The question, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would insist, isn’t whether to love my neighbor. It isn’t even whether to love my enemy as my neighbor. The question is how to love when one neighbor—whom I am called to love—is kicking to death another neighbor—whom I am also called to love—without cause. The duty of neighbor love can be simply carried out when the situation is without complexity—that is, when there isn’t a competing duty. When duties compete, it sometimes seems that the degree to which one duty is followed is the degree to which the other duty is necessarily shirked. This tension is at the heart of Todd Komarnicki’s Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. Some critics insist the tension is overplayed and the manner of its resolution false.
In question is the extent of Bonhoeffer’s connection to a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer, while not trivializing the complexity of the matter, has no qualms linking its eponymous hero directly to assassination plots—better defined as tyrannicide attempts. Detractors, less sanguine, insist that while Bonhoeffer clearly was aware of various plots to kill the führer, there’s no hard evidence proving his personal involvement. They find assertions to the contrary unsettling. They shouldn’t.
For starters, Bonhoeffer’s willingness to oppose Hitler even to the point of actively helping to kill him should give no offense. Hitlerism, let us never forget, was responsible for the systematic murder of Jews, Romani, political dissidents, homosexuals, Slavs, the disabled, and religious minorities, among others, and launched a war that would ultimately claim well north of 40 million lives in the European theater alone.
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Comment by Salvatore Anthony Luiso on November 29, 2024 at 11:14 pm
Regarding “Sometimes, the answer to prayer might be an assassination plot”: Notice that in the case of Bonhoeffer, a plot to assassinate a fellow citizen of Germany–Adolf Hitler–was a plot to *murder* him. Notice also that one of the Ten Commandments prohibits murder–not all forms of homicide, just murder.
Therefore, the author seems to think that “Sometimes, the answer to prayer might be a murder plot”.
Maybe he thinks that’s obvious, but I don’t.
Especially considering that there were other ways Bonhoeffer could have tried to stop Hitler. It wasn’t as if his only choices were prayer or murder.
I would like to know: Did Bonhoeffer have good reason to believe that if he helped to kill Hitler, he would have indirectly saved lives? Because it’s obvious that to stop the crimes that were being perpetrated by the German state, killing Hitler alone would not have been sufficient.