- He decided by age of fourteen to become a theologian and later a pastor. When his older brother told him not to waste his life in such a”poor, feeble, boring, petty, bourgeois institution as the church, 14-year-old Dietrich replied:”If what you say is true, I shall reform it!”
- Two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor, as Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer (leader), he was cut off the air in the middle of a sentence, though it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible.
- Bonhoeffer was in the United States in 1939 but went back to Germany. He wrote:”I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany.”He returned to Germany on the last scheduled steamer to cross the Atlantic. He died on April 5 1945, 23 days before the Nazis’ surrender.