sense of security. He was thought to be a stabilizing force and a check on the wildness of Hitler. Hitler knew this and had used Hindenburg to legitimize his leadership. But now Hindenburg was gone, and the German people found themselves far from shore, alone in a boat with a madman.
* . The hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
* . The term confess means “to give assent to” or “to acknowledge.” It echoes Jesus’ statement from the gospel of Matthew that “whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven” (10:32 nkjkjv). At first some called it the Confessional Movement. The German term for “Confessional Church” was Bekennendekirche, so it is sometimes abbreviated BK.
* . Absurdly, it was also referred to as Operation Hummingbird.