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Despite the brevity of this brilliant book, it effectively covers the immense topic of passive resistance in Nazi Germany. The author captures the importance of a German student uprising against the fascist reign of Adolf Hitler during World War II, reveals the building of the fascist monster, and analyzes the moral imperative of standing up for freedom in the face of death.
The White Rose, formed by University of Munich student Hans Scholl, is the most well-known German resistance group and stands out because of its youthful founders, the deathly danger of its mission, its members’ bravery before the guillotine, and the widespread reach of its extraordinary advocacy of free will and personal and spiritual freedom during a time of almost superhuman fascist control. When White Rose published and distributed pamphlet #2 (out of six), 300,000 Jews had already been murdered in Poland. After three of its early members were sentenced to death in a sham trial, word of their beheading spread to concentration camps, prison ghettos, and Russia’s eastern front, despite only a tiny notice in local papers describing the death of three traitors.
How did Germany get to such a state of soullessness and cruelty? With a good sense of place, both physically and historically, Flanagan incisively etches the creation of Germany’s own Frankenstein monster. The narrative connects key points and figures in German history, starting at a time before Germany was unified, when Wilhelm I (then King of Prussia) and his Chancellor (Otto von Bismark) decided to form a unified Germany by provoking a war with France. The First German Reich, World War I, and the rise of Adolf Hitler in the war’s devastating aftermath are all expertly chronicled.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression gave power to the Nazi party under Hitler’s compelling rhetoric of revenge, and by 1934 there was only one political party, the National Socialist Party, and one führer, Adolf Hitler. With the end of democracy in Germany, the Hitler monster grew appendages rapidly. Concentration camps, Kristallnacht, and the “Final Solution” stomped and slashed the Jews because, Hitler reasoned, they were responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War I and her economic difficulties. The Brown Shirts (SS), Goering, Himmler, and the Gestapo followed and seized control over the radio, telegraph service, and postal service.
The Kreisau Circle was one of the first resistance groups and included members of the army and the German aristocracy, its most famous member being Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A youth group called the Edelweiss Pirates fought fascism and hid Jews. But the group that truly stands out in history was the White Rose, comprised mainly of students at the University of Munich. Student Hans Scholl formed the group, and his sister, Sophie, soon joined. Hans’ service as a medical orderly in the military facilitated meeting others who would become key members of White Rose: Alexander Schmorell and Christoph Probst. Together, they witnessed atrocities against Jews and civilians. They formed the White Rose, recruited philosophy professor Dr. Kurt Huber, and began writing and distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets as well as painting anti-Nazi slogans on walls. Both activities were punishable by death.
Approximately 10,000 pamphlets were distributed around Munich and Germany. One day, a janitor at the university saw Sophie throwing some pamphlets from a balcony. He turned her in. Her brother was arrested, as well as Probst. With these facts and others, Flanagan sets the stage for a riveting analysis of passive resistance, the necessity of acting on moral imperatives, the importance of freedom of thought and communication, and the heart-breaking bravery of these students.
The author is a master of condensation with comprehension, of marrying personal details to historical nuance. He weaves facts about the Nazi regime with thoughts from humanistic philosophers and poets in a manner that stirs the modern soul of freedom and fans a contemporary fear of how easy it is to sleep while evil leaps. As a bonus, the White Rose’s six pamphlets are included in their entirety. Of course, the trial of the White Rose members was a farce (actual trial transcripts exist), and the Reich controlled the so-called People’s Court, all described in detail by Flanagan. But the members’ bravery and loyalty in the face of the guillotine is far from fake. The repercussions of their work are felt today in ripples that have ignited verbal, written, and cinematic discussions of personal freedom, free will, hope, the resilience of the human spirit, and faith in the ultimate victory of truth.
Flanagan, a retired lawyer, gives a stirring, richly detailed, and highly thoughtful account of the beauty, bravery, and accomplishments of the White Rose. The concise, eminently understandable introduction and analysis of the rise of Hitler’s fascism is integral to understanding how the “most significant social movements have been led by the young and the powerless” and how doing nothing is the greatest mistake man can make.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review