Chapter 13, part 2: Relentless Rain

August 12 - August 14, 1942.

Summary:

Willi Graf decides he will not sit and be miserable. Together with others from the HVP, they clear a place on the edge of the forest where they can read and write. The hard physical labor makes him feel better.

Hans Scholl pens a very strange diary entry that bounces from pathos and melancholy to phony euphoria. I asked whether Hans had a drug addiction and learned that he was addicted to a form of crystal meth called pervetin, alt. pervitin, a “go-drug” the Nazi military administered to soldiers on the front line. That explained a great deal about Hans’ diary entries and letters from their time on the Russian front, as well as his behavior.

Willi Graf mentions “informative” tests administered, presumably of a medical nature, but says they are ugly in type. He does not expound on what disturbs him.

Sophie Scholl is assigned to a munitions plant that manufactures screws, a plant close to the Hirzels’ home. Susanne Hirzel works at a factory near the Scholls’ home. Sophie takes her lunches with the Hirzels, but advises Susanne against visiting her family, because of Robert Scholl’s impending jail time.

Rev. Ernst Hirzel later identifies the time Sophie spent in their home that summer as his son Hans’ push to commit treason.

Hans Hirzel initiates a friend named Walter Hetzel into White Rose intrigue and tells Walter he must keep it a secret.

Sophie finds her work on the assembly line soulless, loveless. “A trained ape could do it just as well, if it were stupid enough to be bullied into it.”

But she enjoys the Russian woman at the station next to hers. She comments that the other German women in the factory help the Russian woman, surprised to find that “even Russians” are human beings.

Sophie badly misses Otl Aicher and her brother Werner. She hates being stuck at home with Inge.

Why this matters:

• When faced with horrendous conditions, we humans make choices as to how we will deal with the bad situations. Willi Graf chose to read, and when that failed, he volunteered for hard physical labor to take his mind off things.
  Hans Scholl, on the other hand, turned to drugs that made him feel invincible.
  Choices.

• Sophie’s observations about the interactions between German and Russian workers at the munitions plant show wisdom beyond her years.
  Indeed, the notion that war affects human beings on both sides of a conflict? That informs one of our projects that you’ll read more about in the months to come. Even when one “side” of a conflict is more just that the other — as clearly was the case from 1939-1945 — that does not lessen the pain and suffering of families and friends on the “wrong side.”
  At some point, unless we wish for mutual mass destruction, we must figure this thing out, how to resolve international disputes without war.
  That may be a long time coming. But we can start thinking about it now.

Talk about it! I’d wager you have strong opinions one way or the other.

White Rose History, Volume II, pages 160-163.

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