The Faithful Spy
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Intertwines two stories: the insidious rise of Hitler with his creed of hatred and Bonhoeffer’s development as an ethical thinker who believed that radical action was necessary, but that killing was a sin.” —New York Times
The dramatic true story of German pastor and Nazi resistor Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to life in this award-winning graphic novel from John Hendrix.
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party is gaining strength and becoming more menacing every day. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor upset by the complacency of the German church toward the suffering around it, forms a breakaway church to speak out against the established political and religious authorities. When the Nazis outlaw the church, he escapes as a fugitive.
Struggling to reconcile his faith and the teachings of the Bible with the Nazi Party’s evil agenda, Bonhoeffer decides that Hitler must be stopped by any means possible! In his signature style of interwoven handwritten text and art, John Hendrix tells the true story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor who makes the ultimate sacrifice in order to help free the German people from oppression during World War II.
Young readers will be thrilled by the near-miss attempts to kill Hitler. The plots involve deception, gut-wrenching timing, and concealed explosives: a bomb in a gift package, a rigged docent conducting a tour of captured weaponry, and an explosive briefcase snuck into the heart of Hitler’s fortress. But Hendrix makes the bold and surprising decision to tell it as a tale of faith. It makes this book unique, one as much about morality as it is about the attempted murder of one of history’s most heinous leaders.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hendrix (Miracle Man) captures the powerful and purposeful life of the pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose faith and philosophy eventually led him to take a stand against Hitler when few others in Germany would. Using a variety of art styles, the book highlights Bonhoeffer's intellectual, spiritual, and personal development alongside the cultural and political shifts behind Hitler's rise to power. It also shows Bonhoeffer's struggle to question his country's leader and his work to become more than mere witness to history his writings, his work as "chief pastor to the conspiracy" before his eventual capture and hanging. Hendrix details Bonhoeffer's life in accessible prose, offering appropriate, meaningful context and in places using Bonhoeffer's own words. Provocative background imagery enhances the comic's mood and atmosphere: a noose wrapped around a church shows religious strangulation in Hitler's Germany; prose shown on the moonlit wall of Bonhoeffer's prison cell conveys imprisonment's isolation. These visuals powerfully communicate the dread, despair, and violence inherent in living and fighting against Hitler's Germany. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 10 14.