The Peaceful Defiance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

On April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer walked to the gallows at Flossenburg concentration camp. The camp doctor who witnessed his execution later wrote that he had never seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God. Bonhoeffer knelt in prayer, then calmly ascended the steps. To the Nazi guards, he was simply another defeated prisoner. To the watching world, his death seemed a senseless waste — a brilliant theologian silenced at thirty-nine.…