Dramatic license

Trigger warning: Mentions drug and alcohol use, incest, rape, cults, physical abuse. No graphic descriptions, mentions only.

February 26, 2026. For the last almost-four weeks, I’ve been hard at work on a autobiographical fiction novel series generally based on the first twenty-nine years of my life. When I first started writing, I searched through newspapers dot com to find exact dates, exact locations, exact names. I am telling the story from my point of view, and that of my family. But initially, I was applying the methodology used for White Rose Histories to this novel.

A few pages in, I knew that was not sustainable. Nor was it even wise. Sure, there are some events for which I need actual dates and real names of characters. Hurricane Carla and Dan Rather. John Kennedy’s assassination and the date of his funeral. When the Watergate break-in took place, who the Plumbers were, who went to prison. And who did not.

But the date our family drove down to Galveston to watch Carla blow in? As long as that takes place during the timespan that Carla came ashore at Galveston, and as long as it’s logical that we could be there—i.e., the Gulf Freeway wasn’t under water—it doesn’t matter. The date that I witnessed utterly racist behavior from a man who was proud his father oversaw the last lynching in Houston—we oughta bring that back!, he said—only needs to take place before that man’s death in 1967. I don’t talk to ghosts.

Some aspects of this novel must be changed. If I were to include every person in our one-block neighborhood (90), plus everyone in our cult aka community of faith (250), plus everyone I knew in elementary school through fourth grade (75, after eliminating kids who were in the same classes), plus everyone in fifth grade (25), plus junior high (150), plus high school (250?, 350?), plus TCU (125? 200?), plus my dad’s side of the family (50), plus my mom’s side of the family (95), or 1,110 on the low side, no one would read this book.

While we as human beings have this crazy ability to know, even know well, hundreds of individuals over our lifetimes, readers cannot keep more than fifteen or thirty people straight. Without constant reminders or identity clues, that is.

Therefore, although in junior high school I had mad crushes on fun and silly Brad Gilbert whose mother and my mother became sweet friends, and gentle soul Barry Lack who made me think, and quiet Math whiz Mitch Goldstein who was better at algebra and worse at geometry than I, as well as Brad’s handsome college brother Chris who was a famous running back at University of Texas, in my novel that crush will likely be on a single boy who was gentle, quiet, funny, sweet, who was a Math whiz, whose brother was a wide receiver at Texas A&M, and whose mother and my mother were great friends.

And in much shorter sentences. (I haven’t named him yet.)

I am also telling this story solely from my viewpoint. If someone else were to tell a similar story involving the same people, it would look completely different. I don’t have to care about others’ viewpoints. In fact, I shelved the first attempt at this novel back in 1998/1999. I tried too hard to make it even-handed.

Focusing on only three or four families, in that first draft I wrote from the third person omniscient POV. I wanted to show the struggles of all those families, not just ours, faced with racism, misogyny, and hypocrisy on an epic, albeit microcosmic, scale. Although I knew many of those struggles from having witnessed them immediately after the fact, or having heard of them directly from the friends involved, it was beyond difficult describing, for example, what girls who had been raped by their father felt like.

Although I could and can sympathize with those girls, and even empathize to a degree, I stumbled over fairly presenting their anguish. However, writing from a Denise POV, I can accurately account for what I witnessed of those girls’ lives, the emotional devastation I saw, the after-effects of the beatings that followed the rapes. And since it is autobiographical fiction, I can camouflage their identities by combining their pain with similar pain experienced by others. Because where alcohol, drugs, and vicious control freak personalities merge with male-dominated authoritarianism, there’s always more than one family affected.

I also do indeed have the “right” to make this story all about my family. Our conversations around the dinner table. Our customs and traditions. Our cousins. I am not writing a history of that cult aka community of nonfaith. I am writing, from my POV, about our family’s intersection with it.

There’s also a small group of people, combined into one or two individuals, that I may write worse (if that is possible) than they were in real life. Although I am finding it hard to do so. Some of these characters were authentically awful. I don’t have to make them worse. The worst of the worst are being written out of the story. Which I may do, because it’s autobiographical fiction.

I am also lucky in that both my parents talked openly to my sister and me about tough subjects even when we were little. My mom said that my first word was “why.” They encouraged me to ask questions. Although there were a few topics that had to wait until I was a bit older to understand, we still talked about them. Especially regarding respect for people, all people, and not using pejoratives to describe anyone. Both parents would reprimand us if we used the word “hate.” That was not supposed to be in our vocabulary.

In this autobiographical fiction novel, I can invent conversations that have a strong basis in reality without worrying about an editor or reader debating the elements of nonfiction versus fiction. The voices are still in my ear. I can let them speak. Out loud.

I could omit my parents’ flaws, and mine, if I so chose. I am choosing not to omit them. Their “feet of clay up to their hips” made them human. Makes me human.

Finally, although I have letters and cards and even diaries, I don’t have to use events or thoughts or opinions that would either overload readers, or mess with my plotted timeline. This is neither an autobiography nor a memoir. It’s not even a historical account of our family or that cruel place. It’s a narrative based on my memories, our family, and that cruel place. “Based on a true story.”

So, I can hear you asking, what does this have to do with White Rose resistance?

I am having fun writing this novel. It’s being cathartic. Interestingly, I am understanding things about my parents and grandparents, things I knew with my head, but had never put together emotionally. The first big release occurred when writing about moving to my grandmother’s big orange brick house, while she and her sister moved to an apartment behind it. An apartment that had been my grandfather’s workshop.

The workshop where he would beat the living hell out of my father and his brother, before heading inside to beat my grandmother.

It had never dawned on me that my father and his brother fixed that place up so nice, so different from the workshop, with so many custom-designed items especially for my grandmother—an enormous walk-in closet with built-in jewelry cases!—and even more, what it meant to her to live in a place that had caused her pain. And my father too.

Any writers reading this know that characters speak to you, regardless of whether you are writing fiction, nonfiction, or historical fiction based on a true story. My grandmother’s voice as we helped her move into that apartment came through loud and clear.

As did my father’s voice when I wrote about visiting the dilapidated TB hospital for Blacks and “Mexicans.” He went because his friend Arnold’s mother was there. He took me to give my mom some space. I remember the joy I felt when we walked into the giant overfilled ward with women whose families were afraid to visit them. He wasn’t. He taught me not to be afraid. (Reminiscent of the later treatment that AIDS patients received.)

It took writing about those evenings before I grasped—now as an adult—that Houston didn’t give a damn about Blacks, Hispanics, and immigrants who had neither money nor social status. Even poor whites got a real hospital for TB treatment, Jefferson Davis.

If I were writing this as a nonfiction book, I’d have to research exactly who my father visited, what the beds looked like, how many people were in a ward, when visiting hours took place. But since it’s fiction, I am not limited to those cold hard facts (although someone really should write that book too!). I can describe him passing easily from one woman to the next, kissing foreheads, sitting on beds, handing me, Juanita, little John, from one forgotten woman to the next.

So, I can hear you asking, what does this have to do with White Rose resistance?

Because this is exactly how Inge Scholl wrote her little White Rose book. She centered it on her family, knowing full well who comprised the noble group of friends who sacrificed everything. She omitted people she did not like: Wilhelm Geyer, who challenged her alleged embezzlement from the Hochschule in Ulm. Traute Lafrenz, who knew about Hans’ homosexuality up close and personal. Lilo Ramdohr, who was closer to Alexander Schmorell than was Sophie. Käthe Schüddekopf, who was smarter than Hans and Sophie combined. Lisa Grote, nanny, friend of Alex and Prof. Kurt Huber, who distributed White Rose leaflets in her spare time. Lilli Holl of Ulm, object of Inge’s abuse as Lilli refused to join Jungmädel. Lilli too was Alex’s friend, saw the student soldiers off in July 1942, visited the Schmorell family after his execution.

These people were inconvenient for Inge, had angered her, or overshadowed her siblings. So she excised them from her little book. Despite having their Berichte, their reports, their memories about White Rose work. It was easier for Inge to ignore them.

Inge omitted uncomfortable narratives. According to her version of events, the Scholls always lived on Münsterplatz. That prevented people from asking questions about the small apartment on the Michelsberg, as well as the larger flat where they were the only non-Jews. Kristallnacht? Must not have conformed to her well-plotted story, as detailed in her Chronologischer Bericht used in the writing of her little book. She simply left it out.

She merged several characters into one, especially when she wanted to leave someone out of her story. This was especially true when she invented philo-Semitic fairy tales, absolute falsehoods. Luise Nathan stood in for all the Jewish girls that at one time were part of the Scholl circle of friends, until Hitler said good Germans didn’t associate with Jews. Yet Inge didn’t even know what Luise looked like.

Inge had no issue with changing dates, sometimes even historical dates that should have been unassailable. Her dating of Hans’ participation in Hitler’s Parteitag matched her timeline, not reality. Sophie’s arrival in Munich corresponded to Inge’s plot, not reality. Among other things, some of which were not noticeable until recorded in my database.

Above all, she made characters be who she wanted them to be, starting with herself and her father. We know from multiple, indisputable sources that Inge herself was hardcore Nazi. As Ringführerin, second in command, Inge taught Nazi racial ideology and antisemitism to Jungmädel leaders in the Ulm region. Otl Aicher told how she and her troop of girls stepped out in front of Hitler’s car during a parade (likely not in Ulm), forcing the Führer to stop. Hitler personally saluted Inge and her girls.

Her book allowed her to reinvent herself.

Her father counted the thirty top Nazis in Ulm among his tax clients. The Kreisleiter in Öhringen, where Robert Scholl had roots, was one of his best friends, even after the execution of his children. Mussgay, Gestapo chief in Stuttgart and another of Robert Scholl’s closest friends, sent Eugen Grimminger’s Jewish in-laws to their deaths in Riga. He also pulled strings to get Hans Scholl a light sentence during his bündische trial for Section 175(2) offenses, sexual assault of a minor boy under Hans’ command. Robert Scholl was well-connected to high-ranking Nazis and used those connections to provide a most comfortable life for his privileged, pampered family.

Inge’s book reinvented her father, and their family, as well.

Writing my autobiographical fiction novel has made me realize how easy it can be to write a historical narrative when you don’t have to stick to facts.

It’s bad enough that Inge Scholl’s book is treated as historical nonfiction when it is not. Even worse when other writers—especially Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn, Detlef Bald, Fred Breinersdorfer, Michael Verhoeven, Barbara Beuys, Hermann Vinke, Anton Gill, Barbara Schüler, James Fell, and A Mighty Girl—use Inge’s fiction as basis for even more historical fiction marketed and sold as nonfiction.

Dramatic license, aka artistic license, is all well and good when you’re writing a novel (fiction) or making a movie—although it should not be mislabeled as nonfiction. It is not all right when you’re passing yourself off as a scholar.

Writing nonfiction, especially when focused on White Rose resistance, is extremely difficult. Resolving contradictions between Gestapo interrogation transcripts and postwar memoirs. Comparing gaps in letters against correspondence of others in a (usually vain) attempt to determine what’s missing. Ensuring that all of the friends, not just the inner circle, are honored for their willingness to die for justice. Knowing what questions to ask when there’s only two or three hours for an interview. Searching obscure archives for even more obscure documents.

And always, pushing back against Inge’s legend. That’s often the hardest part, because it is so entrenched.

When I die in twenty or thirty years, please do not use my current novel-in-progress as authority about the Heap and Sachs families. Much less about me.

And starting now, please agree not to use Inge’s historical fiction as the basis for your research and scholarship into White Rose resistance. We’ve got to move away from nonsense to reality. It’s the only way this remarkable story can continue to have real meaning.

PS: You can read book reviews on the Web site of Center for White Rose Studies here. I’m not shy. Also not vague.

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© 2026 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote.

Image credits: Top photo--My mom holding my newborn baby sister, and me, March 1957. Photo © 1957 John Heap. Please contact us for permission to use. Bottom photo--Shopify, public domain for platform users.

Our White Rose histories are fully documented. Please purchase them for access to that material! To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume I: Coming Together (January 1933-April 30, 1942), click here. To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume II, click here. WRH1 is © 2002, 2003, 2007 by Denise Elaine Heap. WRH2 is © 2002, 2007 by Denise Elaine Heap.

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