Bonhoeffer's oldest brother Walter is killed in WWI, leaving a permanent mark on the family and shaping Bonhoeffer's worldview.

After completing his doctoral work, Bonhoeffer chooses pastoral ministry over academics and accepts his first post in Barcelona, Spain.

On a study fellowship in New York, Bonhoeffer finds real spiritual vitality not in seminaries but in African-American congregations in Harlem.

Adolf Hitler wins election as Germany's new chancellor, alarming Bonhoeffer and his entire family.

Bonhoeffer writes and circulates a pamphlet arguing the church must sometimes work against an unjust state to protect Jewish Germans.

Bonhoeffer and other resistance pastors form the Pastors' Emergency League to coordinate opposition to the German Christian movement.

Resistance pastors adopt Karl Barth's Barmen Declaration, formally establishing the Confessing Church as separate from the Nazi Reichskirche.

Bonhoeffer leaves his London pastorate and returns to Germany to run the new Confessing Church seminary at Zingst.

Nazi authorities shut down Bonhoeffer's Finkenwalde seminary, forcing him to shift to a decentralized mentorship-based training model.

Bonhoeffer joins the Abwehr conspiracy against Hitler, officially recruited through his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi.

Traveling under Abwehr cover, Bonhoeffer meets Bishop George Bell in Sweden and relays details of the assassination plot to the Allies.

After months of careful discernment, Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer become engaged.

The Gestapo arrests Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi, beginning the period of imprisonment that will end only with Bonhoeffer's death.

Stauffenberg's bomb explodes in Hitler's meeting room, but Hitler escapes nearly unscathed, triggering a massive crackdown on conspirators.

Bonhoeffer is tried and executed at Flossenburg concentration camp, and Bishop Bell later organizes a memorial service in London.

Bonhoeffer grows up in a distinguished German family and chooses pastoral ministry as his vocation, only to see Germany transformed by Hitler's rise to power. As the Nazi regime coopts the German Protestant church, Bonhoeffer emerges as one of the leading voices of resistance, helping form the Pastors' Emergency League and establish the Confessing Church through the Barmen Declaration. He runs an underground seminary at Zingst and Finkenwalde until Nazi authorities shut it down, then transitions fully into covert work through the Abwehr intelligence service. Using his international contacts in the ecumenical movement, he relays details of the assassination conspiracy to Allied representatives, including Bishop George Bell in Sweden. The conspiracy's multiple attempts on Hitler's life ultimately fail, and Bonhoeffer is arrested, imprisoned, and eventually executed at Flossenburg concentration camp. His memorial service, organized by Bell, is broadcast across England and Germany, introducing the wider world to a man who gave his life resisting the Nazi regime.

The headline events of Bonhoeffer's life and resistance.

Bonhoeffer's mother Paula nurtures sincere Christian faith in her children, becoming the primary religious influence in the family home.

At age thirteen, Bonhoeffer resolves to devote his life to theology and the reform of the German church.

Visiting Rome as a young student, Bonhoeffer is deeply struck by the Catholic Church's racially transcendent, universal character.

During postdoctoral work in Berlin, Bonhoeffer befriends Franz Hildebrandt, a Jewish-ancestry Christian who becomes a lasting companion.

Watching the film All Quiet on the Western Front during his American stay, Bonhoeffer begins a serious journey toward pacifism.

Bonhoeffer delivers a radio address warning Germans against idolizing a national leader; the broadcast is abruptly and mysteriously cut short.

Resistance pastors successfully elect Friedrich von Bodelschwingh as German church bishop, but Nazi pressure forces him to resign shortly after.

Bonhoeffer visits the Bethel care center and drafts a bold confession of faith, but colleagues water it down until he abandons it.

Martin Niemöller meets Hitler personally and, feeling attacked and betrayed, loses all his remaining illusions about the Führer.

At the ecumenical conference in Fanø, Bonhoeffer delivers his famous Peace Speech, asserting God's commandments as supreme over any state.

Bonhoeffer meets Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, an outspoken Prussian noblewoman who becomes a fierce patron of his seminary work.

After the Nuremberg Laws strip Jewish rights, Bonhoeffer publicly declares that only those who defend Jews may truly worship God.

Bonhoeffer's twin sister Sabine, whose husband has Jewish ancestry, recognizes the mounting danger and flees with her family to England.

Bonhoeffer sails to America to escape German conscription but returns after barely a month, driven by conscience.

Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer sit at home in Berlin, listening as their son's memorial service is broadcast across England and Germany.

Bonhoeffer's faith journey begins at home, shaped by a mother who nurtures sincere piety, and crystallizes at age thirteen when he resolves to devote his life to theology. His studies take him from Berlin to Rome to New York, where encounters with the universality of the Catholic Church, a film about WWI, and the worship of African-American congregations gradually shape his pacifist and ecumenical convictions. As Hitler consolidates power, Bonhoeffer steps into a prophetic role through a cutting radio address and a bold confession of faith drafted at Bethel, even as key colleagues like Niemöller are slower to recognize Hitler's true character. He speaks out fearlessly when the Nuremberg Laws target Jews, and watches helplessly as friends and family — including his twin sister Sabine — are forced to flee Germany. A brief, conscience-stricken flight to America ends with his swift return, choosing solidarity with his people over personal safety. The story concludes with his parents sitting in Berlin, listening to the broadcast of their son's memorial service — the world's formal recognition of Bonhoeffer's courage and sacrifice.

The formative moments and supporting story of Bonhoeffer's journey.

Bonhoeffer's doctoral thesis at the University of Berlin argues that the church is 'Christ existing as church-community.'

A mutual friend arranges a meeting between Bonhoeffer and renowned theologian Karl Barth, and the two men forge a significant lasting connection.

In America, Bonhoeffer befriends French theologian Jean Laserre, who deepens his engagement with Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and nonviolence.

Bonhoeffer completes his postdoctoral thesis and passes his final exams, becoming fully qualified as a German university lecturer.

The Reichstag building is burned, Communists are blamed, and Hitler uses the crisis to seize full emergency powers over Germany.

The Aryan Paragraph is introduced, threatening non-Aryan church workers with removal and directly imperiling Bonhoeffer's friend Hildebrandt.

The Brown Synod makes the Aryan Paragraph retroactive, barring already-ordained non-Aryan clergy and pushing Bonhoeffer to call for open schism.

The Confessing Church seminary relocates from Zingst to the Finkenwalde manor house, where Bonhoeffer introduces a semi-monastic communal life for ordinands.

Over 800 Confessing Church leaders are arrested by Nazi authorities in a sweeping crackdown, including both Niemöller and Hildebrandt.

Prime Minister Chamberlain's appeasement policy hands Czechoslovakia to Hitler without resistance, further emboldening the Führer's expansionist ambitions.

Kristallnacht erupts across Germany with attacks on Jewish homes and businesses; Bonhoeffer continues to publicly defend the rights of Jews.

Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi work together to smuggle seven endangered Jews out of Germany and into relative safety in Switzerland.

The first assassination attempt — a bomb secretly placed aboard Hitler's plane — fails when the device mysteriously does not detonate.

Fellow prisoner Captain Payne Best later describes Bonhoeffer at Buchenwald as the most spiritually grounded person he had ever encountered.

Bonhoeffer leads a final prayer service for fellow prisoners and is then taken to Flossenburg, where he is swiftly tried and executed.

Bonhoeffer's theological identity takes shape through key intellectual encounters — his doctoral thesis on the nature of the church, a pivotal meeting with Karl Barth, and a friendship with the pacifist Jean Laserre — that harden into unshakeable conviction well before Germany's political crisis breaks. Hitler's seizure of emergency power after the Reichstag fire, followed by the Aryan Paragraph and the Brown Synod's retroactive measures, force Bonhoeffer to choose between accommodation and open resistance at every turn. The Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde becomes both a laboratory for his theology and a quiet institution of resistance, until a massive crackdown arrests over 800 church leaders and shuts down his work. Events outside the church — Chamberlain's appeasement, Kristallnacht, and the covert smuggling of endangered Jews to safety — push Bonhoeffer from prophetic speech toward direct action within the assassination conspiracy. The conspiracy's first bomb plot fails without explanation, leaving the conspirators increasingly exposed to Gestapo scrutiny. Bonhoeffer faces his end with striking calm, remembered by fellow prisoners at Buchenwald for his extraordinary spiritual groundedness, and his final prayer service becomes the last act of pastoral ministry in a life entirely defined by it.