Robert and Magdalena Scholl had arrived with Werner. They had taken the early train from Ulm, only to be met at the station by a desperate Jürgen Wittenstein, who told them that the trial was already under way.
Mrs. Scholl looked at Jürgen’s face and said, “Will they have to die?”
Jürgen nodded, about to weep. “If I had just one tank,” he cried, “I’d get them out. Then I’d blow up the court and take them to the border!”
They all ran down the long street leading to the Palace of Justice.
Robert Scholl forced his way by the guards at the door and pushed forward down the aisle, the other members of the family following in his wake. Somehow he managed to get to his children’s defense attorney. He whispered harshly in the lawyer’s ear: “Go to the president of the court and tell him that the father is here and he wants to defend his children!”
The lawyer was stunned and followed Mr. Scholl’s instructions. The courtroom was buzzing with curiosity and confusion. Freisler seemed perplexed; he was waiting for an explanation.
The defense attorney made his way to the platform. He whispered Scholl’s request in Freisler’s ear.
The judge made a dramatic and wide gesture of rejection, shrieking at the top of his lungs, and then, pointing at Robert Scholl, ordered that he be removed from court. Guards surrounded the family and hauled them out. Mrs. Scholl collapsed for a moment, but managed to revive herself.
Robert Scholl roared: “There is a higher justice!” and just as the doors were closing, he added, “They will go down in history!”
The family—Mr. and Mrs. Scholl and Werner—were left standing alone in the open-air corridor outside the courtroom.
Soon the spectators came streaming out of the chamber; Freisler and his colleagues had withdrawn to decide upon the verdicts. The Scholls sat on a bench, waiting; the others acted as if they were invisible—except for one young law student: Leo Samberger. He had received White Rose leaflets in the mail, was able to get into the courtroom, and had watched the proceedings with growing horror. He walked over to the family, introduced himself, and suggested that they put in a plea for clemency immediately, that it was the only option left.
The crowd outside was returning to hear the verdict. The Scholls waited. A few minutes later the doors were opened. The family saw it on all the faces: their children were sentenced to death.
Hans had made no statement in his own defense; but when Freisler announced the death sentence, he had called out, “You will soon stand where we stand now!” He was handcuffed, along with Sophie and Christoph, and escorted out of the courtroom. In the throng, Werner Scholl, who was in uniform, was able to push through. He shook hands with them, tears filling his eyes. Hans was able to reach out and touch him, saying quickly, “Stay strong, no compromises.”
The condemned were put into a paddy wagon and taken to Stadelheim Prison, where most executions in the Munich area took place. Everything was moving fast, too fast to be comprehended.
With Leo Samberger, the Scholls ran to the state attorney’s office and entered a clemency plea for their children and for Christoph. They found out where the prisoners were taken; the family made its way out to Stadelheim as quickly as possible; Munich was a city they did not know.
Somehow Robert Scholl was able to talk his way into the prison, along with his family. It was perhaps the first and last exception ever made at Stadelheim: the condemned were not allowed to receive visitors. Apparently the word had gone round the prison about how the young students had conducted themselves in Gestapo hands and at the infamous trial. The prison staff admired them; workers at the facility were not members of the SS or in the Gestapo; they considered themselves “normal civil servants” who performed their unpleasant duties no matter which regime happened to be in power.
Considering what the personnel at Stadelheim had seen and done over the years, it is a near-miracle that the White Rose were able to touch them. The guards broke the rules: they brought Hans out to see his family in a reception room. They had already made him change into the striped uniform of a convict; his face was gaunt and small. He shook hands all around over the barricade, and reassured his parents that he had no feelings of hate, that “all of that” was behind him. His father put his arms around him, saying he would go down in history and that there was justice in the world.
As Hans was about to be taken away, he sent greetings to his friends. As he uttered one name, tears rushed to his eyes. He turned away, trying to control himself.
He let the guards take him away.
Then they brought in Sophie. She was still wearing her own clothes—a jacket, blouse, and skirt. She smiled at the visitors. She seemed smaller, but her skin was fresh and clear. She accepted the sweets her mother had brought—Hans had refused them—saying yes, she was hungry, she hadn’t had any lunch.
“Sophie, Sophie,” Mrs. Scholl said, “you’ll never come in that door again.”
“Oh mother,” she answered, still smiling, “what are those few years anyway?”
“Sophie . . . remember, Jesus,” her mother said.
“Yes, but you too,” she replied. She was taken away.
Robert Mohr found her weeping in the reception cell.
Christoph Probst had gradually become a believing Catholic. He had never been baptized, and now, in his death cell, he asked to see a priest. When the father arrived, they spoke awhile and prayed together, then they kneeled down before a small table that served as an altar. Christoph Probst received his first communion and last rites.
Hans and Sophie prayed with the Protestant chaplain, reading some of their favorite psalms in their cells. They both took communion.
Suddenly the doors of their cells were opened. They were handcuffed and taken out. In a hallway, near a door that led into the courtyard, they found themselves standing together, with no guard between them. Again the rules were broken: “Here, have a cigarette together,” someone murmured.
They stood and smoked silently. Then Christoph said, “I didn’t know that death could be so easy.”
The door to the courtyard opened. Across the way was a small building with the guillotine. Sophie was the first to go. She walked erectly across the yard, escorted by the guards. She entered the building. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, three hours after the trial had ended. There was a heavy sound. It was over.
When it was Hans’s turn, he walked quickly across the yard, and before he went over the threshold, he turned and shouted so that his voice could carry to all the barred windows around: “Long live freedom!”
TWENTY
THE WEATHER continued to be balmy in Munich during most of February, filled with the scents of spring. But in the alpine regions to the south, heavy storms were blowing up.
Alex had no choice; someone in Mittenwald had recognized him and reported him to the police; he had to leave immediately. He made his way along a path in the mountains that was fast disappearing from under his feet. He did not have boots or adequate clothing, his provisions were giving out. In front of him lay a white wall of blindness. He went on for some hours, then realized it was no use. He had no strength left, no one to turn to.
He turned back; he saw no other way. He would return to Munich.
The Scholls had gone back to Ulm Monday evening, thinking their children were alive. They planned the appeal process, which they hoped could hold up the execution for months.
On Tuesday the news of the executions was made public on placards posted around the city and the university, and in special notices in the Munich press. The citizenry was informed that three students had been tried and executed the same day for high treason; they were characterized as Einzelgänger, outsiders and troublemakers who had defied “the spirit of the German people in a shameless manner.”
Wednesday, February 24, was the anniversary of the founding of the National Socialist party. To mark that occasion—but surely also with the White Rose in mind—the Führer himself sent a procla-mation to Muni
ch, “the Capital of the Movement.” Loyal Party members were exhorted to remain steadfast despite attacks, and to strengthen German resolve by ruthlessly annihilating saboteurs. “The Party has to break terror with tenfold terror,” Hitler’s message shrieked. “It has to extinguish the traitors—whoever they are, whatever their disguise.” Apparently traitors even hid among the privileged middle-class students at the university, who in the majority were normally apolitical. To make sure they stayed that way, examples had to be made.
On February 27, Propaganda Minister Goebbels demanded that hostile university students be subjected to the free use of corporal punishment.
Gone was the heady feeling of solidarity and freedom among the students. It was as if the uprising had never happened. A special rally to demonstrate loyalty to State and Führer was held in the Auditorium Maximum, where Kurt Huber had given so many of his lectures. Hundreds of students attended to give vent to their “indignation” against the traitors who had lived in their midst. They stood up and gave a resounding ovation to the man who had saved the university from infamy and revolution, the Pedell, the custodian Jakob Schmid. He rose, bowed, and held his arms out wide to receive the tumultuous applause.
Not every student reacted this way. For a few days after the exe-cution of Hans, Sophie, and Christoph, new graffiti appeared on the walls of the university: “Scholl lives! You can break the body, but never the spirit!” And on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, April 20, the day after the remaining White Rose members had been tried, Hitler’s portrait at the university was discovered with the added inscription “Germany’s Enemy Number One.” The graffito was removed immediately, but appeared again the next day, this time painted in oil.
These were the isolated and lonely responses of the few, disheartened but moved to act in whatever small way they dared. Lisa Grote, who was a student at that time, recalled later: “There had been twenty or so leaflets in our mailbox in Schwabing. I gave them out on walks through town. When the Scholls were killed, our courage was broken. I lost many other young friends, as decent and innocent as that brother and sister. But it never cut that deep again. Because of the guilt feeling—that one didn’t run out screaming into the streets.”
For the remaining members and friends of the White Rose—those already in prison, like Willi Graf, and those not yet taken—a terrible time of waiting had begun. One by one, they were plucked from their homes by the Gestapo and interrogated, sometimes for hours, often for days and weeks; the stain of incrimination spread from Munich to cities all over South Germany. Traute Lafrenz, Gisela Schertling, and Katharina Schüddekopf were among those in the early wave, then came the Ulm high-school student Hans Hirzel and his sister Susanne, as well as their friends Franz Müller and Heinrich Guter. In Stuttgart, Eugen Grimminger was arrested, and in Freiburg, so was Willi’s university contact, Heinz Bollinger.
The waves spread even wider; the cells in the Wittelsbach Palace were filled to capacity.
On the evening of the Führer’s proclamation to Munich, February 24, two days after the executions and nearly a week since the initial arrests, the RAF unleashed a furious bombing raid on the city of Munich.
A young woman named Marie-Luise was in a bunker near her apartment house, huddled together with other women. The raid seemed to be almost directly over Schwabing, in the area where she lived. She was in an advanced state of pregnancy, and like the other women in the bunker, was in an extremely agitated state.
Suddenly the bunker door opened and Alexander Schmorell walked in. He was exhausted, panting, barely able to stand. He called out, “Marie-Luise?” She had been a former girlfriend of his, and about the only one left in Munich who was not in any way connected with his activities. When he arrived at the Central Station, the attack had started, and he made his way to Marie-Luise’s flat on Habsburgerplatz.
The young woman screamed: “Shurik!” All her neighbors stared at him with slowly dawning horror, as if he were a specter, a leper.
“Marie-Luise,” he said in a weak voice, “please come out here for a moment. I have to talk to you.” He stayed in the small anteroom of the bunker.
She didn’t move, riveted to her seat, her face stricken with fear. She didn’t answer him. Instead, she turned to her neighbors and whispered something. Alex sat down on a bench and waited. The whispering became intense. The women were telling Marie-Luise that there was only one thing to do in order to protect themselves: to call the block warden and have him arrest Alex.
He sat, waiting, perhaps catching fragments of their frantic whispers between the whistling fury of the bombs. He could not move. For seven days and nights, he had run like a hunted hare to keep his freedom. He had given his all; he had no strength left.
When the all-clear sounded, the women summoned the building superintendent, who informed Alex that he was under arrest. He did not resist. A few minutes later, a Gestapo car was in front of the house.
It is not known if the 1,000-mark reward was collected.
In Berlin the next day, Thursday, February 25, Falk Harnack waited for Hans Scholl at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It was to be the beginning of a new phase of national resistance, the linking up of students with the officers, government officials, and theologians of the Confessing Church, most of whom, more than a year later, would be involved in the July 20 plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
The meeting never took place. Harnack went back to his unit at Chemnitz on February 27. There he found a letter from Lilo Ramdohr. It said simply: “Our friends on the front have fallen.” He knew it was a matter of days before the Gestapo would come for him.
Waiting at dawn for the knock at the door—that image has become a symbol; it expresses the texture of fear in the Third Reich for those who did not belong to the Volksgemeinschaft: the Jewish people and the dissidents who had crossed the line. Waiting—each day and each night, knowing that the knock would come and that there would be no mercy.
A Social Democrat named Eugen Nerdinger from Augsburg was involved in a clandestine group; he tried to articulate what it felt like in a poem published recently in a collection of the memoirs of unknown resistance-fighters. Here is a translation:
You sit in bed, listen to the night.
How many such nights have you waited,
Have you asked into the unknown:
Will they come today to get me?
The way, morning after morning, they came for them,
Those who were your friends.
The morning becomes gray, you look at your room,
You see the light beyond the drapes,
You know that your mother close by is awake
Like you and asks like you,
Will they come today to get me?
The house is still, no sound of life,
Only you and she are restless.
Will they come today to get me?
Still is the street, the lamps are pale.
Far away the clocks strike.
Will they come today to get me?
The neighbors sleep.
They won’t stir
When they come and get you.
The stillness screams, can’t be endured.
When will you finally take her and me?
A car stops, footsteps in the yard.
A knock, noise on the stairs.
They’re here now.
For Kurt Huber, this time of waiting must have been agonizing. He probably had little hope that his name would not come up in the Gestapo interrogations of his students. He had been in the Lichthof when Hans and Sophie were seized; he must have seen that the leaflet they were distributing was his own. He followed the news of their trial, their execution; he came home and burned papers and documents, got rid of books. He knew of the wave of arrests, knew that some people, even unintentionally, were naming names. He was pale, silent, sleepless. His wife was out in the country, bartering their few precious possessions for food, and their little boy had gone along.
He lived with his daughter Birgit
alone in the house, a silent ghost waiting to get through the nights and the dawn.
It was about five in the morning on Friday, February 26, that the bell rang. Birgit ran down the stairs to answer. Three men in civilian clothes were standing outside. They asked politely if her father was home. She said yes, he was sleeping. They said that didn’t matter, pushed by her, and went into the house. A wave of anguish and fear went through the twelve-year-old girl; she ran by them, leaped up the stairs, tore open the door of her parents’ bedroom and screamed: “Poppi, poppi, the police are here!”
Kurt Huber sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide-awake with terror.
They had finally come.
TWENTY-ONE
SEVERAL DAYS after the Scholl family went to Munich to buryHans and Sophie in the cemetery near Stadelheim Prison, all of them—with the exception of Werner, who was returned to active duty—were taken into Sippenhaft (clan arrest). The expression, like so many others, had eased its way into the social vocabulary of the Third Reich, its shocking meaning somehow neutralized by being printed on bureaucratic forms and becoming part of the juridical and penal systems. For the authorities—and thus for the society they controlled—to arrest the parents, spouses, siblings, or children of “political criminals,” with its implications that guilt is related to bloodlines, was a “normal procedure,” as long as there were signed, stamped, and sealed forms in the family’s file.
Again in Ulm the Gestapo was at the door, and this time all those remaining had to go. They were questioned endlessly; one agent from Munich kept talking ominously about concentration camps. Mrs. Scholl and Inge were put in solitary confinement. Inge came down with diphtheria and her mother’s condition weakened each day. Finally, at the end of July 1943, the women were released.
In August, a family trial was held, and the Scholl women were at least able to see Robert Scholl again, for the first time in months. All of them were resigned to the idea of being resentenced to prison. To their surprise, the judge gave Mr. Scholl a two-year sentence, but let the women go.
Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Page 20