Behind the scenes: White Rose histories
One critique of our White Rose histories: TOO detailed. How did we make the decision to widen the scope to include fringe people? What went into decisions regarding digital version? Does it matter?
July 2021, as I contemplated Center for White Rose Studies’ work and decided to reboot, creating a digital version of our White Rose histories landed at the very top of my to-do list.
The print version was no longer viable. Cost of paper and ink had driven up price for short-run digitally-printed materials to levels our readers would not have been able to afford.
And I was no longer willing to risk selling the CD-ROM. Even if there had been demand for that edition of our histories, I wasn’t keen about the notion of putting the CD-ROM “out there,” as it seemed to have encouraged plagiarism among the people who bought it. Next post – for paid subscribers – will tackle that hard topic.
From 2002 through 2021, those had been the only versions available, due to expense of e-Commerce solutions for digital downloads.
Just as I was leaving Las Vegas for Gettysburg (2022), Shopify announced an upgrade to its previously bad digital solution. Reviews I read indicated that they had fixed the issues that had plagued their freeware.
Once computer was set up, even before half the boxes stacking up my new home were unpacked, I started working on the digital version of White Rose History, Volume I. One advantage of a digital version would be the ability to insert photographs, not hyperlinks to a photo album as had been the case with the CD-ROM. (The print version had only a handful of rudimentary illustrations.) I wanted this edition to enable visual learners to better “see” the landscape and environment that surrounded our circle of White Rose friends.
Just as I was making good progress on this work, Microsoft added AI dot EXE to its Office 365 suite. November 11, 2022. Surreptitiously. Embedded in your computer’s registry, without your knowledge. You cannot get rid of it, no matter how hard you try. I posted a query on Microsoft’s tech support site. It’s been a year, and I’m still getting notifications of IT gurus begging Microsoft to destroy AI dot EXE. Microsoft’s tech support bots ignore all pleas.
Because it’s a memory hog. No longer is a 5MB Word document manageable. It will crash at least three times in a single day, as AI dot EXE scrapes your work. Once you have downloaded the Microsoft O365 November 2022 update that embeds AI dot EXE in your computer’s registry, if your Word doc is bigger than 5MB, have a few odd tasks that you can work on while your computer freezes.
I ploughed on. About three-quarters of the way through, it became unbearable. Decided to convert it to Adobe PDF, just to ensure that it was going to be worth my while to keep going. If I could not convert the file to a PDF because of AI dot EXE…
What do you know – it converted the file, but all those lovely photographs and illustrations were strewn all over the PDF instead of in the fixed positions assigned in the Word doc.
Since I had to rework the file anyway to remove photographs, I thought it would be a good idea to convert footnotes to endnotes. As noted in the “purpose” section of White Rose History, Volume I, a section also on our Web site, these histories are as accurate as humanly possible, no scrimping on the scholarly or academic bases. But they’re written for high school and college students to read. Old people like me (!) and scholars who read them are just gravy, cherry on the sundae, sunshine in January.
Excerpt from that “purpose” section:
When I was a very young undergraduate, I was not interested in studying history. High school history teachers had been pretty… awful. One hated her job, another saw teaching as a bridge to marriage, another emphasized memorizing facts.
But TCU’s core curriculum in the 1970s – largely the love-child of Betsy Colquitt, a true Renaissance learner – “made” us take large doses of history and political science, even if we were Math and German majors.
The textbooks used in those American History 101/102 and German History 201/202 courses were written for us non-majors. No footnotes, no technical terminology, no abstract Buckley-esque verbiage. I found myself reading the books from cover to cover the same week I bought them. When other texts were re-sold to the Campus Bookstore or boxed up and placed in the garage, three of those books stayed in my active library.
I must have read Marshall Dill’s GERMANY four or five times over the last thirty years. Something about the immediacy of his words, the realization that he had lived some of the scenes he described in the sections on World War II, grabbed me and held my attention.
Did our history professors let us slide by with merely accepting what we read on unfootnoted pages? No way! One in particular – Frank Reuters – would hold our feet to the fire. He demanded that we look for sources that either contradicted what was written or that at least presented a different viewpoint. Verify, verify, verify! Without footnotes, we had to do the legwork to test the text. And that in pre-Google days. We learned from him to value primary source materials, to treasure them like gold. His classes were hard work. And like Prof. Kurt Huber’s, always the first to fill up.
We wanted this book to be the same way (and would that I were a Marshall Dill). One that non-majors would actually read, yet that could serve as a basis for much deeper discussions in a teacher-led class. I don’t consider it a textbook. I see it as a nonfiction book that can be used to teach. How well it is taught depends primarily on the person teaching.
Endnotes would allow serious scholars to check out my sources, while not disrupting the flow of the text. It seemed a reasonable compromise.
Except: Adobe and Microsoft apparently have an ongoing feud. Yes, Adobe will convert a Word document into a PDF, even preserving the endnotes. But where Microsoft Word treats endnotes like hyperlinks – i.e., you can double-click on the superscript and it will take you directly to the endnote, and then double-click on the superscript in the endnote and it takes you back to the place in the text you were reading – Adobe drops the hyperlinks.
This has been a known issue since the 1990s. Since the 1990s! And neither side will budge from whatever the principled decision is that prevents the two pieces of software from playing well together.
Six months of work down the drain, because two software behemoths won’t fix a simple bug.
I tried to salvage those six months of work by converting endnotes to footnotes. I’ll spare you the gory details about that endeavor. Let’s just say: It made things worse.
I therefore started over. Dug up an older version of the histories, before the two volumes had been combined for the CD-ROM. In other words, for Volume I:
30 chapters, plus bibliography and five appendices, as published in 2002;
2003 update consisting of 30 chapter updates, one new appendix, and additions to the bibliography;
2007 update consisting of 29 chapter updates and additions to the bibliography;
Title pages, end pages, and covers; and,
Table of contents for each section.
Each chapter and update had to be reformatted, page and footnote numbers recalibrated, and saved to PDF individually (footnote issue). In addition to reformatting, I reread the text as I went and made minor (and I do mean minor) edits. The digital version uploaded is intended to be as much like the 2002-version-with-updates as possible. We gave it a new ISBN number, since it’s digital and not print, but it is not a new edition.
Once all 100-ish sections were completed, I combined them into a PDF file, holding my breath the whole time. This “combine” work took multiple attempts, as Adobe put the chapters and updates in random order, despite my conscious efforts to click on each PDF in order.
Volume I of the history is relatively short, only thirty chapters. Even after compressing the PDF, it was 5.6MB, barely under the Shopify limit for digital downloads.
I’ve already researched solutions for Volume II, because it is sixty-four chapters long. Apparently Adobe Distiller can handle hefty compression needs. But I’ll be experimenting before I spend too much time on Volume II. If you have a solution I don’t know about, please contact us or post in comments!
Goal is still to have White Rose History, Volume II, digital version finished and uploaded before 12/31/2023. Wish me luck! Pre-publication price is $48, which will increase to regular price ($54) once done.
Some final comments. Initially thought about putting these thoughts behind a paywall for paid subscribers only, but I think they are critical enough to leave open for everyone.
First: If you are unfamiliar with the format of our histories - The original print version came in a three-ring binder. Even in 2002, it was clear that there was so much censorship of archival material, it was impossible to write a “full history” of White Rose resistance. Anyone who claims or claimed to have done so, and tries to maintain a straight face while making that claim, is an out-and-out grifter.
I hope I am still alive and kicking when Scholl Archives (and others) are finally thrown wide open. There will be a lot of “full history” people with egg on their faces.
Second: Original intent was to have one update per year. There’s enough new material to justify that notion.
As anyone who’s purchased our histories knows, the last update was 2007. For me personally, life took a nosedive in 2007. Center for White Rose Studies and Exclamation! Publishers had long been family-run. To say that the last sixteen years have been hellacious would be an understatement. I owe my literal sanity and mental health to a few very close friends who’ve been safety net, unpaid talk therapists, and guidance counselors, and in so being, have become “family.”
Third: I’m pretty much the only actual family member left standing. That means that if you query Exclamation! Publishers or Center for White Rose Studies these days, you’ll basically get me. If a digital version is to be created, that’s me. If a print version (still available for Gestapo interrogation transcripts in English translation) is to be shipped, that’s me. If either Web site has technical issues, who are you gonna call? Me.
That also means that it’s just me trying to scan and upload (to Microsoft Teams, for now) our archives, a little at a time. That means it’s just me writing book reviews for Center for White Rose Studies Web site, or these posts for Substack. It’s just me trying to maintain a LinkedIn presence as well as Facebook pages for both Center for White Rose Studies and Exclamation! Publishers, and a Twitter page for Center for White Rose Studies, separate from my personal account. (No politics on the White Rose Twitter account, and I refuse to call it X.)
Fourth: The third point means that I am actively trying to find a partner to whom I can hand off both Center for White Rose Studies and Exclamation! Publishers, a partner who will treasure this legacy and keep the work going.
Who will continue to speak on behalf of White Rose families and refute the German national mythology.
Who will honor Micha Probst’s request that our White Rose work NOT be used for political or religious ends, but that we view these young people and their older friends as human beings who did the best they could in dark days, who did not share political or religious beliefs with one another, but who knew right from wrong, and were willing to stand up for justice. Knowing. The. Cost.
Who will respect Fritz Hartnagel’s plea not to make up anything – a heart-cry after he and Elisabeth Hartnagel nee Scholl fought Inge’s fiction for so many decades.
Who will “get” Erich Schmorell’s sense of humor, who will adore Lilo’s openness as we did, who will focus on the real Christoph Probst whom his widow Herta loved so deeply, who will dig and dig and dig some more, never content with open questions.
Who is well-funded, so the legacy will last well into the next century and beyond.
Fifth: There will be 2024 updates to both volumes of the histories, almost assuredly towards the end of 2024, maybe early 2025. Anyone who orders the digital version will receive the updates free of charge. I’m expecting the 2024/2025 update to be a good 200-300 pages long.
Sixth: The “full history” possibly won’t be written in my lifetime.
Seventh: One consideration when working on the digital version of White Rose History Volume I involved consolidation of the updates into the text of each chapter. In other words, an extensive rewrite.
It was not merely the time consideration that caused me to nix that idea. Rather, as long as archives are not fully open, as long as there are so many open questions, the “not-annual” updates serve as mileposts for progress in the historical record.
The 2007 update, for example, included the Hartnagel edition of correspondence between Sophie Scholl and Fritz Hartnagel. The gaps that book alone filled in! And as “open” as Thomas Hartnagel was, he still censored (refused to publish) several letters. When I say “several,” I mean at least 87 out of “a good 400.” Only 313 allowed to be published. See page 11 of that book if you don’t believe me. He did not identify which letters were omitted or his reasons. What do you want to bet those 87+ letters dealt with: a) Kristallnacht, b) The move to the great apartment on Münsterplatz, and c) Fritz Hartnagel’s days in Stalingrad?
And how will those 87+ letters blow the lid off White Rose “history” and vigilantly maintained narratives?
Therefore as you read the updates following each chapter, it may feel a bit disjointed. Just keep in mind that those updates were generated from documents that had been carefully concealed. It should feel disjointed.
Eighth: I assume that White Rose History, Volume III: Fighters to the Very End (October 13, 1943 – May 8, 1945 and beyond) will be written by my successor. It is a necessary work. I hope I will have strength and energy to consult with successor on that volume. I also hope it’s a collaborative effort. That has long been my intent.
Just the archival material I have collected regarding those days is mind-blowing. But there are more questions than answers, so I don’t feel comfortable even with a heavily “caveated” version.
Ninth: Through the years, I have been really bad about asking for money to support our work. In other words, I have not asked, but have personally borne most of the costs of archival acquisition, travel, finance and administrative (including tax returns), e-Commerce, and so on. A rough calculation: Our family has invested over $800,000 in this work, out of pocket expenses, since July 1994. My personal share is about half. Unreimbursed.
Soon I will be adding a better donation “button” to our Center for White Rose Web site. It will allow you to designate specific projects, e.g. archives, you wish to support. Our new bank – shoutout to Laura Becker of Members First Federal Credit Union – will be working with us to set up restricted accounts for projects, so we can follow both letter and spirit of tax law.
In the meantime, please know that funds from subscriptions to this Substack post go directly to Center for White Rose Studies general fund. Talk to your tax advisor if you itemize charitable donations, since your subscription may be tax deductible. We can also accept donations by check (until the donation button is active) at the address on the About page of this Substack. Plus we have a very bad workaround on our Web site that allows you to “purchase” memberships or donate to projects.
I am grateful to our friends and donors who have made significant contributions to our work, whether books, papers, money, late-night phone calls, or hands-on volunteering. There’s plenty of room for more hands!
Tenth and final for today: If you liked this look behind the scenes, please drop a note in the comments or contact us. I’ve thought about having a monthly “behind the scenes” post that helps you understand how we’ve collected our materials, the families and friendships we’ve made, the serious aspects of our many research trips, the not-so-serious aspects (for example, Mom deciding to rescue a ball from the Danube in Ulm and being attacked by nesting swans). And more.
Your feedback is important. I am grateful for every person who keeps us honest, makes us laugh, and joins in this important work.
Postscript: For every single reader who devoured White Rose History, Volume I, and who has been bugging, I mean, contacting me asking when the second volume will be ready for download: THANK YOU. You absolutely make my day, if not my year. Those are my favorite emails to answer! - DEH.
© 2023 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote.
Excellent look into the nuts and bolts of your work, Denise!