German Resistance – History of Sorts

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, pastor, and anti-Nazi dissident who is widely recognized for his resistance against the policies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime during World War II. Born on February 4, 1906, in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), Bonhoeffer grew up in a family of intellectuals and theologians.

He was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1931, and served two Lutheran congregations, St. Paul’s and Sydenham, in London from 1933-35

In September 1933, the Nationalist church synod at Wittenberg voluntarily passed a resolution to apply the Aryan paragraph within the church, meaning that pastors and church officials of Jewish descent were to be removed from their posts. Regarding this as an affront to the principle of baptism, Martin Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors’ Emergency League). In November, a rally of 20,000 Nationalist Deutsche Christens demanded the removal of the Jewish Old Testament from the Bible, which was seen by many as heresy, further swelling the ranks of the Pastors Emergency League.

In 1933, pastors saw Hitler as the saviour of the church

Within weeks of its founding, more than a third of German pastors had joined the Emergency League. It was the forerunner of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), which aimed to preserve historical, Biblically-based Christian beliefs and practices.[31] The Barmen Declaration, drafted by Barth in May 1934 and adopted by the Confessing Church, insisted that Christ, not the Führer, is the head of the Church.^[32] The adoption of the declaration has often been viewed as a triumph, although by estimate, only 20% of German pastors supported the Confessing Church

Bonhoeffer became increasingly involved in the Confessing Church, a movement within German Protestantism that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches. He was particularly outspoken against the regime’s attempts to control the churches and distort Christian doctrine to serve Nazi ideology.

One of Bonhoeffer’s most famous texts was his April 1933 essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question.” Addressing the challenges facing his church under Nazism, Bonhoeffer in this essay argued that National Socialism was an illegitimate form of government and hence had to be opposed on Christian grounds. He outlined three stages of this opposition. First, the church was called to question state injustice. Secondly, it had an obligation to help all victims of injustice, whether they were Christian or not. Finally, the church might be called to “put a spoke in the wheel” to bring the machinery of injustice to a halt.

One of Bonhoeffer’s most notable actions of resistance was his involvement in the Abwehr conspiracy, a plot by some members of the German military intelligence (the Abwehr) to overthrow Hitler. Bonhoeffer’s role was primarily to maintain contact with the British and American governments to secure their support for the coup and negotiate a peace settlement. However, the conspiracy was discovered, and Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943.

Bonhoeffer spent the next two years in prison, during which time he continued to write letters, reflections, and theological works. His most famous work, “The Cost of Discipleship,” explores the meaning of Christian discipleship in the face of challenges and suffering.

The core of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich was an elite group within the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), which included, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Head of Military Intelligence, General Hans Oster (who recruited Bonhoeffer), and Hans von Dohnanyi, who was married to Bonhoeffer’s sister, Christine. All three were executed with Bonhoeffer on April 9, 1945. For their role in the conspiracy, the Nazis also executed Bonhoeffer’s brother, Klaus, and a second brother-in-law, Rudiger Schleicher, on April 23, 1945, seven days before Hitler himself committed suicide on April 30.

Later this year a movie directed by Todd Komarnicki titled “Bonhoeffer” will be released. The movie was mostly shot in Limerick

Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dietrich-bonhoeffer

Biography

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/defiant-theologian-dietrich-bonhoeffer-is-hanged

https://www.evangelisch.de/inhalte/211696/27-01-2023/90-jahrestag-der-machtergreifung-pastoren-sahen-1933-hitler-den-retter-der-kirche

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Hans Scholl—German Victim

Most people will have heard of Sophie Scholl, but perhaps not so much about her brother Hans. Both Hans and Sophie were members of the resistance group, The White Rose.

The reason I refer to Hans Scholl as a victim (in the title) rather than a resistance fighter is as follows:
Except for the Jews, Roma, LGBT, and disabled, it is sometimes hard to define what a Holocaust victim is. Either my grandfather was executed or driven to suicide by Nazis, yet, I have not considered him a Holocaust victim. Some prisoners of war are defined as Holocaust victims, and other prisoners of war are not. The same goes for resistance fighters—not all of them are considered Holocaust victims. For example, those involved in the 20th July plot are not considered Holocaust victims.

The point I am making is it is hard to define who is a victim—aside from the group mentioned earlier—and it appears to be very easy for some people to be definite about the perpetrators. This is a trend that worries me. Many factions say that all and only Germans were perpetrators. I have heard people say no one should visit Germany and everyone should boycott German products.

If you say all perpetrators were Germans, you ignore facts proving many were also victims. You also excuse all other perpetrators from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, The Balkans, and even the United Kingdom, the United States, and other known nations.

You, in particular, ignore victims like Hans Scholl.

Hans Scholl was born on the 22nd of September 1918. He grew up in a liberal Protestant family with four brothers and sisters. He was strongly influenced by the Bündische Jugend, the youth movement. From 1933 on, Hans Scholl was active in the Hitler Youth, climbing to the rank of Fähnleinführer. However, he soon turned his back on National Socialism. He organized a group in Ulm in early 1936 based on the lifestyle and goals of the banned German Youth Group for Boys of November 1, 1929.

The Gestapo imprisoned him for two weeks at the end of 1937. After his labour and military service, Hans Scholl studied medicine in Munich during the 1939 summer semester. In May 1940, he was deployed as a medical orderly on the French front. Hans Scholl was able to continue his degree in April 1941 in the 2nd Student Company of the Army Medical Squadron in Munich, where he met Alexander Schmorell in June 1941. From the fall of 1941, Hans Scholl was in close contact with the Catholic journalist Carl Muth. In June and July 1942, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell distributed the first four White Rose leaflets. With Schmorell and Willi Graf, Hans Scholl was sent to the Soviet Union from the end of July to the end of October 1942 on a front internship. After their return to the University of Munich, he continued his resistance activities. The group’s fifth leaflet was duplicated and distributed by Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie, Alexander Schmorell, and Willi Graf. In February 1943, Scholl and Alexander Schmorell painted slogans such as “Freedom” and “Down with Hitler” on Munich walls, with the support of Willi Graf. Hans and Sophie Scholl placed the sixth and final White Rose leaflet around the Munich University building on the 18th of February 1943, throwing some down into the atrium. They were arrested at the university and sentenced to death four days later. They were executed at the Munich-Stadelheim Prison that same day.

They were all beheaded by guillotine only a few hours after being found guilty. A prison guard later reported: “They bore themselves with marvellous bravery. The whole prison was impressed by them. That is why we risked bringing the three of them together once more—at the last moment before the execution. If our actions had become known, the consequences for us would have been serious. We wanted to let them have a cigarette together before the end. It was just a few minutes that they had, but I believe that it meant a great deal to them.” It was reported that Hans Scholl’s last words were, “Long live freedom!”

The activities of The White Rose resistance consisted of distributing anti-Nazi regime leaflets and cladding anti-Nazi slogans on public buildings.

Holocaust historian Jud Newborn wrote:
“You cannot really measure the effect of this kind of resistance in whether or not X number of bridges were blown up or a regime fell… The White Rose really has a more symbolic value, but that’s a very important value.”

Sources

https://spartacus-educational.com/GERschollH.htm

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/hans-scholl/?no_cache=1

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Traute Lafrenz Page—Forgotten Hero

There is an Iron Maiden song that has the line, “Only the good die young, all the evil seem to live forever.” There was a time when I thought this to be true, but luckily this is not the case. Sometimes the good ones live a long time.

Traute Lafrenz Page died ten days ago at age 103. She was a German resistance fighter and a White Rose member of the White Rose during World War II. Many people will have heard the names of Sophie and Hans Scholl but may not be familiar with Traute Lafrenz (now Page). She was in her early 20s when she joined the White Rose and ultimately to survive the war, even though many White Rose members were executed.

The White Rose never numbered more than a few dozen persons representing one of the first organized protests calling attention to the Holocaust, which eventually claimed the lives of six million Jews, and additionally, Roma, disabled people and others. “We will not be silent,” said one of the leaflets, and “We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

White Rose members from left to right: Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell (hidden behind Hans), Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst

Lafrenz was born on 3 May 1919 in Hamburg to Carl and Hermine Lafrenz, a civil servant and a homemaker; she was the youngest of three sisters. Together with Heinz Kucharski, Lafrenz studied under Erna Stahl at the Lichtwarkschule, a liberal arts school in Hamburg. When coeducation was abolished in 1937, Lafrenz moved to a convent school, from which she and classmate Margaretha Rothe graduated in 1938. Together with Rothe, Lafrenz began to study medicine at the University of Hamburg in the summer semester of 1939. After the semester she worked in Pomerania, where she met Alexander Schmorell who had begun studying in the summer of 1939 at the Hamburg University Medical School but continued his studies from 1939 to 1940 in Munich.

In May 1941, she went to Munich, where she soon met Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst. She took part in many of the White Rose group’s conversations and discussions, including with Kurt Huber.

The White Rose never numbered more than a few dozen persons and represented one of the first organized protests calling attention to the Holocaust, which eventually claimed the lives of six million Jews in addition to Roma, disabled people and others. “We will not be silent,” said one of the leaflets. “We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

In November 1942, Traute Lafrenz brought the third White Rose leaflet to Hamburg. That Christmas, she tried to get hold of a duplicating machine in Vienna. Along with Sophie Scholl, Traute Lafrenz obtained paper and envelopes for dispatching more leaflets in January 1943. She was first interrogated by the Gestapo on 5 March 1943, and then arrested a few days later on 15 March.

After her release, the Gestapo arrested her again at the end of March 1944 and put her into Fuhlsbüttel Gestapo prison in Hamburg with other female prisoners from the Hamburg White Rose group. Traute Lafrenz was then transferred via prisons in Cottbus and Leipzig to Bayreuth. On 15 April 1945 she was liberated by American troops.

After Germany’s defeat, Page emigrated to the United States. There, she met her husband and had four children, and largely stayed quiet about her activities during World War II. According to The New York Times, her children didn’t learn about what she’d done during the conflict until 1970.

Even then, Page largely stayed out of the public eye. It wasn’t until 2019, on her 100th birthday, that she was awarded Germany’s Order of Merit for rebelling “against the dictatorship and the genocide of the Jews.”

“Traute Lafrenz was not at the centre of the White Rose,” Peter Normann Waage, a Norwegian author and journalist who interviewed Page, said according to The New York Times. “She did not physically write any of the leaflets—but she did just about everything else.”

Waage added, “She helped lay the foundation for the revitalization of cultural heritage as a weapon against brutality; she helped make the distribution of the leaflets as practical as possible and helped to spread them.”

She emigrated to San Francisco and worked as a medical resident at St. Joseph’s hospital. In 1948, she married fellow resident physician Vernon Page of Texas. Together they formed a medical practice in tiny Hayfork, California. Vernon Page received further training in ophthalmology, and the growing family settled in Evanston, Illinois. A strong conviction in the reality of the spiritual world inspired Traute’s adult life. She joined the Anthroposophical Society and was an early practitioner of the anthroposophical-inspired holistic medical approach. Like many women in the post-WWII years, Traute was at home with her young family. She liked to say “in those days you met PhDs at the park.” In the 1960s, Traute organized Waldorf summer school programs in Evanston. Waldorf schools work to awaken and enliven recognition of the human spirit through art, poetry, and appreciation of great human advances. Her son, Michael and granddaughter, Emily are Waldorf teachers. In later years, Traute became director of the Esperanza school in Chicago for developmentally delayed children, with a focus on these same principles. Traute always travelled extensively with her family including trips to Italy, Austria, France, Spain, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, Egypt, Mexico, and South America into her 80s and 90s. In 1993, Traute and Vernon moved to Charleston, SC.

On 6 March 2023, Lafrenz died on Yonges Island, South Carolina, at age 103, as the last living member of the White Rose group.

sources

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/charleston/name/traute-page-obituary?id=49800057

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/traute-lafrenz/?no_cache=1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/03/11/lafrenz-white-rose-resistance-dies/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/traute-lafrenz-page

Dietrich Bonhoeffer— Defying Hitler

The picture is a still from a behind-the-scenes shot of the movie God’s Spy. The film was shot in Limerick and is now in the post-production stage. It tells the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church—a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church.

Bonhoeffer’s name is mentioned quite a bit in a book I am reading at this moment. titled, Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule.

Born in Breslau on 4 February 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the sixth child of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer. His father was a neurologist and one with plans to stop Hitler. First, arrest Hitler, next have him examined by Bonhoeffer. This would be to determine if Hitler had brain damage. That plan, unfortunately, never came to fruition.

Two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then lecturer at Berlin University, took to the radio and denounced the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip, the leadership principle, that was merely a synonym for dictatorship. Bonhoeffer’s broadcast was cut off before he could finish. Shortly thereafter, he moved to London to pastor a German congregation while supporting the Confessing Church movement in Germany, a declaration by Lutheran and evangelical pastors and theologians that they would not have their churches co-opted by the Nazi government for propagandistic purposes. Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1935 to run a seminary for the Confessing Church; the government closed it in 1937.

Bonhoeffer’s outspoken political opinions isolated him within his church. Throughout the 1930s many of his activities were focused abroad.

He regularly reported on events in Nazi Germany to ecumenical Protestant leaders in Europe and the United States. In September 1933, he attended the ecumenical World Alliance meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he spoke about the Jewish question, and the delegates passed a resolution condemning Nazi actions against Jews. Bonhoeffer took a copy of the resolution to the German consul in Sofia to prove that Nazi policies were damaging to Germany’s image abroad. The leaders of the German Evangelical Church in Berlin demanded that he withdraw from ecumenical activities; Bonhoeffer refused.

From September 1933 to April 1935, Bonhoeffer served as pastor to several German-speaking congregations in London, leading them to break with the official German church and join the Confessing Church. In April 1935, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, where the Confessing Church was under increasing pressure from the Gestapo. Most church leaders refused to openly oppose the Nazi regime and criticized their colleagues who did. As a result, more radical Confessing Christians found themselves embattled on all sides.

Bonhoeffer began to train young clergy at an illegal Confessing Church seminary, Finkenwalde, which was closed by the Gestapo View This Term in the Glossary in September 1937. Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly travelling throughout Eastern Germany to supervise his students, most of whom were working illegally in small parishes. The Gestapo banned him from Berlin in January 1938 and issued an order forbidding him from public speaking in September 1940.

Pressed into service in the Office for Foreign Affairs/Counter Intelligence of the Armed Forces High Command in 1940, Bonhoeffer repeatedly travelled abroad to contact the Allied governments. His brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi—son of the Hungarian composer Ernő Dohnányi, also was an officer at the Abwehr, the German intelligence service. Dohananyi used his position in the Abwehr to help Jews escape from Germany and worked with German resistance against the Nazi régime.

The first deportations of Berlin Jews to the East occurred on 15 October 1941.

A few days later, Bonhoeffer and Friedrich Perels, a Confessing Church lawyer, wrote a memo giving details of the deportations. The memo was sent to foreign contacts, as well as, trusted German military officials in the hope that it might move them to action. Bonhoeffer also became peripherally involved in “Operation Seven.” It was a plan to help Jews escape Germany by giving them papers as foreign agents. After the Gestapo uncovered the “Operation Seven” funds that had been sent abroad for the emigrants, Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi were arrested in April 1943.

For one and a half years, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned at Tegel Prison and was awaiting trial. There he continued his work in religious outreach among his fellow prisoners and guards. Sympathetic guards helped smuggle his letters out of prison to Eberhard Bethge and others. The uncensored letters were posthumously published in Letters and Papers from Prison. One of those guards, a corporal named Knobloch, even offered to help him escape from the prison and disappear with him. Plans were made for the disappearance, but in the end, Bonhoeffer declined it, fearing Nazi retribution against his family, especially his brother Klaus and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi, who was also imprisoned.

After the failure of the 20 July Plot on Hitler’s life in 1944 and the discovery in September 1944 of secret Abwehr documents relating to the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer was accused of association with the conspirators, although he had been in prison when the attempt happened. He was transferred from the military prison Tegel in Berlin, where he had been held for 18 months, to the detention cellar of the house prison of the Reich Security Main Office, the Gestapo’s high-security prison. In February 1945, he was secretly moved to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and finally to Flossenbürg Concentration Camp.

The following hymn was written by him in the concentration camp, shortly before his death.

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
And confidently waiting, come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
Still, evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
With bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us
The joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be Yours alone.”

On 9 April 1945, he was hanged with other conspirators. His brother Klaus Bonhoeffer was also executed for resistance activities, as were his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher.

There is so much more that could be said about this man. So many books have been written about him and now a movie had been made about this Hero. All that is left for me to say is happy birthday, Herr Bonhoeffer.

sources

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dietrich-Bonhoeffer/Ethical-and-religious-thought

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dietrich-bonhoeffer

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/defiant-theologian-dietrich-bonhoeffer-is-hanged

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/dietrich-bonhoeffer/?no_cache=1

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/133.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26237514/?ref_=tt_mv_close

All Quiet on the Western Front

I watched All Quiet on the Western Front, last night. I thought that November 11 would be the perfect date to watch a World War I movie. It is a very powerful retelling of the story. Although I thoroughly liked the movie, this is not going to be a review of it, suffice to say I do recommend it.

This post is going to be about the man who wrote the book, Im Westen nichts Neues, which was translated into English as All Quiet on the Western front Erich Maria Remarque was born as Erich Paul Remark, his life was everything but quiet. it is also a reflection of how little regard the Nazis had for their World War I heroes.

Remarque was born on June 22nd, 1898, in Westphalia. After a local school and university education, he was drafted aged 18 and sent to Flanders on June 12, 1917.

Remarque was wounded five times within a month of being on the western front, the last during the third battle of Ypres. He began writing in a military hospital about his experiences, supplementing them with stories of fellow injured soldiers.

Remarque was the third of four children of Peter and Anna. His siblings were his older sister Erna, older brother Theodor Arthur (who died in early childhood), and younger sister Elfriede. The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he published All Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and to dissociate himself from his earlier novel Die Traumbude (which he started writing at the age of sixteen and completed, but it was not published, until 1920). His grandfather had changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark in the 19th century.

In 1929, Remarque scored his greatest success with All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel, a lasting tribute to Germany’s “lost generation” that perished in the Great War, became an immediate international bestseller. In Germany alone in 1929, the book sold almost one million copies. It was translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, Chinese, and Dutch.

All Quiet on the Western Front earned Remarque accolades generally from the liberal and leftist press for the work’s pacifist stance. The Nazis and conservative nationalists immediately called it an assault on Germany’s honor, a piece of Marxist propaganda, and the work of a traitor.

That same year, German-born Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, acquired the rights to make a film of the book. In May 1930, the American film premiered in Los Angeles and won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. That summer, audiences in France, Britain, and Belgium flocked to the film and it received popular acclaim.

Nearly immediately the Hollywood-made movie ran into trouble in Germany. When it was proposed for showing, a representative of the German Ministry of Defense demanded that its screening be rejected on the grounds that it damaged the country’s image and shed a bad light on the German military. In response, the Berlin censorship office requested Laemmle to edit the film, which was done. Remarque’s former boss, the press and film magnate, and outspoken German nationalist, Alfred Hugenberg, indicated that because of the movie’s alleged anti-German bias it would not be shown in any of his theaters. He subsequently petitioned German president, Paul von Hindenburg, to ban the film.

In December 1930, when the edited and dubbed version of the film was shown to the general public in Berlin, the Nazis sabotaged the event. The Party’s leader in Berlin and its propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, organized a riot to disrupt the showing. Outside, SA Stormtroopers intimidated moviegoers, while inside they released stink bombs and mice and harangued the audience. At subsequent showings, the Nazis carried out violent protests. In response to these actions and conservative attacks on the film, the government banned the film. Liberals and socialists condemned the action, but the prohibition lasted until September 1931, when Laemmle produced a more censored version for German audiences.

Remarque left Germany for Switzerland in 1932.

Once in power, Goebbels banned all Remarque’s works, stripped him of his citizenship, and let his Nazi rumor mill claim the author’s birth name, Remark (his grandfather dropped the French spelling), was a reversal of his real, Jewish, name: Kramer. On May 10, 1933, pro-Nazi students consigned his works to the flames during the fiery book-burning spectacles staged throughout the country. Remarque’s writing was publicly declared as unpatriotic and was banned in Germany. Copies were removed from all libraries and restricted from being sold or published anywhere in the country. The 1930s version of cancel culture.

In 1943, the Nazis arrested his youngest sister, German: Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a trial at the notorious Volksgerichtshof (Hitler’s extra-constitutional “People’s Court”), she was found guilty of “undermining morale” for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, “Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen” (“Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – you, however, will not escape us.”) Elfriede was beheaded on 16 December 1943. The bill of 495.80 Reichsmarks was sent to her surviving sister, Erna. Remarque later said that his sister had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance activities.

In exile, Remarque was unaware of his sister Elfriede’s fate until after the war. He would dedicate his 1952 novel Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben) to her. The dedication was omitted in the German version of the book, reportedly because he was still seen as a traitor by some Germans

In 1944, Remarque wrote a report for America’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the country’s foreign intelligence organization and the forerunner to today’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In it, he urged the Allies to adopt a systematic policy for re-educating the German population after the war. Germans, he believed, had to be exposed to Nazi crimes and evils of militarism.

When you watch the movie, and I hope you will, or read the book then please remember it is not just a bit of cultural history, but also something that is still current. That hate has never left, it just came back in different configurations.

(Many thanks to John Davis for pointing out the story to me, and Jackie Frant for doing some research on it)

sources

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-unquiet-life-erich-maria-remarque-and-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-1.3772230

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/erich-maria-remarque-in-depth

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/erich-maria-remarque-born

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque#Early_life

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Hans Scholl

When you look at the picture, you would assume it is the mugshot of a hardened criminal. But you couldn’t be further from the truth. The picture is of Hans Scholl. He was arrested and later murdered for exposing the criminals that arrested him.

There wasn’t an awful lot of resistance in Germany against the Nazi regime, but there were some groups who actively defied the Nazis. One of those groups was the ‘White Rose’, Hans and his sister Sophie were the founders of that group.

Born on September 22 1918, Hans Scholl was the typical Aryan ideal. In 1933, he joined the Hitler Youth and quickly became a squad leader. However he soon grew disillusioned with the Nazi party. In 1937 a former member of his group, Ernest Reden, confessed to a homosexual relationship with him. Hans was arrested and kept in solitary confinement before admitting the allegations were true. Hans made a positive impact on the judge, who dismissed the choice to join the youth groups as the “youthful exuberance” and “obstinate personality” of a “headstrong young man.” The judge then dismissed the homosexual allegations as a “youthful failing.” Although he was charged under “Paragraph 175”, the paragraph in Nazi law that criminalized homosexual behavior,Hans was allowed to leave the trial with a clean slate. Ernest Reden, on the other hand, was sentenced to three months prison and three months in a concentration camp for the relationship.

Paragraph 175 was only abolished in 1994.

In the summer of 1940 Scholl was sent as a member of the medical corps that went with the German Army invading France. Although he observed little of the actual fighting as he was working at a field hospital where four hundred soldiers were being treated. As a medic he assisted during leg amputations and other operations. He was based in the town of Saint-Quentin and felt guilty about living in requisitioned houses. He told his parents in a letter: “I liked it better when we slept on straw. What am I – a decent person or a robber?”

Scholl returned to his studies in Munich. He attended classes at the university, listened to lectures at various clinics around the city, and attended the wounded soldiers who had returned from fighting on the front-line. He told his sister Inge Scholl: “Going from bed to bed to hold out one’s hand to people in pain is deeply satisfying. It’s the only time I’m really happy. But it’s madness just the same… If it weren’t for this senseless war there would be no wounded to be cared for in the first place.”

Hans was again enrolled in the military service in the spring of 1941 as a medic in the Wehrmacht. After his experiences at the Eastern Front, having learned about mass murder in Poland and the Soviet Union, Scholl and one of his friends, Alexander Schmorell, felt compelled to take action.

In 1942, Hans ,Sophie and others founded the non-violent underground protest movement called The White Rose. From the end of June until mid-July 1942, they wrote the first four leaflets. Quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, the German poets, they appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated the authors themselves. These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.

Hans also was responsible for graffiti on public buildings which read ‘Down With Hitler’ and ‘Hitler the Mass Murderer.’ The siblings continued to distribute the leaflets until they were apprehended in 1943 after throwing dozens of fliers from a university window.

“Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals. Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid, calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”

— 2nd leaflet of the White Rose.

The Scholls and another member of White Rose, Christoph Probst, were scheduled to stand trial before the Volksgerichtshof—the Nazi “People’s Court” notorious for its unfair political trials, which more often than not ended with a death sentence—on 22 February 1943. They were found guilty of treason. Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, sentenced them to death. The three were executed the same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. Sophie went under the guillotine first, followed by Hans and then Christoph. While Sophie and Christoph were silent as they died, Hans yelled “es lebe die Freiheit!” (long live freedom) as the blade fell.

IN THE NAME OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE in the action against

Hans Fritz Scholl, Munich, born at Ingersheim, 22 September 1918,
Sophia Magdalena Scholl, Munich, born at Forchtenberg, 9 May 1921,
Christoph Hermann Probst, of Aldrans bei Innsbruck, born at Murnau, 6 November 1919, now in investigative custody regarding treasonous assistance to the enemy, preparing to commit high treason, and weakening of the nation’s armed security, the People’s Court first Senate, pursuant to the trial held on 22 February 1943, in which the officers were:
President of the People’s Court Dr. Freisler, Presiding,Director of the Regional Judiciary Stier, SS Group Leader Breithaupt, SA Group Leader Bunge, State Secretary and SA Group Leader Koglmaier, and representing the Attorney General to the Supreme Court of the Reich, Reich Attorney Weyersberg,
[We]find: That the accused have in time of war by means of leaflets called for the sabotage of the war effort and armaments and for the overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most vulgarly defamed the Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation.
On this account they are to be punished by death.
Their honor and rights as citizens are forfeited for all time.

— Translation made by Berlin Documents Center HQ US Army Berlin Command of 1943 Decree against the “White Rose” group.

Something that is often overlooked is the fact that Hans had 4 more siblings aside from Sophie.

Inge Aicher-Scholl (1917–1998) she wrote a book about the White Rose after the war.

Elisabeth Scholl Hartnagel (1920–2020), married Sophie’s long-term boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel

Werner Scholl (1922–1944) missing in action and presumed dead in June 1944. In 1942, Werner was sent out to the Russian front, where, by chance, he was stationed near Hans. The two were able to see each other fairly often.

Thilde Scholl (1925–1926)

Robert Scholl was a politician and the father of Hans and Sophie Scholl. He was a critic of the Nazi Party before, during and after the Nazi regime, and was twice sent to prison for his criticism of Nazism. He was mayor of Ingersheim 1917–1920, mayor of Forchtenberg 1920–1930 and lord mayor of Ulm 1945–1948, and co-founded the All-German People’s Party in 1952.

On 27 February 1943, five days after the execution of his children Hans and Sophie as members of the White Rose, Scholl was sentenced to 18 months in prison for listening to enemy radio broadcasts.

Although this post is titled ‘Hans Scholl’ we should not forget the sacrifices made by the other family members.

Hans Scholl would have been 104 today. In wikipedia he is called an activist, but he was much more then that.

sources

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/hans-scholl/?no_cache=1

https://legacyprojectchicago.org/person/hans-scholl

https://spartacus-educational.com/GERschollH.htm

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/paragraph-175-and-the-nazi-campaign-against-homosexuality

The Kreisau Circle

Many people assume there was no resistance in Germany against the Nazi regime, and to be honest, there wasn’t much. Nevertheless, some were relentless in trying to end that regime.

There were dozens of assassination attempts on the life of Hitler. The most famous was the 20 July plot. Some of those involved in that plot weren’t necessarily anti-Nazi but leaning towards it based on the way the war was going. I, therefore, think it is a mistake that all should be considered to be heroes.

One of the men was Adam von Trott zu Solz. He was one of the leaders of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested within days, placed on trial and found guilty. Sentenced to death on 15 August 1944 by the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court), he was hanged in Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison on 26 August. He had also been a member of the Kreisau Circle.

From 1940 on, men and women opposed the regime but with a variety of social backgrounds, values, and values met for talks in Berlin, on the Kreisau estate in Silesia, and in Munich. The driving force behind it was the friends Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg. Catholic and Protestant Christian clergy, Social De

The Kreisau Circle aimed to draft basic principles for an intellectual, political, and social new order after the end of the Third Reich. They prepared themselves for the time afterwards through conferences, discussions, and memoranda. They hoped to provide a new foundation for human coexistence and the state. Questions of the state structure, the restriction of state power, the economy, the church, and education were discussed in depth. Particularly important was to embed Germany in a new European postwar order.

Although the circle did not promote violent overthrow of the regime, their planning was considered by the Nazis to be treasonous as it rested on the assumption that Germany would lose the war.

The members of the Kreisau Circle recognized early on not only the devastation of the cities but also the horrific destruction in the minds and hearts of the people (Moltke). They knew that a functioning democracy required both participation and a sense of responsibility to its citizens. As early as 1939, Moltke had outlined his concept of democracy in a text on Small Communities:
“Only those who have carried some form of responsibility in smaller communities will have the right sense of responsibility towards a larger community, the state or any other large communities …”

The participation of women in the Kreisau Circle discussion was often limited to the presence of their husbands. Freya von Moltke, a founding participant, was cut off from The Circle’s correspondence following her husband Helmuth von Moltke’s arrest.

There are also no known female members who—were not married to a male member. However, despite these limitations, women played an integral role in the Kreisau Circle. Margrit von Trotha, for example, utilized her skills as an economist to partake in the plans for Germany’s future economy. In addition, in Marion Yorck von Wartenburg’s memoirs, she refers to The Circle as Our Group, indicating that she was a part of The Circle’s membership and discourse. A known list of female members of The Circle included: Freya von Moltke (lawyer), Marion Yorck von Wartenburg (lawyer), Margrit von Trotha (economist), Rosemarie Reichwein (physician/therapist), and Irene Yorck von Wartenburg.

The group disagreed on several different issues. Whereas Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmuth von Moltke were strongly anti-racist, others, such as Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, believed that Jews should be eliminated from public service and evinced unmistakably anti-Semitic prejudice. As late as 1938, he repeated his call to remove all Jews from government and the civil service. His biographer, Albert Krebs, attests that Moltke was never able to rid himself of feelings of alienation toward the intellectual and material world of Jewry. He was appalled to learn of the crimes perpetrated against the Jewish population in the occupied Soviet Union, despite this, it was not the major factor in his determination to see Hitler removed.

In the autumn of 1943, Helmuth von Moltke learned from an informant that a Gestapo spy had discovered an anti-Nazi salon in Berlin and that there would be a round-up of all participants. Moltke warned his friend, who had been present at the salon, Otto Kiep, of the round-ups.[2] Kiep, former German Consul General in New York and member of the counterintelligence department under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris failed to escape and was arrested in January 1944. The Gestapo later discovered that von Moltke had warned him of the arrests, and Helmuth was then arrested on 19 January 1944. This left the Kreisau Circle without one of its integral members. Freya von Moltke was also ousted from the group following Helmuth’s arrest, as the members were worried she would be interrogated. During this time, Yorck struggled to maintain the cohesion of the group. However, this was not the death knell of The Circle because the Gestapo was not yet aware of the resistance. Before the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler, Helmuth von Moltke was treated fairly in prison and allowed to correspond with his wife, Freya.

The mass round-up of suspects after the July 1944 Bomb Plot and the subsequent torture of these suspects led to the Gestapo gaining the names of many plotters or supposed plotters—including men in the Kreisau Circle. Yorck von Wartenburg was arrested as part of the July Bomb Plot, tried, found guilty and executed in August 1944. Von Moltke had already been arrested (January 1944) and was tried before the People’s Court. He was found guilty of treason and executed in January 1945.

Sources

https://www.kreisau.de/en/kreisau/kreisau-circle/

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/topics/12-the-kreisau-circle/

https://spartacus-educational.com/Kreisau_Circle.htm

Kreisau Circle

Letter from a Bishop to the Reichsminister

No one can deny that the Roman Catholic Church, and especially the Vatican have a lot to answer for when it comes to its part in the Holocaust.

However, some Catholic clergymen did speak out to the Nazi regime and many of them paid the ultimate price.

Antonius Hilfrich was a German priest and Roman Catholic Bishop of Limburg, Germany. Amid 1941 Catholic protests over Nazi euthanasia led by Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Münster, Hilfrich wrote to Franz Gürtner, the German Minister for Justice, to denounce the murders, calling them an “injustice that cries out to heaven…”

Below is the translated version of that letter.

The Bishop of Limburg

“Limburg/fiahm, 13 August 1941

To the Reich Minister of Justice
Berlin

Regarding the report submitted on 16 July (sub. ZV, pp.6-7) by the Chairman of the Fulda Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Dr Bertram, I consider it my duty to present the following as a concrete illustration of the destruction of the so-called “useless life.”

About eight kilometres from Limburg in the little town of Hadamar, on a hill overlooking the town, there is an institution which had formerly served various purposes and of late had been used as a nursing home. This institution was renovated and furnished as a place in which, by consensus of opinion, the above-mentioned euthanasia has been systematically practised for months— approximately since February 1941. The fact is, of course, known beyond the administrative district of Wiesbaden because death certificates from the Hadamar-Moenchberg Registry are sent to the home communities. (Moenchberg is the name of this institution because it was a *Franciscan monastery prior to its secularization in 1803.)

Several times a week buses arrive in Hadamar with a considerable number of such victims. Schoolchildren in the vicinity know this vehicle and say: “There comes the murder box again.” After the arrival of the vehicle, the citizens of Hadamar watch the smoke rise out of the chimney and are tortured by the ever-present thought of depending on the direction of the wind.

The effect of the principles at work here is that children call each other names and say, “You’re crazy; you’ll be sent to the baking oven in Hadamar.” Those who do not want to marry, or find no opportunity, say, “Marry, never! Bring children into the world so they can be put into the bottling machine!” You hear old folks say, “Don’t send me to a state hospital! When the feeble-minded have been finished off, the next useless eaters whose turn will come are the old people.”

All God-fearing men consider this destruction of helpless beings a crass injustice. And if anybody says that Germany cannot win the war, if there is yet a just God, these expressions are not the result of a lack of love for the Fatherland but of a deep concern for our people. The population cannot grasp the fact that systematic actions carried out in accordance with paragraph 211 of the German Penal Code are punishable by death. High authority as a moral concept has suffered a severe shock as a result of these happenings. The official notice that N. N. died of a contagious disease and, therefore, his body had to be burned, no longer finds credence, and official notices of this kind which are no longer believed have further undermined the ethical value of the concept of authority.

Officials of the Secret State Police, it is said, are trying to suppress discussion of the Hadamar occurrences by means of severe threats. In the interest of public peace, this may be well intended. But the knowledge, the conviction, and the indignation of the population cannot be changed by it; the conviction will be increased with the bitter realization that discussion is prohibited by threats, but that the actions themselves are not prosecuted under penal law.

I beg you most humbly, Herr Reich Minister, in the sense of the report of the Episcopate of 16 July of this year, to prevent further transgressions of the Fifth Commandment of God.

[Signed]
DR.HTLFBICH£

11 days later on 24 August 1941 Hitler ordered the cessation of Nazi Germany’s systematic T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and the disabled due to protests, although killings continue for the remainder of the war.

source.

Letter from Bishop of Limburg to the Reich Minister of Justice

Karl Amadeus Hartmann— Protesting Against the Nazi Regime Through Music

Today marks the 117th birthday of Karl Amadeus Hartmann. He was born on 2 August 1905 in Munich and came into contact with art and music at an early stage. He studied trombone and composition at the Staatliche Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich from 1924 to 1929.

He hated Nazism and Hitler and anything that ranked extreme socialism and communism. A fellow composer, Udo Zimmermann, said about Hartmann, “His concept of life oriented towards humanity is inscribed in all his scores. A warning in view of the atrocities of this world, but also resistance from the heart: revocation of the spirits, love and life.”

His compositions were often politically charged, as Hartmann was a socialist who staunchly opposed the Nazis and fascism. During World War II, Hartmann half-poisoned himself to avoid military conscription.

He voluntarily withdrew completely from musical life in Germany during the Nazi era, while remaining in Germany, and refused to allow his works to be played there. An early symphonic poem, “Miserae” (1933–1934, first performed in Prague, 1935) was condemned by the Nazi regime but his work continued to be performed, and his fame grew abroad. A number of Hartmann’s compositions show the profound effect of the political climate. His “Miserae” (1933–34) was dedicated to his friends…who sleep for all eternity; we do not forget you (Dachau, 1933–34), referring to Dachau Concentration Camp, and was condemned by the Nazis. His “Piano Sonata 27 April 1945,” is about the thousands of prisoners from Dachau, whom Hartmann witnessed being led away from Allied forces at the end of the war.

Just three days before the liberation of the Dachau camp, the SS forced approximately 7,000 prisoners on a death march from Dachau, south to Tegernsee. During the six-day death march, anyone who could not keep up or continued was shot. Many died of exposure, hunger, or exhaustion. American forces liberate the Dachau Concentration Camp on 29 April 1945. In early May 1945, American troops liberate the surviving prisoners from the death march to Tegernsee.

Solly Ganor, a survivor said about the march, “We could see the furtive parting of curtains as German civilians peered out at us. To our surprise, a few of them came out and tried to offer us some bread, but the result was disastrous. Hundreds of starving inmates would descend on the benefactor, often knocking him or her down. The bread was immediately torn to pieces, and the guards set upon the mob. Each time this happened several more bodies were left by the side of the road.”

After the fall of the Nazi regime, Hartmann was one of the few prominent surviving anti-fascists in Bavaria whom the postwar Allied administration could appoint to a position of responsibility. In 1945, he became a dramaturge at the Bavarian State Opera and there, as one of the few internationally recognized figures who had survived untainted by any collaboration with the Nazi regime, he became a vital figure in the rebuilding of (West) German musical life. Perhaps his most notable achievement was the “Musica Viva” concert series, which he founded and ran for the rest of his life in Munich.

He died on 5 December 1963 in Munich.

Although Hartmann is one of the greatest German composers of the 20th century, he is forgotten in the English-speaking world.

sources

https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/hartmann-karl-amadeus/

https://archive.ph/20130104153710/http://www.schott-music.com/shop/persons/featured/8399/index.html#selection-559.0-559.208

ON THIS DAY | German Composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann Born in 1905

Death march monument

They Came First…

Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem “First they came…”

Although he was an opponent of the Nazi regime. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements. But after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Hitler’s interference in the Protestant Church. He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps.

This is the poem he wrote, its words are still relevant now.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

source

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

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