Chapter 14, part 4: Unexpected Harmony

August 31, 1942.

Summary:

Hans Hirzel takes the money Sophie Scholl had given him. He travels to Tübingen to visit his maternal grandfather, Robert Gradmann. While there, he buys a simple duplicating machine along with supplies. Hans Hirzel employs the same methodology used by White Rose friends - he purchases supplies at two different stores in Tübingen and four stores in Ulm.

It is not clear whether Hans Hirzel is resisting the Nazi regime, or simply rebelling against his mother. Complicating matters, he continues pilfering drugs from Kurt Glöckler’s attic laboratory (sleeping aids and homemade LSD). No one in the Hirzel household, not even his sister Susanne, notices his addiction issues.

The Hirzel parents cut off all personal contact with the Scholl parents, except to greet them on the street. Rev. Ernst Hirzel, however, is faced with a dilemma. While deputizing for the vacationing prison chaplain, he is assigned the prisoner Robert Scholl. That means he must listen to the man’s conversation. All other prisoners must work outside the jail. Due to special privileges granted to Robert Scholl, he continues his accounting work while behind bars.

Robert Scholl talks to Rev. Hirzel about his gloomy apocalyptic views, together with his belief that the war is lost. Ernst Hirzel is forced to listen, although he is confused by the conversation. He knows that Robert Scholl is agnostic, so his near-religious nattering makes no sense. Robert Scholl also confides personal matters to Rev. Hirzel, things the pastor will not divulge even to the Gestapo, because of penitent-clergy privilege.

Sophie and Inge regularly visit their father in jail. The two sisters, who have never been close, grow a bit closer due to their common sorrow. Inge says (postwar) that Sophie would take her flute to the jail and play Die Gedanken sind frei [Thoughts are free] for her father.

Despite the time the sisters spend together, Sophie does not initiate Inge into their White Rose work.

Without question, Hans and Sophie both know that if their older sister could ever become passionate about their cause, if she could ever walk away from her connection to Nazi bigwigs and League of German Girls ideology, she could be a welcome addition to the White Rose work. Whatever Inge did – whether teaching antisemitic and racial ideology, staging plays, designing Jungmädel induction ceremonies, cleaning house, or simply working on her father’s books – she does thoroughly and fully focused.

As things stand, they cannot and do not trust her. But they have so much work left to do.

Why this matters:

• Robert Scholl clearly taught his son Hans well. Robert Scholl was a chameleon, changing his stripes based on the person he conversed with. Ernst Hirzel was confused by Scholl’s “near-religious” talk, but Robert Scholl was talking to a religious person. Therefore, he adopted religious talk.
  When Robert Scholl talked to Nazis, he adopted extreme nationalist talk. After the war, when talking to Americans, he adopted democratic talk. When talking to the surviving heirs of the very Jewish families he had shunned during the war, he adopted “reconciliation” and advocacy talk.
  Hans Scholl did the same thing. When he wrote his mother, it’s all religion all the time. When he hung out with Wittenstein, or Gisela, or Hellmut Hartert, or Kurt Huber, he was a nationalist, bowing to their Nazi fervor. When he was around Willi Graf and Käthe Schüddekopf, he wanted to know more about Catholicism. When he was with Traute and Sophie, Lutheran.
  I mentioned this aspect of Hans Scholl during my speech in Munich in October 2023. Afterwards, the son of Wolf Jaeger approached me. He thanked me for making this statement - one you will not hear expressed in Germany. He said his father said exactly the same thing about Hans Scholl.
  Hans Scholl learned it from his father.
  And it cost the White Rose friends. Dearly.

White Rose History, Volume II, pages 178-179.

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