Reddit mentions of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

There's this great biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the biographer goes into the details of what Hitler wanted to turn the churches in Germany into. It seemed at first Hitler was very pro-Christianity, but over time the Catholic churches and the Confessing Churches seemed to turn against him.

He was absolutely not a practicing Catholic (far from it), but his Austrian upbringing was Catholic...

There is a phenomenal book out there about Bonhoeffer called Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. I highly recommend it. The book has a bunch of primary sources, including many from Bonhoeffer himself.

The difficulty of discussing Christianity and the Holocaust, directly, is that relatively few people, even within Germany, were truly aware of the extent of the Holocaust until near the end of the war. As a result, you will find it a little more difficult to find information directly related to that topic. Christianity's relationship to Naziism, on the other hand, does have some more readily available information.

While a good portion of Germany's Christian population either supported, or at least failed to oppose, Naziism, that is not universally the case. You might be interested in a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and theologian who strongly opposed Hitler and Naziism, and was eventually executed by them. He was moderately known at the time, but became extremely influential in the past few decades or so.

While it's an extremely large volume, and not directly related, you might find some useful information in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". It's very comprehensive, and does talk a bit about the Christian Democrat party's opposition to Nazism early on, only to eventually fail to mount any meaningful opposition as Hitler began rising to power.

Finally, while I don't know of any specific books on the topic, you probably will want to look into the influence of Martin Luther (specifically his antisemitism) on Germany, Naziism, and Hitler. This is topic that has been widely written about, to my knowledge, so there should be an abundance of information out there on it.

might not be the type of "Resistance" you are wanting to read about, but I loved this book (and i'm not even religious)

https://www.amazon.com/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464

wiki page for the guy it's about, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

The easiest way to get Christianity is to read the Bible. But to supplement that, I would encourage you to read books by these two German authors: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jurgen Moltmann

Bonhoeffer was a prominent leader of the confessing church (the church that resisted Hitler) and was a prominent member of the German resistance and a part of the Valkyrie plot. If you want to know more about him and his life, Eric Metaxas wrote an excellent Biography about him. Bonhoeffer's most famous works are "Life Together" about living a life in Christian community, and "The Cost of Discipleship" which is about Grace and how we must not live in a place of cheap Grace. Bonhoeffer was executed a t Flossenburg concentration camp a few months before VE day, and there are some nice memorials to him there (about 1.5 hours east of Nurnberg).

Jurgen Moltmann was drafted into Hitler's army in like 1944 and was taken prisoner. He found God in a Scottish POW camp. Moltmann writes a lot about Hope and spends a lot of time exploring what Christ's sacrifices mean to believers. Some of his most famous works are "The Crucified God", "Theology of Hope", "Trinity and the Kingdom" and "The Way of Jesus Christ." Moltmann also comments on more social issues which arose in the post-war era and has a more social theology, which adds a unique depth to his writing.

In case you want to read up more on your question, you may be interested in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s struggle with the same thing. Give Ethics or The Cost of Discipleship a try. TLDR; he was a pastor in the end who decided it was biblical to conspire against Hitler and it cost him his life. Really smart, well-reasoned man who had a biblical basis for what he wrote. Found myself challenged by his books.

Actually, people like Bonhoeffer and other Lutherans were surprised when people were using Luther's writings for antisemitic purposes, mostly because until that point they had not read them. Clearly, until much later, these works weren't a significant part of Luther's works.

source

Too soon, amigo. Yes, that was 80 years ago, and yes, it's still too soon to quip about that. As an aside - but related to that topic - I've been reading a fantastic biography about Deitrich Bonhoeffer, a lutheran pastor who valiantly fought the Nazis every way he could, before being executed in a concentration camp in 1945. Highly recommend.

Beethoven : The Man Revealed by Suchet is a great character study of a man who gave everything to music.

I think our modern sense of “greatness” is pretty shallow to be honest.

I’m currently reading Bonhoeffer right now, and so far I’m very intrigued. If you’re interested in what kind of greatness inside a man could lead him to leave the safety of America and travel back to Nazi Germany to undermine Hitler, check it out.

(Not to say that sports, or athletic excellence shouldn’t be celebrated or read about, and if you enjoy it, great. But when i hear “greatness” i think of other things.)

Currently reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and I'm enjoying it so far!

https://www.amazon.com/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464

That's a must-read.

No. I am 49.

If books are a good idea than I would recommend something by G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis.

Or this: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy My aunt bought it for me but I haven't read it yet. I here it's good. He was a Lutheran pastor in Germany during Hitler.

Or a nice crucifix (if he's high church) or a cross (if he's low church).

Finally, maybe a Bach CD. Bach was Lutheran. St. Matthew's Passion would be good.

http://www.amazon.com/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464

I read about this in Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy - but leading up to WWII, the churches in Germany became increasingly nationalistic. And that's one of the things that people who get upset with me don't understand - not all "Nazis" were stereotypical, and it didn't start with killing Jews. It started with an increasingly nationalistic environment. When we say "Nazi" today, we think of putting Jews in gas chambers. But it didn't start that way. The war had to be sold first. So there were years beforehand where churches became increasingly nationalistic. Over time you'd hear less and less of the gospel and more and more politics - just like the church in the article I linked here - and eventually the Bible was literally replaced with "Mein Kampf" and crosses were literally replaced with the Swastika. And even during the war, most "Nazis" were not "killing Jews Nazis" - in fact, if you could go back in time and tell people who called themselves Nazis that this is what the Nazis were doing, they'd probably treat you like you were crazy. That's the aggravating part of this - because when I look at the Tea Party I really do see a lot of similarities between them and the environment that led up to WWII in Germany. But when you point this out people go "how dare you! You're spreading hate and division!" And it's like "look, I'm pointing out facts. Don't like 'em? Change things."