The inquiring ape with insatiable curiosity to understand the Cosmos!: June 2014

I came upon this one post about a girl namely Sophie Scholl on the good fb page ‘Occupy London’ [Link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-London/124563204315456]. It was actually posted by this another wonderful page called ‘A Mighty Girl’ [Link: https://www.facebook.com/amightygirl] as part of their "Pick of the Day" campaign which picks a book each day for the followers of the page. It was rather accidental, for I was impatiently scrolling through the heap of mostly bullshit that came upon my ‘newsfeed’ then. It was a great accident though, because that girl Sophie Scholl and her co-conspirators (or ‘traitors’, as the NAZIs branded them) are my heroes now! I include them among history’s great men and women who resisted oppression, injustice and evil regimes.

So that post described briefly about Sophie Scholl’s heroic White Rose Resistance Movement and also gave few links and also names of books to read in order to study or learn about White Rose further, for which I’m very thankful for. So the book I chose to read was “Sophie Scholl and the White Rose”. And I will state that this book is one of the best books I ever read.

Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Willie Graf, Prof. Kurt Huber, and their other accomplices like Hans’ girlfriends Traute Lafrenz, Gisele Schertling, Manfred Erickmeyer and many many other noble young men and women together comprised the ‘White Rose’, a German resistance movement against that rose against the darkness of National Socialism that wiped the light out of the lives of countless Europeans and Russians. The first six names mentioned above formed the core group of White Rose and the rest of the people helped them in various ways like passing on the leaflets or helping the main guys hide their equipment and other incriminating material. All of them would later face trial and punishment at the hands of the judges that are NAZI cronies.

Most, if not all, of these guys came from relatively well-off families and all these guys could’ve just as well went on with their lives at the University of Munich carrying on their education. They just as well could’ve waited for the Allied invasion and watched the destruction of National Socialism (and Germany with it) in the ensuing war. They could’ve lived out the war, NAZI tyranny and may have lived their full lives. Yet they felt they had to do something to awaken Germans from their deep slumber and resist the NAZI zombies trying to take over Eurasia.

Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell are the chief architects of the White Rose Movement. The name White Rose is chosen by Hans who was inspired by a Spanish novel of the same name. Hans and Alex produced the first leaflet of resistance. Both of them served on the Eastern Front in Russia and also in occupied France, and both were drawn towards each other due to their similar interests as well as disdain for Nazism. The rest of the members also got together thanks to their disgust for the Nazi ideology and common interests with respect to their field of study and hobbies.

Hans was a sergeant in the Wermacht(German Army) and part of the Sixth Army that capitulated in Stalingrad when it was surrounded on all sides by the Red Army(Russian Army). Hans was a survivor of the Battle of Stalingrad and escaped Stalingrad before the 6^th Army surrendered. He was a courageous and highly decorated soldier with Purple Heart, Eastern Front Medal and two Iron Crosses – First and the Second class. Alex and Christoph Probst are also veterans of the Russian Front.

As the African-American writer Frederick Douglas who escaped slavery puts it, Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave… it is the deep knowledge of German history, culture, literature and philosophy that enabled all of the central figures of the White Rose movement to see through the lies and propaganda of the Nazis and join hands to fight back the oppression of Germany and Europe. The six main people at the heart of White Rose… all of them shared great interest about German Idealist Philosophy and read a great deal of the Philosophers like Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann and others. In fact, their early leaflets have a liberal amount of quoting from the works of these great authors.

In the pic from left: Hanks Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst in Munich

Medical students reading works of literature, history, philosophy, arts and culture not just of German origin but that of other nations too… that is something we rarely witness today. I think this aspect of reading diverse books is what sets these guys (and other resistance heroes of history) apart from the common folk from both those times and even today. ”The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom” said one internet quote I came across once. That is a universal truth. When men start to think, and then question things… that’s when the first chinks on the armor of evil appear, and those will lead to the eventual collapse and death of the evil. So I urge everyone reading this piece of writing to please read books, as many of them as possible.

Every leaflet produced and distributed by the White Rose had this ending sentence:

“WE WILL NOT BE SILENT. WE ARE YOUR BAD CONSCIENCE. THE WHITE ROSE WILL NOT LEAVE YOU IN PIECE!”

It is more or less similar to the signature of today’s internet resistance organization of hackers called Anonymous, which is “We are Anonymous. We are a legion. We do not fear. We do not forget. Expect us.” and also “The Corrupt fear US. The Honest support US. And the Heroic Join US.” Anonymous is a group of random and leaderless organization of hackers who attack injustice using the internet.

Coming back to White Rose… Hans, Alex and Willi were called back to active frontline duty on the Eastern Front in Russia in 1943 and this assignment had a great positive impact on all three of them and they were a changed lot when they were back in Germany after the duty as medics during this assignment. When they stepped on Russian soil they witnessed how the war destroyed the lives of innumerable innocent people and razed cities, towns and villages in its path to ground. The Wheat fields burning, children turned orphans due to the war crying for attention and people in misery running from its path… these tragic images created in the three of them a deep hatred for Hitler and his war.

The duty in Russia also had a great positive impact on these three young men. Through this assignment, they had a chance to meet common peasants of Soviet Union who were humble when these guys were gentle with them, even though the peasants’ lives were being destroyed by the Wermacht to which these three guys belonged. Though kind interaction with the “sub-human Slavic people” is forbidden by the Nazis, these three met the peasants of Russia, learned about their culture, drunk and danced and sang with them. They were enchanted when they saw that the simplest people like peasants, fishermen, craftsmen knew Feodor Dostoevski and are involved in what he wrote while in contrast not many Germans knew or followed Goethe!

When they returned to Nazi German from their assignment in Russia… Hans, Willie and Alex were not the same people who boarded that troop transport train to the East. It is certain that Russia changed the complete outlook of these young men towards everything. And when they came back to Germany, they narrated their experiences in Russia to their friends and that influenced them too which resulted in their common detesting of Hitler’s war machine. This is why I emphasize that everybody should travel to new places and explore cultures. It will give us a new perspective about life and everything else under the sun.

Immortal Words of Sophie Scholl

After they returned to Germany from active duty, they arranged meetings with the rest of the members more frequently and produced more leaflets. They travelled to various cities of Germany and Austria and mailed the leaflets to other cities from there to distract the Gestapo which by now is thoroughly shaken by these rebellious leaflets and the Nazi leadership ordered it to investigate and nail the rebels. Such was the language used in the leaflets – which urged all Germans to passively resist the Nazi government and stop collaborating with them in everything – that Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, himself ordered the Gestapo to catch White Rose members.

The Gestapo intensified its hunt for White Rose. It installed spies everywhere in Munich including the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. in 1943 Sophie and Hans were distributing anti-war leaflets at the University when they were caught by the custodian, Jakob Schmid, who informed the Gestapo. The leaflets told the truth about Nazi atrocities in Russia and the stunning defeat at Stalingrad for the German Sixth Army the previous month. On February 22, a Nazi judge sentenced Sophie and Hans to death for treason and they were beheaded the same day in Stadelheim prison. Three other White Rose members were also executed. Gestapo interrogators had offered Sophie the chance of survival if she blamed the leaflets entirely on her brother and other White Rose members, but she refused. Christoph Probst, who was a father of 3 children, was also executed along with Hans and Sophie.

Willie Graf, Alexander Schmorell and Prof. Kurt Huber were arrested later, tried for high treason and sentenced to death later. They were executed by beheading using the guillotine. All the other members who were not directly involved in drafting the leaftlets were sentenced to varying prison terms. Though the main members of White Rose have been silenced, others – inspired by the heroic actions of these noble youth – took part in spreading the word of resistance. The last unpublished leaflet was smuggled to the neutral Switzerland and later transferred to the hands of the allies who reproduced it in the thousands and air-dropped them all over Germany freely. By 1943, Allies had complete control of European sky as much of the Luftwaffe(German Airforce) was wiped out by RAF during the Battle of Britain.

The White Rose Movement opened the eyes of Germans towards the atrocities of the Nazis and made them see through the propaganda fed to the Germans by the Nazi propaganda machine. It inspired more youths to stand up and fight back the evil that has befallen Europe. The BBC broadcasted the heroic story of the White Rose guys which the Germans hears in secret (for listening to foreign is a serious crime in Nazi Germany!) and realized that Hitler is leading Germany into a gigantic abyss. Thus the White Rose Movement was not a failure but a spectacular success paid for by the lives of some of the best youth Germany have ever produced. These are 6 people who will live in History and share the ranks of great Resistance heroes and rebels who just couldn’t keep quiet and fought back.

Today White Rose is remembered by the umpteen number of streets and squares named after them and the numerous books, films, plays and documentaries about them. In fact, stamps were released by the German govt. commemorating these heroic youngsters.

The larger message we need to grasp from the story of White Rose is that, when you don't fight back evil.. you are a part of it even if you do not directly support it. And you will pay for your inaction at the end! Had people of Germany curbed Hitler during the late 1930s, the world might not have witnessed the slaughter that is WWII and Germany wouldn't had paid so dearly as they did during and after the war with all cities reduced to rubble, women raped en masse by the invading Soviet Army, lose of a complete generation of young men on the fighting fronts and complete destruction of the human spirit itself.

So people should think for themselves, question their rulers and keep them under control! And for that knowledge of the world – obtained via reading and researching – is the only way.

A New York Times article on White Rose Movement that was published in that newspaper on Monday, August 2nd 1943 ended with the following paragraph:

It was natural that the older generation, growing to manhood in a civilized country,should be at least lukewarm toward the hideous nonsense of Nazism, but there was doubt as to what could be expected of young people who had never known anything else. An animal brought up in a sty may be expected to behave like a pig. But these Munich students, few or many, representative or otherwise, rose gloriously out of the mud, protesting in the name of principles which Hitler thought he had killed forever. In years to come we, too, may honor Sergeant Hans Scholl, Sophia Scholl, Christophe Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Karl Huber and William Graf, slain in Munich for a cause that is also ours.

Concluding with the great words of African-American Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr: