Critics Of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Are Wrong About Everything

Tucker Carlson shocked nearly everyone last week when he implied that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and one of the most revered heroes of World War II, had to abandon Christianity in order to turn on Adolf Hitler.

Bonhoeffer attempted to assassinate the Nazi leader and was murdered by the Third Reich in 1945. Bonhoeffer’s actions are almost universally regarded as heroic — but not to Carlson, who declared recently that Bonhoeffer had simply “decided … Christianity is not enough, we have to kill the guy.”

Carlson held Bonhoeffer up as a warning to conservatives who criticize antisemitism on the Right, saying, “once you start calling people Nazis, we really have no choice but to start shooting them,” Carlson said.

So much sloppy thinking, so little time. 

Carlson is right that falsely labeling someone a “Nazi” or a “fascist” today paints a target on that person. It was reckless, for example, for California Governor Gavin Newsom to call White House advisor Stephen Miller a fascist, prompting leftists in Miller’s neighborhood to dox him, plastering telephone poles and lampposts with Miller’s home address.

But what does any of this have to do with Dietrich Bonhoeffer? He wasn’t sloppily using “Nazi” as a slur against his political opponents, the literal Nazis. Nobody was falsely claiming that the ordinary enforcement of just laws amounted to genocidal terror. Genocidal terror was written into the laws of a regime which had seized power in a crisis, suspended the constitution, outlawed all opposition, and stripped Jews of citizenship. 

Literal Nazis, who called themselves “Nazis,” were filling concentration camps with non-violent political dissidents, and preparing a war openly designed to conquer, enslave, and exterminate the peoples of neighboring nations. The Nazi blueprint for obtaining “Lebensraum” in Poland and the Soviet Union, Generalplan Ost, envisioned wiping out some 80 million Slavs by either direct murder or slow starvation, to be replaced by German colonists. 

Carlson’s absurd criticism of Bonhoeffer is rooted in a fundamental misrepresentation of Christianity and its teachings. Despite Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek on a personal level, Christianity was never rigidly pacifist.

By the time of St. Augustine, the Church had developed the “Just War” doctrine, narrowly defining occasions when military action by the state was morally good and right. That teaching is widely accepted by most Christian churches, and codified by the Roman Catholic Church in its Catechism.

Catholic teaching holds that a Just War is one in which “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain,” and “all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.” There also “must be serious prospects of success” and “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”

The language above refers to the actions of the state, not individual citizens. On the surface, it seems only to apply to decisions by nations such as Great Britain and France, whose declarations of war on Germany were obviously just. 

But the Just War analysis doesn’t only apply to states. As I explained in my recent book, “No Second Amendment, No First”, during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious persecution by intolerant monarchs drove thinkers in both the Jesuit and the Calvinist traditions to ask if those conditions could justify a civil war, a rebellion against a tyrant. Most of them answered “Yes,” and Christian political thinking began for the first time to countenance the overthrow of evil governments by their people. The men who removed King Charles I, and rebelled against French monarchs during the Wars of Religion, cited such arguments. 

So would later rebels, right here in America. Our own Declaration of Independence is actually an eloquent argument that the misgovernment of the 13 colonies by the British parliament and crown amounted to tyranny, and met the Just War requirements, making armed resistance not just permissible but obligatory.

The anti-Nazi resistance to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer belonged was steeped in this same tradition, and saw its efforts to overthrow a wicked tyranny in wartime as perfectly compatible with the broad Christian tradition. Their actions had nothing in common with the violence fostered by irresponsible leftist zealots in our non-tyrannical country in peacetime, which enjoys free elections and a free press.

For the real story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, treat yourself by streaming the recent, powerful biopic about the man, or reading Eric Metaxas’s magisterial book on his inspiring life. And remember to always take with a grain of salt anything claimed by a certain former bow-tie-wearing war hawk with a maniacal laugh.

* * *

John Zmirak is author of many books, including the biography of anti-Nazi exile Wilhelm Röpke, and the recent No Second Amendment, No First.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Right now, DailyWire+ annual memberships are 50% off during our Black Friday sale. Join now at dailywire.com/blackfriday.