BradTaylor

Bonhoeffer: Chapter 9

This chapter covers 1933, the fateful year in which Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Hitler and his cronies swiftly and fearlessly put their plan in place within weeks of being elected: First proclaiming that his politics were God’s politics; then having the Reichstag burnt to the ground; and then having the checks and balances abolished so he could have absolute power. After his election in January, this was all accomplished before the end of March.

In the meantime, Bonhoeffer was delivering a speech on radio he had written before Hitler was elected, a speech that would prove to be prophetic: “Two days after Hitler’s election, a young professor of theology delineated with incisiveness the most fundamental philosophical errors of a regime that hadn’t existed when he wrote the speech, but that would from the week in which he was speaking and for the next twelve years lead a nation and half the world into a nightmare of violence and misery, which would in its last days include the murder of the man giving the speech” (p.140).

Uncanny, indeed.