Why they just stood there

In the post entitled The events of Thursday, February 18, 1943, I asked the question, “Why would Hans and Sophie Scholl stand there, waiting for Jakob Schmid to catch up with them?”

The answers I found, the things people told me, shattered my comfortable “White Rose” world.

The image of Hans and Sophie standing still, waiting for Jakob Schmid to capture them, disturbed me deeply from the first time I heard this story. When we explored the university building, photographing the maze of corridors and stairwells, I wondered why they did not run down the steps that lead to the great auditorium directly above the Lichthof and mix in with the students who by now were leaving class.

Hertha Schmorell nee Buhl — wife of Alex’s half-brother Erich and daughter of the C.O. of the Second Student Company — studied in Munich in February 1943. She had recently transferred from Freiburg. She explained that those particular stairs did not exist in 1943. When the university building was leveled by Allied bombs, they rebuilt it as it had been and added the staircase.

But, she continued, the rear of the building is now as it was then. If Hans and Sophie had wanted to escape, they could have gone straight down the hall and down the stairs to the Amalien Strasse exit. No way Jakob Schmid could have caught up with them in that case.

I am hardly the first White Rose scholar to ponder this inscrutable issue. Various people — some directly involved with White Rose resistance, others like me who have studied it for years — have put forth varying explanations for why they threw the leaflets over the balustrade and waited for Jakob Schmid to arrest them.

Traute Lafrenz connected this action with the graffiti operation. She had worried about Hans’ cockiness then. His same “cocky gesture” as he pointed out the graffiti to her — that was at the heart of their behavior. This “wealth, excess, and that uncertain smile in the moment of greatest external danger” defined Hans and Sophie. They could do no more, no less.

Inge Jens thought the whole thing was an accident. To be sure, they intended to set out the leaflets. But throwing them over the balcony was an “oops” moment, with Sophie perhaps jostling a stack they had just set out on the wide balustrade. From there, events merely took their course.

A “process” argument was echoed by Peter Steinbach, then director of the German Resistance Museum in Berlin. According to a Südwestpresse article by Rudi Kübler, Steinbach interpreted February 18 as a natural process. “They took their fate into their own hands,” he reportedly stated.

Both Christiane Moll and Armin Ziegler have written that it was a mistake resulting from (in Moll’s words) “a spontaneous act caused by their extreme mental and physical exhaustion or a euphoric, daring mood, or both.” She pointed to the incriminating evidence they left behind in their rooms, while Ziegler believed the late-night telephone call from Otl Aicher “was the release mechanism for the overly hasty operation at the university.”

In contrast, Hans Hirzel said the whole thing resulted from poor planning. “No one stopped to think about the best way to go about making their conspiracy work.” It was not a matter of choosing between an amateurish matter or something with a solid intellectual basis, he said. Rather, their choice was between improvising as they went along or giving up resistance altogether.

Along those same lines, Eckard Holler pointed to people in Ulm who never could work up much enthusiasm for the Scholls’ ‘conversion’ to the opposition. These individuals had born the brunt of the Scholls’ passion for National Socialism, having been publicly humiliated and hauled to prison at their request.

Though they welcomed the lack of persecution following Hans and Sophie’s “180-degree political turn,” they could not trust the Scholl siblings’ change of heart completely. For them, the dramatic events at the university on February 18 represented a continuation of the “overly exaggerated” style they had demonstrated as Hitler Youth leaders. What they did this Thursday smacked of the same radicalism and martyrdom that had characterized them in their previous incarnation.

The “martyrdom” theme has appeared frequently in White Rose literature. Hellmut Hartert recalled Hans’ Christmas present, an edition of The Ploughman From Bohemia. His inscription had read, “Life is nourished by suffering.” After the war, Hellmut noted, “[It was] as if he had suspected what was coming or unfathomably wished for martyrdom.”

Klaus Wiegrefe speculated along the same lines. “Historians ponder one decisive question sixty years later: Why did the Scholl siblings risk this suicide mission after they and their friends had distributed countless leaflets in anonymous mailings throughout southern Germany and Austria? Was this supposed to be a torch to stir Germans to action, a few short days after the defeat of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad had been made known?

“Or did the Scholls merely wish to die a martyr’s death, as e.g., Thomas Mann suspected?”

Others (including me) have understood it as a deliberate act, one final hurrah. They knew “the work” as it had existed since June 1942 was finished. Christl had been stationed elsewhere and had his wife and family to worry about. Alex and Willi were moving on to a different phase of their challenge to Hitler’s regime. This was not about martyrdom, but rather about making the ultimate stand.

Fritz and Elisabeth Hartnagel trusted Else Gebel’s narrative, in which she said Sophie told her she did it on purpose because she thought if push came to shove, the student body would support their cause. Elisabeth subsequently told Klaus Wiegrefe that her siblings underestimated the danger, because until then, they had succeeded at everything.

Things Sophie and Hans had said stuck with others. Wilhelm Geyer remembered Sophie’s statement on February 16. “If they were to be arrested, then it was not to be secretly, but in a manner such that the whole world would know about it. This probably explains their conduct during the leaflet operation at the university.”

For Lilo Berndl, Alex’s words about their plan to drop the leaflets from a single location, exiting through the rear, running to safety via the shortest route made sense. It might not have explained why they stood around as Jakob Schmid lumbered up the stairs, but for her, their initial risk was not a mystery.

The things Hans had said (and not said) on February 16 haunted Josef Söhngen as well. He knew Hans would be arrested, he had sensed that Hans expected — if not wished for — such a disaster.

Later it was said frequently that it was simply a case of youthful imprudence that the leaflets were thrown from the top floor over the Lichthof of the university in Munich. This is said due to a lack of knowledge of the context [of those actions]. It was one last desperate act. He had so hoped that he could actuate the slothful hearts of others.

Söhngen’s analysis is best supported by the evidence at hand. Hans and Sophie supposed they were under surveillance and would be arrested soon. Alex and Willi were no longer going to participate in the leaflet operation. Hans had alienated Traute. After February 18, the Scholls would be left to their own devices.

They were not foolish. They knew they could not do this work alone. If they were not arrested (as Hans had told Söhngen), Hans would have to concentrate on his studies, Sophie on war work in a factory. Since Hans had not attended the January 13 assembly, there was even a good chance he could be expelled from the university after that semester.

In this context, a “final hurrah” made perfect sense. Neither sibling feared death. They feared that their message would be ignored, that they could be silently eliminated, more than they worried about dying. They did not want to go quietly.

Moll’s argument about the incriminating evidence left behind in their apartment is well-taken, but not as confirmation that they acted spontaneously. Instead, the Scholls’ carelessness in such a major aspect of the day’s events merely served as reminder of Hans’ longstanding character flaw, that recklessness that included Gisela Schertling in their circle, drove away Raimund Samüller, and flabbergasted Falk Harnack (and probably Willi and Alex).

Helmut Götz, complete stranger to the Scholls yet admirer of the words they had written, watched as Jakob Schmid reappeared in full view of the students mingling in the Lichthof. He wondered at the sight of the short janitor leading a male student — who was a good two heads taller than Schmid — by the arm.

In those days, in addition to my impression of the total indifference of fear among the student body, I also saw the amateurish attempt to call for resistance to tyranny. I asked myself what kind of people these must have been who wanted to do battle with a despot armed with leaflets, and yet who allowed themselves to be taken into custody as they were distributing those very leaflets, and that by the janitor, without offering up any resistance whatever.

Despite all the sympathy I felt for those who had been arrested, despite all my hopes for the success of their operation, despite the fervent desire that their lives would be rescued, I was certain of one thing: This had been a mistake. The people who had done these things may have acted on behalf of thousands of people who thought like them, but they stood alone, they had to keep standing alone, and they had to die alone.

As noted in the first post on this topic, the arrest of Hans and Sophie Scholl on February 18, 1943 serves as a warning to us in the twenty-first century. If we wish to stand for justice, we must ensure that our coworkers have our backs, and are reliable in every way.

Otherwise:

The people who had done these things may have acted on behalf of thousands of people who thought like them, but they stood alone, they had to keep standing alone, and they had to die alone.

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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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