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Aug. 30, 1995 - Bill Cooper
56:25
Resistance Stand Against Socialism
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Time Text
I don't know.
Oh, my God. my God.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
Good evening.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm Dave.
And I'm Michelle.
Would you start us off Annie?
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Well folks, busy Bill Cooper has asked us to sit in for him this evening and we've got some very interesting, important, and useful information for you tonight.
So don't go away, we'll be right back.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is a group of boys who have come up out of nowhere in the past six months to become the talk of the nation.
It's Spike Jonze and his city slickers with Kyle Grayson singing Hitler's national anthem, The Fewer Space.
The Fewer Space.
He ain't a beauteous babe, not too long ago.
His face ain't so beauteous.
He ain't a beauteous babe.
Thank you.
Be wild, dear.
I ain't a good place.
It's a good place.
In every long this place.
Be wild, dear.
I ain't a good place.
I mean, that's a superman.
There you go, superman.
Yeah, I'm here.
Super, duper, superman.
If you want to make a round of dreams, if you want to make a round of dreams, I'm not the man.
Just believe it.
But be great.
Good to order.
I hit the world to order.
Every one born day.
We're long to give the faith.
But be great for the world to order.
And the purer said.
He hit the master, right?
He held.
He held.
He gained the purest faith.
Not to love the purer.
He tried to train, so he held.
He held.
He gained the purest faith.
Thank you.
Thank you.
During World War II, only a few Germans actively resisted the Nazi regime.
But what is resistance?
Is it participating in a plan to overthrow a government and kill its leader?
Is it riding down with Hitler, or whoever the leader might be, in chalk or paint on a wall?
Or is it everything between those two extremes?
In Germany under Hitler's regime, the penalty for anti-Nazi graffiti and for offenses of even lesser nature was death.
Under such circumstances, it is difficult to set a limit to what resistance is.
In the United States, we have not lived long in a police state.
At this time, we can still criticize the government in letters to the paper or on an open postcard to a friend.
We can still speak our minds freely on the telephone and in media forums.
At this stage in the transformation of our republic into a socialist totalitarian police state, most people have no idea of what it is like to work against a regime whose hold on power depends on fear and informers, on mistrust and deception, on children reporting parents and parents denouncing children.
Most Americans do not believe that we are living in a country occupied by such a power.
Although it becomes clear each day that we are indeed occupied, oppressed, surveilled, persecuted, infiltrated, falsely accused, falsely arrested, and even murdered, for holding views in opposition to those officially espoused by the forces which now rule.
Tonight we will be discussing resistance, the stand against socialism.
We will not detail for you specific strategies and techniques because each opportunity for the resistance movement to act will require its own guidelines and planning and will be affected by the details of the situation at hand as well as by the skills and motivation of the people involved in the resistance movement.
You will, however, we will, however, paint broad strokes of principle for you and teach you a little bit about the resistance movements in both France and Germany during the Hitler regime.
Take from these lessons of history the concepts and principles involved, and when the need arises, adapt and improvise the principles to organize and implement the resistance movement as needed in your situation.
The word resistance in this most basic definition means to stand against.
To stand against.
We are not talking about offensive, aggressive military actions of any kind, nor are we discussing armed insurrection of any kind.
Do not misinterpret or misunderstand the subject matter here.
I want to make this absolutely, perfectly clear.
Resistance means to stand against.
In the context of tonight's material, it does not mean offensive movement against.
It means the successful, secret, and silent standing against socialism.
If you are simply standing, you are not running toward the enemy, drawing their fire, or determining the object of their propaganda.
The resistance which we are discussing operates in secrecy, quietly, and ideally without detection.
A resistance movement that can be organized and sustained early in the occupation has the best chance of surviving.
It must be organized before the enemy can institute the blocked control system in cities, and while some unrestricted movement is still possible in more rural areas.
Further, it must be remembered that the most successful resistance operations have always been based in areas that are isolated by terrain, poor roads, and bad weather.
Operations within a city are extremely difficult.
According to Colonel Wendell W. Furtig, United States Army retired, quote, It is well to repeat six basic principal requirements which must be present if a resistance movement is to succeed and eventual victory be achieved.
These are, one, a loyal people who will support the resistance effort at great risk to themselves.
Favorable terrain and organization to fit particular terrain needs, a possible safe haven.
3.
A source of adequate finances.
4.
Good communications, radio, telephone, etc.
5.
An adequate supply of food to support the units, and most importantly, 6.
Support from an outside power.
If two enemies fight each other to the last, and this is always the case when ideology is involved and religion is part of it, guerrilla warfare and civilian resistance will inevitably break out in the final phase.
The military expert who undervalues or even disregards these things makes a big mistake since he does not take into consideration the strength of heart.
The last and admittedly most cruel battle will be fought by civilians.
It will be conducted under the fear of deportation or execution in detention camps.
The motto of these civilian resistance operatives is death rather than slavery.
The subject with which we are dealing tonight is difficult and unpleasant.
Nevertheless, in the age of the total warfare for global domination, where not only material but also ideological factors are at stake, It is imperative to discuss these problems, both from the perspective of history, what has gone before, and from the perspective that these things may occur again, possibly within our own borders.
It may be assumed that in the case of armed conflict, areas of territory will temporarily be lost to the enemy.
Soldiers fighting against an invading enemy may be largely neutralized, even though sizable units may continue to fight for an extended period in mountainous regions.
Ladies and gentlemen, please don't be alarmed.
We're going to go off the air for just a few seconds to see if we can get rid of the echo that you're experiencing during this broadcast.
rulers waiting for salvation and liberation from the outside?
Or should the struggle for liberty be continued in a new manner with all available means?
Ladies and gentlemen, please don't be alarmed.
We're going to go off the air for just a few seconds to see if we can get rid of the echo that you're experiencing during this broadcast.
Please bear with us.
It
may also be assumed that with the well-known love for freedom of the population on the one hand and the proven ruthlessness of the enemy on the other, clashes between the occupation forces and the resistance will become inevitable.
The Thus, it is important to study the atmosphere, tactics, and techniques of such resistance operations as far as these can be reconstructed from the experiences of past wars.
In occupied France during World War II, where the patriotic and political issues were very clear-cut, where every Axis soldier was an enemy, only 2% of the adult population were involved in the resistance at any level.
In Germany, the political issues were never clear-cut.
Unlike the First World War, there was no enthusiasm for the Second.
Hitler ran the country into massive debt very quickly, and the early rejoicing at his solution of the unemployment problem was soon dampened by the stressful circumstances, both physical and ethical, under which the Nazis forced people to live.
The depression of the late 20s and 30s was universal, yet other countries resolved their material problems without becoming a totalitarian state, and Germans were aware of this.
But even those who resisted Hitler still had to live and work within German society.
Those who had jobs in the army, the intelligence service, and the foreign office had to do their duty as Germans at the same time as they obeyed their consciences by working against the evil government.
They had to remind themselves that by betraying that Nazi government, they were not betraying their country.
They had to accept that defeat at the hands of the Allied powers was necessary and desirable for Germany, without which there would be no moral rebirth.
But it was very hard to accept.
At the same time, they had to work under enormous pressure of the fear of denunciation and to cope for years with a Jekyll and Hyde existence.
These pressures became greater according to the degree of responsibility, executive power, and therefore effectiveness of the resistance operative.
And the resistance to Hitler necessarily took the form of a revolution from above.
The Nazis were quick to stamp out or drive into exile their most powerful political opponents.
And the civilian political underground lacked the means of expressing itself other than through pamphleteering and acts of sabotage, limited.
The German army, with its strongly forged infrastructure and its practical power, was the only organization with the potential capacity to overthrow the Nazi government.
but the army was managed traditionally by the ruling class.
Nevertheless, it was from within the army that the main resistance to Hitler came as a handful of determined officers perceived the evil towards which the Fuhrer was leading the country.
Adolf Hitler was a brutal power monger who disposed of anything he disagreed with and anyone who got in his way with utter ruthlessness.
His very crudeness and his disregard for any accepted political or diplomatic rules caught his opponents, both at home and abroad, wrong-footed.
His initial successes blinded people to his immorality, and his criminal megalomania was mistaken for strength of purpose.
Above all, his supporters, who were on the conservative right in Germany, and those who were to become his opponents in the army, thought they could control him.
By the time they realized that they could not, it was too late.
Hitler's strongest and most organized political rivals, the Social Democrats and the Communists, made the mistake of regarding each other, and not the Nazis, as the most dangerous enemy.
Instead of banding together against the threat of National Socialism, they dissipated their energy in fighting each other.
It was a classical case of divide and conquer, and is perhaps one of our best historical examples of the chase-your-tail syndrome.
In their haste and passion to hate each other, the two German political powers, which had the greatest chance of removing Hitler from authority, failed to see the big picture, and consistently missed or ignored opportunities to destroy the rising power of National Socialism.
One reaction to Hitler was simple disbelief, another that such a man could not possibly last a year.
Part of Hitler's initial success was due to the fact that enough powerful people did not take him seriously, and part was due to the related fact that they did not see him for what he really was.
Is history repeating itself?
Does this situation sound the least bit familiar to you as you consider our present American leadership and the political atmosphere in this country?
Do you see any patterns and similarities between the rise of National Socialism in 1930s Germany and the rise of National Socialism in 1990s America?
You should!
And you should pay close attention to the lessons of history which we will share with you tonight in our study of the anti-Nazi resistance movements of World War II.
Hitler was a brilliant opportunist, with a famous sixth sense for personal danger, which helped preserve him more than any of his considerable security measures.
His indecisiveness, his habit of changing his plans to the last minute, and of not attending a given meeting or function at the appointed time, also hamstrung attempts to kill him.
It is not hard to imagine Hitler living out his life in a kind of dream, a fantasy fulfillment which even he could hardly have imagined possible, At each new step he may have asked himself, am I going to be able to carry this one off too?
And as time progressed and his success continued, so he might well have come to believe in his own infallibility.
One of Hitler's support agencies, the Gestapo, was never subtle in his methods and his field agents were not always intelligent, though of course the system threw up evil geniuses in the upper ranks like Reinhard Heydrich and Walter Schellenberg.
The Gestapo relied on a system of informers and on denunciation, not detection, to make their arrests.
They tapped telephones and infiltrated suspect groups of stiff columnists and agents provocateurs.
Once arrested, a victim might well have information tortured out of him, increasingly so as the regime progressed, or he might be thrown into a concentration camp for a few years.
Dachau was opened as early as March 1933, originally for political undesirables.
Those arrested in the early days might find themselves acquitted by the regular courts or sent to an ordinary prison for a short term, only to be picked up by the Gestapo on their release.
These presumed political protestors summarily disappeared into the camps.
As the people of Germany became increasingly aware of the swift and often fatal reprisal against any opposition to the Nazis, Most chose simply to live in fear, to toe the mark, to keep their mouths shut, and to look away if their friends, business associates, or even family members were imprisoned, beaten, tortured, or murdered for the least display of disapproval toward the National Socialist regime.
Such punishments were not limited to political dissenters, but were also a consequence of one's racial heritage, religious belief, or cultural preference.
Some Germans, however, would not fend on principles of the will of the oppressors.
Some of them organized resistance movements against National Socialism and operated with the greatest possible secrecy.
In the ranks of civilians, this resistance was manifested by reduced production rates in factories, which manufactured munitions and supplies for the Nazi soldiers, or the deliberate sabotage of weapons, automobile parts, electronic equipment, and machinery on which the National Socialists relied to conduct the war.
Civilian resistance operatives were also successful in waging the psychological war against the Nazis by secretly writing, publishing, and distributing anti-Nazi literature throughout Germany, which exposed the lies, the deceit, the manipulation, and the methods of the Nazis, and told the truth about the events of the war, both in Germany and in the occupied territories.
The general purpose of any resistance movement is to stand against the enemy in those parts of the country occupied by the invaders, or to continue resistance action against the enemy after the defeat of the regular army.
Pay attention to the timing I am describing here.
The resistance movement, although it should be organized long before it is needed, must be cautious not to take any action prematurely.
To do so is to guarantee failure.
This is extremely important to recognize that there is a very fine line between the resistance to an invading and occupying enemy and a provocative act of terrorism.
Be advised that it is the goal of the supporters of National Socialism in the United States to publicly brand all active patriots, lovers of constitutional liberty, and people of deep religious conviction as terrorists in order to justify the arrest, imprisonment, and eventual murder of those persons.
The greatest single threat to the resistance movement today is that one undisciplined radical patriot impatient for action will initiate an aggressive attack, draw the fire of the enemy, and inflame the distrust of the general public.
Should offensive provocative action occur, the powers that be, with the cooperation of the national media, can and will use the established propaganda machines to make absolutely certain that any actions taken against the resistance movement will appear justified, necessary, and desirable by the general public.
Remember Mr. Cooper's warning and burn it into your brain in bold capital letters.
Whoever fires the first shot loses the war.
Resistance operatives who wisely do not provoke open conflict and do not initiate offensive actions can successfully cause fear and confusion behind enemy lines, force the enemy to initiate complicated security measures, thus wasting his strength, and can inflict losses on both personnel and material.
When a territory has been occupied by the enemy, the entire area must be pushed into a state of constant unrest so that no invader may move about alone and unarmed.
Service and occupation troops of the enemy will have to take on extra security measures in addition to their numerous other tasks.
During World War II, only days before the German occupation of Paris, Premier Paul Raynaud said the French would fight before Paris and defend every building house to house.
He begged the people not to flee and told them not to listen to rumors.
He said everyone should stay where he was.
In the meantime, he and his government escaped to Tours.
Paris was abandoned to her fate.
By Saturday, June 15, 1940, the German army had crossed into France and occupied Paris.
Edda Scheiber, an American citizen and activist in the French resistance movement, described the entrance of the Germans into Paris in her book, Paris Underground, published in 1943 while France was still occupied territory.
From the darkness, the noise of many motors made itself heard, and suddenly, with a rush, the German army was upon us.
They were motorcycle troops, rushing southward at breakneck speed, driving forward through the dark with complete assurance that the planes ahead of them would have swept the road clear like great brooms.
Without slowing up, they swung around the few stalled cars, still standing motionless in the road.
There was something inhuman about those riders in their dark gray uniforms.
It seems like part of the machines they rode, as cold and as unfeeling.
They looked neither to the right nor to the left as they roared by.
I don't know what we had expected from the Germans, but certainly not this.
Certainly not that they would ignore our very presence.
It was more fearsome than if they had dismounted from their motorcycles and arrested us.
Almost more fearsome than if they had fired on us.
This passage of mounted automatons who seemed not to see us at all imbued us with a chill far greater than any we felt, even during the confused panic of the airplane attack earlier that night.
I thought I had been frightened then.
It was nothing to the deep buried fear that clutched at the pit of my stomach and twisted and turned in my flesh.
Light armored cars followed the motorcycles.
Sitting bolts upright in them were more lifeless statues.
They were young soldiers, almost boys.
Stiff and morose, they were dragged forward by the iron monsters in which they rode like victims to a sacrifice rather than triumphant conquerors.
Not one of them spared even a glance for the refugees who lined the road on both sides.
They were whisked by, pawns in the game of war, seemingly devoid of any human feelings of joy or pity.
The rumble of heavier engines filled the air and shook the earth about us.
The tanks were coming.
The very air seemed to have come to life and to be shouting with brazen lungs.
They burst upon us, not only down the main highway but from the crossroads, roaring upon us from the route which we had followed through the night, mercifully too slowly to reach the road before the Nazi planes swept over it.
They plowed across the field.
They seemed to be everywhere, to possess the whole earth about us.
It was an interminable parade which passed before our eyes, lasting all that night, and then to the next day.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon before the road cleared.
As the rear guard of the German army passed down the road and disappeared in its own dust, it dropped men off behind it.
Every two hundred yards, unfolding in a regular pattern behind the moving army, a German motorcyclist stopped and took up his position.
The military necessities had been satisfied for this reason, Now the civilians could be attended to." End quote.
The atmosphere in all of France, but in Paris in particular, was tense to say the least.
Many Parisians felt betrayed by the Premier's government, which had abandoned Paris to the German army without any struggle of any kind.
During the early days of the German occupation, when the Gestapo were conducting routine house-to-house searches looking for hidden French and English soldiers, a very small group of resistance operatives, many of them merely wives and mothers, managed often to short-circuit the intent of the occupying German forces.
Gradually, over time, one small, compartmentalized resistance group would accidentally discover another, and their stand against National Socialism could grow in scope and activity.
The organizers of the French Resistance discovered that certain areas of the occupied territory remained unoccupied, primarily because of their perceived lack of importance, and sometimes because of insufficient numbers of German Army personnel.
The French underground leaders moved into all of these areas and assembled small groups of personnel at those places.
All resistance groups remained inactive until each small group was well organized.
All resistance operatives must not provoke the enemy into taking countermeasures against them during their moments of greatest vulnerability, such as during phases of organization and initial activation.
At no other time in the future, not even in the most critical situations when pursued or actually encircled by the enemy, will the resistance group be more vulnerable or in danger of disintegrating as it will be during that initial organizational phase.
With regard to the organization of the civilian French resistance movement, certain general principles were followed.
It was first necessary to find out who was generally reliable and who was willing to help passively, that is, to supply food, provide intelligence information, who had supplies of medicines, clothing, vehicles, and so forth.
Certain basic skills were sought and highly valued in the civilian resistance, and these skills were taught to other resistance operatives.
These skills included the ability to serve as guides, to hide and care for the wounded and sick, to gather intelligence about other civilians, such as those who were passively supporting the Nazis as political followers, profiteers, and so forth.
It was also necessary to determine who was actively working with the enemy.
The longer a resistance group has to organize and train its members, the greater the chances of success, as there will be fewer losses of personnel, a more complete and secure system of secrecy, and less likelihood of making stupid and fatal mistakes.
This, in turn, increases the self-confidence of the members of the resistance, and they will not be implementing operations motivated by panic and undermined by lack of experience.
The Organization of Militia Combat Units is not the subject of tonight's discussion, but it should be remembered that the Civilian Resistance operatives can be usefully instrumental in procuring ammunition, food, equipment, clothes, shoes, arms, and medical supplies.
Later, if necessary, Civilian Resistance volunteers may be recruited into other more active forces, but that is a subject for a future episode of the Hour of the Time.
In reading the history of the French and German resistance movements, it is important to understand the operatives and their political aspirations in the context of their period.
Most had no idea of the hardcore realities that they would have to face as the hated German army fell in defeat, first on the Eastern Front in Russia and later in the West.
In Germany, few of the resistance survived.
Those that did survive were not confident that they had not failed in their mission.
With the end of World War II, most resistance operatives saw a post-war world and a post-war Germany quite different from the one they had imagined and planned.
Somehow, most had clung to memories of life as they had known it in previous times of peace.
Perhaps, actually, many imagined that life without the Nazi presence would resume as it had been before.
But you can never go back.
Pandora's box can be closed, but the troubles released cannot completely be contained ever again.
For the surviving members of the German resistance, life would never be the same.
Few realize that the final phase of any resistance operation, even if conducted by civilians only, is a general resistance uprising whose aim is to force the enemy from the country.
At that point, As the Allied forces began to occupy the territories once controlled by the German army, it became necessary for German resistance members to actively fight in armed conflict against their own countrymen, because to them, death was preferable to slavery.
And there was no escape from the reality that it was their own countrymen who were placing the shackles of bondage on all over whom they had control.
When we come back, we'll look closely at one particular civilian German resistance operation, Stay with us.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
Stay with us.
Stay with
THE END
Ah, Wagner, Hitler's favorite, right?
While we're doing historical comparisons tonight, it wouldn't be out of order to recall Germany's hyperinflation of the early 1920s.
In 1915, the highest denominated German mark note was 100 marks, and a mark was roughly equivalent in value to the U.S.
dollar.
By October 1923, notes denominated in 100 billion marks were common, and the Minister of Finance was not able to have them printed fast enough.
In 1915, a retired person could live comfortably off the interest from 50,000 marks in a bank savings account.
By 1923, the banks were closing those accounts for having insufficient funds to justify keeping the accounts open.
When the bank mailed the now worthless 50,000 marks to the retired owner of the account, it required 2 million marks just for postage.
German mark notes were so worthless that Germans literally heated their homes and cooked their food with them.
Hyperinflation is truly the one economic catastrophe that is worse than bankruptcy, and it is also worse than depression.
There has never been a paper money system that has not failed.
Conversely, there has never been a hard money system that has ever failed.
Right now America is sitting on the worst hyperinflation powder keg in world history and when it ignites our currency will become absolutely worthless in a very, very brief period of time.
The outcome will likely be even worse than Germany's.
Open your eyes and recognize that you have only the tiniest of windows of time in which to protect your assets you already have.
And the only positively safe way to protect those assets is to exchange your almost worthless Federal Reserve notes into precious metals, gold, silver, or platinum.
Swiss America Trading can help you obtain financial security against what is sure to come.
Call decidedly not the time to remain wishy-washy about the issue of precious metals.
The End
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The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End The End
Tonight's episode of the Hour of the Time was prepared from research by members of the Intelligence Service and the Citizens Agency for Joint Intelligence, and references the following research works which you can access in your own studies: An Honorable Defeat, A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945, by Anton Gill.
Paris Underground, by Etta Scheiber.
Story of a Secret State, by Jan Karski.
Triumph of Treason, by Pierre Coe.
And Total Resistance by Major H. Von Dock.
In spite of all their good intentions, not all people are suitable for active participation in the resistance movement.
You have to select carefully from among the people available.
The success or failure of the resistance movement depends on this selection.
Example of members unsuitable for the resistance movement are prominent politicians, both active or retired, leading economists, editors, professors, and important administration officials.
All of these persons are too well known to participate in the underground movement.
They will certainly be shadowed, arrested sooner or later, or even executed.
Anybody wishing to work with the resistance movement must be as inconspicuous as possible and remain silent in public.
Contact and work with individuals of similar conviction.
If one remains alone and isolated, his morale will deteriorate.
The isolated member of the Resistance is subject to the same threat of fear and desperation that a soldier may feel when isolated from his unit during conventional warfare.
One of the most important and useful services you can perform as a Resistance operative is to participate in the gathering and distribution of information.
The general population will always be subjected to the most intense psychologically manipulative propaganda at the hands of the enemy.
It is imperative that the war of words be fought with just as much dedication and perseverance as any other aspect of war.
Resistance operatives observe and dispense information concerning the general behavior of the community and of the occupying forces in their area.
An organized resistance movement can operate no matter what conditions may exist.
It can successfully assist, regardless of whether the operative is still living in his home, has been imprisoned, or is serving in some kind of labor camp.
Resistance operatives will be able to acquire information about the behavior of persons on both sides of the questioning and police interrogations.
The behavior of questioned individuals following such an interrogation can be observed, as well as the behavior of others in prison, during deportation and in detention camps.
Of greatest benefit is the ability to dispense information concerning the true war situation and to monitor politically and militarily important news to be relayed to other resistance and militia members.
Resistance operatives working in the anti-propaganda campaign will produce posters, publish pamphlets and newsletters, hand bills and underground newspapers.
They can instruct the general population concerning appropriate behavior which could save their lives.
It will also be important to document records of brutality committed by occupying forces, to unmask agents and informers, and to ascertain the truth or fiction of suspected collaboration with the enemy.
These activities cannot be underestimated in their value and should be strongly promoted and prepared for.
Perhaps the most famous of the German resistance pamphleteers were Hans and Sophie Scholl, who at the ages of 23 and 21 years, respectively, had caused so much trouble for the Nazis that, upon their eventual arrest, Hitler felt it necessary to send out his most virulent and violent judge to try their case.
This is their story.
It is a true story, and it demonstrates the power of the written and spoken word against the armed and mechanized forces of the enemy, and clearly shows that from the youngest to the oldest, We can all serve our country effectively and with great courage and honor.
Today, the main square outside the University of Munich is called the Schweizer Schulplatz.
The name commemorates a small group of students who, operating independently, managed to create one of the few single protests of great significance outside the main body of the German resistance.
Hans and Sophie Scholl were the second and fourth of the five children of Robert Scholl, the liberal and independent mayor of the little town of Forchtenberg, located to the east of Heilbronn.
Robert Scholl was a big, warm-hearted man, rarely without a cigar, smoking away below his luxuriant mustache.
Hans and Sophie were born in 1918 and 1921.
And in those days, Vorkenberg's only contact with the outside world was the yellow postcodes that connected it with the nearest railway station.
In 1930, the family moved to Ulm, where they ultimately settled.
Hans, according to his brother-in-law, was like his father, Robert, impulsive, generous, and extrovert.
Sophie, no less strong a personality, had her mother's quiet sensitivity.
What she shared with Hans was an absolute sense of human rights, something which all the children had inherited from their father, who exerted a strong but benign influence on them.
The happy family life did not end with Hitler's seizure of power.
The arrival of National Socialism was the first impact on politics, on the children's thoughts.
Hans was 15, Sophie 12.
On January 30, 1933, the radio and the newspapers were full of the news.
Now everything will be better in Germany.
Hitler is at the tiller.
The children were keen to join the Hitler Youth, and their parents, though they had given them a liberal upbringing, did not forbid it.
But never for an instant had the children's father, Robert, been fooled by Hitler, and he said to the teenage children, Have you considered how he's going to manage it?
He's expanding the armaments industry and building barracks.
Do you know where that's all going to end?
Hans and Sophie argued that Hitler had solved the problem of unemployment and pointed to the new motorways being built throughout the land.
Robert wondered aloud if material security would ever make happy a people which had been robbed of its right to free speech.
At first his arguments fell on deaf ears.
His children were enthusiastic members of the Hitler Youth and its female branch, the League of German Girls.
They became group leaders.
Only Sophie was a little less enthusiastic than the others.
She was already worried by the fact that her Jewish school friends could not join.
She listened more attentively to her father's arguments.
Sophie's brother Hans and her father Robert were barely on speaking terms at this time because of their disagreements over German politics.
But then Hans, now age 17, attended the 1935 Nazi Party Rally at Nuremberg.
He had been selected to carry the flag of Um Sandort at the rally, a great honor.
But he came back a changed man.
Hans did not say much at first, but gradually new ideas emerged.
The endless, senseless drilling.
The hate-filled, aggressive speeches.
The stupid conversation.
The vulgar jokes.
A concentration of all this at Nuremberg had finally focused his mind on what Nazism really meant.
There had been signs of Hans' disaffection before this.
He was annoyed when he was told that the Hitler Youth was not interested in his collection of international folk songs.
Foreign, especially Russian songs, were strictly forbidden.
And the special flag of his group was forbidden, too.
All groups were expected to carry a swastika banner.
When finally his 12-year-old standard-bearer was threatened by a senior Hitler Youth official for refusing to give up the group flag, Hans hit the official.
That was the end of the Hitler Youth for him.
Soon afterwards, he heard that a young schoolteacher had been picked up by a gang of brownshirts and spat upon to order.
The schoolteacher's crime had been failure to join the Naftan Party.
Then, gradually, news of the concentration camps seeped through.
Hans began to show more of an interest in another kind of youth group, the DJ-111, so-called because it had been founded as Deutsche Jugend on November 1st, 1929.
The DJ-111 was now illegal.
All youth groups and organizations had been banned under the Nazis or amalgamated with the Hitler Youth.
But DJ-111 still existed underground.
Its spirit was open-minded, liberal, and easy-going.
It represented cosmopolitanism, not nationalism.
Its members did not wear uniforms or salute each other.
They read illegal books.
Works by George Bernard Shaw, Stefan Zweig, and Paul Claudel.
Because for culture and against militarism, for the individual and not the mob.
Although membership in DJ-111 was open only to young men from the age of 12 upwards, Sophie caught the mood of the group from Hans and was in agreement with what she learned of its outlook.
In late November 1937, the Gestapo came to the Shoals apartment in Ulm.
The secret police had the DJ-111 group under observation for some time and now they were ready to pounce.
The men said they were there to search the apartment and arrest the children.
With great presence of mind, Frau Scholl told them that they could do so by all means, but that if the gentleman would please excuse her, she had to go to the baker's.
The policemen didn't object.
Women in the Third Reich were consigned to three areas of life, church, kitchen, and children.
Even female Nazi leaders were never given much status or publicity by the regime.
Although the Gestapo found no incriminating literature, the official took Sophie, her sister Inga, and her brother Werner, the three children who were home at the time, away with them.
Sophie was released almost immediately.
literature into a basket and took it round the corner to trusted friends.
Although the Gestapo found no incriminating literature, the officials took Sophie, her sister Inga, and her brother Werner, the three children who were home at the time, away with them.
Sophie was released almost immediately.
Inga and Werner were taken to Stuttgart and detained for a week and interrogated about DJ 111.
By playing dumb, they were finally released.
Hans, who had been subsequently arrested, was held for five weeks.
Luckily for him, he had been conscripted by them, and his commanding officer had him released, telling the Gestapo that Hans was a soldier and that he was in the army's jurisdiction and not theirs.
Hans' father, Robert, was also himself later arrested and imprisoned briefly for anti-Nazi activities.
The Scholls, who were a well-known family in the small town of Ulm, failed to stay out of Werner had taken an early decision to leave the Hitler Youth, and at one point tied a swastika scarf around the eyes of the bust of Justice located in front of the Ulm Law Courts.
Werner ultimately died on the Russian front at the age of 21.
All of the Shoal children read a great deal—Socrates, Aristotle, St.
Augustine, Pascal, Maritain, and Bernanos.
The influence of these thinkers went deep, strengthening their resolve against the Nazi regime.
The question was what to do and how to do it.
If Sophie had been moving away from Nazism through the late 1930s, she turned actively against it as a result of two experiences.
Kristallnacht, which she lives through in Ulm, and the outbreak of war on September 1st, 1939.
1939.
Just before her 21st birthday, which would be her last, Sophie traveled to Munich University where she was to begin taking courses.
Hans was at the station to meet her.
He was studying medicine at the university, alternating semesters of study with the unavoidable semesters of military service on the German front.
Hans had never given up his idea of making some kind of a stand against the Nazi regime and had become markedly politicized.
He had been in the He was now the center of a group of young medical students who had decided to launch a leaflet campaign against the war, encouraging passive resistance to the regime.
The group had the idealism of its youth, and had no wish to throw bombs or to cause injury to human life.
They wanted to influence people's minds against Nazism and militarism.
The group had been able to buy a typewriter and a duplicating machine.
They called their group the White Rose.
Sophie eventually became an active member.
The choice of the name White Rose is not easily explained.
The rose as a symbol of secrecy might have occurred to them, and white might have reflected the fact that their pamphlets were not inspired by any color of political thought, but by broad humanism.
But whatever the reason, the symbol they chose is still today a powerful one in Germany.
In June-July 1942, the first four leaflets of the White Rose appeared in quick succession.
The first begins uncompromisingly, quote, Nothing is less worthy of a cultivated people than to allow itself, without resistance, to be governed by a clique of irresponsible bandits of dark ambition.
End quote.
The four publications draw on Goethe, Schiller, and Aristotle, among others, to make their point.
They refer to the murder of the Jews in Poland, encourage the idea of sabotage in the armaments industry, and criticize the anti-Christian and anti-social nature of the war.
The leaflets read, quote, We are all guilty.
We will not be silenced.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will not leave you in peace.
End quote.
It was hard for this small group of resistance members to swim against the current, and harder still to wish defeat upon their own country.
Worst of all was the isolation in which they worked.
Tirelessly, the group distributed the leaflets by suitcase load throughout the towns in southern Germany, either traveling with them, a very dangerous undertaking, and delivering them by hand at night, or using the mail.
They were so successful that the movement spread, notably to Hamburg, where a branch of the White Rose was set up to survive its originator.
The White Rose went into temporary abeyance during the summer of 1942 as Hans and two of his fellow resistance members were ordered to the Russian front.
They returned to Munich in October.
Hans had seen the maltreatment of the Jews and Russian prisoners at first hand.
The group returned more determined than ever to carry on the work of the resistance and to make the White Rose into a permanent resistance cell.
A school friend remembers meeting Sophie in Stuttgart in December 1942, at which time Sophie said, If I had a pistol and I were to meet Hitler here in the street, I'd shoot him down.
If men can't manage it, then a woman should.
The school friend replied, But then he'd be replaced by Himmler, and after Himmler another, Sophie retorted.
One has got to do something to get rid of the guilt.
The White Rose Group bought a new, less noisy duplicating machine.
On trains, they took suitcases full of leaflets.
If the police searched the train, they would leave the suitcase on the rack and hide in the restroom, or spend the journey in another compartment.
They had become used to living on their nerves and never considered that they had a choice.
In January 1943, a new white rose leaflet appeared.
Several thousand copies were made.
Addresses were painstakingly copied out of telephone directories.
The group had to ensure that the Gestapo could not trace the source to Munich.
On January 13, 1943, to mark the 470th anniversary of Munich University, the Nazi district leader of Munich, Paul Geisler, gave a speech during which he told the female students that it would be better for them to get on with giving the Fuhrer a child than wasting time on books.
He even offered to put his henchmen at their service.
Several girls immediately left the hall in protest, only to be arrested at the exit.
This led to a demonstration, in the course of which the Nazi student leader was dragged from the podium, beaten up, and declared a hostage against the release of the arrested girls.
The Nazis telephoned the police, who promptly arrived and broke up the meeting.
This was the first student demonstration against the Nazis in Munich, and it stimulated the Gestapo to redouble its efforts to find the originators of the White Rose.
On February 3, 1943, news of the German defeat at Stalingrad came through on the radio.
The following morning, Hans and Sophie went to the university to attend a lecture.
On a wall by the entrance, the word FREEDOM had been written in huge letters.
What bastard did that?
snarled an older student.
Hans said nothing, but his silent broad grin almost betrayed him.
The significance of the defeat at Stalingrad, in whatever light Goebbels presented it, could not be concealed from the German people.
And the group around Hans Scholl realized that they should follow up with another leaflet immediately.
This, the last from the White Rose, was quickly prepared and addressed to their fellow students.
It was more strongly and directly expressed than any of its predecessors.
Quote, The day of reckoning is come.
The reckoning of German youth with the most appalling tyranny that our people has ever endured.
In the name of the entire German people, we demand from Adolf Hitler the return of our personal freedom, the most valuable possession of the Germans." Hans and Sophie decided to distribute it in the university personally.
On Thursday, February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie hurried to the university at 10 a.m.
before the first morning lectures were over, carrying copies of the newsletter in a small suitcase.
They spread them wherever they could, on windowsills, shelves, the top of walls, until their supply was almost exhausted.
They returned to the University's Central Hall and emptied the remaining contents of the suitcase from a parapet into the courtyard just as the doors of the lecture halls opened and students poured out.
But the Shoals had been seen.
The University's caretaker, Jacob Schnitt, charged toward them as they raced back down the staircase, seized them each by the arm and bellowed, You're under arrest!
Hans and Sophie stayed calm.
The doors of the university were sealed and all the students remaining inside had to assemble in the courtyard.
Those who had picked up leaflets had to surrender them.
The shoals were taken to Gestapo headquarters in handcuffs.
They had known the risk they were running.
Even Sophie had said, quote, so many people have already died for this regime that it's time someone died against it.
After their arrest, Hans and Sophie were not tortured, but were intensively interrogated for four days in Gestapo headquarters at Wittelsbach Palace in Munich.
Members of the White Rose notified the parents of Hans and Sophie, and all tried in vain to secure their release.
The trial was set for February 22nd.
Roland Fraesler, Hitler's hanging judge, flew down from Berlin specially to preside.
This was an indication of the importance the Nazi leadership considered the White Rose to have.
The war was lost.
The Allies were already bombing Munich, but still, protesters had to be smashed.
The hearing started at 9 a.m.
and lasted until 4 p.m.
It was a closed trial, and those without passes, including Hans and Sophie's parents, were not admitted.
Neither of them flinched under the sarcastic, hectoring onslaught of the judge.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion.
Death by the guillotine.
They were taken from the court to Stadelheim Prison immediately after the judgment had been passed.
By a miracle, the parents had a last opportunity to see their children.
They saw Hans first.
Robert embraced him, saying, You will go down in history.
This is another justice.
There is another justice than this.
Sophie had no regrets for her own life, but was concerned that her mother should be able to withstand the deaths of two children at the same time.
The parents left and returned to Ulm, thinking that something might still be done to help, at least to get the sentence commuted.
But in the Nazi state, punishment normally followed sentence with terrifying speed.
On February 22, 1943, four days after their arrest at 6 p.m., two hours after sentencing, 21-year-old Sophie Scholl and her 23-year-old brother Hans were beheaded by the Nazis.
Two days later, they were buried in Perloch Cemetery in South Munich.
Throughout the city, graffiti appeared on walls everywhere which simply read, Their Spirit Lives.
The wheel of the cycle of history has turned again since 1943.
Germany now is reunified and powerful.
Europe is unstable and in economic disarray, and the United States is teetering on the brink of economic and political collapse.
Nationalism has raised its head once more.
Humanity never learns the lessons of history, and so perhaps the ideas of the Resistance are not as remote as all that.
Only those who know and remember what has gone before will be aware that we have again entered a cycle in which National Socialism, Nazism, is being reborn in our own country.
It then becomes the responsibility of every American to stand against this threat.
To resist, by every means, the repetition of this great horror of history.
I think Schopenhauer has written truly.
His comments here are translated by R. J. Hollendale.
However much the plays and the masks on the world's stage may change, it is always the same actors who appear.
We sit together and talk and grow excited, and our eyes glitter and our voices grow shriller.
Just so did others sit and talk a thousand years ago.
It was the same thing, and it was the same people, and it will be just so a thousand years hence.
The contrivance which prevents us from perceiving this is time.
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