The White Rose - Germany
Duty to Warn: Lessons for Americans
by Gary G. Kohls_February 16,
2010
www.consortiumnews.com/, February
16, 2010
At one of the darkest moments of human
history - in the heart of Nazi Germany - three idealistic German
college students began publishing and distributing leaflets urging
their countrymen to resist the barbaric depredations of Adolf
Hitler's war-making regime.
The three, known as The White Rose, were
ultimately captured, tried and executed, but their inspirational
pleas for resistance to an intolerable war machine and its propaganda
apparatus inspire people to this day and offer lessons to Americans
who face far less personal danger in resisting the dangers of
militarism, Gary G. Kohls notes in this guest essay:
Sixty-seven years ago, on Feb. 18, 1943,
three courageous, patriotic German college students from Munich,
the birthplace of the Nazi party, were arrested by the Gestapo
on charges of treason, a crime that was punishable by death.
The three - 22-year-old medical student
Christoph Probst, 24-year-old Hans Scholl, also a medical student,
and Hans' 21-year-old sister Sophie -- were part of a small group
of university students whose code name was The White Rose.
The White Rose group had seen the atrocities
that were being committed, the loss of freedom, the shredding
of human rights and the fact that the war, following the carnage
on the Eastern Front, had already been lost.
These dissenters were also aware, as early
as 1942, that hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered
and that atrocities were being committed against the Polish people.
They were also alarmed at the apathy and
fear that they witnessed all around them. There were no active
resistance movements among the adults they knew.
They knew that Hitler's aggressive war-making
and terrorist activities were making Germany the most hated nation
in the world and, because of their altruism, their still-intact
consciences and out of their sense of patriotism, they felt that
they had to do something.
Therefore they began, in late 1942, producing
amazingly insightful, well-written leaflets, informing their fellow
Germans about the criminal regime they were living under, which
most Germans were tolerating without objection.
These heroic young people knew that they
had to use underground tactics because the liberal printing presses
and other media that had tried to alert the people years earlier
had been smashed by the barbaric right-wing Freikorps, the demoralized,
demobilized, combat-traumatized military veterans' militia groups
that had formed all over Germany following World War I, with orders
to crush socialism, communism and the attempts at bringing democracy
to Germany.
The Freikorps had done their jobs well,
but, when their usefulness was over, they were betrayed and annihilated
in 1934 ("The Night of the Long Knives") certainly with
the approval of the corporate elite that had control over Hitler.
The only "crime" that the little
White Rose group had committed was the writing and circulating
of a series of "subversive" leaflets whose purpose was
to awaken people to the atrocities that were being perpetrated
by Hitler's obedient followers and to motivate others to join
the various nonviolent resistance movements.
They had also been guilty of having evaded
detection for so many months, humiliating the Gestapo in the process.
The Nazis thought that the White Rose
story ended with the arrest and the show trial, overseen by the
notorious Roland Freisler, the shrieking Nazi judge who had been
assigned to the "People's Court" trials that the Nazis
deemed most important for propaganda purposes - to instill fear
in the people.
Little did they know that the executions
of the three, by guillotine, only made martyrs of these heroic
resisters. Their inspiring lives and the spirit of their courageous
stand against tyranny lives on.
Excerpts of three of their leaflets
are below:
***
Excerpts From The 1st Leaflet of the
Resistance (of The White Rose) - Fall 1942
"Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized
nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by
an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.
"It is certain that today every honest
German is ashamed of his government.
"Who among us has any conception
of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children
when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible
of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure
- reach the light of day?
"If the German people are already
so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a
handif they abandon the will to take decisive action if they are
so devoid of all individuality, turning into a spiritless and
cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.
"Goethe speaks of the Germans as
a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would
appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on,
who now - the marrow sucked out of their bonesare waiting to be
hounded to their destruction.[B]y means of gradual, treacherous,
systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual
prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become
aware of his fate.
"Only a few recognized the threat
of ruin.
"If everyone waits until the other
man makes a startthe last victim will have been cast senselessly
into the maw of the insatiable demon.
"Therefore every individual, conscious
of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization,
must defend himself as best he can at this late hour, he must
work against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any
similar system of totalitarianism.
"Offer resistance wherever you may
beforestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it
is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced
to rubble, and before the nation's last young man has given his
blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human [ Hitler].
"Do not forget that every people
deserves the regime it is willing to endure!"
***
Excerpts from The Second Leaflet of
the Resistance (of The White Rose) - Fall 1942
"It is impossible to engage in intellectual
discourse with (fascist) philosophy...At its very inception this
movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow
man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support
itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early
edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German
I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated
to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers):
"It is unbelievable to what extent one must betray a people
in order to rule it."
"If at the start this cancerous growth
in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because
there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good,
so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however,
and finallyattained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it
were, and infected the whole body.
"The greater part of its former opponents
went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars;
there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and
sun, gradually to choke to death. Now the end is at hand. Now
it is our task to find one another again, to spread information
from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow
ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent
need of his struggle against this system.
"We are not in a position to draw
up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this
catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will
be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering;
that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon
our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs
on our world.
"three hundred thousand Jews have
been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we
see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that
is unparalleled in the whole of history.
"the entire Polish aristocratic youth
is being annihilated. All male offspring of the houses of the
nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported
to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor,
and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into
the [houses of prostitution] for the SS!
"Why do German people behave so apathetically
in the face of all these abominable crimes? The German people
slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist
criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations;
and of course they do so.
"Is this a sign that the Germans
are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord
within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have
sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never,
never awake? It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the
German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does
not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of
criminals.
"He must evidence not only sympathy;
no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his
apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to
act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which
has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt;
indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about
at all!
"Each man wants to be exonerated
of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the
most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated;
he is guilty, guilty, guilty! It is not too late, however, to
do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government...
Nowour eyes have been opened, we know exactly who our adversary
is[I]t is high time to root out this brown horde.
"Up until the outbreak of the war
the larger part of the German people was blinded; the Nazis did
not show themselves in their true aspect. But now, now that we
have recognized them for what they are, it must be the sole and
first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these
beasts."
***
Excerpts From the Third Leaflet of
The White Rose - February 1943
"But our present "state"
is the dictatorship of evil. "Oh, we've known that for a
long time," I hear you object, "and it isn't necessary
to bring that to our attention again." But, I ask you, if
you know that, why do you not bestir yourselves, why do you allow
these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and
in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one
day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state
system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already
so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather,
your moral duty - to eliminate this system?
"Many, perhaps most, of the readers
of these leaflets do not see clearly how they can practice an
effective opposition. We have no great number of choices... The
only one available is passive [but active] resistance. At all
points we must oppose [fascism], wherever it is open to attack.
We must soon bring this monster of a state to an end. A victory
of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable, frightful
consequencesThe defeat of the Nazis must unconditionally be the
first order of business
"Sabotage in armament plants and
war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies,
and organizations of the National Socialist Party. Obstruction
of the smooth functioning of the war machine (a machine for war
that goes on solely to shore up and perpetuate the Nazi Party
and its dictatorship). Sabotage in all publications, all newspapers,
that are in the pay of the [fascist] "government" and
that defend its ideology...the presses run continuously to manufacture
any desired amount of paper currencyTry to convince all your acquaintances,
including those in the lower social classes, of the senselessness
of continuing, of the hopelessness of this war; of our spiritual
and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists;
of the destruction of all moral and religious values; and urge
them to passive resistance!
"Aristotle [said in] Politics: "...
and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny]that everywhere
[the subjects] will be spied upon...and so it is part of these
tyrannical measures, to keep the subjects poor, in order to pay
the guards and soldiers, and so that they will be occupied with
earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity
to engage in conspiratorial acts.... Further, [to levy] such taxes
on income as were imposed in Syracuse, for under Dionysius the
citizens gladly paid out their whole fortunes in taxes within
five years. Also, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment
wars."
"Please duplicate and distribute!"
Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician who
writes about issues of war, peace, justice, mental health and
nonviolence and feels it is important to mix religion and non-partisan
politics. One of his areas of interest and expertise is combat-induced
posttraumatic stress disorder. Dr. Kohls is a founding member
of the interdenominational peace group, Every Church A Peace Church
(www.ecapc.org), whose stated goal is to gradually transform Christian
churches back to the original form of Christianity.
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