Overview

The story of two courageous opponents within Hitler's Germany-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the celebrated theologian, and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, a lawyer in the Wehrmacht-who both bravely resisted the Nazis During the twelve years of Hitler's Third Reich, very few Germans took the risk of actively opposing his tyranny and terror, and fewer still did so to protect the sanctity of law and faith. In No Ordinary Men, Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern focus on two remarkable, courageous men who did-the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his close friend and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi-and offer new insights into the fearsome difficulties that resistance entailed. (Not forgotten is Christine Bonhoeffer Dohnanyi, Hans's wife and Dietrich's sister, who was indispensable to them both.) From the start Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazi efforts to bend Germany's Protestant churches to Hitler's will, while Dohnanyi, a lawyer in the Justice Ministry and then in the Wehrmacht's counterintelligence section, helped victims, kept records of Nazi crimes to be used as evidence once the regime fell, and was an important figure in the various conspiracies to assassinate Hitler. The strength of their shared commitment to these undertakings-and to the people they were helping-endured even after their arrest in April 1943 and until, after great suffering, they were executed on Hitler's express orders in April 1945, just weeks before the Third Reich collapsed. Bonhoeffer's posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison and other writings found a wide international audience, but Dohnanyi's work is scarcely known, though it was crucial to the resistance and he was the one who drew Bonhoeffer into the anti-Hitler plots. Sifton and Stern offer dramatic new details and interpretations in their account of the extraordinary efforts in which the two jointly engaged. No Ordinary Men honors both Bonhoeffer's human decency and his theological legacy, as well as Dohnanyi's preservation of the highest standard of civic virtue in an utterly corrupted state.

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9781590176818

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A story that needs to be heard. Library Journal Fritz Stern's pointed reflections [in Five Germanys I Have Known] upon the fragility of democratic liberties and the unpredictable ease with which they can wither and die should be required reading for every informed citizen. Tony Judt [The Politics of Cultural Despair] is a superb cultural history, erudite, thoughtful, imaginative, beautifully written. Klemens von Klemperer, professor emeritus of European history at Smith College The Politics of Cultural Despair is one of the durable masterpieces of 20th-century history because it seems to locate the roots of a peculiarly modern malaise. The New York Times [Stern] is a man of nuances; when he defines himself, it is with a kind of fastidious detail. Roger Cohen I cannot praise [Gold and Iron] too highly. It is a work of original scholarship, both exact and profound. It restores a buried chapter of history and penetrates, with insight and understanding, one of the most disturbing historical problems of modern times. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sunday Times (London) He writes with the wisdom and truth of a historian who never fails to empathize with the human uncertainty and frailty that operate in extreme as well as everyday historical conditions...No one has written better on the country's rise and fall than Fritz Stern. Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times A landmark work on the liberal ideals of the progressive American tradition, reaffirming their relevance for today... A major contribution to the intellectual history of modernity. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [An] ebullient and shrewd meditation on faith and social action... A peaceable state of mind simply accompanies the reader as he ends this effortlessly elegant, uniformly sensible paean to the human faith that Sifton inherited. Carlin Romano, Philadelphia This [is a] splendid and strenuous book. David Tracy, The New Republic Well written and engaging, this is a tale of quiet courage. The Lady

Praise for Stern's The Politics of Cultural Despair <br> <br> It is a superb cultural history, erudite, thoughtful, imaginative, beautifully written. --Klemens von Klemperer, professor emeritus of European history at Smith College <br> <br> The Politics of Cultural Despair is one of the durable masterpieces of 20th-century history because it seems to locate the roots of a peculiarly modern malaise. -- The New York Times <br> <br> [Stern] is a man of nuances; when he defines himself, it is with a kind of fastidious detail. --Roger Cohen <br> <br> Praise for Sifton's The Serenity Prayer <br> <br> A landmark work on the liberal ideals of the progressive American tradition, reaffirming their relevance for today.... A major contribution to the intellectual history of modernity. --Arthur Schlesinger Jr.<br> <br> This [is a] splendid and strenuous book. --David Tracy, The New Republic

Well written and engaging, this is a tale of quiet courage. The Lady A story that needs to be heard. Library Journal Fritz Stern's pointed reflections [in Five Germanys I Have Known] upon the fragility of democratic liberties and the unpredictable ease with which they can wither and die should be required reading for every informed citizen. Tony Judt [The Politics of Cultural Despair] is a superb cultural history, erudite, thoughtful, imaginative, beautifully written. Klemens von Klemperer, professor emeritus of European history at Smith College The Politics of Cultural Despair is one of the durable masterpieces of 20th-century history because it seems to locate the roots of a peculiarly modern malaise. The New York Times [Stern] is a man of nuances; when he defines himself, it is with a kind of fastidious detail. Roger Cohen I cannot praise [Gold and Iron] too highly. It is a work of original scholarship, both exact and profound. It restores a buried chapter of history and penetrates, with insight and understanding, one of the most disturbing historical problems of modern times. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sunday Times (London) He writes with the wisdom and truth of a historian who never fails to empathize with the human uncertainty and frailty that operate in extreme as well as everyday historical conditions...No one has written better on the country's rise and fall than Fritz Stern. Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times A landmark work on the liberal ideals of the progressive American tradition, reaffirming their relevance for today... A major contribution to the intellectual history of modernity. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [An] ebullient and shrewd meditation on faith and social action... A peaceable state of mind simply accompanies the reader as he ends this effortlessly elegant, uniformly sensible paean to the human faith that Sifton inherited. Carlin Romano, Philadelphia This [is a] splendid and strenuous book. David Tracy, The New Republic

Author Information

Elisabeth Sifton has been an editor and book publisher for many decades. She is the author of The Serenity Prayer- Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (2004), about the background to the famous prayer written by her father, Reinhold Niebuhr. Fritz Stern is University Professor Emeritus and the former provost of Columbia University, with which he has been associated since the 1940s. His many books include The Politics of Cultural Despair (1963), Gold and Iron- Bismarck, Bleichr der, and the Building of the German Empire (1977), Einstein's German World (1999), and Five Germanys I Have Known (2006).

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