The White Rose Reframed

Faith, fatherland, and the decision to resist

Constantin von Hoffmeister argues that the White Rose was no liberal fable, but a tragic and deeply national revolt born of honor, faith, and responsibility.

At 5 pm on February 22, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with their friend Christoph Probst, were executed by guillotine after being found guilty of distributing leaflets opposing the Nazi regime. The trial had commenced earlier that day at 10 am.

The members of the White Rose were not pacifists. Professor Kurt Huber, a respected researcher of folk songs, was so enthusiastic about the military that he volunteered several times—in vain—to be a soldier, despite severe disabilities. Sophie may have rejected war, but not violence: she demanded that the French defend Paris to the last shot because it was a matter of honor; she welcomed the violence of the SS in Amsterdam because it would clarify each party’s position, and she herself would have been ready to shoot Hitler. She agreed with Hans and Alexander Schmorell, who argued in the leaflets that Hitler’s “brown horde” must be attacked and exterminated. In December 1942, Hans wrote that it was necessary to take up arms against the “wild beasts” that had been let loose, and he had a loaded army pistol with him during the nightly graffiti actions.

Sophie did not take an early stand against National Socialism. On the contrary, she was a fanatical Hitler girl for many years. Classmates described the 16-year-old as a feared “150 percent supporter of the Nazi regime.” She voluntarily remained a member of the BDM (League of German Girls) beyond eighteen, continued to attend regular meetings, and as late as 1941—a year after her high school graduation—encouraged a friend to do the same.

Hans learned about the extermination of the Jews in the fall of 1941 when his mother wrote a letter about the war experiences of an acquaintance from Latvia: “The adults, male and female, were all shot; the children were given injections. The Jews supposedly screamed, especially the young girls.” In August 1942, as a Wehrmacht medic on the Eastern Front, Hans wrote in his diary, “I am the only one going for a stroll amid sensible nonsense.” He would utilize his free time from military hospital duties to engage in several activities, such as reading Dostoevsky, learning the Russian language, and embarking on excursions across the countryside with Alexander Schmorell, who was half-Russian and born in Orenburg in Russia. The two recruits had already launched their first leaflets in Munich.

Schmorell, executed a few months after Hans, was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2012. After his arrest, Schmorell stated:

First of all, I want to emphasize that I do not equate Russia with the concept of Bolshevism; on the contrary, I am an open enemy of Bolshevism. I would like nothing better than to see Bolshevism disappear, but not, of course, at the expense of such important territories as Germany has so far conquered, which, after all, comprise almost the whole of core Russia. I believe that you, as a German, would not think differently if Russia had conquered such a large part of Germany as Germany has done in the East! That is a self-evident feeling—it would be a crime if one showed other feelings towards one’s fatherland in such a case. That would mean that one is a person without a home, some international swimmer only concerned with where one is best off.

According to Nikolai Nikolaeff-Hamazaspian (1921-2013), the Armenian friend of Schmorell, it was Schmorell who gave the group its name. He is said to have been thinking of Dostoevsky’s legend of the Grand Inquisitor, in which the returned Savior at Seville raises a girl from the dead: at the words “Talitha Kumi,” the girl rises and holds in her hands a bouquet of white roses with which she had previously lain in the coffin. The white rose would thus be a symbol of resurrection, perhaps also of victory over the rule of lies and the perversion of justice.

Sophie only learned about the distribution of the first four leaflets after the fact. Hans wrote sixty-five percent of the six leaflets, and the remaining parts were written by Schmorell and Professor Huber. Without Hans, the White Rose would not have existed, but without Sophie, the leaflet campaigns would not have expanded beyond Munich in early 1943. Sophie played a crucial role in increasing the White Rose’s reach by organizing the distribution of the group’s leaflets in other cities and towns. She and Hans, along with other members of the group, would travel to different locations by train to drop off leaflets and spread the group’s message. Sophie was also responsible for addressing envelopes and coordinating with printers to produce the leaflets. Without her efforts, the White Rose may not have been able to gain the wider audience and impact that it did.

One of the White Rose leaflets was smuggled out of Germany and ultimately reached the Allies, who decided to reprint it and drop millions of copies over Germany via aircraft. The leaflet urged Germans to recognize the atrocities being committed by their own government and to resist the Nazi regime.

Before his execution, Professor Huber drank his last sip of wine as a gesture of goodwill towards his beloved fatherland. In a letter to his wife, he expressed that she should rejoice he was dying for their country. Similarly, during the trial, Sophie stated that her actions were in the best interests of her people.