The White Rose Resists

by Amanda Barratt

If only Goebbels could see us now: cold, weary, trudging. It might give him a dose of reality, the true picture of the morale of the German people.

  Our street is untouched. Wherever the bombs fell, it was nowhere in the direct vicinity. The crowd disperses. Annalise and I walk to the apartment in silence, our steps shuffling up the stairs. I unlock the door. She takes off her coat and hangs it on its hook. The light flickers as I turn it on.

  It’s late, we’ve spent over an hour in a shelter crammed with people and smells and must. Doubtless, the odor hangs on our own clothes.

  This isn’t a night to become lovers.

  I rub a hand across the back of my neck, about to suggest (I don’t really know what), when Annalise comes toward me, gaze meeting mine.

  “This isn’t how I imagined.”

  I nod, sighing. “I know.”

  “It was supposed to be candlelight and soft kisses and no interruptions.” Her smile is a little sad.

  “It will be.” I brush a strand of hair behind her ear. “We have all the time in the world. Tomorrow, and—”

  She shakes her head. “Nein, Kirk. We don’t. We can’t know that.”

  I say nothing. She’s right. I can’t promise my beloved forever. I cannot even promise her tomorrow.

  Even if there wasn’t a war, there would still be no certainties. But war is life magnified. What happens in life once, happens in war a thousand times over.

  “We have right now.” Her breath brushes my lips. “This moment. And I love you.”

  As her lips meet mine, the world fades away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sophie

  December 24, 1942

  Ulm

  BEFORE THE WAR, I considered Christmas the one time of year when everyone put aside their differences. It was, after all, a celebration of unity, good tidings, and great joy.

  Now I know better. War allows nothing. Christmas became a time when it was far too easy to focus on all one had lost in the year preceding rather than anything gained. Perhaps some people still mark the passage of the holidays with the hope that “maybe things will be good next year.”

  I know better than that too.

  I stand outside, wrapped in my winter coat, facing darkness.

  There are no windows with curtains thrown back so the light of Christmas tree candles might illuminate not only one’s own house, but the dwellings of those around them. There are no carolers tramping door to door to beg a cup of something warm in exchange for a chorus of “O Tannenbaum.” There’s no childlike anticipation that tomorrow will bring a day of feasting and merriment.

  There’s only darkness, a scattering of stars in the blackness overhead, and the beating of my own heart.

  I stare into the sky, frosted breath clouding from my lips, and try to pray. Something holy and fervent to commemorate this night. But all my brain can conjure is emptiness and a plea for help to be better than I am. All other words, as they so often do, drain out of me, leaving a void.

  I turn my thoughts to our work, the one thing that fills me with a measure of clarity. Before arriving in Ulm, Hans and I stopped in Stuttgart. He paid another visit to Eugen Grimminger, who’d needed time to consider Hans’s request for funds. This time, Herr Grimminger wrote out a check for five hundred marks to finance our leafleting operation. Meanwhile, Willi has gone to Saarbrücken and other towns in the Rhineland to speak to his like-minded friends about forming their own cells.

  Even at Christmastime, our work goes on.

  Footsteps crunch behind me. Vater walks toward me to stand at my side. I glimpse his face in profile. In the starlight, his sturdy frame appears shrunken. Breath plumes from his mustached lips.

  For several minutes, we don’t speak. Then his arm comes around my waist, and he pulls me against him. I lean my cheek into his scratchy overcoat and inhale his familiar scent.

  “My little Sophie,” he whispers. “What a mad world this is.”

  “Vater?” I glance up at him. “What do you mean?”

  His chest lifts with a sigh. “All I ever wanted was to provide a good life for my children. Give them everything they desired, all possible advantages. And now that demon Hitler has robbed me of the ability to do that.” Under his breath, he curses Hitler. His body tenses. “I found your mutter upstairs weeping because we couldn’t afford a Christmas tree this year.”

  “None of us care about that.” I pull away to look into his face. “That’s not what Christmas is about.”

  “Nein?” He shakes his head and laughs softly. “Then tell me, the wisest of my women, what is it about? I haven’t heard from my youngest son in weeks. For all I know, our Werner could be …” He pauses as if searching for the word.

  The word I don’t want him to say. I have to believe my youngest brother is out there, somewhere, alive. He was never more fully Werner than at Christmas. He used to pester Inge and me to distraction: “How much longer till we can see the tree?” I wanted to box his ears from exasperation.

  Now I just wish I could hug him.

  “Never coming back.” Vater’s voice is gruff with emotion. “My daughters wear careworn looks, my wife is more ill than she lets on, our home has been overrun with borders, and Hans seems not himself. I find little to celebrate this year.”

  “We’re together, Vater.” My whisper is fierce. “This year, let’s celebrate that. And God is still with us.”

  “Is He? I wonder.” Vater gazes off into the distance. “Sometimes it seems as if He has abandoned Germany altogether. Abandoned it to murderers and tyrants.”

  I say nothing. It would do little good to say how often I’ve agreed.

  “Vater, Sophie.” A shawl held over her head, Inge approaches. She looks between the two of us. “Mutter is asking for you. We’re going to sing carols.”

  Vater’s mask falls into place. He would not dare show such unguarded emotion in front of his frail wife. He turns to me with a smile, a gesture of bravery. Of Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich erhalten.

  “What do you say, Sophie?” His tone is bright, like he’s trying too hard. “Shall we sing carols?”

  We return to the house to find the family gathered in the parlor, along with the married couple and their adolescent daughter who rent our upstairs rooms. Lisl sits at the piano, turning over some music. Hans sits on the sofa next to Mutter, looking half-asleep, but he rises and lets Vater take his place, coming to stand next to Inge and me in front of the piano. Gently Lisl presses down on the glossy keys, the first bars of “Stille Nacht” rising onto the air.

  Our voices fill the Christmas treeless room with song. Our favorite carols, followed by ersatz kaffee and stollen without raisins that crumbles because it doesn’t have enough butter.

  Despite all the powers, we maintain ourselves.

  Later, when the rest of the family has gone to bed, I linger in the parlor, a sheet of paper in my lap, a single lamp my only light.

  Christmases past fill my mind, wreathed in a glow of gold. Vater heaping our plates with sliced goose; Hans, fork in mid-air, laughing at one of Inge’s jokes; Fritz sitting beside me, our shoulders brushing, sneaking glances at me over our glasses of currant wine.

  Ah, Fritz. Where does this Christmas Eve find you?

  I imagine him somewhere in the great white expanse of Russian winter, one among thousands of men. Doubtless there will be little to remind him of Christmas this year. Will his thoughts turn, as mine do, to the holidays we’ve spent together? Impromptu snowball fights, weaving Advent wreaths, stealing kisses when no one was looking.

  I close my eyes in an attempt to lose myself in a sweet memory, a gift to myself this Christmas Eve. My mind scrambles for details and sensations, but … none come.

  My hands ball into fists. I press them hard against my eyes as hot tears trail my cheeks.

  I can’t remember the touch and taste of his lips against mine. I know I once felt it, but the memories are wrapped in a fog I can’t push past.

  Panic soaks through me. What more have
I forgotten? If our kisses, then what else?

  How to love him? Have I forgotten that?

  My breath comes quick and sharp.

  Nein. Not that. Never.

  Fingers shaking, I lift my pen. Wondering, as I form the words, if the man I pen them to is even among the living.

  I’m thinking of you this Christmas Eve, wherever you are. Tonight we sang all the old carols while Lisl played the piano. I hope your heart is free from cares tonight and that you are remembering our Christmases together, as I am.

  The first Christmas was an unlikely one: the Christ Child laid in a humble manger. Yet everything about that night was a miracle. Let us trust one will come for us too.

  Until then, know my prayers are with you, as is my love.

  Yours,

  Sophie

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Annalise

  January 13, 1943

  Munich

  THE AUDITORIUM OF THE Deutsches Museum echoes with the sounds of students shuffling to find a seat, muffled coughing, and muted chatter. Students and faculty have been ordered to attend an address by Paul Giesler, the Party leader of Munich and Upper Bavaria, to commemorate the 470th anniversary of the founding of Ludwig Maximilian University.

  Kirk, Hans, Alex, and Sophie have vowed to boycott Nazi-sponsored assemblies. They’re at Hans and Sophie’s apartment talking over leaflets.

  I’d rather be with them. But I’ve a bland curiosity to hear what Giesler has to say. Perhaps it will be worth a mention in our next leaflet.

  I settle onto a bench in the middle of the balcony. Below me, in the main auditorium, sit row upon row of uniformed men—soldier-students and high-ranking Wehrmacht and SS officers, along with faculty garbed in ceremonial robes.

  Seated on the swastika-draped platform on both sides of the podium, along with invited dignitaries, are leaders of the National Socialist Student Association. They turn their gazes expectantly to the podium, waiting for the speech to begin.

  We don’t have long to wait. Giesler strides from a side entrance. Thunderous applause echoes as he mounts the platform, dressed in a brown uniform with a swastika armband. I hide my hands in my lap and don’t clap.

  Giesler looks across the packed auditorium like a king assessing his subjects. His coarse face dons a satisfied look, and he lifts a hand for the applause to cease.

  “I greet you, officers, students, faculty.” His voice echoes off the high ceiling. “This year marks the 470th anniversary of the founding of Ludwig Maximilian University, and it is indeed a great occasion. The university is an integral part of National Socialist society, and in a short time, you, the students, will be standing on the command bridges of German life.”

  As the minutes pass, my eyelids grow heavy. His voice may be booming, but he’s no orator.

  I snap out of my daze, blinking. Giesler is bellowing now.

  “Twisted intellects and falsely clever minds are unacceptable and are not an expression of real life. Real life is transmitted to us only by Adolf Hitler, with his light, joyful, and life-affirming teachings.” He pauses, as if expecting a torrent of applause to drown his next words. Receiving none, he goes on, congratulating students who are recently returned, or are about to leave for the front, adding a nod to those performing factory work. “But many—” He sweeps his arms in an expansive gesture. “Many in this very room, without talent or seriousness of purpose, are expending valuable time and resources that would be better used for the greater victory. Their presence here is nothing less than waste. Waste!” He spits out the word like a bad piece of cabbage. “The university is not a rescue station for well-bred daughters shirking their duties for Führer and Fatherland.”

  I suck in a breath, cheeks flushing. How dare he make judgments about the female students. Around me, students whisper amongst themselves, shifting in their seats.

  “Insolent cad!” comes a feminine cry from the back of the balcony.

  “How dare you,” a red-haired woman calls, leaning over the balcony.

  Giesler cranes his neck, looking up at the students in the balcony, face reddening, posture like an angry bull about to charge. I sit, hands tight in my lap, every nerve thrumming with vindication. They’re actually shouting back. I want to shout with them. Yet I don’t dare draw attention to myself.

  “A woman’s place is not at the university, but with her family, at the side of her husband!” Giesler volleys the words up at the balcony.

  Young men stamp their feet and boo. A few loose earsplitting whistles. Girls get up from their seats, surging toward the exits in a flurry of skirts, satchels, and outraged voices.

  “Women!” Giesler shouts, shaking his fist. “Women should present the Führer not with a diploma, but with a child every year. And if any of you aren’t sufficiently attractive to catch your own man, I’d be happy to lend you one of my adjutants.” He grins, leering up at the remaining girls. “I can promise you that would be a thoroughly enjoyable experience.”

  “Enough!” A young officer bursts from his seat below. “Students, will we stand for insults to ourselves and our women?”

  A uniformed veteran with only one leg raises his crutch. “Nein!”

  The cry is taken up. I join the refrain, calling out along with the rest. Shouting at Giesler, his depravity and chauvinistic dominance.

  For a glorious moment, I don’t think of the danger or who might be watching. I hurl insults down at Giesler, and for fleeting seconds, it’s as exhilarating as champagne. Giesler may be the one we shout at, but embodied in him is everything the Nazis stand for. In those seconds, the cry feels universal.

  Around me, students are pushing and shoving, storming out of the balcony. Boots stomp. SS guards race into the balcony, herding us with shouts of “Out, out, out!” I rise, caught in the middle of the crowd. An elbow jabs my ribs. I grip my satchel close to my chest. Within are fifty stamps I purchased at the post office before coming to the assembly.

  “They’ve arrested some of the girls who left in the middle of the speech,” exclaims a brunette as we’re shoved toward the door by the roiling crowd. I glance over the side of the balcony.

  On the stage and in the auditorium, male students brawl with National Socialist Student Association leaders. Blood spurts from the nose of one as two young men in Wehrmacht uniform pummel him, while others shout for the release of the women. The cause of it all—Giesler—is nowhere in sight.

  Revolt. The word rises in my mind. The students are revolting.

  We clatter down the stairs and into the lobby. Shouts. Fists hitting flesh. The shrill of police whistles. Never have I seen such a thing, such tumult. Boots pound the marble floor as just-arrived commando squads grapple to restore order.

  I slip through the surging crowd, heart pounding not with fear, but with elation, pushing my way outside into cold air and weak sunlight. Students pour down the steps, flooding past me, forming groups and linking arms. Heads held high, they march toward the bridge linking the island with the rest of Munich.

  They’re singing. Like victorious soldiers, their proud voices rise into the air.

  Visitors en-route to the museum stop on the sidewalk, pointing and gesturing. The students march past them, steps high and arms linked.

  I long to join their ranks. But I remember the leaflets and Sophie and Kirk. I can’t risk getting caught. This demonstration can’t last forever. Sooner or later, they’ll disperse or be forcibly broken up. Likely, the latter.

  I hurry to Franz-Josef-Straße, lungs burning, shoes slipping on slick cobblestones, taking a streetcar part of the way. When I reach the garden house, I’m hot and panting, hair disheveled and cheeks stinging from the wind. Alex answers the door. “Back already? How was it?”

  “Let me in, and I’ll tell you.” I move past him, shrug out of my coat, and hang it on a hook. Inside the Scholls’ rooms, Sophie, Kirk, and Hans sit around a table littered with scraps of paper. Their gazes swing in my direction. Alex comes in behind me.

  Ki
rk rises, taking in my disheveled state. “Annalise? What’s happened?”

  I gulp in a few breaths. It’s still unimaginable, such a thing actually taking place. For so long, we’ve all been afraid to so much as open our mouths. Now this, a visible protest in broad daylight. Among the students, no less.

  Facing the group, I outline what I witnessed. Their expressions transform from disbelief to astonishment to the giddy exhilaration still purling through my veins.

  Sophie speaks first. “Our leaflets. They must have spurred this on.”

  “We haven’t produced a leaflet since the end of July,” Hans says. But his eyes shine too.

  “We wanted to make people think, generate a feeling of unrest instead of accepting whatever edict handed them.” Kirk’s tone is musing. “Sophie’s right.”

  My hands itch to grip the handle of the duplicating machine. To sweat and sacrifice and work to open the eyes of those around us. “What happened today can only be the first of such protests. Demonstrations to the government that the people, especially the students, are not automatons bending to their every whim. Today they proved we still have a voice. We must work harder.”

  Sophie’s eyes flash, her slim jaw jutting forward. “Ja. There is no time to waste.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Sophie

  January 15, 1943

  NO LONGER DO WE head our leaflets with the ambiguous title the White Rose. Now, our fifth pamphlet reads Leaflets of the Resistance Movement in Germany: A Call to All Germans! Who would guess a group of students is behind those formidable words? In them, we sound like someone who ought to be listened to, given heed. I’m proud to own the title.

  Professor Huber isn’t fond of our new name, but Hans and Alex overruled his objections. The addition of Professor Huber has brought with it a good many heated arguments. Hans and Alex each wrote drafts of the fifth leaflet to be combined into one, as they’d done before. But Professor Huber flatly rejected Alex’s contribution. “He sounds like a raving Communist,” he stated. “Absolutely unacceptable.”