Important enough to write down

February 22.

It does us no good at all if we know the story of the White Rose… It does us no good at all if we know the real story of the White Rose and can differentiate it from legend…

It does us no good at all if we know the story of the White Rose and do not comprehend what they did and why it matters. Are they historical characters worthy of the best Hollywood depiction of their lives? Absolutely!

But their lives mean much more to us than shadows on a silver screen or pages in a history text. I dare say that Sophie Scholl would be deeply grieved if we honored her solely by sticking her bust in Walhalla without grappling with her life. Her death, yes, that was tragic and heroic, but her life made it so.

Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Professor Kurt Huber, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Hans Leipelt, Harald Dohrn, their deaths too will have been in vain if we are content to remember without acting. What benefit do we derive from Traute Lafrenz’s unbelievable spunk and fearlessness, Käthe Schüddekopf’s steadfast idealism, Lilo Ramdohr’s timid courage, Gerhard Feuerle’s courageous fear, Wilhelm Geyer’s optimistic confidence and firm NO!, Harald Dohrn’s raging dissent, if we stop with the memory?

To honor them, we should be as open and receptive to righting the wrongs in our own back yards as they were. These students and their mentors did not die protesting the brutality of colonialism on the African continent, America’s damnable “separate but equal” laws, or pogroms in Russia. They focused instead on the injustice they witnessed, on indignities that were perpetrated by their own people.

Willi Graf’s nightmares of bestial brutality he had seen firsthand spurred him to do something. Eugen Grimminger’s close contact with the Jewish community taught him how cruel and inhuman Nazi justice could be. The same held true for Traute Lafrenz and Christoph Probst, where Traute’s friend and Christoph’s stepmother were endangered because of genetics alone.

Whether they had personal reasons for protest, or whether they “merely” recognized injustice when they saw it, once aroused, they could not keep silent. If everyone cowered under fear of denunciation, if everyone kept their mouths shut – later falsely claiming “inner emigration” – then Germany would be lost. Their Germany. Their homeland. The land they loved, and cherished.

Because: These students and the adults who learned from them were patriots in the truest sense of that word. Sure, the primary physical damage – in the form of humiliating deportations followed by sadistic murders – happened to the Jewish community, and others the NSDAP deemed subhuman, “Others” such as Roma and Sinti.

But the students of the White Rose argued that if nothing were done to stop Hitler and his henchmen, the real losers would be Germans and Germany. This land they loved, and cherished. Worse than the physical death they faced if they did not act, Germany faced moral, intellectual, and spiritual death, unless her people stood up and shouted a collective No.

As we know, that did not happen. Except for those involved in White Rose resistance, together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a very small number of crazy, foolhardy idealists like them, most Germans did not say No. The vast majority of Germans did not say No! They tolerated the evil, closed their eyes to injustice, and hoped it would never happen to them.

Since this No never came, Germany to this day struggles to regain its moral footing. Of course, it is a beautiful country. People are friendly and helpful. Its Holocaust memorials bear witness to the awfulness of acquiescence, and scholars are learning how to discuss what happened. From Berlin’s heartpounding energy to Munich’s relaxed Gemütlichkeit, with wonderful cities and towns in between, it’s a great place to visit, a great place to live. And ironically, these days a pretty safe place to live Jewishly.

Yet Germany has not recovered from the silence, from the refusal to say No. More than seventy-five years later, the lone voices of the White Rose and the few courageous Others resound so clearly, because they were so singular.

Does this mean they risked their lives for nothing? No. No. No! They did all that was humanly possible, and then some, to turn the tide. That their pleas fell on deaf ears was no reflection on them, but rather on the nation as a whole.

Some will try to say that the White Rose represents some sort of atonement for Germany, that their morality should inure to the benefit of their larger society, that their courage somehow makes up for what the rest of Germany would not do. They would be the first to decry such a notion. Guilty, guilty, guilty! – so they proclaimed anyone who read the leaflets defining the atrocities and yet did nothing. 300,000 Jews murdered, can you believe it?, certain that such a crime against humanity would be enough to stir the populace to revolt. This was Germany after all, home of the Enlightenment, rationalism, Immanuel Kant, Albert Einstein, Hegel and Fichte! Wouldn’t the nation of Goethe and Schiller, wouldn’t the nation of Heinrich Heine and Felix Mendelssohn!, rise up if only they knew?

But they did know, and they did not rise up.

The history of White Rose resistance can be boiled down to a very simple principle: As individuals, we are responsible to act justly, even if no one else does. In November 2002, Traute Lafrenz counseled me not to expect to make things right regarding flawed White Rose research, but to do what I know is right. It is clear these are principles she has lived with for all of her life, values shared with friends who did not escape with their lives.

And that is the essence of this thing, it is what fascinates and astonishes about their story. Common people, just like you, just like me, took on an evil empire. Maybe they did not win. But certainly, Germany lost, in more ways than one.

When I come to the end of my life, I want my epitaph to read, “She may not have won, but she did what was right.” Because in the long run, that is all that matters.

When I ask myself: What have I left behind?
Rough drafts, sketches only – papery masses,
hardly a clean copy. The clean copy of my life
is only my death. And it was not in vain.
— Professor Kurt Huber

Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst (February 22, 1943)
Alexander Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber (July 13, 1943)
Willi Graf (October 12, 1943)
Hans Leipelt (January 29, 1945)
Harald Dohrn (April 29, 1945)

Your deaths, and your lives, were not in vain.

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The above information is fully footnoted in our White Rose histories. 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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