The White Rose Movement :
During the rise of Nazism before the second world war started, a huge transformation was starting to take place in Germany. Many huge changes were already taken place, the burning of the Reichstag and the harsh brutality of the SA under the leadership of Ernst Rohm.
Voices speaking out of this oppression was not appreciated by the Nazi officials and those caught were silenced, either executed or sent to prison. One notable person during these years was a young student Sophie Scholl, she was associated with the White Rose Movement. A movement of a youthful resistance to Nazism.
Very few people today would know that Sophie Scholl is not the best known resistance fighter. But unlike most young women of her time, her story is very powerful. Sophie was a very important member of the White Rose --- a resistance movement organized and run by students at the Munich University.
This group printed and distributed leaflets, highlighted the Nazi crimes and the corrupt political system. The White Rose group was a protest against the Nazi state, and a call for resistance. The Gestapo (secret police) caught up with Sophie, and she was beheaded on the 22nd February 1943.
Sophie was born in May 1921, the fourth of six children born of Robert Scholl, the Mayor of Forchtenberg, a small town north-east of Wurttemberg. The Scholl family were a middle class family, that later lived in the town of Ulm where her father worked as a tax consultant and state auditor.
When the Nazi came to power in January 1933, many sensed a new air and excitement grew as many got involved in the National Socialist youth. The children of the Scholl household got involved with this youth cult of Nazism. As a teenager Sophie believed in those ideologies propagated and was intrigued by the focus on nature and communal experiences. Soon Sophie got involved with the League of German Girls (the Bund Deutsch Madel ). Being very apt Sophie steadily and quickly rose through the ranks. Although mostly her father Robert did not like their children's involvement in the Nazi youth groups.
Robert Scholl made no secret about the Nazi party from there beginning, his children were raised and firmly grounded in theatre bad Christian tradition. He noticed his children's developments in Germany and it's form of Nazi nationalism with growing fear and horror. Lively discussions were a daily occurrence at dinner table, teaching the children the value of open and honest conversation. (a rarity at that time).
As mentioned earlier Sophie was the fourth of six children, her oldest brother Hans, was later to become the founding member of the White Rose, also were members of the non-Nazi groups of young people. These associations shared and propagated a love of nature, outdoor adventures, as well as the music, art, and literature of German Romanticism. This may seem to be compatible with the Nazi ideology by many, but these alternative groups were slowly dissolved and finally banned by 1936. Hans continued to be active in one such group, however, and was arrested in 1937 along with several of the Scholl children. This arrest left a bad feelings on Sophie's conscience and she began the process that eventually turned her from being a happy supporter of three Nazi system to an active resistance fighter.
On September 1st 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany. The older Scholl brothers were sent off to fight on the front. Sophie's life in the town of Ulm changed as well. Sophie graduated in high school in the spring of 1940 and started an apprenticeship to become a kindergarten teacher. Later she took an interest in studying biology and philosophy. In order to be admitted, students had to spend a period of time working for the state in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (National Labour Service RAD).
Sophie's hopes that becoming a teacher would allow her to substitute for the RAD were quashed and she instead had to enter the service in the spring of 1941. Sophie loathed this military -like regime and mind numbing routine caused her to find comfort in her own spirituality, influenced and guided by the readings of the theologian Augustus of Hippo.
As Sophie wrote her thoughts, realizing that her "soul was hungry" --she longed for an autonomous life, and end to the war, and for happiness with her boyfriend Fritz Hartnagel, who was now fighting on the Eastern front. She became more disillusioned and her doubts grew about this regime.
In May 1942 Sophie finally moved to Munich to study philosophy and biology, her brother Hans a medical student at the same university, and a few of his friends had already begun to actively question the system. Serving on the Eastern Front, they learned about the crimes committed in Poland and Russia first hand and witnessed the misery with their own eyes.
They knew they could not keep this quiet, and in June 1942, they started printing and distributing pamphlets in and around Munich, calling their fellow students and the German public to action. Other members of their circle joined in the endeavour, writing four pamphlets until the autumn of the same year. Being a student at the Munich University, it was not long before Sophie had not only seen the leaflets, but also applauded the content as well as the contribution, and courage of the authors in promoting the power of truth. On discovering her brother's involvement, Sophie demanded to join the group. She wanted to become active, the passive Sophie was gone.
The White Rose was maybe considered a small endeavour, but yet the consequences were quite the opposite. At the core of this group, we're Hans and Sophie Scholl, also with in this group were fellow students Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, and also a professor of philosophy and music at the Munich University, Kurt Huber. Together they published and distributed six pamphlets, first typed on a typewriter, then multiplied via a mimeograph. First these pamphlets were distributed by mail, sending them to professors, booksellers, authors, friends and others --- using phone books and hand writing each envelope. Little did this group know, that they distributed thousands, reaching household throughout Germany.
There hardest hurdle was acquiring such a large amount of paper, envelopes, and stamps, as Germany had entered a time of strict rationing, this hurdle was very problematic, and drawing attention from inquiring and suspicious eyes was the last thing the White Rose group needed. The members of the group managed this by engaging in a wide ranging network of supporters in cities and towns as far north as Hamburg, and as far south as Vienna. These networks also were activated to distribute the leaflets, attempting to trick the Gestapo into believing that the White Rose Movement had locations all across Germany and beyond.
When reading the movements pamphlets today, one cannot help and think of how chillingly accurate they were in their accusations and calls to action, the powerful insight they provide about Nazi Germany.
The third pamphlet reads:-
"Our current 'state' is
the dictatorship of
evil. We know that
already, I hear you
object, and we don't
need you to reproach
us for it yet again.
But, I ask you, if you
know that, then why
don't you act? Why
do you tolerate these
rules gradually
robbing you, in public
and in private, of one
right after another,
until one day
nothing, absolutely
nothing, remains but
the machinery of the
state, under the
command of
criminals and
drunkards."
White Rose leaflet.
In their attempt to gain support for the resistance and stop the war effort, they gave clear advice and advocated sabotage of Hitler's war machine. Their fifth leaflet stated: "And now every convinced opponent of National Socialism must ask himself how he can fight against the present 'state' in the most effective way... We cannot provide each man with the blueprint for his acts, we can only suggest them in general terms, and he alone will find the way of achieving this end: Sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies, and organisations of the National Socialist Party. Obstruction of the smooth functioning of the war machine... Try to convince all your acquaintances... of the senseless of continuing, of the hopelessness of this war; of our spiritual and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists; of all moral and religious values; and urge them to passive resistance!"
In January 1943, things were looking good, the White Rose Movement felt empowered and hopeful. Their hard work seemed to be working, rattling the Nazi authorities and igniting a spark of discussion among their peers. The group was well organised and they were about to set up even more connections to other underground resistance groups. Observing the political situation in Nazi Germany in January 1943, Sophie and the White Rose members believed a change in the country was imminent.
The German army's disastrous defeat at Stalingrad was a turning point on the Eastern Front, and voices of dissent grew louder at theMunich University after students were publicly called out as leeches and war registers. This encouraged them to work with more boldness, distributing the pamphlets in person, also writing slogans like "Down with Hitler" and "Freedom" on the walls around Munich. The last and sixth pamphlet of the White Rose Movement read:
"Even the most dull-witted German has had
his eyes opened by the terrible bloodbath,
which, in the name of freedom and honour
of the German nation, they have unleashed
upon Europe, and unleashed anew each day.
The German name will remain forever tarnished
unless finally the German youth stands up,
and pursues both revenge and atonement,
smites our tormentors, and founds a new
intellectual Europe Students!
The German people look to us! The res-
possibility is ours: just as the power of the
spirit broke the Napoleonic terror in 1813,
so too will it break the terror of the Nationalist
Socialist in 1943."
Hans and Sophie distributed the pamphlets at their university on
February 18th 1943, for their fellow students to find walking between lessons. At some point, in what we can assume was an
attempt to make even more people see leaflets, Sophie pushed a stack off a railing unto the central hall. What is now an icon scene
in every documentary about the group, was the moment that changed everything. The pamphlets falling through the air descending to the floor of the central hall was seen by a caretaker
a staunch Nazi supporter, who had Hans and Sophie arrested immediately by the Gestapo. The draft for the seventh pamphlet was still in the bag belonging to Hans. This lead to the arrest of Christoph Probst on that very same day.
The three endured a mock trial after each of them had received a long and arduous interrogation. They all took the blame for the actions of the White Rose Movement. This attempt to save their friends from arrest and interrogation failed in the end, and Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, and Kurt Huber were finally arrested later that month and put to death shortly after.
After a day and a half trial led by the infamous Roland Freisler, president of the People's Court, Hans, Sophie, and Christoph were sentenced to death for treason. Despite this horrific prospect, Sophie did not waver. Freisler asked her as a closing question whether she had not-
"indeed come to the conclusion that (her) conduct and the actions
along with her brother and other persons in the present phase of the war should be seen as a crime against the community?"
Sophie answered-
"I am, now as before, of the opinion that I
did the best that I could do for my nation.
I therefore do not regret my conduct and
will bear the consequences that result
from my conduct.
Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine on February 22nd 1943. And while their death's were only barely mentioned in German newspapers, they received attention abroad. In April, The New York Times wrote about the student opposition in Munich. In June 1943, Thomas Mann, in a BBC broadcast aimed at Germans, spoke of the White Rose's actions. The text of the sixth leaflet was smuggled into the United Kingdom where they were reprinted and dropped over Germany by Allied aeroplanes in July of the same year.
In post-war Germany, the White Rose was and revered. A myraid of schools, streets, and a prestigious award are named after individual members, the group or the siblings Scholl. Sophie's story looms especially large in the history of Ulm, my hometown she personifies the importance of acting according to one's beliefs and following your conscience, even in the face of great sacrifice.
In collective memory, her story reminds us to not be silent, and fight for what Sophie wrote on the back of her indictment the day before she was killed: Freitheit---Freedom.
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