Ultimate Price

The witness of seven courageous Christians whose faith inspired them to resist the Nazi regime and who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Through their stories and their own words this volume highlights seven inspiring men and women who felt compelled by their Christian faith to oppose the idolatrous Nazi regime. Some of their stories are well known, others less so: Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned and executed for his role in a plot to overthrow Hitler; Jesuit Alfred Delp, executed for his role in the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle; Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian peasant who refused to take a military oath; Sophie Scholl, a young university student and part of the doomed White Rose conspiracy; hymn writer and novelist Jochen Klepper; Berlin's Cathedral provost Bernhard Lichtenberg; and recently beatified Jesuit preacher Rupert Mayer. What were their motives? What convinced them, long before their vindication by history, that they must defend the truth and the dignity of human life at the cost of their own lives? In tracing their journeys, they challenge us to heed our own conscience; they bid us examine our own loyalties to kin and country in light of Christ's claims. They prod us to take our own stand with those Christ called "the least of these."