Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister

Re: Your question of how Bonhoeffer was able to work in the Intelligence section of the German Army, the Abwehr:

Beginning almost from the moment the nazis came to power in 1933, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, became one of the principal anti-Hitler figures in the German government.  Canaris was a conservative, monarchist and principled man who had grown up in the ‘old world’ of Wilhelmenian Germany, and both the rise of Communism and the Brownshirts revolted him.

Hitler may have appeared as a temporary answer to the threat of Communism, but by 1934 Canaris was confiding to like-minded associates he trusted that Hitler had to be removed.

Canaris would continue to play all sides of the street—he was responsible for gathering intelligence on enemy *military* plans and details, but wasn’t above leaking information on nazi plans to British Intelligence (whose commander, Stewart Menzies, had as a young intelligence officer been sent to neutral Spain during WW1 to kill a German agent—which was Canaris). 

At the same time, Canaris hired into the Abwehr and protected a number of people involved in the anti-Hitler resistance, who could use the cover of their ‘intelligence’ position—including Bonhoeffer.

Canaris’ running a double life eventually caught up with him. He was held at Flossenburg concentration camp, and executed there—as was Bonhoeffer just weeks before the end of the war in 1945.

Comment by TS from USA — October 22, 2007 @ 2:00 pm