Dietrich Bonhoeffer Joins Resistance

The deck tilted under a gray Atlantic swell. I gripped the rail and watched Dietrich Bonhoeffer walk the same stretch of planking he had walked every morning since we left Southampton. He carried no book this time, only his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders squared against the wind. The other passengers kept their distance. They had learned he answered questions with another question or with silence.

We reached New York in the first week of June. The seminary people met him at the pier with handshakes and careful smiles. They spoke of lectures already scheduled, of quiet rooms where he could finish the manuscript he had begun in London. Bonhoeffer listened, nodded once, then asked whether any letters had arrived from Berlin. None had.

I stayed close because the Confessing Church had sent me to watch the edges. My job was to carry messages back if the Americans pressed him to remain. In the first days he gave the lectures they wanted. He spoke of grace and discipleship in rooms that smelled of chalk and wet wool. Afterward the students clustered around him, asking how a German pastor could still believe the church had any future inside the Reich. He answered without raising his voice. The answers never satisfied them for long.

One evening the radio in the common room carried news of new decrees against the Jews. Bonhoeffer stood by the window, listening. When the broadcast ended he asked the nearest student for the date. The student told him. Bonhoeffer repeated the number under his breath and left the room.

Two weeks later he came to the small office where I sorted mail. He asked whether a berth could still be found on a ship returning in early July. I told him the next available sailing left in ten days. He said that would do. When I asked what had changed, he looked past me at the corridor.

“I realize that I’ve made a mistake by coming to the United States,” he said. “I must stand by the Christians of Germany during this difficult time in our national history. I will have no right to participate in the reestablishment of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share this time of trial with my people.”

He repeated the words once, as though testing their weight, then turned and walked toward the stairs. I wrote the cable to Berlin that night.

The crossing back was shorter and colder. Bonhoeffer spent most of it on the same stretch of deck, but now he carried a notebook and wrote in it during the long watches when the only light came from the bridge. He did not show the pages to anyone. At night the engines changed pitch and he would lift his head, listening, as if the sound might carry news from home.

We landed at Bremerhaven in the rain. A single car waited at the quay. The driver handed Bonhoeffer an envelope. He read it standing under the overhang of the customs shed, then folded it twice and put it in his coat. He asked me to ride with him as far as Berlin. The roads were nearly empty. In the villages we passed, windows were shuttered against the summer heat.