Jägerstätter's mother was an unmarried chambermaid named Rosalia Huber who lived in Sankt Radegund, Upper Austria, a small village between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn where nearly everyone was Catholic.

[1][2][3] As his parents could not afford a marriage, Franz was first cared for by his grandmother, Elisabeth Huber, who had a reputation as an exceptionally devout woman.

[7] While he regularly went to Mass, there was little to foreshadow the devotion he was known for in later years, and he once embarrassed the pastor of the village by asking him about the possibility that the Virgin Mary had other children after Jesus.

[11][12] Perhaps due to circumstances related to the girl's conception, Jägerstätter apparently underwent an "exile" around this time during which he was obliged to leave Sankt Radegund for several years, working in the iron mines of Eisenerz.

[13] In the social democratic working class environment he first experienced a crisis of meaning, but returned to his homeland as a deeply pious person.

In the mid-1930s, Jägerstätter made a turn towards morality and piety that most of his neighbours recalled as "so sudden that people just couldn't understand it", "almost as if he had been possessed by a higher power", although others described it as more gradual.

He was the only person in the village to vote against the Anschluss in the plebiscite of 10 April; nevertheless, the local authorities suppressed his dissent and announced unanimous approval.

He was dismayed to witness many Catholics in his town supporting the Nazis, writing, "I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country".

In summer 1940, the local parish priest, Josef Karobath (1898-1983), offered him work as a sacristan, as Jägerstätter attended Mass daily anyway.

Drafted for the first time on 17 June 1940, Jägerstätter, aged 33, was again conscripted into the German Wehrmacht in October and completed his training at the Enns garrison.

Faced with his experiences in military service, the suppression of the church, as well as reports on the Nazi T4 euthanasia program, he began to examine the morality of the war.

A reference in this text to "five years" of Nazi rule in Austria implies the questions were composed in the winter of 1943, probably in preparation for the meeting with Fließer.

[25] A 1946 letter by the editor of the diocesan newspaper regarding the non-publication of an article about Jägerstätter gives an account of Fließer's words: "I saw that the man was thirsty for martyrdom and for suffering in atonement, and I told him he could only walk that path if he was sure that he was being called to do so by an extraordinary summons from above, not just from within himself.

[30] When Jägerstatter was told of the fate of the Austrian Pallottine father Franz Reinisch, who had been executed for his refusal to take the Hitler oath, his conscience was calmed.

A 1971 film treatment of his life made for Austrian television, Verweigerung ("The Refusal") (originally titled Der Fall Jägerstätter), by director Axel Corti, starred Kurt Weinzierl.

[30] On 26 October 2007, Jägerstätter was beatified in a ceremony held by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Linz.

[37] The film is inspired by the book Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, edited by biographer Erna Putz, with Malick acquiring its adaptation rights for the production.