Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged on this day in 1945

On this day, April 9, 1945 German theologian, pastor and dissident, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the German authorities at Flossenbürg concentration camp. Flossenbürg is in Bavaria in the Fichtel Mountains near the German and the then Czechoslovakian border.

Bonhoeffer, who was born on February 4, 1906 in Breslau, now Wrocklaw in Poland, was a founding member of the German Confessing Church.

In 1930 he went to the US where he began postgraduate work but returned to Germany the following year. That year he became a lecturer in systemic theology at the University of Berlin.

In November 1931 he was ordained at St Matthew's Church in Tiergarten, not far from the Dominican church in Oldenburger Straße.

His book, The Cost of Discipleship  is a modern classic and considered to have played an influential role in modern theology.

Bonhoeffer was from day one opposed to the Hitler regime and had many opportunities to stay in the United States but instead returned to Germany. Unlike many of those, who opposed Hitler, Bonhoeffer was objecting to the Hitler government long before the Wehrmacht defeat at Stalingrad.

The Nazis accused him of being part of the July 20th plot against Hitler. He was imprisoned in Tegel, where he remained 18 months before being transferred to Flossenbürg. Tegel prison is still a place of incarceration and is close to Berlin's main airport, soon to be replaced by Berlin-Brandenburg, which is close to the Berlin Schönefeld airport, which was the main airport in the former GDR.

Bonhoeffer was unlucky in that the prison was liberated two short weeks after his execution.

It so happens that on the day of his execution the battle for Königberg, now Kaliningrad in Russia, was ended through the genius, heroism and valour of the Red Army.

Bonhoeffer was murdered just 21 days before Hitler's suicide.

He managed to dodge the Hitler gangsters for many years and then just by the shortest of time the world lost a great man, who had so much to give Germany and the world.