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Bonhoeffer's promising academic and ecclesiastical career was dramatically knocked off course by the Nazi ascent to power on 30 January 1933. He was a determined opponent of the regime from its first days. Two days after Hitler was installed as chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be verführer (misleader, seducer). His broadcast was abruptly cut off, though it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible.[25] In April 1933, Bonhoeffer raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply "bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam a spoke in the wheel itself."[26]
In November 1932, two months before the Nazi takeover, there had been an election for presbyters and synodals (church officials) of the German Landeskirche (Protestant mainstream churches). This election was marked by a struggle within the Old-Prussian Union Protestant Church between the pro-Nazi Deutsche Christen (German Christian) movement and Young Reformers, who were interested in following the Gospel teachings of Jesus�a struggle that threatened to explode into schism. In July 1933, Hitler unconstitutionally imposed new church elections. Bonhoeffer put all his efforts into the election, campaigning for the selection of independent, non-Nazi officials who were dedicated to following Christ.
Despite Bonhoeffer's efforts, in the July election an overwhelming number of key church positions went to the Deutsche Christen.[27] The Deutsche Christen won a majority in the Old-Prussian general synod and all its provincial synods except Westphalia, and in synods of all other Protestant church bodies, except for the Lutheran churches of Bavaria, Hanover, and Württemberg. The anti-Nazi Christian opposition regarded these bodies as uncorrupted "intact churches", as opposed to the other so-called "destroyed churches".
In opposition to Nazification, Bonhoeffer urged an interdict to stop offering all pastoral ceremonial services (baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals, etc.), but Karl Barth and others advised against such a radical proposal.[28] In August 1933, Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse were deputized by opposition church leaders to draft the "Bethel Confession,"[29] as a statement of faith in opposition to the Deutsche Christen movement. Notable for affirming God's fidelity to Jews as His chosen people, the "Bethel Confession" was eventually so watered down to make it more palatable that ultimately Bonhoeffer refused to sign it.[30]
In September 1933, the nationalist church synod at Wittenberg voluntarily passed a resolution to apply the Aryan paragraph within the church, meaning that pastors and church officials of Jewish descent were to be removed from their posts. Regarding this as an affront to the principle of baptism, Martin Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors' Emergency League). In November, a rally of 20,000 Deutsche Christens demanded the removal of the Jewish Old Testament from the Bible, which was seen by many as heresy, further swelling the ranks of the Pastors Emergency League.[31]
Within weeks of its founding, more than a third of German pastors had joined the Emergency League. It was the forerunner of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), which aimed to preserve historical, Biblically based Christian beliefs and practices.[32] The Barmen Declaration, drafted by Barth in May 1934 and adopted by the Confessing Church, insisted that Christ, not the führer, is the head of the Church.[33] The adoption of the declaration has often been viewed as a triumph, although only about 20% of German pastors supported the Confessing Church.[34]