This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.

The show where America is the star and the American people. And large

numbers of Americans cite faith is one of the drivers of their life. And this is one heck of a faith

story. It's about a German citizen who left the safety of American soil in order to sacrifice

his own life by opposing Adolf Hitler.

Eric Metaxis is the New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

Here's Eric with the story of Dietrich Bonhofer.

Bonhofer, in a nutshell, was born in 1906 into what must fairly be described as an absolutely

spectacular family.

For there's some great men that arise out of a vacuum, not Dietrich Bonhofer.

He comes out of a truly great family.

His father was the most famous psychiatrist in Germany for the first half of the 20th century. A very famous doctor

and scientist, Bonhoeffer's mother was a genius and all the brothers and sisters. There were four

boys and four girls. All geniuses, all married geniuses. His brother called Friedrich goes into physics.

And for a Bonhofer going into physics means you will split the atom with Max Planck and Albert Einstein. That's exactly what he did. Bonhofer's other brother

became the legal head of Luftanzah. His sisters were geniuses. They married geniuses. On

and on and on it goes. So he grows up in this family and at age 14 he shocks the family by announcing

to them that he wants to be a theologian. They weren't so happy about this most of them.

The mother's father and the mother's grandfather were theologians. The grandfather was quite a

famous theologian, but the father as a scientist wasn't so keen on this. He was more of an agnostic,

...