Mixed emotions
September 1939.
Warning: Long post. I did not want to break up the before and after of the beginning of World War II.
Photo is of Cracow train station, September 1939.
As much as Scholl legend-tellers would like us to believe that Sophie and Hans resisted German aggression from the first day of World War II, that’s simply untrue. Sophie was indeed slowly moving in that direction. But thoughts of opposition either to Hitler or to the war remained on the horizon. Hans? That young man fell into informed dissent kicking and screaming.
Otl Aicher remarked that this war was set in motion rather oddly. Hitler wasted little time in advising Germans that the British had grasped at a “threadbare excuse” to continue their centuries-old tradition of world domination, and that the two countries were now at war. Instead of church bells pealing or people taking to the streets in jubilation over this long-awaited declaration of war, everybody sat at home and ate their Sunday pot roasts. The whole thing seemed anticlimactic.
I particularly liked Sigmund Freud’s reaction to the news. Worldwide, journalists and politicians proclaimed that this would be the last war. To which a terminally ill Freud rejoined, “It will be my last war!” He died three weeks later.
Susanne Hirzel’s research uncovered the notion that before the war in Poland, German resistance had consisted of pacifism and attempts simply to prevent war from breaking out, with the notable exception of the men of 1938—Carl Goerdeler, Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, Hans Boehm-Tettelbach, Ludwig Beck, Erich Kordt, Theodor (“Theo”) Kordt, Adam Trott zu Solz, and Ernst von Weizsäcker—whom the British had ignored and insulted. I would add: Communists as well, whose pre-World War II resistance included overthrowing democracy and joining the USSR, complicating postwar narratives about their dissent.
But after “Poland,” resistance came to mean overthrowing Hitler. This is an important distinction, as it represents a turning point.
On Saturday September 2, 1939, Sophie and her favorite sister Elisabeth went for a walk along the Danube. They mulled over the prior day’s events, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and Great Britain and France’s failure to come to the aid of their ally. Lisl remembered expressing the hope that it would not come to war. As long as there was no declaration of war, there was optimism.
“No, hopefully there is a war,” Sophie told her sister. “Hopefully someone will finally stand up to Hitler.”
In that moment, Lisl realized that her sister was far more tenacious than Hans.
Naturally, the NSDAP cancelled the Party Day of Peace in Nuremberg that Fritz Hartnagel used as cover for not visiting Sophie in Ulm. Instead of ‘enjoying’ pageantry, marching bands, and lots of loud speeches, Fritz sat among fellow soldiers, like him on edge to receive their marching orders, yet already having prepared for same.
He had not been asked to defend Germany’s Eastern borders against the Polish hordes. No, he and his men were stationed in Calw, in the Black Forest. He had been assigned to a Signal Corps (military intelligence) division.
From Fritz’s September 3 letter to Sophie, it is clear that he had known about his new assignment and had suspected—if not outright known—that hostilities were about to begin. The information about the Party Day of Peace had been a red herring to keep her from asking too many questions.
Because as Fritz and his unit waited in Calw, he admitted that they were secretly glad that this had finally happened. “The last eight days, we have been working hard from early morning till late at night to get everything completely ready. It’s really a lot of fun when one can start to put what was learned in military academy and ‘peace theories’ into practice.” Even if that meant that “hostilities” could start at any minute.
He recalled their trip to Worpswede fondly and was only sorry that they would not get to see one another any time soon. Despite the tension in the air, he had “an infinite feeling of good luck.”
That turning point that Susanne Hirzel mentioned in her postwar memoirs? It was one that Otl Aicher immediately faced. Werner Scholl rescued him from coffee and cake with his parents on Sunday afternoon, September 3, 1939. The two teens, along with one of Werner’s friends known only as Ulli, met for a hike in a forest on the edge of town.
Werner came straight to the point and asked Otl to help him form a resistance movement to sabotage the war effort. He believed that Hitler stood a good chance of winning an all-out war unless railroads were bombed and mines were laid from behind their own lines.
Otl tried to dissuade him from it, pointing out that resistance for the sake of resistance was not justifiable. He admitted as an adult that his words to Werner were driven by cowardice, by a strong desire to survive the war. He believed Werner’s proposed resistance would fail because of the effective network of neighborhood spies that had been put into place years before. How could Werner sabotage anything if the local block warden reported all suspicious activities?
We never learn what actions if any Werner took, since none of his writings has been made public by Scholl Archives. Werner is the forgotten Scholl.
As a humorous aside: An exhibit in Ulm had included a photograph of someone Inge Scholl had labeled as “young Hans Scholl.” A local man contacted the historian in charge of the exhibit and asked him to correct the caption. The picture was of Werner Scholl, not Hans. The man knew that for a fact, as he was the person who had taken the photograph.
But Werner’s legacy lives on. At a time when Hans Scholl remained self-absorbed, paying little heed to political matters, Sophie developed a genuine social conscience. You hear her little brother’s voice when she writes to Fritz on September 5. You and your men must have plenty to do now. I just cannot comprehend that people’s lives are under constant threat from others. I will never be able to understand it, and I think it is terrible. Do not tell me again that it is for the Fatherland.
These were Werner’s sentiments, recorded for us only by his good friend Otl. “Whoever saw what the Fatherland was capable of doing was unable to call it that any longer. He who called it ‘Fatherland’ was already so twisted that he was too blind to see what it was doing. He no longer saw those deeds.”
Werner was the first Scholl to grasp that National Socialists would stay in power as long as they were allowed to by the people. And that he had no right to complain as long as he did nothing. So Werner set about doing something. That influence on Sophie’s thinking never faded. I only wish we knew more about this enigmatic young man.
As a non-military historian, I find it curious that Werner already talked in terms of resistance on a Western front, when the war was in the East.
But that seems consistent with what actually occurred in the autumn of 1939. Britain and France apparently did not rush to Poland’s defense so much as they mobilized for war against Hitler—from the West. There were no battleships steaming into Danzig, unloading thousands upon thousands of British and French soldiers. The two countries strengthened their fortifications along Germany’s western border and mobilized troops there.
Consequently, Fritz Hartnagel was assigned to a signals unit attached to the army staff on the Upper Rhine front, hundreds of miles from Poland.
War affected life in Germany in ways that no one could have anticipated. In Ulm, school was dismissed pending further notice. National Socialists also undertook a major overhaul of higher education, likely to downsize university workforces so they could draft more able-bodied men. Little has been written about those streamlining efforts. The Third Reich is not an era that most modern German universities like to include in their histories.
We do know that the semester system was converted to trimesters and the length of time required before graduation was proportionately shortened. Hans Scholl was thrilled because he would finish his medical studies by the time he was “twenty-three-and-a-half,” substantially sooner than under the old structure. Interesting that the letter from Hans has been censored or blocked. Sophie is the source of the information about her brother’s excitement.
That September 5 letter from Sophie—the one with the Fatherland quote—represented Sophie’s turning point. She’s not there yet, but her thoughts moved in the right direction. Not only did her brother Werner become more important to her political development. Otl Aicher as well, with his more radical but less active political philosophy, influenced Sophie’s ethical evolution.
In Ulm, the Scholls were able to celebrate a positive development. Hans Scholl made it home from bringing in the harvest in Grabnik, Masuria safely! That was not a cliffhanger, I’ll admit, since much of White Rose history includes him.
It was a scary time for him, however. The group in Grabnik made it out on the last boat—too dangerous for a return trip completely by train. We know little about his thoughts from those days, only what Inge told us secondhand. No published letters described his emotional state, nothing documented how he felt when he was so close to the war, yet not part of it.
Despite not receiving a reply to his September 3 letter, Fritz wrote Sophie a few days later. He ignored her concerns about military action, raving about the beauty of the Black Forest where he was stationed.
Fritz asked about the Scholl family. Had Lisl come home? (He knew her job had ended when war broke out.) Did Werner enjoy his job as a postal employee, and did he get to wear a postman’s cap? He reminded her to send “the Pentecost pictures I ordered.” At his expense of course. Above all, when she wrote him, she must remember to use the armed forces postal designation, since the Reich covered postage on all Feldpost [APO mail]. “This is one reason you should write me more often!!”
Sophie replied to Fritz’s pro-war sentiments with a letter (date unknown) he referred to when he wrote her on September 13. That letter, in which she referred to “the shedding of blood,” has not been published by the Scholl-Hartnagel families.
If we can infer from his reaction to that letter that Sophie lectured Fritz about the wrongness of “the shedding of blood,” his September 13 letter would have done nothing to soothe her. It began benignly enough, thanking her for the “charming picture” and the chocolate, and for her letters in general. “Before I go to bed at night or get up in the morning, I can read one of your letters, something that banishes the previous day and casts a joyous light on the one to come.”
He was not able to write her as often as he’d like, he explained, because he often worked late into the night, or was drawn into social activities he did not enjoy. Times he would rather be alone, his colleagues would be “otherwise disposed,” and he would find himself surrounded by “beer and cigarette smoke and bad jokes.”
Sophie must have asked him about his daily routine, because Fritz told her he really had none. “The adjutant is a Girl Friday. If someone does not know what he should do, he goes to the adjutant.” Fritz, however, was responsible for the distribution of mail and daily orders for their unit, a task he carried out from a restaurant he used as temporary office.
Although Fritz was still a lieutenant, his C.O. was grooming him for a promotion. He spent half of every day with the unit commander at Army High Command. It was his responsibility to “turn the C.O.’s ideas about the duties of our signal corps unit into reality, that is, I draft the actual orders.”
He enjoyed the opportunity to get “a glimpse of the big picture” by sitting in on strategy meetings, and he did not underestimate the responsibility they had given him. “Naturally I would rather be assigned to the front lines with an infantry unit, or even better, to an aviation unit.” He told Sophie he had asked for a transfer to “aviation” (he did not write Luftwaffe, just Fliegerei), but that request had been denied.
This conversation-by-letter assuredly panicked Sophie, if it did not utterly overwhelm her. If Fritz’s continued enthusiasm for war and desire to serve on the front lines did not take her breath away, his response to her “shedding of blood” letter would have.
“You also stir up an internal controversy for me when you question the meaning of the shedding of blood in general. Two years ago, perhaps I could have answered your question, because then I believed I was fully mature and saw such things clearly. But these days I feel like a little boy who is just beginning his education. And that is largely your fault. But I am happy about it.”
If he had stopped there, Sophie would have been content. But ever the honest gentleman who preferred the direct approach, Fritz continued, “However, I cannot agree with you, because I frankly do not have enough courage to act in accordance with the consequences of such a view.”
He expressed his hope that Sophie would be able to get out of Reich Labor Service—which she counted on and dreaded once school was done—by registering to help her mother at home in lieu of Labor Service duty. He believed she would be unhappy if they forced her to work at a Labor Service camp. “That is why I hope you are spared, and that things always go as well for you as they do for me.”
Sophie finally replied to Fritz’s letters on September 19. There were no fireworks or reaction to his disagreement with her. She merely told him about mundane matters, and the French reconnaissance plane that nosedived the Münster. “We are not giving up hope that the war could soon be over.”
She told Fritz the city was filled with soldiers, but that other than that, the war was hardly noticeable. They were having to cut back some—rations—but it did not have a major impact on their lives. She advised him she was determined not to let the war determine how she lived her life, especially with regards to the things she thought about.
Three days later, the dress Fritz had bought her in Worpswede made its way to Sophie’s closet. She was thrilled with it—I look like a rag girl in it—but wanted to know how much she owed him for it. That question was almost certainly prompted by Mrs. Scholl’s sense of decency, because Fritz had already made it clear that he was buying it for her. Sophie hoped he liked it too.
Robert Scholl’s CPA and tax business had obviously taken off, and the family enjoyed creature comforts beyond belief. Fritz’s brother-in-law, the architect Rudi Daub, had built a custom-made bookcase for their living room. Sophie thought it was so beautiful, it should not even be called a bookcase. It cost them 400 RM ($3,200). And Inge had nearly convinced her father to buy the family a Blüthner grand piano, one of the most expensive brands on the market.
Their move to the apartment on Münsterplatz—and most likely Robert Scholl’s acquisition of Ulm’s top Nazis as clients—had elevated the Scholls’ social status significantly. Sophie told Fritz that “we now have fabulous connections to the orchestra of the city theater.” Inge wanted the prestigious grand piano so they could properly entertain and give private concerts. Sophie thought the whole thing splendid.
Suddenly realizing how that had to sound to a soldier in the field (although not on the front lines), she quickly back-tracked. “All of this is likely inconceivable for you. I am sorry. It seems totally unfair that we are still able to enjoy all of this while you all are constantly in danger and don’t have anything like this. Hopefully, you don’t hold it against us.”
School had been suspended on account of war, and “only the gods know when [it] starts back up again. Perhaps next week.” Her mother kept her busy with housework, mending linens and the like. Of course, she was still worried about Reich Labor Service. And the Pentecost photos were being taken care of. “I will take them to the best photographer.”
Either mail traveled faster to men in the armed forces, or Fritz merely responded faster when Sophie wrote him. September 27, he made time to answer the letter she had penned on the 22nd. He was not cut out for paperwork, he told her. He envied the other lieutenants who were “driving around the region doing reconnaissance work and telephone installations.”
But he was still granted access to that military ‘big picture’ that intrigued him. They had shot down a plane near Freiburg. The day before, the three French airmen who had been captured had been brought to their base as prisoners. “They make a very merry impression,” Fritz said. “However, they believe that the war will last another three to four years.”
Fritz’s unit was also making preparations to winter in Calw. But instead of war, they were enjoying the “deepening peace.” He told Sophie about the friendly relations between German and French soldiers. “The French wave across the Rhine to us, and we to them. It is said that at Kehl, the two sides guarding the bridge have even sealed their brotherhood with wine.”
As pleasant as things were in Calw, he wished that he and Sophie were hiking through the Alb instead. Autumn was his favorite time of year. “Although many people hate autumn and see the dying year in its wind and fog and in its acridness, I see in this time of year the final consummation, the genius that even so in its colors, in its savagery, its drunkenness and its melancholy perhaps devolves into insanity. But that is why I love autumn.”
He said he wished he could see her in her new dress. The Pentecost photos she had promised to send him would mean a lot, “because around here, one lives on memories.” He closed out his last letter of September 1939 with a request for Hans Scholl’s address. “I want to send him my bicycle.”
This level of intellectual involvement in September politics was rare for 1939. Sophie, her brother Werner, his friend Otl, these are about the only people we run across who were talking in sensible terms this early in the war. Her aversion to the word “Fatherland,” one that Fritz Hartnagel apparently used to rationalize his participation, mirrored Otl Aicher’s claim that he could not bring himself to utter the word. He perceived it as propaganda, not patriotism.
Today, we can hear Hitler’s September 1 speech and wonder that the Germans did not rise up in revolt. When Adolf Hitler outlined the order of succession, and requested that, in the event of his death, the German people give his successor the same “blind loyalty and obedience” they gave him, we shudder, knowing what will come. When he announced war on September 3, warning that traitors would be killed, we tremble.
- Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.
- As long as our nation was united it has never been conquered. … Whoever offends against this unity need expect nothing less than annihilation as an enemy of the nation. If our people will fulfill its highest duty in this sense, then God will help us. God has always bestowed his mercy on those who were determined to help themselves.
- Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which, by his blessing, they were able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with a continuance of His favor, ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.
Who said the above? Adolf Hitler? Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederacy from 1861-1865)? George W. Bush? If you have the courage to know, the answers are included at the bottom of this post. It is always frightening when patriotic rhetoric is used as justification to start a war. Any war. Even more frightening when the politician in question invokes God’s name as validation for going to war.
One more piece of the tapestry took shape in the weeks immediately following the start of war.
Because of the proximity of the Hirzels’ modest home to the railroad station, Pastor Hirzel asked the Scholls if some of his children could stay with them. Though Hans Hirzel later remembered that he was too overwhelmed by the lively nature of political discussions to take an active role in the conversations, he became friends with Sophie at this time. Until the end of the war in Poland (mid-October), the two Hirzel boys forged a strong bond with the Scholls.
In Sophie’s correspondence with Fritz that foreboding September 1939, Sophie picked up on the logical disconnect that existed between her world and the one that Fritz now inhabited. She commented that if she told him about things that brought her joy, such as flowers in the garden that were turning brown because of so much rain, it would mean little to him. We also learn from Sophie that the man on the street trusted that Hitler would be able to “blockade England into quitting,” while she judged prospects for that happening as close to nil.
A blockade of England sounds quixotic sixty years later, but her letter revealed precisely what Germans accepted as true—or rather what Adolf Hitler told them would happen. General Schmundt, Hitler’s adjutant and one of his top advisers, took notes at a May 1939 meeting of select Nazi brass. Hitler outlined his plans for an invasion of Poland and almost certain war with England. He explained that Germany had to strike that year, before the Allied forces (England and France) invented weapons to combat what Germany had in place. He explicitly enumerated submarines, fighter planes, and toxic gases as weapons that Germany could use without expecting effective counterstrikes. In Poland, he knew that German tanks would suffice.
Hitler also recognized that his window of opportunity was limited to no more than eighteen months. By 1941, England and France would have come up with appropriate defensive measures and more advanced weapons systems of their own.
Central to the May 1939 plans: A blockade of England once war was declared. Hitler intended to keep English troops off the continent, accurately predicting that France would capitulate with minimal fighting, and that a Blitzkrieg in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg would result in an easy German win. If he could prevent Britain from coming ashore, Germany would control Europe. German submarines and airplanes would present the impenetrable defense that made the Atlantic Ocean part of Germany’s “Western Wall.”
Of course, while the Scholls and Hirzels talked about the war over dinner, they had no way of knowing what all Hitler had planned for the months to come. The idea of a Blitzkrieg had not occurred to anyone outside the circle privy to Hitler’s Napoleon-syndrome. They could only deal with news at hand. Goebbels dutifully parroted Nazi promises that England would be denied access to war on the continent. Thinking Germans dutifully rejected that notion as utterly impractical.
Thinking Germans also had to wonder why Soviet aggression in Poland was not met with a declaration of war against the USSR. Britain and France only lodged an official protest when Soviet troops marched in and occupied the eastern half of Poland. There was so much that simply did not make sense those days. It could be difficult separating fact from fiction (and the luxury of time and distance has not made it any easier to comprehend everything that went on).
Oh, that plane that had nosedived the Münster? Germans had shot it down. And the Scholls had returned to afternoon tea.
Who said what?
- Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.
- As long as our nation was united it has never been conquered. … Whoever offends against this unity need expect nothing less than annihilation as an enemy of the nation. If our people will fulfill its highest duty in this sense, then God will help us. God has always bestowed his mercy on those who were determined to help themselves.
- Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which, by his blessing, they were able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with a continuance of His favor, ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.
1) Tonight we are a country— George W. Bush. “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” September 20, 2001. 2) As long as our nation was united— Adolf Hitler. Proclamation of September 3, 1939 to the German People and the German Army. 3) Reverently let us invoke— Jefferson Davis. “The Inaugural Address of Jefferson Davis,” Montgomery, Alabama, February 18, 1861.
Are you surprised?
Excerpted from White Rose History, Volume I. See below for copyright information. Please contact us for permission to quote.
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Image credits: Top photo--Cracow train station. This is what was happening in Krakow, Poland in September 1939 while Sophie Scholl enjoyed tea and an expensive new bookcase. German propaganda postcard. Public domain. Bottom photo--Digging graves in Warsaw, Sept/Oct 1939. German propaganda postcard. Public domain.
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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