Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

by Annette Dumbach

  Now she came to his aid again. She was able to get hold of a Yugoslav passport and had the photo replaced with one of Alex; with a trusted neighbor who was a printer, she forged travel papers. Alex’s tentative plan was to flee to Switzerland. First he would temporarily disappear into a Russian POW camp near Innsbruck; later, when the atmosphere had cooled down, he would take the mountain passes through the Alps that he knew so well and reach the Swiss frontier.

  On Friday, February 19, Alex and Lilo went to the Starnberger Bahnhof to meet Willi Graf. Lilo waited outside the station while Alex went in to look for Willi. After a short while Alex came out—alone. They left the area immediately; the tension was remounting. Alex told Lilo that Willi had not been there and that the station was swarming with Gestapo and police; papers and train tickets were all being checked.

  As he always did on Fridays, Christoph Probst reported to the unit cashier for his weekly pay. He was on his way to see his wife, who was still in the hospital several weeks after the baby was born. Instead of getting his pay envelope, he was told to report to his superior.

  When he walked into the office, the door was shut by someone behind him. Two Gestapo agents were standing in the room with his suitcase. They ordered him to take off his air-force uniform and put on civilian clothes. He was handcuffed, then pushed out the door and into a car that sped off in the direction of Munich.

  It happened so fast and unexpectedly that he probably couldn’t grasp the reality of it. But one menacing sign he surely recognized as a soldier: in civilian clothes he was no longer under the comparatively benign protection of the military; he had been delivered into the hands of the Gestapo.

  In her cell, Sophie Scholl was told by Else Gebel that someone else in their group had been arrested. Sophie already knew that Willi Graf had been taken and was in a cell one floor above—through Else she had smuggled him a cigarette with the word “freedom” scribbled on it. Now she thought they had caught Alex. She became slightly nervous and distraught; Else promised to check out the name of the new prisoner.

  When she came back later after her office work, Else told Sophie: “It’s Christoph Probst.”

  Sophie broke down—for the first and last time. Christel: father of three babies, his wife ill, his whole world revolving around his young and growing family in the quiet village. They had all tried to keep him away from the peril; he had done almost nothing that could be called treason.

  Slowly, she calmed down; she was sure he would get a relatively mild sentence; he had done nothing; and if he were imprisoned, he would be liberated as soon as the Allies invaded—a matter of maybe eight weeks. Her calm, her inner repose, seemed to return.

  Friday evening Lilo went back to the Starnberger Bahnhof to reconnoiter; at home Alex was changing to a new set of clothes not described on the man-wanted poster. Lilo came back disconsolate: there was no way to get through, the police control points were still in place. Alex decided that on Saturday morning, regardless of the checkpoints, he would get on a train to Innsbruck. He had to get out of Munich.

  All day Saturday the interrogations went on at the Wittelsbach Palace. Robert Mohr tried to persuade Sophie to confess her sins and declare herself for National Socialism. “I tried with all the powers of persuasion I knew,” he later wrote, “to explain to her that she was not ideologically in rapport with her brother, that she had relied on him and followed him without thinking of the consequences of her actions. Sophie Scholl saw right away what I was trying to do, and decisively rejected any such assertion. This would have been in fact the only way to save her life.”

  She retorted that she was not led by her brother, and that she indeed knew the consequences of her acts. Mohr tried to explain the National Socialist “worldview” to her, to show her what Adolf Hitler had accomplished.

  She replied: “You’re wrong. I would do it all over again—because I’m not wrong. You have the wrong worldview.”

  At this point Mohr broke off the interrogation and sent her back to the cell. To her surprise, Else Gebel had prepared a small feast for her: tea, a few sausages, bread, butter, cookies, and cigarettes—all of which had been donated by prisoners and guards.

  They celebrated the moment—the food, the sense of concern and solidarity that seemed to emanate from every cell and chamber. Sophie was able to relax and even to smile; she arranged to have some of the food smuggled up to Hans.

  Alex did manage to get to Innsbruck Saturday morning. When he arrived, he called a Ukrainian woman in Munich who had contacts with the Russian head of the Soviet POW camp nearby. The woman agreed to make the journey to Innsbruck and meet him. The pressure must have eased up a bit: if he could go underground in the camp, he still had a good chance.

  He waited at the Innsbruck station for the Munich train. It arrived, but the woman did not appear. He stood there, alone, desperate, trying to work out a new escape route.

  On Sunday morning, Sophie was summoned from her cell to receive the official indictment against her by the People’s Court, Berlin. The Scholls and Christoph Probst were all accused of high treason. She returned to her cell, read the document carefully, and her hands began to shake.

  She walked over to the barred window; it was an unseasonably warm day, filled with the scents and sounds of spring. People outside, dressed in their Sunday best, were strolling by, enjoying the weather. The sunlight poured into the cell. “Such a beautiful sunny day,” she said softly, “and I have to go. . . .”

  Again she pulled herself together, reasoned with herself, talked to herself. “How many are dying on the battlefields, how many young lives full of hope . . . what difference does my death make if our actions arouse thousands of people? The students will definitely rise up.”

  She turned to Else Gebel then and talked about her mother, the deepest concern she still had. How would her mother take it—two children lost at once, and another fighting in Russia. It would be unbearable for her. Her father would suffer but he would understand.

  The crisis was over; her hands stopped shaking. She had accepted what would come.

  From Innsbruck, Alex managed to get to Mittenwald, a familiar town from his mountain treks and skiing trips. Some time before, he had struck up a friendship with a Russian coachman who worked at Schloss Elmau, a castle turned into a health resort on the outskirts of town. He was in luck; the coachman agreed to hide him, although the man-wanted posters were now up on shop windows and in post offices in the smallest villages.

  He was stopped by two local policemen who asked to see his identity papers. They looked at the Slavic name on the pass, scrutinized Alex for a moment—and let him go.

  Luck had stayed with him twice. Now, if he could lie low and furtively organize the trek through the mountain passes, there was a chance he could make it.

  The court-appointed defense attorney reluctantly visited Hans and Sophie in their cells. His visit was perfunctory; he was doing his duty. The trial was set for the next day, Monday, February 22, at Munich’s Palace of Justice. It was to be no ordinary criminal procedure: it was under the jurisdiction of the People’s Court, Berlin. That very name, and that of its presiding judge, Roland Freisler, were enough to strike terror in the hearts of even the most apathetic and uninvolved citizens. The name Freisler in a courtroom meant abuse, degradation, and death. Later, after the failure of the military plot to kill Hitler in July 1944, it was Freisler in his People’s Court who mocked and abused the generals, colonels, and high government officials who had participated in the planning; most of them were subsequently executed, like the Rote Kapelle two years before, by strangulation on meat hooks. Secret films were made of Freisler’s frenzied shrieking at the accused during the trials and were shown to the Führer nightly.

  Whatever Sophie knew about the People’s Court, she managed to react calmly, telling the lawyer that she was as responsible for the so-called crimes as her brother was, and that she expected to receive the same sentence he did. She asked if Hans had the right to execution by firin
g squad since he was in the army and had been at the front, thus deserving that “honor.”

  The lawyer was taken aback by the coolness of the question: he evaded answering. Her next query astounded him even more: she wanted to know if she would be hanged or beheaded.

  Shaken by her bluntness, he withdrew as quickly as possible.

  It was getting close to the end. Robert Mohr came by and suggested that the prisoners write letters to their parents.

  The letters were short; they thanked their parents for the love and warmth they had given their children all their lives, and asked forgiveness for the pain and despair they were causing. They said that they could not have acted otherwise, and were sure their parents would understand, and that the future would justify their actions.

  Christel wrote to his mother:

  Please do not be frightened by the fact that I did not come to you as planned last Saturday, nor be frightened by the events I must now relate. Instead of getting my usual pass last Saturday, I was arrested and brought to Munich. Through an unfortunate development I have been brought here to the Gestapo prison. Please don’t think I am exaggerating when I say things could not be better with me. The treatment is good and life here in this cell seems so pleasing to me that I have no particular anxiety about being here a long time. . . .

  Your love is more precious than ever. Oh, that I’m causing you such anxiety! . . . The whole thing is so much bound up with our destiny that I beg you not to reproach me for being irresponsible. You all know—mother, sister, wife and children—that I live only for you.. . . I can’t express how much I have felt your love, how much your love has helped my little Vincent, . . . little Herta. . . .

  And even if something may destroy me, I hope that these gentle and guiltless creatures may live; I cannot imagine that they should suffer. How things will turn out, I don’t know. I only know that nothing is too difficult for us to endure.

  All good wishes to Heinz! Oh mother! You have endured so much with Herta and now I’m the unlucky one. But we do know that mothers are more important for the children than the father.

  I don’t feel separated from you. I feel you are close by me, my own dear mother. I embrace you and remain, always, your son, Christel.

  Sophie also wrote to Inge and asked her to send her last greetings to Carl Muth, and to express her deep and undying admiration for him. The last letter she wrote was to Fritz Hartnagel somewhere in Russia.

  The Gestapo never sent any of these letters, but by one of those capricious quirks so common in a totalitarian state, Christoph Probst’s letters to his mother and sister Angelika did survive, at least long enough to be read by the recipients in the presence of Gestapo officials after Christoph’s death. The family was not allowed to take the letters with them. But Christoph’s mother would never forget the words: “I thank you that you gave me life. When I think about it, it was the only way to God. Don’t be sad that I sprang over part of it. Soon I’ll be much closer to you than ever. I’ll prepare all of you a glorious reception. . . .” He wrote Angelika: “I am dying without any hate. . . .”

  The lights burned all night in their cells.

  NINETEEN

  ON FRIDAY, the day after the arrest, the Scholl family in Ulm got the terrible news. They were called by three friends, Traute Lafrenz, Otl Aicher, and Jürgen Wittenstein; there was no question about how disastrous the situation was. By chance, Werner, the youngest child, had gotten leave from the front and was at home with his parents. The family found out that no visitors were permitted in Gestapo headquarters over the weekend; they had to endure Saturday and Sunday at home in Ulm. They planned to leave early Monday morning for Munich.

  At 7:00 am, Monday, February 22, the three inmates were taken from their cells. Else Gebel could barely control herself as she said good-bye to Sophie, who remained calm. Later Else returned to the desolate cell to collect her things: a sheet of paper was lying on Sophie’s neatly made bed: it was the official indictment. On the back, Sophie had written one word: “Freedom!”

  On the bare white wall of Hans’s cell they found some words scrawled in pencil: Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich erhalten—“Despite all the powers closing in, hold yourself up,” his father’s favorite citation from Goethe.

  About nine o’clock, Gestapo officials took the three prisoners to the Palace of Justice, a huge and intimidating gray edifice located several blocks from the Munich Central Station.

  That a trial was held so quickly after capture and interrogation was truly an exceptional occurrence; the event was no local affair. Heinrich Himmler himself, in Berlin, had made the decisions on how the proceedings would play out. The primary goal now was to warn all students to keep away from the fires of resistance; various options on how to demonstrate this brutally and dramatically had been considered. The Munich gauleiter wanted the three students hanged publicly on the Marienplatz, the central square of Munich. Another idea was to hang them in front of their university. Himmler rejected both proposals, noting that public executions might be provocative and lead to further demonstrations. Executions would take place—but secretly and quickly.

  The trial, held by the People’s Court, was to follow all procedures of law, but the outcome was never in doubt.

  The courtroom was packed, with invited guests only, almost all in brown or black uniforms. No family members of the accused were present; they had not been officially informed about the arrests or the trial.

  The presiding judge, Roland Freisler, came out in a brilliant whirl of scarlet robes. Other judges took their seats at a long panel on either side of Freisler; these assistant judges represented the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, the SS, and the SA. Behind them on the wall hung a portrait of Adolf Hitler.

  Roland Freisler has gone down in the unsavory history of the Third Reich as one of the most repellent figures in the constellations of power. His background is odd, and it is difficult to conclude whether his ideological zigzags were completely opportunistic or if they were motivated at least partially by the wild swings in conviction often associated with the true believer. As a young man, Freisler had been a prisoner of war in Russia during the First World War. There he had learned fluent Russian and became, apparently, a devout Bolshevik. He returned to Germany after the war ended, and in 1925 he suddenly emerged as a dedicated, fanatic National Socialist. He remained a great admirer of Stalinist techniques of terror, however, and studied Andrei Vishinsky’s tactics as prosecuting attorney at the Moscow purge trials in the 1930s. Hitler called Freisler “our Vishinsky,” but he was wrong. Freisler never brought the accused conspirators—generals, students, professors, lawyers—to their knees; they never confessed their “guilt,” they did not beg to be reintegrated into the Volk community. In Nazi Germany, “rehabilitation” did not precede execution. By Vishinsky’s standards, the Freisler techniques were a brutal failure.

  On that Monday morning, the three accused students sat at the side of the chamber, each flanked by two guards. They looked wan, shrunken, exhausted, but sat upright in their chairs.

  At 10:00 am the trial opened. Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst were officially accused of aiding and abetting the enemy and committing acts of high treason. The prosecution demanded death.

  It seemed impossible to believe the string of charges, oaths, attacks, and insults that Freisler now unleashed against them. He seemed out of control; it was his style since he had become so notorious as Hitler’s hanging judge. He seemed to revel in a kind of de-mentia that was turned off and on again without warning. The chamber was filled with silence and terror; this crazed man in dazzling red could do precisely as he wished—and they all knew it.

  He shrieked, he screamed, he made wild and billowing gestures with his robed arms; the attorneys for the state and for the accused were rendered mute. The evidence was brought in: the leaflets, the duplicating machine, the paint and stencils for the wall graffiti. Three witnesses for the prosecution were ready and waiting to be called: Gestapo interrogators Moh
r and Mahler, as well as the hero of the day, the custodian Jakob Schmid, who had already received a 3,000-reichsmark reward and a promotion in the university service.

  But witnesses were not called: there was no need to; the three accused had already confessed. Freisler simply went on with his tirade. On several occasions a young voice broke in to contradict him: it was, astonishingly, the voice of Sophie Scholl. “Somebody had to make a start,” she called out. “What we said and wrote are what many people are thinking. They just don’t dare say it out loud!”

  This induced more shrieks from the raised platform in front of the courtroom.

  Finally the proceedings were drawing to an end. Each prisoner, in conformity now with trial procedure, was permitted to make a final statement. Sophie and Hans chose to remain silent.

  Christoph Probst rose and stood at the dock. He tried to explain that what he had done was done in the interest of his country. His only desire was to end the bloodshed and to spare Germany the agony of new Stalingrads. The spectators shouted their outrage at him; from all sides insults and abuse descended upon him. Freisler interjected a remark about Christoph’s proposal to turn to President Roosevelt; just that name brought on another screaming tantrum. Christoph stood quietly, looking straight ahead until the tumult died down.

  Then he asked for clemency, for his life, for the sake of his sick wife and three small children.

  These words were greeted by a stony silence. Suddenly Hans Scholl spoke up: he said Christoph had virtually nothing to do with the leaflet campaign, and he should be treated with leniency.

  Freisler snapped at him: “If you have nothing to say for yourself, then kindly keep your mouth shut!”

  It was time for the verdict to be decided upon. Suddenly there was a rushing movement at the entrance to the chamber, the sound of raised voices, shouts, confusion.