„Mért ne legyek tisztességes! Kiterítenek úgyis.”

Ha csak azt nézzük, mit ért el Sophie Scholl és a Fehér Rózsa szervezet, az eredmény elkeserítő. Lelkes amatőrök, akik pár szórólappal próbálták megmenteni a világot – mégpedig micsoda szórólapokkal! Csupa filozofálás, moralizálás, citátumok Goethétől, Schillertől, Arisztotelésztől… nehéz elképzelni, hogy mondjuk a sarki hentes egy árva mukkot is értett volna mindabból, amit Hitler és a rezsim szemére hánytak. Igazuk volt, nagy ügy, de ér valamit az olyan igazság, amit a sarki hentes nem ért? Aligha rövidítették meg akár csak egy perccel is a háborút, és mivel ez volt a céljuk, mondhatjuk, kudarcot vallottak. Még saját egyetemi közegüket sem váltották meg – feljelentőjük, Jakob Schmid gondnok úr a müncheni egyetem aulájában lelkes ováció közepette vette át a nyomravezetőnek járó vérdíjat. (Jakob Schmid, jegyezzük meg ezt a nevet: a spiclik és feljelentgetők védőszentje ő, az ember, aki a nála tisztábbakat örömmel kínálja fel étkül a hatalomnak. Lesz még szobra a Nemzetvédelmi Egyetem kertjében.) Mindaz, amit a Fehér Rózsa elért, a tagok kivégzése után füstté vált és elillant a brutális hitlerizmus közbelépésekor. Mintha sosem lett volna. Csak némi frusztráció maradt, meg az önmentegetés, ami még jó húsz évig uralta a német közbeszédet, a Brunhilde Pomsel – Goebbels titkárnője – által is megfogalmazott vélemény: hogy sajnáljuk persze Schollt és barátait (hisz oly fiatalok voltak), de hát miért nem maradtak kussban? Miért nem lapítottak, mint mindenki más? Ha meghúzták volna magukat, élő németek maradtak volna. Tisztességben megőszült, élő németek.

Csak hát az van, hogy néha nem lehet tisztességben megőszülni.

És mégis, minden reménytelensége ellenére ez egy felemelő kötet. Mert arra tanít, hogy az ember nem azért kell jót cselekedjen, mert cserébe bármi jutalmat remél. Hanem azért, mert egyszerűen nem tehet mást. Mert ez az imperatívusz, az egyetlen hiteles, szuverén választás: jót kell tenni. Ezek a srácok, Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell és a többiek a keleti fronton lementek az oroszok kalyibáiba, népdalokat énekeltek velük (katonanyelven ezt fraternizálásnak mondják), szembeszálltak a hadifoglyokat bántalmazó náci őrökkel, ellátmányukat odaadták egy csontsovány nőnek, aki sárga csillagot viselt – aztán hazamentek, és röplapokat osztogattak. Csoda, hogy nem kapták el őket már előbb a Gestapo emberei, vagy akár a partizánok. Schollék talán pontosan tudták, hogy ennek az egésznek nem sok hozadéka van, ha a háború egészét nézzük. Talán nevezhetjük őket ezért naivnak, idealistának. De ha azt vesszük, mit őriztek meg önmagukból – az életük árán –, olyasvalamit, amit a német nép (szinte) egésze fityingekért elvesztegetett… nos, talán nem is döntöttek rosszul.

Ez a könyv sok szempontból felrúgja a klasszikus történelmi munkák szabályait. Érzékenyebb, személyesebb, mint amit megszokhattunk. De jó okkal az – gondolom én –, mert nem az az elsődleges célja, hogy bemutassa, mi történt, hanem hogy érzékeltesse ennek az egésznek a súlyát. Hogy láttassa magát a Poklot – hisz minden embernek, aki szabadon akar gondolkodni, a totális rezsim a Pokol, mert ott a keze, a szája, a szíve, a méhe, az agya nem az övé, hanem a nemzet tart rá igényt. Scholl és társai ki akartak szabadulni a rendszer fojtóhurkából, és ezért az életükkel fizettek. De ha a másik opció az, hogy nincs saját kezünk, szánk, szívünk, méhünk és agyunk, akkor ez – meglehet – nem is olyan nagy ár.

A hős nem az, aki egy tömeg részeként kockára teszi az életét: ő csak egy csavar a rendszerben. A hős az, aki ki mer lépni a rendszerből, és azt mondja: nem teszem meg, mert megtenni nem szabad. ( )

A bit hard to categorise this book, part history part dramatisation. One of those book which are hard to `love` but have to read. Everyone has to know the life and deeds of those who raised their voices in the middle of a world burning and protested against the inhumanity and barbarism of the fascist state. Were they idealistic and naive? Partly true but that`s one of the reasons their names will be remembered forever. ( )

Sad and pathetic. A small group of German students led (more or less) by Hans Scholl and opposed (more or less) to Nazism picked the name “The White Rose” to describe themselves. Nobody’s quite sure where the name came from; best guess is a novel of that name about peasant exploitation in Mexico. At any rate, being college students, they decided the best way they could overthrow the Third Reich was by writing long, pedantic leaflets full of quotations from various philosophers and distributing them on their campus. This was more or less the same thing students from my generation did with Marxist propaganda. Those students of my generation went on to become investment bankers and tax attorneys; the kids of the “White Rose” went on to be guillotined by the Gestapo.


Sophie herself was, alas, something of a nonentity. She was the only female in the group so (it being the 1940s) they made her the secretary. Did she join because her brother was the leader? Because she had a teenage crush on one or more of the other members, as so many of the Marxist groupies of my college years did? Because she had an actual belief in the cause? Combination thereof? Not enough data to say. Later Germans, desperate to demonstrate that they weren’t all Nazis, seized on The White Rose as proof and, in a 2003 poll of the greatest Germans of all time, picked Hans and Sophie Scholl as 4th. (The whole list – rather telling):


* Konrad Adenauer

* Martin Luther

* Karl Marx

* Hans und Sophie Scholl

* Willy Brandt

* Johann Sebastian Bach

* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

* Johannes Gutenberg

* Otto von Bismarck

* Albert Einstein


It was a sure thing they would get caught; to add insult to injury it wasn’t a crack Gestapo counterintelligence team that picked them up, but a college janitor, who grabbed them for littering when they dumped a box of leaflets off a balcony. By all accounts they went to their deaths bravely enough. There are a couple of pictures of Sophie; in one she’s serious and rather sad looking. In another she’s seeing off a bunch of friends as they head for the Eastern Front, looking young and brave in their new feldgrau uniforms. Sophie is standing in the back, looking over a fence, and pensively holding a white rose. She was 22 when she was beheaded.


The White Rose didn’t even cause anyone in the Third Reich to blink. It’s unlikely that anybody even bothered to read the pretentious leaflets, since being caught with one would at the least lead to an unpleasant experience. Instead of a modern version of the 300 standing at their equivalent of Thermopylae, “The White Rose” comes across as a bunch of feckless adolescents, of the sort who in later generations would have the last words “Hey, watch this” when about to win a Darwin Award. Still, they did something – even if it was ineffective and sophomoric – and even if its only effect was to allow later Germans to pat themselves on the back and say “See, we did fight back”.


A good read; there’s not that much information about The White Rose but authors Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn did yeoman service in tracking it down. Multiple appendices give the actual text (translated) of The White Rose leaflets, plus articles from German and foreign newspapers. An earlier version was titled Shattering the German Night.
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rue german martyrs of ww2
By sally tarbox on 2 May 2011
Format: Paperback
in Britain, we tend to imagine the Germans all went along enthusiastically with the Nazis, from joining the Hitler youth, to attending rallies. This book shows another side to the German people, telling the story of siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends who ultimately went to the guillotine for writing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, urging passive resistance. It was also interesting to see how much covert support they had from those around them, even those who weren't members of the White Rose group. A terrible book but one that makes you see a new side to Germany of that era. ( )

This book is more about The White Rose resistance movement than about Sophie Scholl. Nevertheless, it did follow her experience, her brother's experience, and the organization that printed leaflets crying out against the wrongness of the Nazis.

There are other examples from outside the White Rose of resistance against the social and political will of the Nazi regime. Eugenic cleansing was halted to some small degree after a Catholic bishop denounced the killing of people considered unfit from nursing homes and asylums. We must not forget the holocaust. Nor should we forget that while many people did nothing some Germans were voices crying out against the evil in their nation.

The story of Sophie is the slender thread on which the author ties together the story of the White Rose. And her musings in her letters and diaries are unusually deep. She was well educated and from an intellectual upbringing. Some learned people are very academic and scholarly about what they know and believe. And that "knowing" and understanding is what drives and motivates them. And some academic people are driven to learn by the desire to experience life from new or fresh perspectives. Sophie was one of the latter. Her letters often talk about experiencing nature or the beauty of the world along with deep musings on the ethics of human behavior.
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I just recently saw the film "Sophie Scholl, the Last Days" and was so taken by this true story that I immediately borrowed the book from my local library. It is an almost unbelievable story about standing up for what you believe in against everything, including your own death. But also, it's a story seldom heard about how many Germans were rebelling against the war and the Hitler regime, how many wanted the war to end and were willing to risk their lives to do what they could to see the insanity end. It portrays the Germans as much imprisoned (and many were sent to work camps, concentration camps, or were simply shot on the spot at the whim of a soldier) as those the Germans sought to conquer. You can clearly see, as they did, that world war 2 was a self-destructive illogical war led by someone who didn't care if all of Germany died, strangely, in his quest to conquer Europe.

The book includes in the appendices all of the 4 leaflets that were anonymously distributed by the White Rose, and others written after the death of Hans and Sophie Scholl, and the others in their small group. It also includes a detailed index and bibliography, as well as newspaper articles from American when the story finally leaked out. It's a thought-provoking book, one that would do well for a book discussion group. ( )

I watched the movie Sophie Scholl a couple years ago and, I'll admit it, I was so moved I cried. I knew there had to be books about the true story behind the movie, and found this book secondhand. It then promptly became lost in the shuffle and giant pile of other books I've read since. I wish I had read it sooner.

The book follows the very true and very amazing story of the White Rose, a group of university students who wrote and distributed leaflets calling Germans to revolt against Hitler during WWII. While focusing on Sophie and her brother Hans, it also explores the backgrounds of all the other major members of the group and their contributions to the writing and editing of the leaflets, as well as the dangers of distributing them. These students embodied fearlessness, representing the indignation of people oppressed by their government and the ideal reaction to such oppression. I couldn't help but feel both empowered by reading this book and awkward as I wondered if I could ever be as bold as these students, how I would act in a similar situation.

The nice thing about reading books about history is that the reader usually knows what's going to happen next. Having watched the movie, I knew they would be caught by the Gestapo, and after a short trial, quietly and immediately executed. Even if I had forgotten the ending the book explains their executions in the preface, and had I skipped that, I'd learn a summary of the entire story by page 10. So if there was any chance of any anger for my supposed spoiler, I hope the book ruining it so quickly as well spares me! What I was surprised about most as I read the book was how little the movie strayed from the truth. The true story seems so unbelievable and dramatic, there was little to exaggerate for the big screen. There is a section of photos in the center of the book, among them a picture of the back of Sophie's indictment, where she had boldly written the word "freedom"(but in the German "freiheit," of course). If that doesn't seem dramatic enough, there is Hans Scholl shouting "Long live freedom!" right before his beheading, a moment in the movie that I was certain was added in for the benefit of the audience.

Even after the narration of the story and all the trials of the rest of the members is over, there is the series of appendixes, where the texts of many documents concerning the trial are translated to English to read. There are all of the leaflets the White Rose wrote, along with a seventh that had only made it to its rough draft before the arrest. There are documents of their "crimes" as documented by the German government of the time, as well as the information they had gathered about the situation at the time. There are also articles that had been published in newspapers about their executions, as well as one from The New York Times that was originally published in 1943. I also found myself staring at the picture of their duplicating machine among the appendixes, thinking of the descriptions of the sleepless nights spent copying leaflets.

This book is for anyone interested in the history of WWII, a story with a very strong female character, or a suspense story filled with surprising details and bold characters. ( )

Not the most exciting book I've read but that's perhaps because it is so true to life. As feeble as these attempts at resistance appear gazing back more than fifty years. The courage of the people in the book does give food for thought at the price of freedom, and in today's world are we willing to pay that sort of price. ( )

This is a good overview of probably the best know small resistance group in Germany. ( )

Probably the best English-language account of the White Rose story. If there is one criticism is it does not explore the religious underpinnings to their actions. Otherwise spot-on, and manages to avoid some of the more egregious sentimentality/hagiography. ( )

Leadership Calgary, Resistance