A portrait of the German pastor-theologian draws on new research to cover the 1930 visit to America that shaped his perspectives on faith and moral responsibility, his achievements as an anti-Nazi activist, and the plot against Hitler that would result in his execution.

"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,...

Uses archival footage, documents and visits to original locations to capture the life, times and thought of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the National Socialists days before the end of WWII.

"From the beginning of his career, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) was often in conflict with the spirit of his times. While during the First World War German poets and philosophers became intoxicated by the experience of community and transcendence, Barth fought against all attempts to locate the divine in culture or individual sentiment. This freed him for a deep worldly engagement: he was known as "the red pastor," was the primary author...

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...