In every crisis‚ there is a figure who provides the moral clarity so others may see more clearly. For the twentieth century and the terrifying rise of Nazism‚ that man is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In April 1945‚ just three weeks before the end of the war‚ the Nazis brutally hanged revolutionary German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer for his role in the assassination plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Since then‚ Bonhoeffer's writings and his significance have grown so that he remains one of the most fascinating and complex figures of the 20th century.
Raised as part of German high society‚ Bonhoeffer shocked his family by becoming a theologian and churchman. After discovering what true faith looked like from a Harlem church during his studies in New York‚ he went on to become one of the first public figures to oppose Hitler. This led to his creating a clandestine seminary of the "confessing church movement‚" described in his classic LIFE TOGETHER. A pacifist‚ Bonhoeffer eventually decided that Hitler's Final Solution had to be stopped and so joined a plot to assassinate Hitler. Hitler barely escaped but was able to round up the conspirators. Bonhoeffer ended up in a concentration camp‚ where he penned some of the most influential Christian writings of the twentieth century (collected in LETTERS AND PAPER FROM PRISON) before his execution.
Eric Metaxas‚ bestselling author of AMAZING GRACE and "an irresistible writer" (Books & Culture) provides the first popular biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer‚ whose statue stands besides nine other martyrs of the twentieth century on the face of Westminster Abbey. Read and quoted by such leaders as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu‚ Bonhoeffer's books have sold millions of copies. No one has had a greater impact on the modern church.
