Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Resistance Against the Nazis as a Double-Agent

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) became a pastor in the German Christian Church in 1931. After Hitler’s rise in 1933, the “German Christians” group banned Jewish Christians from the church. Bonhoeffer strongly opposed this. He asserted it went against Christian doctrine and urged pastors to resign to show support for the Jewish Christians. He helped establish the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazis.

In 1938, his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, who was working at the Justice Ministry, informed Bonhoeffer about various German resistance plans. Dohnanyi joined the Abwehr (military intelligence) in 1939. His connections helped Bonhoeffer avoid military service in 1940 and secured him a position with the Abwehr. As a double agent, Bonhoeffer made several trips outside the Reich between 1941 and 1942. He informed ecumenical contacts in Geneva and the Vatican of the resistance plans.

After the first deportations of Berlin Jews to the East on October 15, 1941, Bonhoeffer and Friedrich Perels, a Confessing Church lawyer, wrote a memo detailing the deportations. The memo informed foreign contacts and trusted German military officials of the deportations. They hoped to spur them into action. Bonhoeffer, as part of “Operation Seven”, organized Swiss visas and sponsors for fourteen Jews. He arranged for the removal of their names from deportation lists and secured identification designating them as agents of the Abwehr. The Gestapo uncovered “Operation Seven” and arrested Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi in April 1943.

Officials brought charges against Bonhoeffer for using his intelligence role for non-intelligence purposes. He plotted to rescue Jews and assisted Confessing Church pastors in avoiding military service. After finding his connections to the failed July 20, 1944, coup, they moved him to the Gestapo prison in Berlin. In February 1945, Bonhoeffer was transferred from Buchenwald to Flossenbürg in April. The authorities executed Bonhoeffer and his brothers-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher, in April 1945, very close to the war’s end.