Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm their Downy. A few months
Speaker 1: ago we talked about Hanna Snish, a Hungarian who opposed
Speaker 1: the Nazis by parachuting into Yugoslavia and an attempt to
Speaker 1: save fellow Jews. She was arrested, tortured, and executed, and
Speaker 1: this heroic story left many of you wanting to hear
Speaker 1: more about resistance to the Nazis during World War Two.
Speaker 1: These stories are usually tragic, you know, how could they
Speaker 1: end well, but they're also pretty inspirational. One of the
Speaker 1: most surprising of these heroic stories comes out of Germany,
Speaker 1: of all places, where the Gestapo in the SS that
Speaker 1: kept such a close eye on the population listening in
Speaker 1: to a broadcast of Radio London could be enough to
Speaker 1: get you execute it. And it's in Germany, in Munich, actually,
Speaker 1: that this group of students decide to protest the atrocities
Speaker 1: of their government and stir up their apathetic countrymen at
Speaker 1: a great risk to their own lives, and they call
Speaker 1: themselves the White Rose. But before we get into the
Speaker 1: student movement in Munich. We need to give some background
Speaker 1: on what life was like for someone who was trying
Speaker 1: to resist the Nazi government, And some sources that Sarah
Speaker 1: was reading kept saying that you can't understand unless you've
Speaker 1: lived under a totalitarian regime. But we hope this will
Speaker 1: help a little bit. So this is what you're up against.
Speaker 1: Nazi indoctrinations started in preschool. Children were encouraged to denounce
Speaker 1: their parents for making derogatory comments about Hitler or about
Speaker 1: the Reich, and at age ten, boys would register to
Speaker 1: join the German Young People after being investigated for racial purity.
Speaker 1: At thirteen they could join the Hitler Youth and at
Speaker 1: eighteen they'd be a member of the Nazi Party. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was mandatory to serve either in the armed forces
Speaker 1: or in labor details until aged girls did the same thing,
Speaker 1: participating in leagues that taught comradeship and motherhood. So that's
Speaker 1: what you're up against in terms of this early indoctrination.
Speaker 1: But in addition to the Gestapo, every block also has
Speaker 1: a spy who would note down conversations going on, keep
Speaker 1: track of who was saying what. So maybe you make
Speaker 1: a joke to your wife about Hitler and your neighbor
Speaker 1: overhears it. Uh next thing you know, you've got police
Speaker 1: knocking on your door. So dangerous times. Consequently, it's pretty
Speaker 1: difficult for all but the smallest groups to actually protest
Speaker 1: the government because organized resistance usually involves a lot of
Speaker 1: people socialists, communists, and trade unionists published underground literature. And
Speaker 1: even though the Catholic Church is officially silent on what's happening,
Speaker 1: some clergymen do work to protect Jews, and the church
Speaker 1: denounces quote unquote to euthanasia of the handicapped. We also
Speaker 1: have the occasional assassination attempt. After the defeat at Stalingrad,
Speaker 1: German officers attempt to blow up Hitler with a bomb.
Speaker 1: He was injured and they were immediately executed. But really
Speaker 1: the military is about the only group that could be
Speaker 1: so bold, because most people who protest against the government
Speaker 1: have to do it passively, just small measures of non
Speaker 1: compliance with Nazi rules. So it's pretty easy to imagine
Speaker 1: that at least a few teenagers were ticked off by
Speaker 1: the idea of having to enroll with the Nazi youth
Speaker 1: in work to fight against that without getting themselves into
Speaker 1: terrible trouble. The student heroes of our story grew up
Speaker 1: in the world of the Reich. They were raised in
Speaker 1: the thirties, so they're fully indoctrinated. Some were even leaders
Speaker 1: of Hitler youth groups. So how did they turn against
Speaker 1: the regime and more importantly, why did they decide to
Speaker 1: risk their lives to denounce it. Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: the eventual members of the White Rose meet in the
Speaker 1: winter of nine thirty nine when they're all finishing up
Speaker 1: their compulsory two years of army service as part of
Speaker 1: this medic program. Basically, if you had intended to go
Speaker 1: to medical school eventually, you could finish up your army
Speaker 1: service training as a medic to get a little hands
Speaker 1: on work before you start your studies. So most of
Speaker 1: these kids end up enrolling at the University of Munich
Speaker 1: the following spring. And we know that students are the
Speaker 1: most protesting group of the population and well, and it's
Speaker 1: no different at Munich too. Even though these students really
Speaker 1: have to watch their backs, they have a lot more
Speaker 1: pressure than most student protesters would have. Still though, when,
Speaker 1: for instance, one of their Nazis student leaders tell them
Speaker 1: that they'll have to spend their first summer break harvesting
Speaker 1: the crops in Bavaria. They are very upset. Stink bombs
Speaker 1: go off in the chemistry building, so you can imagine
Speaker 1: just these acts of protests, still very dangerous in these times,
Speaker 1: but trying to make their opinion. It's heard later in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, when most of the mail Med students
Speaker 1: are drafted into the army, they would steal as much
Speaker 1: freedom as they could skipping out on roll call or
Speaker 1: on drill, according to White Rose survivor George Bittenstein, And
Speaker 1: by early nineteen forty two to Med students Alex Schmorell
Speaker 1: and Hans Scholl have started writing leaflets, copying them on
Speaker 1: a typewriter and distributing them. And Sarah's got the first
Speaker 1: line from the first leaflet. Nothing is so unworthy of
Speaker 1: a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without
Speaker 1: opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.
Speaker 1: It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed
Speaker 1: of his government. So of the first one hundred of
Speaker 1: these flyers that they distribute in mail, thirty five are
Speaker 1: returned to the Gestapo. So this means two things. Spies
Speaker 1: and people who get this very incriminating flyer in the mail,
Speaker 1: get very nervous and send it right back to the Gestapo.
Speaker 1: And writing leaflets and copying them might not sound like
Speaker 1: a big deal, it is paper is in very short supply,
Speaker 1: so buying huge packs of it is very suspicious, and
Speaker 1: so is buying lots of postage. And think about how
Speaker 1: dangerous it is to carry such a pamphlet around with you,
Speaker 1: because if you're stopped and searched, you're done for. But
Speaker 1: the students that Munich are amazed to see these pamphlets.
Speaker 1: Who's doing this? They're wondering what's going on. The Gestapo
Speaker 1: are not pleased, and so the White Rose membership starts
Speaker 1: to grow. And it's interesting that the discipline and order
Speaker 1: that some of the members might have picked up in
Speaker 1: the Hitler youth serves to make them pretty disciplined and
Speaker 1: ordered when they're fighting the German government. They would graffiti
Speaker 1: the streets of Munich with slogans like down with Hitler,
Speaker 1: Hitler the mass murderer, or freedom Freedom, and the initial
Speaker 1: Munich group expands to students in Hamburg, Freiburg, Berlin and Vienna.
Speaker 1: They would mail each other these mimeographed leaflets and sometimes
Speaker 1: They would even carry them on trains, which was a
Speaker 1: task usually left up to the girls. They were less
Speaker 1: likely to be searched. But they could leave these suitcases
Speaker 1: full of these pamphlets in different cars. Well, they'd carry
Speaker 1: them in another compartment, because you didn't want to be found.
Speaker 1: You wanted to be separate from the suitcase for as
Speaker 1: much of the journey as possible. But of course we
Speaker 1: also have to talk about what the White Rose movement
Speaker 1: was even all about, and was it really true that
Speaker 1: Germans didn't know what was going on, what atrocities were
Speaker 1: being committed, As you so often here, that's usually the
Speaker 1: excuse for such enormous inaction that happened. Well, these kids
Speaker 1: know what's going on, and when a lot of the
Speaker 1: male population of the White Rose movement goes to serve
Speaker 1: on the Eastern Front as medical aids in the summer
Speaker 1: of ninety two, they actually see some of the atrocities firsthand.
Speaker 1: Hans Shoal sees Jewish labors being beaten, bound for death camps, mistreated,
Speaker 1: and he hears about how the polls are being deported
Speaker 1: into concentration camps and others like Hans's sister Sophie, here's
Speaker 1: about some of the other policies at church in sermons.
Speaker 1: So these kids know what's going on. We can assume
Speaker 1: that a lot of other people knew. It must have
Speaker 1: to exactly. Sophie gets permission to reprint a sermon against
Speaker 1: these murders and distributes it to the students. She joins
Speaker 1: the White Rose after enrolling at Munich and begging her
Speaker 1: brother to let her in. And many of these members
Speaker 1: also had Jewish friends who had since been deported. We
Speaker 1: have to make it clear they thought that what was
Speaker 1: happening was very wrong. This wasn't just a political protest.
Speaker 1: This was a very personal thing, definitely. And so by
Speaker 1: November nineteen forty two, the students who were on the
Speaker 1: Eastern Front serving as medical aids are back, and the
Speaker 1: White Rose members are more dedicated than ever to their cause,
Speaker 1: and they bring in one of their professors, Kurt Huber,
Speaker 1: who helps them edit the drafts, rejecting one is too communists.
Speaker 1: I can sort of imagine this mentor relationship between these
Speaker 1: students who are probably writing radical things like students do,
Speaker 1: and this older fellow sort of toning it down, making
Speaker 1: it more powerful, making it a better way to speak
Speaker 1: to their audience, and they're not naive enough to think
Speaker 1: that their pamphlets will help topple the government, and that's
Speaker 1: not what they're trying to do. They understand that it's
Speaker 1: only military action that will end the regime. Although they
Speaker 1: do specifically distance themselves as independent thinkers fighting for Germany.
Speaker 1: They they're very patriotic and they want to make it
Speaker 1: clear that they're not puppets under Allied control. But while
Speaker 1: they do advocate sabotage of the armaments industry, their goal
Speaker 1: is to improve resistance morale and stir these apathetic Germans
Speaker 1: into standing up for what is right, letting them know
Speaker 1: that there are other people who think that way, yeah,
Speaker 1: giving people encouragement, and ultimately they publish six leaflets between
Speaker 1: nineteen two and three with that little break while a
Speaker 1: lot of the guys are away on the Eastern Front.
Speaker 1: Four published as the White Rose and two are published
Speaker 1: under the name Leaflets of the Resistance. And it's that
Speaker 1: sixth pamphlet that really destroys some of the major members
Speaker 1: of the movement. It's just after the defeat at Stalingrad
Speaker 1: when the White Rose publishes its sixth leaflet, and here's
Speaker 1: an excerpt, Shaken and broken. Our people. Behold the loss
Speaker 1: of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 1: German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death
Speaker 1: and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War
Speaker 1: one private first class fure we thank you, and another
Speaker 1: repeated through the leaflet for us, there is but one slogan,
Speaker 1: fight against the party. It says that over and over again,
Speaker 1: something to try to get get it stuck in the
Speaker 1: reader's head. And the Shoals go to this campus building
Speaker 1: at their university and they leave stacks of these leaflets
Speaker 1: outside of the doors of the classroom. They're carrying the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole shebang in this suitcase. When they realize that
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of the leaflets left in their bag,
Speaker 1: Sophie takes them up to the third floor and throws
Speaker 1: them down a light. Well, so imagine just all these
Speaker 1: pamphlets shower showering down. Well, it catches the attention of
Speaker 1: a janitor and he turns them into the Gestapo. They're arrested,
Speaker 1: and the barely involved Kristoph Propst is actually implicated because
Speaker 1: Hans has something mentioning him in his pocket, a draft
Speaker 1: for a later pamphlet, so the three of them are
Speaker 1: taken into custody. They delivered that last batch of pamphlets
Speaker 1: on February eighteenth, ninete and just days later they're put
Speaker 1: on trial. The judge is horrified that three nice German
Speaker 1: kids could have turned to this, and is especially disgusted
Speaker 1: that Hans is a soldier well, and that the state
Speaker 1: is paid for his education. It just seems doubly wrong
Speaker 1: to this judge. Props has a wife and three babies,
Speaker 1: and he claims psychotic depression after the loss at Stalingrad
Speaker 1: and because of his wife's difficult child birth. He's trying
Speaker 1: to save his life. Sophie explains herself really boldly, though
Speaker 1: she says somebody, after all, had to make a start.
Speaker 1: What we wrote and said is also believed by many others.
Speaker 1: They just don't dare to express themselves as we did.
Speaker 1: And later she actually tells the judge, you know the
Speaker 1: war is lost, why don't you have the courage to
Speaker 1: face it? So she's being incredibly brave and bold in
Speaker 1: the face of I mean, she'll definitely be charged by
Speaker 1: this judge. There's no other way out. The Shoals parents
Speaker 1: tried to burst into the courtroom in the middle of
Speaker 1: the trial, and their mother is told she should have
Speaker 1: brought them up better. Their father forces his way in
Speaker 1: and is forcibly escorted out, and as he's escorted out,
Speaker 1: he shouts, one day there will be another kind of justice.
Speaker 1: One day they will go down in history. Poor propst family,
Speaker 1: on the other him, doesn't even know that he's been arrested.
Speaker 1: His wife is still in the hospital from childbirth, and
Speaker 1: he's not visited by anyone before his execution. Unsurprisingly, the
Speaker 1: judge rules guilty. The court finds quote that the accused have,
Speaker 1: in the time of war, by means of leaflets, called
Speaker 1: for the sabotage of the war effort in armaments and
Speaker 1: for the overthrow of the national socialist way of life
Speaker 1: of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most
Speaker 1: vulgarly defamed the fur, thereby giving aid to the enemy
Speaker 1: of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation.
Speaker 1: On this account, there to be punished by death. They're
Speaker 1: executed by guillotine almost immediately. The siblings meet with their
Speaker 1: parents one last time, and the guards allow the three
Speaker 1: to meet one last time. Sophie is killed first, then Propst,
Speaker 1: then Hans, who cries out long lived freedom, but it's
Speaker 1: not over yet, and the Gestapo arrests three other members
Speaker 1: later in the year. Alexander Schmorl is twenty five. We
Speaker 1: should I don't think we've mentioned their ages yet. They're
Speaker 1: all in their very early twenties. Uh. They also arrest
Speaker 1: Willie Graff, who's twenty five, and the professor who is
Speaker 1: helping Kurt Hooper, who is forty nine, and some of
Speaker 1: them aren't executed until nine, so the second batch of
Speaker 1: trials doesn't go as quickly as as the first with
Speaker 1: the Shoals and Props does. Today, they're heroes in Germany
Speaker 1: for daring to stand up during the country's darkest years.
Speaker 1: There's a square at the University of Munich named after
Speaker 1: the Shoals, and things all over the city that are
Speaker 1: named after other members, and will close with another quote
Speaker 1: from their leaflets, quote, we seek the revival of the
Speaker 1: deeply wounded German spirit for the sake of future generations.
Speaker 1: An example must be set after the war so that
Speaker 1: no one will ever have the slightest desire to try
Speaker 1: anything like this ever again. Do not forget the minor
Speaker 1: scoundrels of this system note their names so that no
Speaker 1: one may escape ape. We shall not be silent. We
Speaker 1: are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave
Speaker 1: you in peace. It's especially interesting that call to not
Speaker 1: forget even the most minor scoundrels, to know their names
Speaker 1: so that no one will escape. That's still so pertinent
Speaker 1: even today. We have an article on that. It's called
Speaker 1: are their Nazi war criminals still at large? And there are,
Speaker 1: and people are still actively looking for them and looking
Speaker 1: to bring them to justice. People have not forgotten. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to look for that article, you can search
Speaker 1: on our home page at www dot house stuffworks dot com.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to our listener mail for today.
Speaker 1: So when we finish our episode on King Ludibig the Second,
Speaker 1: we mentioned that he's a very popular figure, or so
Speaker 1: we believed in Germany still today. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I remember reading about that was that because the
Speaker 1: twentieth century history is so violent, people have really embraced
Speaker 1: this figure who is a passive This even if he's
Speaker 1: crazy and built all these maybe not, maybe not had
Speaker 1: imagining friends, maybe maybe not, he's still this very compelling,
Speaker 1: peaceful figure and Consequently, a lot of people have gotten
Speaker 1: really into him. But we we raised the question is
Speaker 1: he really a huge figure in Bavaria And we got
Speaker 1: at least one answer from Karen, who studied abroad and
Speaker 1: visited his castles. But she also remembers one of her
Speaker 1: friends from Bavaria putting out a toast to King Ludwig
Speaker 1: in the middle of a bar. All the other American
Speaker 1: student kind of didn't know what was going on, but
Speaker 1: not yeah exactly. They went along with it to to
Speaker 1: look big. The second well, when that happened, a group
Speaker 1: of German guys who were also sitting in the bar
Speaker 1: started to cheer on King Lidvig as well, and they
Speaker 1: started singing the Bavarian regional anthem. Love it. I love
Speaker 1: this story of all these college kids, study abroad kids,
Speaker 1: German guys singing and toasting kids in load big in
Speaker 1: a bar. There are not enough national anthems in bars.
Speaker 1: Maybe during the World Cup, but besides that, maybe we
Speaker 1: really need to step that up. So thank you Karen
Speaker 1: for answering our question, And if you have some really
Speaker 1: cool emails to send us, our email address is History
Speaker 1: Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We would also
Speaker 1: like you to make us look good to our boss,
Speaker 1: and follow us on Twitter at missed in History and
Speaker 1: join our Facebook fan page. You can find out what
Speaker 1: we're up to in the various little trivia bits we
Speaker 1: find during the week, and remember to check out that
Speaker 1: Nazi article by searching on our home page at www
Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
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