Bonhoeffer on Christ, the Church, and Resistance

[mike]

Maybe I'll spill the beans on his thesis. He suggests that there is no evidence that Bonhoeffer participated in the assassination plot. The closest evidence is he most likely introduced his brother-in-law, a known collaborator, to contacts outside Germany while traveling abroad on church work. He suggests that post war evangelicals injected him into the plot after the fact to create a more heroic profile.

If that is true, then why did the Nazis execute him? I'd like to listen to the talk today; maybe he'll address this.

[barnhart]

Maybe I'll spill the beans on his thesis. He suggests that there is no evidence that Bonhoeffer participated in the assassination plot. The closest evidence is he most likely introduced his brother-in-law, a known collaborator, to contacts outside Germany while traveling abroad on church work. He suggests that post war evangelicals injected him into the plot after the fact to create a more heroic profile.

If that is true, then why did the Nazis execute him? I'd like to listen to the talk today; maybe he'll address this.

He objected to many things they stood for. For starters he abandoned the official church when it pledged allegiance to the regime, refused the oath, founded underground churches and seminaries and generally spoke out about what he saw.

Also the 3rd Reich really didn't need a ligitimate reason to execute, plenty of the innocent were slaughtered.

[mike]

Maybe I'll spill the beans on his thesis. He suggests that there is no evidence that Bonhoeffer participated in the assassination plot. The closest evidence is he most likely introduced his brother-in-law, a known collaborator, to contacts outside Germany while traveling abroad on church work. He suggests that post war evangelicals injected him into the plot after the fact to create a more heroic profile.

I listened to it today. From what I understand, his evidence for Bonhoeffer's pacifism until the end of his life is the fact that he never openly deviated from it or renounced it in his writings. His says there is no evidence that he was a conspirator in the assassination plot, but that he would definitely have known some of them, one of which was his brother-in-law.

He says that the best evidence for his complicity in the plot was the recollection by his friends after the war of conversations they had with him where he expressed that he would kill Hitler if he had the opportunity, but Mark dismisses this evidence by saying that such recollections are notoriously unreliable. That may be correct, but I thought this was a particularly weak point.

Bonhoeffer's autobiography written by his contemporaneous friend Eberhard Bethge apparently portrays him as having been a conspirator in the plot, but Mark says he has come to believe this is wrong. I didn't really hear anything in the talk that I could say is definitive evidence that Bonhoeffer was not involved.

It makes a lot of sense why Bonhoeffer would never have publicly said anything that could explain his reasoning for being a conspirator, if that's what he was. He was living in Nazi Germany and his last writings were written from prison. We will never know his reasoning for sure.

But regardless, I didn't really hear a tight case for the idea that Bonhoeffer certainly was not involved in the plot. I think Mark is right that there is a lot of mythology surrounding Bonhoeffer that is just inaccurate, but that's what movies and fiction are. But I don't think he has thoroughly discredited the idea that Bonhoeffer was involved in the plot- but I haven't read his books nor have I done the research he has.

It was a podcast, and I was a little disappointed by his lack of direct answer to the moral question of if it would be OK for someone to kill Hitler. He challenged the assumptions of the question which is fine, but I wondered why we can't just say with moral clarity that it would in fact be wrong to kill even an evil man.

[ohio jones]

Bonhoeffer's autobiography written by his contemporaneous friend Eberhard Bethge...

That would make it a biography.

We will never know his reasoning for sure.

Since the historical record is inconclusive, with both sides of the question relying to some degree on assumptions and speculations, I don't think it's legitimate to make ethical applications based on an interpretation of what he did or might have done. Everyone tends to portray him as an illustration of their own ethical framework, and ambiguity results. Both Mark and Metaxas do this to an extent. I find Mark more credible, but that's mostly because my own ethics are closer to his.

[mike]

Bonhoeffer's autobiography written by his contemporaneous friend Eberhard Bethge...

That would make it a biography.

[Bootstrap]

A few places that discuss this:

Was Bonhoeffer Willing to Kill?
By Charles E. Moore
September 10, 2014
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justic ... ng-to-kill

Operation 7 (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_7

Dietrich Bonhoeffer And The Problem Of Dirty Hands: What Counts As Christian Martyrdom?
https://mrijournal.riccimac.org/index.p ... -martyrdom

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer? An AP Explainer about the anti-Nazi pastor
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-a ... 75134.html

[Bootstrap]

But regardless, I didn't really hear a tight case for the idea that Bonhoeffer certainly was not involved in the plot.

I don't have solid evidence that you don't wear a giraffe outfit, either. In general, it's a bad idea to ask for proof that something did not happen if there is no solid evidence that it did happen.

This is actually a formal fallacy in logic. An argument from ignorance claims that something is true (or false) simply because it hasn’t been proven otherwise. And you see this approach EVERYWHERE in emotional propaganda.

Not proven false → therefore true
Not proven true → therefore false

Can you actually PROVE to me that you aren't secretly corrupt? Probably not. But that's not because you are corrupt. Of course, in propaganda, all you have to do is introduce suspicion, no proof is needed.

[barnhart]

Since the historical record is inconclusive, with both sides of the question relying to some degree on assumptions and speculations, I don't think it's legitimate to make ethical applications based on an interpretation of what he did or might have done. Everyone tends to portray him as an illustration of their own ethical framework, and ambiguity results. Both Mark and Metaxas do this to an extent. I find Mark more credible, but that's mostly because my own ethics are closer to his.

That is where I come out as well. One advantage of Mark's view is there is no need to explain the two different Bonhoeffers.

[mike]

But regardless, I didn't really hear a tight case for the idea that Bonhoeffer certainly was not involved in the plot.

I don't have solid evidence that you don't wear a giraffe outfit, either. In general, it's a bad idea to ask for proof that something did not happen if there is no solid evidence that it did happen.

This is actually a formal fallacy in logic. An argument from ignorance claims that something is true (or false) simply because it hasn’t been proven otherwise. And you see this approach EVERYWHERE in emotional propaganda.

Not proven false → therefore true
Not proven true → therefore false

Can you actually PROVE to me that you aren't secretly corrupt? Probably not. But that's not because you are corrupt. Of course, in propaganda, all you have to do is introduce suspicion, no proof is needed.

Yes of course, I'm aware of that fallacy. However, when a claim really swims against the mainstream, shouldn't it provide at least some evidence, or at least a powerful counterargument? Mark's argument itself seems to go this way: since there allegedly is no definitive evidence of Bonhoeffer's involvement in the conspiracy (at least none that he will accept), it couldn't have happened. Isn't there the possibility of a logical fallacy there as well?

I think he does raise valid questions about whether it is really true that Bonhoeffer made exception to his pacifist ideals and joined the conspiracy to kill Hitler, but my point is that in the end, we still really don't know. Also, I am not sure why the word of those who knew Bonhoeffer at the time has less credibility than the speculations of an academic 70-80 years after the fact.

[Bootstrap]

Can you actually PROVE to me that you aren't secretly corrupt? Probably not. But that's not because you are corrupt. Of course, in propaganda, all you have to do is introduce suspicion, no proof is needed.

Yes of course, I'm aware of that fallacy. However, when a claim really swims against the mainstream, shouldn't it provide at least some evidence, or at least a powerful counterargument?

I suspect the "mainstream" view is often the most interesting story, not the most factual one. Does the mainstream view show Bonhoeffer carrying a briefcase with a bomb to a meeting with Hitler on July 20, 1944? If so, how did he get out of the military prison in Tegel to do that, since he was arrested in April 1943? Wasn't Claus von Stauffenberg the officer who actually carried the briefcase bomb into Hitler’s conference room? Hitler said he was the man who tried to assassinate him, and that's what the official Gestapo and Army files say (Untersuchungsakten zum Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944).

General Walter Warlimont, Colonel Heinz Brandt, and Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Borchers all said that Stauffenberg placed his briefcase under the map table near Hitler, excused himself on a pretext, and left the room minutes before the explosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_von_Stauffenberg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot

Are there any letters, diaries, Abwehr records, Gestapo transcripts, or eyewitness testimony placing Bonhoeffer in the same room with Hitler at all, ever, or showing that they ever met? Hitler was paranoid, and pretty careful about who had access to him.

Bonhoeffer was definitely involved in the resistance movement (Abwehr), but that doesn't mean he was involved in the assassination plot. Bethge did say that Bonhoeffer knew of it. According to the second Wikipedia link, these were Stauffenberg's co-conspirators:

Mark's argument itself seems to go this way: since there allegedly is no definitive evidence of Bonhoeffer's involvement in the conspiracy (at least none that he will accept), it couldn't have happened. Isn't there the possibility of a logical fallacy there as well?

Is he saying that it could not possibly have happened, or merely that there is no evidence that it did?

I think it would be difficult for Bonhoeffer to be actively involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler while he was held in a military prison in Tegel. He was arrested about 15 months and 20 days before the assassination attempt. I suppose it's not impossible, but I'm having a hard time imagining how that could have happened.

Of course, Nazi records connected Bonhoeffer to the assassination attempt, but I don't think they are reliable.

And both the Nazis and mainstream journalists conflated the resistance movement as a whole with the assassination attempt. Which was one of the most dramatic and interesting things they did.

I think he does raise valid questions about whether it is really true that Bonhoeffer made exception to his pacifist ideals and joined the conspiracy to kill Hitler, but my point is that in the end, we still really don't know. Also, I am not sure why the word of those who knew Bonhoeffer at the time has less credibility than the speculations of an academic 70-80 years after the fact.

Are you talking about Bethge? He certainly said that Bonhoeffer was involved in the resistance movement, and that he knew about the assassination plot. Did Bethge go beyond that?