Long Live Freedom!
The graves of Hans and Sophie Scholl, their parents, Christoph Probst and his mother
It is rare that a man is prepared to pay with his life
for such a minimal achievement as causing cracks
in the edifice of the existing order.
Inge Scholl
There would be no euphemizing, no equivocating, no groveling or genuflecting before a blustering “leader.”
They “demand[ed] restitution… of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure that we have, out of which [Hitler] has swindled us in the most miserable way” and described the court jesters echoing his lies as “the party bootlickers.”
In a Germany in which it was dangerous to befriend Jews or to associate with those who spoke against the Fuhrer and the Nazis, the young men and women of The White Rose – almost exclusively in their early twenties – were the only German resistance group to publicly condemn the extermination of European Jews.
“This,” they wrote, “is the struggle of each and every one of us for our future, our freedom and our honor under a regime conscious of its moral responsibility.” They reminded their “Fellow Fighters in the Resistance!” that “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.”
These members of the White Rose quoted the words of a familiar German military song and bade what would become their final farewell: “The dead of Stalingrad implore us to take action. ‘Up, up, my people, let smoke and flame be our sign!’”
The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest battle of World War II.
On February 18 1943, hours after printing their sixth leaflet of The White Rose – addressed to “Fellow Fighters of the Resistance” - and while throwing bundles of copies over the balustrade of the main building at the Ludwig Maximillian University, Hans Scholl, the group’s leader, and his sister Sophie were arrested.
In “Fellow Fighters in the Resistance,” the authors assailed “a system of selection of leaders at once unimaginably devilish and narrow-minded… party bigwigs… Godless, impudent, and conscienceless exploiters and executioners – blind, stupid, hangers-on of the Fuhrer.”
Despite his friends’ determination to protect him because he was married and the father of three small children – aged three years, two years and four weeks old, Christoph Probst was arrested in Innsbruck on February 20, 1943. At the time of Sophie and Hans’ capture, the Gestapo found – in Hans’ pocket - a handwritten draft of a leaflet Probst had been preparing containing the damning sentence “Hitler and his regime must fall so that Germany may live on.” It was quickly matched to a letter signed by Probst in Hans’ flat.
The February 22, 1943 indictment document for the three indicates that, in total, more than 7,000 – perhaps closer to 10,000 – copies of the six leaflets of The White Rose were printed and distributed through the mail and by trusted couriers in Germany’s major cities.
Recently, a translation of what would have been the Seventh Leaflet – presumably written principally by Probst - has become available. It reads in part:
Today German is encircled as Stalingrad was. Will all Germans be sacrificed to the harbinger of hate and destruction? To him, who tortured the Jews, who eradicated half of the Poles, who desired the annihilation of Russia – to him who took away liberty, peace, happiness, hope, and joy, and gave us inflationary money instead? This ought not, this must not be. Hitler and his regime must fall so that Germany can live. Make your decision, Stalingrad and downfall, or Tripoli and a hopeful future. And once you have decided, act.
Captured German soldier after the Siege of Stalingrad.
On February 22 – two days after the arrest of the brother and sister, one day after the arrest of the married father of three small children – they were tried – a five-hour hearing - before People’s Court Judge Roland Freisler, found guilty of treason and executed by guillotine by Johann Reichart in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison minutes after 5:00 in the afternoon.
Hans Scholl’s last words: “Long live freedom!”
Sophie Scholl’s last words: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
In fact, the leaflet “Fellow Fighters of the Resistance” was smuggled out of Germany later that year; Allied Forces produced thousands of copies – retitled “Manifesto of the Students of Munich” – and dropped them over German cities.
Before his execution and perhaps influenced by the spirituality of Wilhelm Graf, Christoph Probst, who had seen firsthand how his stepmother was marginalized simply for being Jewish, asked to be baptized by a Catholic priest; an hour later he was executed by guillotine. On November 3, 1999 Christoph Probst was beatified and included in the martyrology of the Roman Catholic Church.
In words that might well have been written recently but were penned in 1947, Inge Scholl, sister of Hans and Sophie, explained:
Since Hitler’s moods were said to be extraordinarily dependent on the sympathy of the masses, a reversal of feeling among the populace would have been a weapon of considerable force against him. One which would threaten his own self-confidence. For these reasons the leaflets of the White Rose were held by the highest levels of the party to constitute one of the greatest political “crimes” against the Third Reich.
In an era in which a president of the United States has been repeatedly described as demanding/expecting “loyalty” to himself – rather than to the Constitution, the “Transcript of the Sentence of Han and Sophie Scholl and Christopher Probst, February 22, 1943” can be especially important. Among the “Grounds” for Hans’ indictment: “In his capacity as soldier – on assignment to medical study – he has a special duty of loyalty to the Fuhrer.” He was charged with issuing a “call to battle against the Fuhrer.”
Probst was described “a ‘non-political man’ – hence no man at all!” What would have been the Seventh Leaflet was called “cowardly defeatism - a ‘manuscript’ which takes the heroic struggle in Stalingrad as the occasion for defaming the Fuhrer as a military swindler….”
A second trial – of Hans’ longtime friend and “co-spiritual founder” of The White Rose Alexander Schmorell; Ludwig Maximillian University professor Kurt Huber; and Wilhelm Graf, who served as a White Rose recruiter and participated in anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler graffiti campaigns with other members of the group; and eleven others – was held on April 19, 1943.
Willi Graf, pinning a medal onto Alexander Schmorell’s uniform.
The three were sentenced for having “promulgated leaflets calling for sabotage of the war effort and for the overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people; [having] propagated defeatist ideas, and [having] most vulgarly defamed the Fuhrer… On this account they are to be punished by Death.”
In his last letter to his parents, Schmorell wrote: “This difficult ‘misfortune’ was necessary to put me on the right road, and therefore was no misfortune at all… What did I know until now about belief, about a true and deep belief, about the truth, the last and only truth, about God? Never forget God!” His last words – spoken to his lawyer as he was being taken to the guillotine: “I’m convinced that my life has to end now early as it seems, because I have fulfilled my life’s mission. I wouldn’t know what else I have to do on this earth.”
Alexander Schmorell was executed by guillotine on July 13, 1943. Saint Alexander Schmorell was glorified in an act of canonization as a New Martyr by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in Munich on February 5, 2012.
The sentencing court observed that Schmorell and Graf “ought to have been particularly grateful to the Fuhrer, for he ordered army pay for them during the time of their university attendance….”
The Catholic Church of Germany honors Wilhelm Graf as a martyr and his cause for beatification and canonization is in progress
The same court also noted that “a German university professor [Kurt Huber] is first and foremost an educator of the young. As such he ought to try… to see that our university students… are reinforced in their absolute trust in our Fuhrer…”
The sentencing court wrote:
Whoever, as teacher or student, vilifies the Führer in this way no longer belongs to us. Whoever slanders National Socialism in this way no longer has a place among us. Whoever so splits our national unity and will to struggle in time of war, with the treasonable spawn from the brain of an enemy of the people, chips away at our armed security and gives aid to the enemy (Par. 91b of the Criminal Code). Men such as Huber, Schmorell, and Graf know this full well. Whoever commits these acts has earned his death.
Professor Huber, however, explained
What I intended to accomplish was to rouse the study body, not by means of an organization, but solely by my simple words; to urge them, not to violence but to moral insight into the existing serious deficiencies of our political system. To urge the return to clear moral principles, to the constitutional state, to mutual trust between men.
Others were sentenced to periods of ten, seven and five years and twelve and eighteen months in prison. One was sentenced to time served and one youth was set free.
In an attitude of some American politicos in 2021, the court wrote Dr. Heinrich Bollinger and Helmut Bauer merited punishment because:
The disobedience of these two men toward the Fuhrer deserves punishment, since, though they knew it to be forbidden by the Fuhrer, they listened to discussions of military and internal political affairs on the foreign radio.
In the words of Hans’ and Sophie’s sister Inge, The White Rose
was a resistance in which students took it upon themselves to act while the dictatorship was totally in control; in which they accepted the lonely burden of not even being able to discuss these matters with their families; in which they took action even though the omnipotent state allowed them no room for maneuver; in which they acted in spite of the fact that they could do no more than tear small rifts in the structure of that state — much less blast out the cornerstones. It is rare that a man is prepared to pay with his life for such a minimal achievement as causing cracks in the edifice of the existing order.
German prisoners huddle with other Axis soldiers after the defeat of the German army at Stalingrad.
In mid-summer 1943, German army enlisted men taken as prisoners of war in Russia after their defeat at Stalingrad established The National Committee for a Free Germany with the purpose of over-throwing the Hitler regime by encouraging resistance sabotage, and rebellion – the peaceful aims of The White Rose. One of their first efforts was a leaflet “Addressed to the German Fighting Forces on the Eastern Front” and noting “the terrible news that three young Germans… were executed at the end of February.”
These soldiers – prisoners of war because of the fawning subservience of Germany’s military and political classes before the arrogance, conceit and deceit of a “World War I Private First Class” - offer American politicians of 2021 – kowtowing, rushing off to golf courses and afraid of being primaried - a remarkable and cautionary message: “The renown of the brave is eternal.”
In November 1946, Else Gebel, who shared a prison cell with Sophie Scholl in the final hours of her life, wrote to the Scholl family, describing Sophie’s calm demeanor, amazing peace and resolute courage. Hidden in the body of her letter were six stinging words: “How cowardly the human herd is.”
“How cowardly the human herd is!”
“The renown of the brave is eternal!”