I am making all three segments of Chapter 10 free to all readers. I want you to get a good glimpse of the humanity of these students, how they could have fun together, their dynamics in a group setting, simply their silly, serious selves.
July 22, 1942.
Summary:
Manfred Eickemeyer is annoyed and surprised when around thirty people show up for the farewell party. Sophie has brought black tea, Hans nothing, so Eickemeyer scrambles to find pastries and champagne for the guests. He is annoyed at Hans’ lack of manners and misses out on much of the conversation, as the students expect him to serve.
Hans Scholl tells anti-Nazi jokes, which breaks the logjam and gets people talking. Manfred Eickemeyer tells everyone assembled about Nazi atrocities in Poland - things he has heard from reliable sources, as well as events he witnessed firsthand, including 600,000 Jews crammed into the Warsaw Ghetto. Even Professor Huber seems to be moved by the crimes Eickemeyer describes.
Alexander Schmorell poses a question to his friends: How shall they hehave on the battlefield? He advocates passive resistance, but his comments fuel a fierce controversy. Despite pushback from his friends - including Hans Scholl - he maintains his position. Willi Graf retreats into his shell, avoiding the discussion.
At this point, the debate seems to center on passive resistance versus no resistance, not passive versus active resistance. In other words, either not following or slow-playing orders, versus doing one’s duty as a soldier.
Professor Huber comments that when a National Socialist commits a crime, it should be noted so they can be punished later. Hans Hirzel sees that everyone understands his words to mean sooner, rather than later, and is also surprised that no one denounces National Socialism, only Naitonal Socialist crimes.
Manfred Eickemeyer brings out the champagne. The partygoers break up into smaller conversation units. Professor Huber asks Hans Hirzel about the mood in Württemberg. Hans Hirzel self-effacingly says he is not qualified to answer, but his uneducated guess would be that Württemberg is more conservative and pro-Hitler than Munich.
Why this matters:
When I wrote this book in 2002, I would frequently ask people what they would do if something like the Nazi era happened in the USA. How would they react? The answer invariably came, “It cannot happen here. Our system with its checks and balances will prevent something like National Socialism from ever taking root.”
I will now pose Alexander Schmorell’s question here: How will you behave if given an illegal order or if you’re asked to consciously perform an act that is unethical or that contravenes the law?
Because the 2002 response no longer is valid.In recording this segment, I was struck by something I’d missed before, something that seems important. This notion of protesting crimes, criminal acts, and not a political system.
I didn’t give that a second thought back in 2002, but now I wonder about the concept. It goes without saying that crimes, that criminal acts, should be prosecuted. Under what circumstances should a political system be “prosecuted” or routed?
Please comment on these questions, or with anything else that caught your attention in this segment. As you can see, it’s just now starting to get really, really good.
White Rose History, Volume II, pages 128-131.
Notes and references
As of the date this book went to press (2002), my database is 1,995 printed pages long (January 31, 1933 – October 12, 1943). The entries for July 22, 1942 make up nineteen of those pages, a significantly disproportionate number for a single date*. Almost all of those entries come from Gestapo interrogation transcripts, not postwar narrative, a clue to the importance the Gestapo attached to the meeting. - *Each day should be about 1/2 page long in the data dump: 1995/3903.
Positively identified from records as in attendance at the farewell party: Hans and Sophie Scholl, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, Christl Probst, Katharina Schüddekopf, Traute Lafrenz, “great woman (friend of Manfred Eickemeyer),” “Woman #5,” Professor Huber, Manfred Eickemeyer, and Hans Hirzel. It is possible but not proven that friends like Otmar Hammerstein, Raimund Samüller, and Hubert Furtwängler dropped in briefly on the festivities. Not present: Susanne Hirzel, Gisela Schertling, Otl Aicher, and Jürgen Wittenstein.
Oddly enough, in Manfred Eickemeyer’s April 7, 1943 interrogation, he claimed Kurt Huber was not at the party.
The ditty is not easily translated. Steig hernieder, Edler Streiter. / Dein Gefreiter weiβ nicht weiter. / Lasse diese schlechten Zeiten / lieber Adolf Hitler reiten.
Johannes Tuchel points out that Detlef Bald’s surmisings about Eickemeyer’s additional information – identified by Eickemeyer merely as “one or other German measures taken in the Generalgouvernement” – is off-base. In Bald’s book (that is largely based on Dr. Wittenstein’s supposed diary), he asserts that Eickemeyer told them about Hans Frank’s tirades, yet the “quotes” cited were not from public speeches, but rather from Frank’s private journals.
A second alleged Eickemeyer tidbit was not even from Hans Frank, but from Herbert Hummel, and Bald managed to mangle that quote.
Finally, Detlef Bald averred that Eickemeyer could have told them “that SS people drove through the [Warsaw] Ghetto and shot at anything that moved with automatic weapons (pistols).” While that assuredly took place, the “quote” that forms the basis for Bald’s assertion was dated December 20, 1942, five months after Manfred Eickemeyer supposedly knew about it.
In earlier interrogations of Manfred Eickemeyer (and indeed, earlier in the day on April 9), he initially professed not to have known anything about a political discussion because he was out and about running errands. Only later did he own up to his role in the conversation.
Traute Lafrenz alone claimed that Hans Scholl started the debate about passive resistance and how they should behave on the battlefield. Everyone else said Alexander Schmorell had done so.
Kurt Huber’s testimony is a little confusing. On the one hand, he adamantly stated that Alexander Schmorell’s view of passive resistance on the battlefield was contradicted by everyone present. Willi Graf confirmed that report: “With regards to our assignment on the front, Schmorell championed the idea that we should behave passively, and that the others who were present contradicted him.”
Yet Huber turned around and said that “Schmorell publicly championed the point of view that passive resistance was the most useful; however, all of those present agreed with his opinion.”
It is not clear whether Huber said the opposite of what he meant, or whether Alex was eventually able to persuade his friends of the correctness of his opinion.
In the same interrogation, Kurt Huber said that Eickemeyer made statements “that support what we believe, [namely] that one should volunteer for the army.” Compare with Katharina Schüddekopf’s 3/23/1943 interrogation. She merely mentioned the debate and did not name the person who started it.
Johannes Tuchel emphasizes the fact that Alex Schmorell basically stood alone, without Hans Scholl, Willi Graf, or anyone else present supporting his position. Tuchel noted that Detlef Bald’s White Rose book distorts this personal conviction held by Alexander Schmorell, articulated during the trial as ‘not willing to shoot at either Germans or Russians,’ and wrongly incorporates it into overall White Rose outlook.
Hans Hirzel’s comments about democratic viewpoint, about National Socialist crimes versus National Socialism, are more credible because he made the statements during a Gestapo interrogation and not postwar.
Traute’s comment about no one paying attention to Hans Scholl because they were too drunk: She was trying to apply this state of affairs to the entire evening, instead of to the later portion when champagne replaced black tea. The Gestapo did not fall for her deception.
Throughout his interrogation, Kurt Huber insisted that the boy from Ulm was Otl Aicher. Even after the Gestapo knew it was Hans Hirzel and not Otl, Huber persevered in fingering Otl. This is not the only time Professor Huber wrongly identified a person, insisting he was correct when he was clearly mistaken. Watch for this in the chapters dealing with his interrogations.
Hirzel, Susanne. Vom Ja zum Nein: Eine schwäbische Jugend 1933-1945. Tübingen: Klöpfer, Mayer und Co. Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 1998.
Tuchel, Johannes. “Neues von der ‘Weiβen Rose’? – Kritische Überlegungen zu Detlef Bald: Die Weiβe Rose, von der Front in den Widerstand.” In Arbeitshefte des Bereichs Historische Grundlagen der Politikwissenschaft am Otto-Suhr Institut für Politikwissenschaft. Berlin: Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, 2003.
Tuchel, Johannes. “’Von der Front in den Widerstand’? Kritische Überlegungen zu Detlef Balds Neuerscheinung über die ‘Weiβe Rose’.” In Friedrich Veitl (Ed.) Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Heft 11 (pp. 1022-1045). Berlin: Metropol-Verlag, 2003.
Gestapo Interrogation Transcripts: Manfred Eickemeyer and Eugen Grimminger, Volume 1. Stadtsarchiv München Stanw. Nr. 12.530. 4/9/1943 interrogation of Manfred Eickemeyer; 4/7/1943 interrogation of Manfred Eickemeyer.
NJ1704, Volume 1, part 3. 3/1/1943 interrogation of Willi Graf.
NJ1704, Volume 7. 2/27/43 interrogation of Kurt Huber.
Third White Rose Trial: July 13, 1943. 7/13/1943 verdict with reasons; 4/12/1943 Gestapo report re Söhngen, Geyer, et al; 4/27/1943 order to transfer Söhngen, Geyer, Dohrn, and Eickemeyer to investigative custody.
ZC13267, Volume 6. 3/15/1943 interrogation of Traute Lafrenz. Publication in 2024/2025.
ZC13267, Volume 15, part 2. 3/23/1943 interrogation of Katharina Schüddekopf.
ZC14116, Volume 1. 2/27/1943 interrogation of Hans Hirzel; 2/22/1943 interrogation of Hans Hirzel. Publication in 2024/2025.
Podcast © 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. White Rose History, Volume II, Chapter 10, © 2002 Denise Elaine Heap and Exclamation! Publishers. Please contact us for permission to quote.
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Chapter 10, part 2: Black Tea and Champagne