WI Bonhoeffer survives WWII?

Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leader in the anti-Nazi "Confessing Church," was imprisoned by the Nazis for complicity in the July 20th assassination plot. However, for various reasons, he wasn't actually executed till 9 April 1945 - only a few weeks before the war ended.

What if he survived? Perhaps the execution order was never sent; perhaps it wasn't received or carried out amid the chaos; or perhaps a sympathetic guard saved him? For whatever reason, suppose he survives into a postwar Germany otherwise similar to OTL's? What would he do, and what impact would he have on Germany and the world?
 
I think the biggest butterfly - if any - would be on West Germany's coming to terms with the Nazi past. Whether or not it changes how little Nazis were actually held accountable after Nuremberg... well, I have a feeling no.
 
I think the biggest butterfly - if any - would be on West Germany's coming to terms with the Nazi past.
Politically, I think you're right. But, there'll almost certainly also be Christian theological consequences. Bonhoeffer's ideas of "Christianity without religion" and the necessity of suffering developed over time, especially during his imprisonment, so his later work was iOTL left tantalizingly undeveloped. IOTL, others have attempted to take up his work in various contradictory fashions; in a timeline where he himself is left to explain it - with the credit of having survived the Nazis and probably shouldering much of the work of rebuilding the German Lutheran Church - I think he'd be even more influential.
 
Top