The Bonhoeffer (2024) Film: Historical Inaccuracies and the Unspoken Problem
The film Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024) has sparked considerable discussion and debate since its release in November of last year. Audiences seem to love the film, which boasts a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] The film is inspiring in its depiction of moral courage under the oppressive Nazi regime. The production value is excellent, as the film draws the viewer into the world of Nazi Germany. The acting is superb. The choice of German actors speaking English (with German accents) furthers the sense of realism. It is difficult to think of another film that uses the sermon and the sacrament of the altar so effectively in driving its plot and orienting the audience to core themes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s motivation.
But the film has also been criticized for its historical inaccuracies.[2] It must be said that virtually all films that treat historical subjects condense timeframes, conflate two different people into one character on screen (or create characters out of whole cloth), or alter minor historical facts to advance the story — all in the service of the plot and dramatic tension. No doubt such conventions are oftentimes necessary to translate history effectively to the big screen. But Bonhoeffer alters historical facts too easily and without apparent regard for the meaning conveyed.
For example, the film portrays Bonhoeffer witnessing Jews wearing stars of David in late 1933 or early 1934, seeing for himself that racism in Germany exists. The problem is that the stars were not introduced or made mandatory until after war erupted in 1939, and even then, first in Poland and the territories under Nazi domination, and then later in Germany. This historical revision does not acknowledge the Nazi regime’s systematic progression in persecuting the Jews of Germany, and it simplifies his awareness of the perniciousness of Nazism.
Likewise, Bonhoeffer was not whisked away clandestinely to hide out and teach at Finkenwalde, and the students were not dodging the draft when they arrived. This is deeply problematic because the war had not started yet. The truth is that Bonhoeffer received a call to serve by the Confessing Church in 1935, and the Nazi regime was aware of the seminary. The regime did in fact disband the seminary in 1937, but it went “underground” and Bonhoeffer and the seminarians continued their studies in secret, moving from place to place.
One can incessantly critique the historical errors in films such as Bonhoeffer, but the question is, does the film get the overall historical significance of Bonhoeffer right? I would argue the film presents a problematic view of Bonhoeffer in that it does not raise the difficult issue of anti-Judaism that is evident in his writings, and yet it portrays him as a stalwart defender of the Jews. This desire to rescue Jews is presented as the primary impetus for his willingness to join the assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. In short, the film misrepresents the nature of Bonhoeffer’s heroism in Nazi Germany.
There is a reason Yad Vashem has not recognized Bonhoeffer as a “Righteous Gentile Among the Nations,” an honor given to many others. Oskar Schindler was a the German business man who employed, protected, and saved several hundred Jews in his factory. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, gave forged passports to Hungarian Jews and saved them from deportation. Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who, with her family, hid Jews in their home. More than 28,000 men and women have been honored as “Righteous Gentles Among the Nations” for rescuing and saving Jews.[3] Why not Bonhoeffer?
Simply put, Bonhoeffer did not lead rescue efforts to save Jews. In the film, Bonhoeffer is depicted as escorting Jews to the Swiss border, accompanied by another conspirator, his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi. Together they save the lives of these Jews. This is part of the film’s depiction of Operation 7, a plan to escort Jews to the border so they can inform the Swiss government of the crimes of the Nazi regime.
The problem is that Bonhoeffer never led these men to the Swiss border. He had only a very tangential role in Operation 7, and yet the film makes the rescue of Jews the core of his resistance in Nazi Germany. This emphasis is echoed in the epigraph of the film, which condemns anti-Semitism and the violence against Jews on October 7, 2023, and encourages audiences to stand against racial hatred just as Bonhoeffer had.
The truth of the matter is that Bonhoeffer’s main concern was the Nazi regime’s corruption of the Church and Christianity, which entailed the corruption of the entire country. The impetus of his resistance was not to save Jews, but to topple Hitler and his murderous regime and to end the war. In this way, I think the film most-directly mischaracterizes Bonhoeffer.
This misrepresentation of Bonhoeffer’s heroism does not take into consideration his historical views of the Jews. Considerable research has been conducted in the past 30 years to show that Bonhoeffer expressed anti-Judaic tropes in his writings, reflective of the common religious prejudice against Jews of his time.[4] This does not mean that he was anti-Semitic, that is, that he espoused racial prejudice.
A difficult truth for Christians today is that the majority of Christians in this period and throughout church history, reportedly, have understood Jews as guilty of killing Christ, as a people cursed by God for this crime of deicide, and punished by God through the ages as a result (starting with the destruction of the temple in 70 AD).[5] The common Christian view at Bonhoeffer’s time was that the Jews, as a people, were a witness of God’s judgment of sin. It was only until after the Holocaust that churches in the West began to come to terms with the destructiveness of anti-Judaic theology that contributed to laying the foundation for racial anti-Semitism.[6]
Certainly, including an acknowledgment of Bonhoeffer’s anti-Judaic views in the film would make him less sympathetic as a character, but it would also portray him more human — warts and all. References to these views would also have provided a much-needed challenge for him to overcome when making the decision to join the plot to assassinate Hitler.
Bonhoeffer’s heroism was not simply in joining the conspiracy; it was in overcoming problematic theology that inhibited most Germans from standing up for their Jewish neighbors. Indeed, this love of neighbor inspired him to join the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and end the Nazi domination in Europe. His love of neighbor also inspired him to assist in Operation 7. The internal drama of Bonhoeffer dealing with this troubling theology would have made for a better and richer film.
In eliminating this aspect of Bonhoeffer’s theology, the film presents an idealized account of a man without blemish, a holy resistance fighter on behalf of the Jews. But this is a misrepresentation of Bonhoeffer’s heroism. In the film, he does not have anything to overcome except a lack of awareness of the persecution of Jews. But that is quickly dispensed with when he sees Jews wearing stars of David, and he becomes fully aware in an instant. Bonhoeffer’s extraordinary true-life story reveals how a man overcame anti-Jewish prejudice and saw Jews as his neighbors. This is a story that needs to be told today.
Bonhoeffer’s legacy is being written and revised with each generation, and we have a duty to present his story accurately. When we consider his efforts as a resister against Nazi domination, we should work hard to understand his motives correctly. If we fail to understand them, we risk losing the clarity of vision Bonhoeffer offered in his resistance. By telling his story and remaining faithful to history, such as acknowledging anti-Judaism in his writings, we can equip Christians today to overcome problems in their theology that prevent them from loving and serving their neighbors in need, just as Bonhoeffer modeled.
William Skiles is Associate Professor of History and the author of Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church.
[1] See “Bonhoeffer,” Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed April 15, 2025. Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. | Rotten Tomatoes
[2] See in particular Christopher Probst, “Film Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin,” Contemporary Church History Quarterly, 30 (4), 2024. Accessed April 15, 2025. Film Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin – Contemporary Church History Quarterly; and Joshua Miller, “fiction or Truth: A Review of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin. 1517. February 4, 2025. Accessed April 17, 2025. Fiction and Truth: A Review of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin
[3] Yad Vashem. Names of Righteous by Country. Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Accessed April 14, 2025. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/statistics.html
[4] See for example, Stephen Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Post-Holocaust Perspectives (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2006); Nicholas Scott-Blakely, “The Legacy of Anti-Judaism in the Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 18 (1). 2020.
[5] See Raul Hillberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985); Robert Michael, Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Christopher Probst, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012); and Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing church and the Persecution of the Jews, translated and edited by Victoria J. Barnett (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2000)
[6] William Skiles, “Reforming the Church’s Theology of the Jews: Christian Responses to the Holocaust,” in The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide, edited by Sara Brown and Stephen Smith (New York: Routledge, 2021).
