16 Friday, September 21, 1979

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Wishing the Community

White Rose: The German Student Dissidents

A Happy, Healthy & Prosperous

By VICTOR BIENSTOCK

NEW YEAR

Actually, I had never
heard of the White Rose
conspiracy before William
J. Miller told me of it, nor
had I heard of any conspi-
racy or resistance move-
ment against Hitler or-
gani-zed by German "A-
ryans" within the Third
Reich except for the unsuc-
cessful assassination at-
tempts by some of his gen-
erals.
The world had heard of
courageous individual pro-
tests by a few men like Pas-
tor Niemoller, but most of
Hitler's critics had either

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left the Reich or remained, Nazism and the evils of the
war the Nazis had launched
passive and mute.
Miller, then war corre- against the world.
There wasn't much they
spondent for the Cleveland
Press, and I had worked to- could do — a handful of
gether in piecing out the zealots who became the ob-
story of the French under jects of a relentless Gestapo
Nazi-Vichy rule, in un- hunt as soon as Hans had
covering the story of the passed out typewritten
Jews in France and the copies of his first manifesto.
workings of the French Re- But they wrote, mimeog-
sistance in which the Jews raphed and distributed
had no small part. I had to their anti-Nazi exhorta-
leave Europe before the tions in a half-dozen cities.
Nazi surrender but Miller
They painted anti-
remained and went on into Hitler slogans in the pub-
Germany. He was in lic places of Munich.
Munich in May 1945, look- They caused consterna-
ing, he said, "to find some tion in the Gestapo which
German whose hand I could could not gauge the ex-
shake:"
tent of the conspiracy
He found the only two and feared the spread of
Jews who had survived anti-Nazi sentiment.
Some of their leaflets
the war in Munich, the
sisters Kirsch, and the reached London and after
five or six "good Ger- Hans and Sophie Scholl
mans" who had hidden were guillotined, the Royal
them and kept them alive. Air Force bombers dropped
He also found the parents thousands of copies of their
of Alex Schmorell, one of call to revolt which had cost
five University of Munich them their lives.
students who, with a
They were only a handful
crippled professor, were and they took enormous
the nucleus of the White risks. They often speculated
Rose, a desperate, ill- _on the nature of post-war
fated but gallant attempt Germany but none, particu-
to arouse the conscience larly Hans Scholl, could
of the German people to have believed that they
bring about the over- would survive to be part of
throw of the Nazi regime it.
-
and end of the war.
A friend and former
The White Rose was Cleveland Press associate of
launched before Stalingrad Miller's, Richard Hanser,
ended Hitler's dream of the author of several studies of
Thousand Year Reich. It the Hitler era, has written a
ended abruptly on the guil- detailed study of the White
lotine in a Munich prison in Rose, put together after
1943. The White Rose was massive research, including
not an organization with a study of Gestapo records. He
political philosophy and interviewed people who
program; it was purely a knew the young con-
movement of conscience and spirators, including the
morality deriving its inspi- younger sister of Hans and
ration from the great Sophie Scholl, and other
teachers of the past, from sources.
Hanser, who was a spe-
strongly held religious be-
liefs and from an ingrained cialist with the U.S. Ar-
my's Psychological War-
decency of spirit.
Its members were "A- fare Branch, served in
ryans," as racially pure as Germany during the in-
the Nazis would have had it. vasion and occupation.
His book "A Noble
Hans Scholl, who organized
the White Rose and was its Treason," subtitled: "The
guiding spirit, and his Revolt of the Munich Stu-
lovely sister, Sophie, who so dents Against Hitler," was
loyally aided him, had been recently published by G.P.
enthusiastic members of Putnam's. It is fascinating
Hitler youth groups — so reading. It helps one to
much so as to distress their understand — but not to
liberal father — Hans, even condone — the German
while writing and distribut- people's surrender to Hitler
ing his anti-Nazi Manifes- and the obscenities of
tos and seeking recruits for Nazism.
Reading this book, one is
his tiny organization, was
attached to an army medi- appalled at how the intel-
cal unit. In the youth groups lectual elite of Germany,
and at the university, they the standard-bearers of
had learned to despise and German culture, with the
hate the teachings of exception of those who chose
to leave their homeland
rather than stay and fight
what Hans Scholl called the
philosophy of demons, cra-
venly succumbed and joined
in the paeans of praise to
Hitler.
As Hanser points out, the
abject surrender to Hitler of
such cultural heroes as poet
Gottfried Benn and
philosopher Martin
Heidegger was seen by the
comrades of the White Rose
as "the treason of the intel-
lectuals against values they
were supposed to defend.
That towering members of
Germany's intellectual
"ommunity could so

wholeheartedly approve of
Hitler and his movement
spread confusion in the
ranks of the intellectual
young and made dissidence
among them harder to jus-
tify and sustain."
Scholl noted this
"treason of the intellec-
tuals" in his first call to
revolt, proclaiming that
"nothing is more un-
worthy of a cultured
people than to allow
self, without resistanc
to be 'governed' by the
darkest instincts." Young
Scholl was horrified by
such exercises in
legalized barbarism as
the book-burnings which
he, as a student, had been
compelled to witness, by
the Nazi anti-Jewish
measures and by the in-
formation which reached
him of the atrocities and
massacres in the occu-
pied countries.
"If the Germans, devoid of
all individuality, have al-
ready been reduced to a
cowardly, mindless herd,"
he wrote angrily in one
manifesto, "then, yes, they
deserve to go under." But he
hoped still to touch the
German conscience and so
he appealed for resistance to
"the atheistic war machine"
before "the last of our youth
perishes for the hubris of a
maniac."
Scholl could not forgive
his fellow Germans for their
silence over the Nazi at-
rocities. "Everyone," he de-
clared bitterly in one leaf-
let, "wants to exonorate
himself from his share of the
blame and then go back to
sleep with a good con-
science. But it cannot be
done; everyone is guilty!
guilty! guilty!"
The White Rose was not
the only resistance move-
ment in Germany and one of
Scholl's hopes was to link
the White Rose with other
dissident groups around the
country. But, as Hanser
points out, "none of the
plans and objectives (of the
German resistance move-
ment as a whole) the worthy
ones or the dubious, ever
came to fruition. All its
ways and doings were dog-
ged by uncertainty, mis-
chance and malign misfor-
tune. The welding of its
scattered and contradictory
elements into a cohesive
movement that could strike
with power and effect never
materialized."
Friedrich
Rec'
Malleczewan, a Prussian
aristocrat who lived in
Munich during the.war
years made this notation
in his "Diary of a Man in
Despair" when he
learned of the execution
of Hans and Sophie
Scholl:
"The Scholls are the first
in Germany to have had the
courage to witness for the
truth . . . we will, all of us,
some day, have to make a
pilgrimage to their graves
and stand before them,
ashamed."

He that is of a distorted
understanding shall, be de-
spised.