February 22, 1943 The White Rose

With Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933, the National Socialist Worker’s Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP) lost no time in consolidating power. Two days later, the 876-member democratically elected deliberative body, the “Reichstag”, was dissolved.

The National Socialists never did call themselves “Nazis”. That was a derogatory term coined by opponents, long before the party came to power. Throughout the 1930s, it became increasingly dangerous to speak ill of the Nazi party. One such was the Württemberg politician Robert Scholl who criticised the ruling party before, during and after World War 2. Scholl was one of the lucky ones, he lived to tell the story, but not without spending some of that time, behind bars.

In 1935, Hans was selected to carry the flag at the 1935 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, one of three standard-bearers, from Ulm.

He joined the Reich Labor Service for two years before beginning medical school, in Munich. During a semester break, Scholl was drafted as a medic in the French campaign. Back at school, Scholl began to meet teachers and students, critical of the regime. Theirs was a Christian-ethical world view. One of them was Alexander Schmorrell.

The family moved to Weimar Germany following the Russian Revolution. In later interrogations by the Gestapo, Alexander described himself as a German-Russian Tsarist who hated Bolsheviks.

In the Nazi mindset, slavs are part of the great horde of Untermenschen, people considered racially or socially, inferior. Alexander believed no such thing about himself. He was proud of both his German and his Russian sides.

In religion class, Schmorell displayed a stubborn refusal to bend to the will of others, crossing himself right-to-left in the manner of the Russian church, and not left to right. Alexander joined the Scharnhorst youth as a boy, mostly for the love of horseback riding. Once the organization was absorbed into the Hitler Youth movement he gradually stopped attending. Like Scholl, Schmorell joined the Wehrmacht, participating in the Anschluss and eventual invasion, of Czechoslovakia.

In 1941, Scholl and Schmorrell were drafted as medical auxiliaries, for service in the east. There the two witnessed the dark underbelly of the regime in whose service, they risked their lives. The Warsaw ghetto. The savage treatment of Russian prisoners. The deportations and dark rumors of extermination centers.

With the naivety of youth, Scholl and Schmorrell wanted better. Back in school the pair discussed this with Kurt Huber, professor of music and a vocal anti-Nazi. By June 1942, the pair started to write pamphlets, calling themselves, the “White Rose”.

“Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days? Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?”— 1st leaflet of the White Rose

During later gestapo interrogations, Scholl gave differing stories as to the origin of the name. A poem of the same name by the German poet, Clemens Brentano. A work by the Cuban poet, José Martí. Perhaps it was nothing more than the purity of the white rose, in the face of evil. Or maybe Scholl meant to throw his tormenters off the scent of Josef Söhngen, the anti-Nazi bookseller who had helped them, in so many ways.

“Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals. Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid, calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”— 2nd leaflet of the White Rose.

• 

• 

• 

The group added members and supporters. Willi Graf who, unlike the founding members hated the Hitler Youth movement, from the beginning. Christoph Probst whose step-mother was Jewish and considered the Nuremberg laws an affront to human dignity. Hans’ sister Sophie who joined, despite her older brother’s protests. Like her brother, Sophie detested what the Nazis stood for.

“Why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right—or rather, your moral duty—to eliminate this system?”— 3rd leaflet of the White Rose

Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen was critical of the Nazi movement from the beginning, denouncing Hitler’s “Worship of Race” as early as 1934.

Hand copied leaflets were inserted into phone books or mailed directly, to teachers and students.

The grotesque sham trials conducted by Hitler’s “Blood Judge” Roland Feisler made short work of any who would oppose “Der Fuhrer”. Today, the “People’s Court” of Nazi Germany is best remembered in the wake of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In reality, this perversion of justice had been around for ten years, handing out death sentences, in the hundreds. This video gives a pretty good idea of “justice” meted out, in Roland Feisler’s court.

There were Germans throughout the war who objected to the murder of millions, but theirs was a forlorn hope. Clergymen Dietrich Bonhoeffer would state “the ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.” For his opposition to the Reich, Bonhoeffer would pay with his life.

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, great grand-nephew of the famous Helmut von Moltke would lead 28 dissidents of the “Kreisau Circle”, against this “outrage of the Christian conscience.” These too would pay with their lives.

The most successful German opposition party came from the universities of Munich, with connections in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Vienna, including the White Rose. These were a surprise to Nazi leaders as Universities had long been stalwart supporters of Nazi ideology.

On February 18, Hans and Sophie Scholl arrived on campus with a suitcase full of pamphlets. This was their 6th. Hurriedly moving through the campus the Scholls left stacks of leaflets, outside full lecture halls:

“…Fellow Fighters in the Resistance! Shaken and broken, our people behold the loss of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War I Private First Class. Fuhrer, we thank you!…” – Excerpt from pamphlet 6

Their task complete, the pair realized they still had a few. From the upper floor of the atrium, Sophie tossed them into the air and watched them flutter to the ground. It was reckless and stupid, an action witnessed by custodian Jakob Schmid who promptly called the police.

The Scholl siblings were quickly arrested. Hans had on his person the draft, of another pamphlet: #7, written by Christoph Probst. He tried to eat it but the Gestapo was too fast. Probst was arrested within hours, eighty more over the following days. On February 22, 1943, all three were tried before judge Feisler’s People’s Court. All three were sentenced to death and executed by guillotine, the same day.

Es lebe die Freiheit! (Let Freedom live!)— Hans Scholl’s last words before his execution

Graf, Schmorrell, Huber and 11 others were tried on April 13. All three received the same sentence: death by decapitation. All but one of the others received prison sentences, between 6 months and 10 years.

The last member to be executed was Hans Conrad Leipelt on January 29, 1945.

Despite the execution of the group’s leaders, the White Rose had the last word. That last pamphlet was smuggled out of Germany and copied, by the allies. Millions of copies rained down from the sky, dropped, by allied bombers.

Today, the “People’s Court” of the schweinhund Feisler is a district court, in Munich. That’s it, at the top of this page.

Lieselotte ″Lilo″ Fürst-Ramdohr was a war widow at 29 when she joined the White Rose, hiding pamphlets in an apartment closet and helping to make stencils, for graffiti. In 2013 she gave an interview for BBC Worldwide, three months before she died. She was 99.

Lieselotte was arrested and interrogated for a month by the Gestapo, and released. She thinks they’d hoped she would lead them, to fellow conspirators.

In 2012, Lilo’s friend Alexander Schmorell was awarded sainthood by the Russian Orthodox church.

She thinks it’s all too amusing. “He would have laughed out loud” she said, “if he had known. He wasn’t a saint. He was just a normal person.”