Original subtitles

(interference on radio)

- [Man] That the guts of the German Army

have been largely torn out.

(speaking in foreign language)

(singing in foreign language)

- [Man] With thy blessing, we shall prevail,

over the unholy forces of our enemy.

♫ Baby won't you please come home

♫ 'cause your Mama's all alone

♫ I have tried in vain

♫ Never know more to call your name

♫ When you left you broke my heart

♫ 'cause I never thought we'd part

♫ Now every moment of the day

♫ You can hear me say

♫ Baby come on home I need your loving

♫ Baby

♫ Please

♫ Come on home

(typewriter keys clicking)

- [Man Voiceover] If newspaper was my wife,

radio became my mistress.

But don't blame me for my infidelity to the facts.

My work in newspapers gave me the permission

to transcend the truth.

My name is Sefton Delmer and I was the first newspaper man

to interview Hitler in 1932.

At first I thought he was a harmless crackpot

but eventually I saw him for what he was.

An aggressive threat to Europe, perhaps even the world.

After I got kicked out of Germany, in '41,

Churchill and the War Cabinet got me thinking about creating

a fake radio program to help bring down Hitler.

Naturally I loved the idea.

(gentle piano music)

I assembled a team to create these so-called

black propaganda broadcasts.

My good friend Ian Fleming joined to help me

with the script writing.

Agnes Bernelle, a young German refugee

and talented actress, became our radio star Vicky.

Approximately 80% of our scripts were real news.

The other 20% were carefully concocted lies.

Agnes would read these scripts over the radio.

Using the most powerful transmitter in Europe

we could broadcast signals into Germany,

tricking the enemy into thinking they were listening to

real German radio stations.

The goal of our black propaganda

was to turn the German people against the Nazis.

To demoralize the German soldiers and oh, most of all,

to give the Germans something

Hitler didn't want them to have.

Jazz.

- You were right about her.

Radio doesn't do her justice.

- Otto my friend you should've seen her in Fine and Dandy

at the Seville Theater.

- [Otto] I can only imagine--

- Delmer do you want to work

or just tell jokes with your friend?

- Oh I'm sorry but this is his first taste

of black propaganda.

- It's much nicer than I expected.

- And you are?

- Ah forgive me this is Otto John,

one of the July 20th fellas who managed to escape.

He may join us as an expert on the Resistance.

- Agnes Bernelle, sideshow in Delmer's circus.

- I must say it is a pleasure to meet the girl

who once instructed all good German citizens

to send their morning urine to the Fuhrer

in a small bottle.

- I heard it took three weeks to flush those things

through the German postal system.

- That was one of my better ideas.

Fleming, Ian Fleming,

Special Assistant to the Director of Intelligence,

His Majesty's Navy.

- Pleased to meet you.

- You know, when this war is over,

I'm going to write the spy novel to end all spy novels.

And you're going to be in every one of them.

- Well that's if the doodlebug rockets

don't get us first.

Tom are we actually going to do this thing tonight?

- Mm hmm.

- [Agnes] Where's Howard I thought he was going to play

General Beck?

- He had to cancel.

Something about wanting to write the script.

But I think my German will hold up.

- Okay well I'm ready when you are,

this song's just about over.

- [Otto] So, this is your war of wits.

- Total war.

I must warn you.

In my unit we're up to all kinds of dirty tricks.

The dirtier the better.

Lies, treachery, everything.

No holds barred.

If you're at all squeamish about

what you may be called upon to do

against your fellow Germans,

you're no good to us.

What do you say?

(tense music)

- Mr Delmer, my friends have given their lives

to rid Germany of this Satan.

Whatever you ask of me,

whatever quickens the defeat of Hitler,

I consider it a continuation of the work

of my countrymen.

Otherwise, those who died in Valkyrie were the lucky ones.

And those still alive in Germany will have hell to pay.

- [Delmer] The German underground

made an assassination attempt on the Fuhrer,

at least their 20th,

led by Colonel Stauffenberg called Operation Valkyrie.

But the bomb's explosion didn't kill the madman,

only perforating his eardrum and singeing his pants.

An indignity that made him as furious as death itself.

- 120 people were either executed or took their own lives

in order not to be tortured by the Gestapo

and then betray names of their friends.

(shouting in foreign language)

- [Delmer] Soon all those involved found themselves

in the crosshairs of the German Gestapo

in Freisler's People's Court.

- Even though the Gestapo was rather dimwitted

it did not take too much creativity to figure out

the Resistance was primarily the old upper class.

When you look at the list of those hung,

you have all the names that made Prussia great.

Moltke, Schwerin, Schulenburg, Yorck, and so on.

- [Delmer] After the initial executions,

the dragnet expanded to included anyone suspected

of being involved in the assassination attempt.

This included theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

a German who was a nuisance to the Nazi Party

and had been for years speaking out actively

against the Fuehrer.

Such boldness had landed him in Tegel Prison.

- [Bonhoeffer Voiceover] I'm still discovering

right up to this moment

that it is only by living completely in this world

that one learns to have faith.

By this worldiness I mean living unreservedly

in life's duties, problems, successes and failures,

experiences and perplexities.

In doing so we throw ourselves completely

into the arms of God,

taking seriously not our own sufferings

but those of God in the world.

- The time in Tegel Prison after the failure of the coup,

it's from this moment on when he has to reckon with

his own death.

And he's enamored with this figure of Moses on Mount Nebo.

Moses, who gets to look into the Promised Land

but will not enter it,

that's Bonhoeffer and the conspirators.

- [Bonhoeffer Voiceover] Grant me to witness,

through the veil of death, my people,

at their high triumphant feast.

I fail and sink into thine eternity

but see my people marching forward, free.

Stay, hold my nervous hands that fall on my staff.

Thou faithful God, prepare me for my grave.

- Some of the records will say that he with others

pretty much felt their fate was sealed

and that it was over.

That there lives would likely end.

But you know as the weeks went on I'm not so sure

that if I was in his place or any of us would know

that that's truly a possibility,

but I think they had also seen enough

serendipitous stuff happen, I would still guess

that they thought there was a slim chance

that somebody might intervene and they could see

the next month and years of their life.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Delmer] The Allies were pushing their way across France

towards Germany.

Our radio broadcasts were of course already there,

serving up a daily delicious blend of fact and fiction,

to whoever might be listening.

By 1944 I had long since traded decency for deception,

throwing myself completely into the work

of crushing Nazi Germany.

How many listeners believed our black propaganda,

we never knew, but enough successful reports came in

to make me hope there were many.

It was hard work, but also quite fun.

(upbeat music)

- You do know that nobody will be able to see your lipstick

on the radio.

- I know, but you will.

- There's wine on the Rhine.

Two barrels have broken and lost their spirits.

- Is that code?

- Just as we hoped, we lured them over the Alps

with the false coordinates we broadcast

and they ran out of fuel.

(laughing)

- What do you know your black propaganda actually works.

- Recently we even had the SS arresting each other.

- Mostly we just keep those faithful German soldiers

worried sick that their wives aren't quite so faithful.

- And if those soldiers die, Sefton sends cheery letters

to their families to make them think they're still alive.

- Why?

- Spreads rumors, breaks morale.

- Second one in sixth months.

- [Fleming] What about me?

- I think the coordinates were Sefton's idea.

If I remember correctly you were busy creating

sexist names for your future spy novels.

- Now what shall we report today?

- I have an idea.

- Let's hear it.

- We finally announce the formal agreement

between the German Resistance and the Allies.

- Ian--

- It's time.

- You keep pitching that.

- Save it for your book Ian.

Nobody wants more spies and double agents.

- We have Otto now.

- He's here for the details.

- Yeah then why--

- Every German resistor is seen by the Allies

as a spy pretending to be anti-Nazi.

Remember the Venlo fiasco?

A most unpleasant introduction to the German Resistance.

- That was nearly five years ago.

- Will our audience really believe

that high-ranking Germans would turn against Hitler?

- But they have.

We have.

My brother Hans and I were recruited into the Resistance

by Klaus Bonhoeffer.

The entire Bonhoeffer family was very anti-Nazi,

even before the start of the war.

- This is good Otto.

Tell us more.

- We would often meet at the Bonhoeffer home

in order to discuss plans to eliminate Hitler.

We were involved in the attempted coup in 1938.

This was a plan organized by Hans Oster

and there were top generals supporting us.

Even the Berlin Chief of Police.

Our plan was to wait for Hitler's order to attack

Czechoslovakia and then with lightning speed

seize him in the Chancellery.

Professor Bonhoeffer,

Head of Psychiatry at Berlin University,

would then declare him insane.

Subsequently he would be removed from power.

- What happened?

- The world gave in to Germany's demands.

No shots were fired and Czechoslovakia was erased

from the map.

Hitler looked like a statesman.

No one would've supported a coup.

Our best chance came in 1943.

We disguised a bomb as two bottles of brandy

using a captured British explosive with a pencil detonator.

After months of preparation we enacted our plan

which we called Operation Flash.

We managed to give the bomb to Colonel Brandt,

telling him it was a gift,

which he placed on Hitler's plane.

We toasted our luck in getting the explosive

right under the Fuehrer.

And later that night we toasted the detonator that failed.

It's as if the Devil is protecting him.

- But who would believe all this?

- Why is that so hard to believe?

That a German might act out of a sense of conscience,

and not simply self-interest.

Why have you invited me here if you believe,

as Churchill does, that there is no such thing

as a good German.

- That's not what I said.

- No but it's what you meant.

- Listen--

- Klaus' brother, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

managed to get out of Germany in 1939.

He made it all the way to New York City.

It was his conscience that made him return.

- A pastor, taking part in the assassination plots.

- Because of my job with the airlines

I too could have fled.

But I followed Dietrich's lead.

We were resistors, for God and country,

before Hitler was losing the war.

When we had something to lose.

(tense music)

- My apologies.

Churchill dismissed the German resistors at Valkyrie as

an internal disease, but it was clear that the German pastor

with others was inspired into action

by a deep Christian conviction.

But who was Dietrich?

One of eight children, he got his PhD at 21.

A man of intellect, but a man of the world

who loved to travel.

Cuba, North Africa, Mexico,

he loved the bullfights of Barcelona.

He had lived in America for a year,

much of his time in Harlem.

- Bonhoeffer loves life and he savors life.

One time when Karl Barth sent a cigar

by way of Eberhard Bethge to Bonhoeffer in prison,

Bonhoeffer responds, this is a sacrament.

This is a kind of savoring of life.

- [Delmer] This likable misfit was also part of

a highly educated and well-connected family.

(crowds chanting)

When Hitler came into power in 1933,

Germans were ready for something more than the chaos

of Weimar and humiliation of World War One

but it seems the Bonhoeffer family was one of the few

who didn't think this was the rebirth of Germany.

- The interesting part of the Bonhoeffer House

in Charlottenburg, during those years I think was

the coming together of so many important people.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the confessing church pastor

and in some ways was a fly on the wall

because gathering there would be his brother-in-law

Hans von Dohnányi, who some would claim was the

intellectual head of the July 20th plot.

Rüdiger Schleicher and his brother-in-law,

and his brother Klaus had key parts to play

in that plot as it unfolded and I'm sure they found

in the house on the Marienburger Allee,

a safe place of trusted people.

- It turns out that several in that family,

especially Hans von Dohnányi was high placed

in the military counter intelligence, the Abwehr.

So the Bonhoeffer family had access to information

about the medical experiments,

later on about the concentration camps,

so Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood the degrees of hell

in that land.

- Oster and Canaris, at the recommendation of

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnányi,

recommended that Dietrich Bonhoeffer be employed,

and used by the Abwehr, military intelligence,

because of his ecumenical contacts and his relations

with parts of the world where they thought the Nazis

could use some good public relations.

Even though his past had shown some resistance

to the National Socialist regime,

the argument they used was that the Abwehr and intelligence

uses all kinds of people,

not just people who've been loyal to the Reich.

- [Delmer] So Bonhoeffer began visiting his allied contacts

hoping they could convince Churchill to recognize

the Germans plotting Hitler's assassination.

One such trip, in 1942, took him to Norway

under the guise of official work.

But his real mission was to contact

the local resistance movement.

Accompanying him was another agent, Helmut Von Moltke,

and their time together, in many ways,

brought the ethical challenges of the Resistance into focus.

- The two went together, they came to Sassnitz

on the Isle of Ruegen and there was ice on the sea

and the ferry boat wouldn't go.

So they had the night in the hotel

and the whole morning for themselves and they decided

they would go to the Stubbenkammer,

the very famous chalk cliffs.

And they had four and a half hours to talk.

I have tried for years to find out what the two

have talked about.

I was so frustrated in the end that I thought

the beech trees would tell me what they had talked about.

I said this as a joke to my family members

because I wanted to go there and see the place

and we went there and the beeches didn't,

the beech trees didn't tell me anything.

And then we went to Kreisau in Silesia.

And I heard that the Countess Moltke had said well

Bonhoeffer and my husband couldn't get together

because Bonhoeffer was talking like a scribe

in the New Testament, they are the scribes.

And in that moment I knew what they had talked about

because they had talked about the passage

in Bonhoeffer's ethics which he had just worked out.

Namely is it allowed to kill the head of state.

And especially is it allowed for Christians

who follow the commandment thou shalt not kill.

(tense music)

- I think it's too easy to try and force him into saying

he was or was not a pacifist

or was or was not an assassin.

He knew he was living in an incredibly complex situation.

Now he deeply respected the pacifist position.

He wanted to go to India to learn from Gandhi

about non-violent resistance.

He knew the cost of war--he'd lost a brother

in the First World War.

Yet what do you do, do you preserve your innocence

and therefore incur the guilt of doing nothing.

- Bonhoeffer says we live in a country

where the head of state orders the death of innocent people

in their thousands day per day.

And the only way we can stop it is that we kill him.

And therefore God leaves us free to do this

as he left his son Jesus free to heal sick people

on Sabbath day.

And Count Moltke said you can't compare that.

- [Keith Clements] But he says both militarism

and rigid doctrinaire pacifism

don't really deal with the question

of how you act responsibly.

You've got to face what is your duty towards God

and the test of that is what is going to happen

to other people.

And I think that question troubled him during the resistance

and he had to counsel people in the Resistance

who were facing that dilemma.

- I think when someone asks what did Bonhoeffer actually do--

this is what he did.

He speaks from his faith about the context that we are in,

in what Christ is actually calling us to do.

Why our faith compels us to do something different

than what Nazi Christianity is asking of us.

- His choice to be part of the conspiracy I think,

in the end, wasn't actually a choice.

He knew that it was necessary.

He knew that there were only a small handful of people

who understood.

- [Delmer] Back in Tegel Prison the Nazis moved closer

to evidence of Dietrich's involvement

in the assassination plot.

Soon Bonhoeffer was forced into stricter quarters.

They transferred him to the dregs of

Prinz Albrecht Strasse number eight.

The hellish prison in the basement

of the Gestapo Headquarters.

Later, after surviving massive Allied bombing,

he was transferred to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

(tense music)

Buchenwald was a concentration camp

and many say the largest.

I heard the deaths were in the tens of thousands.

A horror of German proportions.

My apologies Otto.

On the edge of this death camp amidst countless atrocities

and his chances of survival were not good.

After two years in prison Bonhoeffer was losing touch

with the outside world.

There are rumors his 20 year old fiancee

even visited Buchenwald to look for him

but was told he wasn't there.

On his own Dietrich was trapped

with a strange mix of prisoners.

If you can believe those who made it to freedom

the stories of his inmates are even better

than I could've written.

There was Hugh Falconer, part of a secret British sabotage

and espionage organization.

One Doctor Hoven was supposedly a failed actor

who pretended to be a doctor

and served as a medical officer in Buchenwald.

Another, Doctor Sigmund Rascher,

invented the suicide pill.

His real claim to fame was placing volunteer prisoners

in the murderous skyrider, a pressure chamber

which simulated high altitude oxygen deprivation.

I even heard there was a young woman there.

Can you believe that?

With 16 or 18 men.

Can't be true, but if it is, she had to be a Gestapo spy.

- Payne Best was a remarkable person.

He was an officer in the British military intelligence

who'd been captured by the Germans

and spent the entire rest of the war in prison camp.

He got to know Bonhoeffer in Buchenwald

where they were sharing the same corridor together.

- [Best Voiceover] Bonhoeffer was all humility

and sweetness.

He always seemed to me to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness

of joy in even the smallest event in life,

and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive.

He was one of the few men I have ever met

to whom his God was real and ever close to him.

- And he wasn't a religious type at all

but he and Bonhoeffer shared their tobacco,

they shared the chess set, Bonhoeffer loved to play chess

and Payne Best gave him his chess set

to amuse himself with in prison.

He gave him all sorts of things.

He gave him a pair of golfing shoes I believe which

I don't know how Best had acquired golfing shoes

in a Nazi concentration camp but he did.

But this was part of prison life I think

that people shared what little they had with each other.

- Payne Best did not reckon with his survival.

He thought when he was brought into this cellar

in Buchenwald, this will be my last living place.

When the air raids came they hoped that this would end

a war for the Jewish people who had survived

in the concentration camp so far and for peaceful people

all over the world including Germany.

So their own lives were not as important to them

as the end of the war was.

Still they all hoped to get out of prison

and to be saved.

(downbeat music)

- Ah.

Dulles or Dullous?

- [Delmer] Dulles.

- Got it.

Who is this man?

- OSS Special Assistant to President Roosevelt.

Self-appointed liaison with the German Resistance

and now negotiator and chief to getting orderly surrender

of hundreds of thousands of German troops in Italy.

- Well Mr Dulles has got some nerve

if he's negotiating anything close to that.

- And speaking of negotiating surrenders

Dulles is especially focused on a love affair

with some bird named Mary Bancroft.

- Somebody sounds jealous.

- Hey.

I've had plenty.

- Children we're about to go on air.

Let's maintain a level of professionalism.

All right.

Going live, three, two, one.

- Great work Agnes.

- Are you okay Otto?

- I'm fine.

- Are you sure?

- It's all going to be gone.

It's Kaiser Willhelm Church.

It's Berlin Palace.

Unter den Linden.

The bridges.

Even the trees of the Tiergarten are dead.

Berlin was the capital of the world.

A magnet for intellectuals.

But after this bombing it will never be the same.

- It's true.

- And my brother and Dietrich and Klaus.

Somewhere right now.

They might be listening to our program.

Believing in their hearts that they might be rescued.

And nothing could be further from the truth.

(mournful music)

- [Delmer] Churchill made it clear

there were no lengths of violence to which we would not go

to beat the life out of Germany.

Initially our airstrikes avoided civilians.

Later they became targets.

Of course I didn't firebomb working class neighborhoods

in Hamburg or mock the victims as Hamburger, as some did.

But I did wonder what role our broadcasts were playing

and the Allied policy of unconditional surrender.

That policy, called for by Roosevelt,

had doomed Otto's friends' efforts to negotiate

with the Allies.

To save Germany from complete destruction.

- The British Foreign Office just pretended

they were ignorant of German resistance before the war

which they were not.

They had refused the conspirators' plea.

- What Churchill feared was that if there was a link

between German Resistance and the British Government,

Stalin might say you are cheating me.

- The Russians obviously were fighting their own war,

in their own country and it would be dreadful

if the British had been thought to be making

a separate deal with the Germans.

- The German military forces were also starting to

become more resolved to fight because of the demand

for unconditional surrender and the amount of casualties

in the months after July 1944 to May of 1945

were disproportionately higher than the casualties before

and that was in part a price

for the unconditional surrender.

(planes roaring overhead)

(static on radio)

- [Man] Prisoners of Buchenwald,

this is General Patton speaking.

We have received your messages

and are moving in your direction.

Just hold on.

Just hold on.

- [Delmer] All in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp

could hear the approaching sounds

of the Allied bombs and planes.

It was decided that several of the VIP prisoners,

including Dietrich and Payne Best,

would be transported south away from the Allied advance.

Though the German transportation system was disintegrating

and fuel was in short supply,

the Nazi High Command seemed to have some unknown purpose

for these few.

- There is the rumor that Himmler,

the leader of the SS, one of the worst criminals

of the Nazi era, he wanted to have a group of

important prisoners to hand them over to the Allied people

and save his own life, which was a ridiculous idea

but this may have been the reason why

the prisoners from Buchenwald were brought to Schoenberg

in Bavaria and most of them survived.

- [Delmer] Concerning their ultimate destination and fate,

the guards were as befuddled as the prisoners.

It was decided they would stay in a small schoolhouse

that had been converted into a makeshift shelter

for prisoners.

(talking amongst each other)

- I think that when Bonhoeffer had reached Schoenberg

with the others he must have thought that this was the end

of my imprisonment, the Americans are very close.

We'll be freed and the war will be over,

that there will be a new life.

(gentle music)

- Hope was rising for him.

Surely the Gestapo and the Nazi apparatus

was no longer interested in them way up in Berlin

which was being bombed to pieces at that time.

They must've thought they were safe and

Bonhoeffer was not wanting to be a martyr.

He was full of love of life.

He was thinking of his parents, his friends,

above all his fiancee Maria.

And thinking my goodness me it's only gonna be

a matter of days now and we'll be free.

- [Delmer] Thanks to prisoner diaries

we know it was an exhausted but increasingly hopeful group

that settled in for the night.

One memoir was written by Fey Von Hassell.

Her father, a key member of the Resistance,

had been condemned by Freisler and hanged.

These were bittersweet days for Fey.

Her two young sons, wrenched from her by Nazi caretakers,

were still missing.

Yet tender feelings toward a fellow VIP prisoner

were growing.

His family name, the blackest in Germany.

Stauffenberg.

Dietrich was learning Russian from a young Soviet prisoner

who was the nephew of Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov

of Molotov cocktail fame.

Another VIP prisoner was a movie star

and popular cabaret singer, Isa Vermehren.

Isa had been entertaining German troops

before her brother defected from the Abwehr

resulting in her arrest.

Captain Payne Best, as imperious as ever,

tells of nearly jumping out of his skin

when one of the beds broke.

Apparently the beds were made with flimsy window blinds.

Just as everyone in the room had settled down

Best's own bed succumbed, much to the delight of the others.

(laughing)

The group knew the Soviets had secured

all of eastern Europe and were rapidly approaching.

To the west they could occasionally hear

the American aircraft.

They could almost taste freedom in the clear Bavarian air.

(gentle accordion music)

(singing in foreign language)

- This is it.

My last broadcast.

I'm going to miss our little gang of rascals.

Even you Ian.

- Aw.

- Better to end now than the war go on forever.

- About the finale Sefton.

I like your idea but the GS1 went off the air with a bang,

with gunfire.

Why not also go out with a bang and this record

will do just the trick.

Explosions.

- Ian this isn't 30 Seconds Over Tokyo.

- I've written something, just hear it.

- Look I really don't have time--

- Take it away sweetie.

- What is that sound?

Allied bombers are here.

The end has come my loyal listeners.

When you hear my voice next, who knows when that may be,

may it be in that eternal city where death may touch

no more. - We'll go with

what's written all right.

- But why, bombings are the reality of what would happen

if we were broadcasting in Germany.

- I don't care.

I want Vicky to live.

Even if our audience never hears her again

I want them to believe that she was real.

So we'll go off quietly, without any explanation.

- You're the boss.

- Let's get ready to go live.

(mournful music)

- [Delmer Voiceover] We did it.

We won.

So why is it when I look at myself,

all I see is a flabby faced crook.

- Tell me the truth Otto.

What do you think about what we've done?

- I.

I truly can't say.

- I don't envy them, their situation.

But I envy their courage.

Their faith.

- This was Dietrich's last Christmas Eve letter,

sent before he was arrested by the Gestapo.

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds.

"We have been drenched by many storms.

"We have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense.

"Experience has made us suspicious of others

"and kept us from being truthful and open.

"Intolerable conflicts have worn us down

"and even made us cynical.

"Are we still of any use?"

- I suppose we must all live with our doubts.

- They spent the Sunday after Easter

in this delightful little Bavarian village called Schoenberg

and apparently it was a beautiful spring day.

Bonhoeffer was always a great meditator on scripture

and he loved the set text,

whichever day of the Christian year it was

and we know that the texts he preached on that Sunday

were from Isaiah and then from the first letter of Peter

and I like to think that he's probably imagining

if I had to preach a sermon today

I'd love to preach on these texts,

and then his fellow prisoners said come on

give us a sermon Pastor Bonhoeffer.

- And he has become friends on a short-term basis,

very short-term with a Russian atheist, Kokorin

and Bonhoeffer says no I think probably not.

He feels that might be pushing Church on a good atheist

and something doesn't sit well with him on that

but then it's Kokorin who says no,

let's have this Church service,

but that's kind of typical of Bonhoeffer

both to deeply respect whom the other is

and wait for the invitation to respond

with his own message of the gospel.

- He was oppressed and he was afflicted

yet he did not open his mouth.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter

and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.

At a time such as this there are simply no words to express

our sadness, our loss, and our pain.

Our fragile words and emotions simply cannot capture

the gravity of what has already happened

and what we are yet to face.

We have worked tirelessly,

confronting the masquerade of evil,

that has engulfed our world, always with the hope

of restoring the good.

But now our hands are tied

and our destinies are fixed.

- And one of the English prisoners who was with him,

Hugh Falconer, said that he captured the thoughts

of everyone there.

He said we were full of hope, we were full of anxiety too.

We want to be back with our families, our loved ones.

What we can really rely on though is that God is with us

and our salvation is certain in him.

That's what we've got to put our hope in.

- Through the experience and words of Isaiah

a word does come from beyond to remind us

that God himself was bruised for our inequities

and wounded for our transgressions.

God has always shared in the pain of his broken creation.

- [Clement] And also that other remarkable English prisoner

called Captain Payne Best, he says that Bonhoeffer sort of

expressed the spirit of everyone there.

He was able, not just to say this is what the Bible says,

but this is how we are feeling

and this is how we can bring our feelings to God

and God can be with us and speak to us in this situation.

- And when we no longer have the personal strength

to hold on to the promise of God,

we can know that he will hold on to us.

Let us join together and sing,

A mighty Fortress is our God.

♫ A mighty fortress is our God

♫ A bulwark never failing

♫ Our helper he amid the flood

♫ Of mortal ills prevailing

(vehicle engines approaching)

- May God in his mercy lead us through these times.

(loud footsteps)

But above all, may he lead us to himself.

- Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.

(tense music)

- A general found the files which Dohnányi had kept

with all the crimes Hitler and his gang had committed,

made an excerpt from this and presented it to Hitler.

And Hitler got into a terrible rage and said

I want all of them liquidated.

When they were looking for the entire group

one person was missing, namely Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

- Can you deliver a message to George Bell?

- Of course.

- Tell the Bishop, that I believe in the principle

of our universal Christian brotherhood

which rises above all national interests

and that our victory is certain.

- Goodbye my friend.

- Farewell.

This is the end.

But for me the beginning of life.

(tense music)

- Terrible as this story is,

it was not without God's command.

And Bonhoeffer knew that himself he says,

Hitler cannot kill me.

The hour of my death will be prescribed

by the living God himself.

And he almost escaped in Schoenberg with the others.

But God allowed him to become a martyr

which made him a much more important figure

for future times.

(choral singing)

- [Delmer] So Dietrich was transported to Flossenbuerg.

This was a camp where Allied prisoners were hanged

on Christmas Eve in 1944, with lights on the trees

in holiday glee.

Another group slaughtered on Easter morning,

as if the life of Christ was used as a calendar for cruelty.

There was no escape for the thousands

that met their end there.

- He knew what was in store for him

and he and I think it was five,

six other of the conspirators were, that night,

put in front of a court-martial by the SS.

- It was a farce.

The verdict had been pronounced by Hitler already.

There was a court-martial that didn't even meet

the standards of a court-martial.

There was no real proceeding.

There was no evidence.

There were no witnesses and apparently the whole thing

happened in a matter of two or three hours.

The SS people just tried to keep up the semblance of justice

in order not to be convicted for unjust murder.

- Prisoner Bonhoeffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born February 4th 1906,

and today's date.

Must keep the records in order.

Thank you for arriving early.

Punctual.

Must be German.

Clothes.

Well prisoner Bonhoeffer

I have some good and bad news for you.

The bad news is, it's damn cold out there,

and you'll be wearing only glasses.

Oops, we need those too.

And wouldn't you know it the crematorium's out of order

but the good news is Herbert has a nice fire going

just steps from the gallow.

Best get going.

Stay ahead of the shepherds.

Happy journey gallow bird.

(dogs barking)

(loud heart beating)

(choral singing)

- When the tyrant executes the martyr,

the tyrant's power ends because he can't do any more

than that but the power of the martyr begins

because his witness goes on forever.

And I always think of that remark

when I think of these resistors.

They were the people who won the battle of faith

and courage and conviction and human dignity

and it's to them that we now look today.

- [Agnes] Dear Sefton, I am writing to communicate

a disturbing discovery.

I was recently informed by some German escapees

that civilians during the war were hanged,

simply for listening to our radio broadcasts.

Were you aware such actions took place?

Please reply, Agnes.

- [Radio] The stirring victory keeps Chelsea

at the top of division one.

This is the BBC World Service, the six o'clock news

read by Nigel Smythers.

We deviate from our regular broadcast to take you

to the Holy Trinity Church in London

for the memorial service of Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer.

The next voice you hear will be that

Bishop George Bell.

(organ music)

- It was in May 1942 that I had my last sight of Dietrich

in Stockholm when altogether unexpected

he came from Berlin, at the risk of his life,

to give me much information of the utmost importance

about the movement of the opposition in Germany,

to eliminate Hitler and all his chief colleagues,

and to set up a new government which should undo

Hitler's deeds as far as they could be undone,

and to seek peace with the Allies.

Very moving was our talk.

Very moving our farewell.

And now Dietrich has gone.

He died with his brother Klaus as a hostage.

Our debt to them, and to all others similarly murdered,

is immense.

His death is a death for Germany, indeed for Europe too.

He made the sacrifice of human prospects,

of home, friends and career,

because he believed in God's vocation for his country

and refused to follow those false leaders

who were the servants of the Devil.

He was inspired by his faith in the living God

and by his devotion to truth and honor.

As one of a noble company of martyrs of different traditions

he represents both the resistance of the believing soul

in the name of God, to the assault of evil,

and also the moral and political revolt

of the human conscience, against injustice and cruelty.

To our Earthly view, Dietrich is dead.

Deep and unfathomable as our sorrow seems,

let us comfort one another with these words.

For him and Klaus, and for the countless multitudes

of their fellow victims through these terrible years of war

there is the resurrection from the dead,

the hope of a new life.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

♫ For all the saints who from their labors rest

♫ Who thee by faith before the world confess

♫ Thy name O Jesus be forever blest

♫ Alleluia

(bell chiming)

(mournful music)