Choices on the Russian Front – August 1, 1942-September 30, 1942
Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Hans Scholl, Hubert Furtwängler, and Raimund Samüller were set down in the middle of a Russian forest, 6 miles from the front lines. They never forgot what they saw.
If you want to read about the experiences of the White Rose friends on the Russian front in chronological order, and including the events in the lives of Sophie, Traute, Käthe, Christl, and others who remained in Germany, please see Chapters 12 through 20 of our White Rose History: Volume II – Journey to Freedom. In this post and the next, I will look at their service as medics on the front lines topically: What influenced them, what they talked about, how they reacted to the Russians they met, why these 3+ months were important for their resistance work the last 3-1/2 months before the arrests.
The broad brush of their letters and diary entries paints the choices they made while serving on the Russian front. Watch their progression from August 1 through November 9, 1942. These five young men grew up as they witnessed injustice, saw fellow Germans behave inhumanely, as they mingled with ‘the enemy,’ as they read and talked and talked some more.
Over the course of the 3+ months, yes, they played chess and skat, yes, they drank vodka and schnapps (and usually regretted it the next day), yes, some of their conversations involved superficial matters. But they matured, they absorbed their experiences, transforming them into words and deeds that would cost three of them their lives.
MEDICAL BACKGROUND
German medical students doing a rotation on the front lines were assigned to one of four types of war-time medical facilities.
Verwundetennest were foxholes where wounds were hastily dressed, tourniquets applied, blood flow stanched. Wounded were evacuated from the Verwundetennest to the Truppenverbandplatz (TVP). Those who could walk were expected to get there under their own power. Everyone else was picked up by TVP medical personnel, although sometimes if battle raged, the wounded were simply moved slightly to the rear.
The TVP was always located as close to the front lines as possible, although it was supposed to be out of the direct line of fire. Doctors and medics administered pain medication, tetanus shots, and shock therapy. They performed pressing procedures, such as tracheotomies. Primarily, they prepared the wounded for further transport to the Hauptverbandplatz or HVP, which supposedly was four to six miles behind the front lines.
Every HVP hypothetically had two surgeons on duty, though there could be as many as six or eight staff surgeons for an HVP near a particularly active front – which meant that less active HVPs would lend their doctors to another HVP, leaving them with one surgeon (or none) on duty. HVPs were designed to handle approximately two hundred patients, but often they crammed three or four hundred into a single facility.
An HVP was equipped with full surgical facilities, including anesthesia. In addition to admissions, apothecary, triage, and operating room, the building (only a few were tents) would have wards for the slightly wounded, badly wounded, and hopeless cases, plus – as at HVP Plankenhorn, where White Rose students served most of their time – infectious diseases if required.
Unless the HVP was extremely busy (as it would be on days when fighting was heavy and the TVP was overloaded), the medical staff took care of all abdominal surgeries, amputations, and primary surgery on “non-transportable cases.” They did not, however, try to tackle major compound fractures or wounds to the brain, chest, or buttocks.
“Real” medical treatment took place at the Feldlazarett or field hospital, located twelve to fifteen miles behind the front lines. Specialized surgeons, x-ray facilities, dental services, and a well-stocked apothecary were elements of a field hospital missing from the HVP. The pace was still hurried, but it would be closer to the experience of working in a German military hospital, such as the one in Ebersbach where Traute Lafrenz served her clinical rotation. The doctors in a field hospital practiced actual medicine, not patch-up-and-move-out as in a TVP or HVP.
Therefore Hans Scholl, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, Hubert Furtwängler, and Raimund Samüller performed their Feldfamulatur or clinical rotation within a few feet to ten miles of the Russian front. Jürgen Wittenstein, who claimed to have served with them, landed a cushy job at a field hospital about sixty miles from the front lines.
Alexander Schmorell’s bout of diphtheria, combined with Hans Scholl’s unfounded worry that he too had gotten that disease, demonstrates that German medicine had been hampered by Hitler’s fixation on military expansion to the detriment of medical progress. Diphtheria had virtually been eradicated in the United States and Great Britain by the early 1940s because of widespread immunizations, yet the German population remained largely unprotected. Treatment after the fact was a different matter. In the US and UK, help was right around the corner. Penicillin had been available for about fifteen years and by 1942, was on the verge of commercial production. In Germany, it would take much, much longer.
When Alex therefore was diagnosed with diphtheria instead of with a common cold, anxiety among his friends would have been great. Even when treated with appropriate antibiotics, 5-10% of diphtheria patients die. The death rate is much higher without urgent medical attention and immediate administration of drugs.
Ambulances on the Russian front were also crude, when they existed at all. HVP Plankenhorn, where the Roses were stationed, did not have motorized ambulance service. When Willi and Hubert were transferred directly to the front lines on 9/3/42, they rode in a horse-drawn vehicle. They were lucky. Sometimes the Germans used goats when horses were in short supply. Willi then traveled by foot, and then railroad handcar, to his post directly on the front lines.
Finally, instead of learning about triage and trauma while working in a prime location for such instruction, the German medical community held front-line seminars on topics such as Pfaundler’s Formula for infant nutrition. The White Rose friends chuckled at the serious suck-up who interrupted the lecture with a polite, “Permission to address the chief medical officer.”
WHAT THEY READ
Nachsommer [Indian Summer], by Adalbert Stifter. Willi Graf.
Bridge of San Luis Rey (in German translation), by Thornton Wilder. Hans Scholl.
Various essays, by Romano Guardini. Willi Graf.
Guilt and Atonement (Russian original with help from Alexander Schmorell), by Dostoevsky. Willi Graf.
HAPPY COINCIDENCES
Werner Scholl had been stationed on the Russian front. On 8/6/42, he appeared at HVP Plankenhorn, perhaps delivering wounded from a TVP or Verwundetennest. Over the course of the three months Hans Scholl served in Russia, he had regular contact with his youngest sibling.
Alois (“Ali”) Mauer encountered Willi Graf for the third time. Twice in 1941, Willi and Ali had bumped into one another. Ali was critical friend for Willi. Unlike the first two chance encounters, on 8/7/42, Willi and Ali sat up late into the night. Ali briefed Willi on front-line conditions, while Willi filled him in on events from their circle in Saarbrücken.
INTERACTIONS WITH RUSSIAN CITIZENS
Matutin, Russian Orthodox mass. On 8/2/42, the White Rose friends accompanied Alexander Schmorell to the traditional morning service in Gzhatsk.
Russian farmers. Werner Scholl – not Alexander Schmorell! – introduced his older brother Hans to the Russian farmers he considered friends. The two Scholls drank several glasses of vodka with the farmers and “sang Russian songs as if we were in the middle of peacetime.”
Homeland. For Alex, the assignment on the front lines was a homecoming. Not a homecoming “of sorts,” but something that nourished his soul. His mantra, “Everything strong is weak, everything weak, strong” was being lived out less than six miles from the fighting. “Beautiful, glorious Russia.”
Long walks. Hans, Alex, Willi, and Hubert noted the long walks they would take, sometimes directly to the front lines, other times through the forest where their HVP was situated. On these walks they talked to other soldiers, medics, and most importantly, to Russian peasants they encountered.
Open air harmony. Alex’s hand can be seen in the 8/22/42 evening, sitting in the open air, listening to a Russian woman who worked in their camp singing songs of her homeland. Others soon joined, someone found a guitar, and before anyone knew it, the four Roses forgot their soldier status and hummed harmony to the women’s soprano. Such an unexpected delight! Music where there would be war… “One can sense the heart of Russia, which we love,” Willi wrote in his diary.
Burying a Russian (Hans and Alex). Hans wrote his mother that the Russian “must have been lying out there for several weeks, a hundred yards from our bunker.” His diary’s version was a bit more gruesome. “The head had come away from the trunk and the soft parts were already decomposed. Worms were crawling out of the rotting clothes. We had almost finished filling in the grave when we found another arm. We ended by nailing a Russian cross together and sticking it in the ground at the head. Now his soul is at rest.” Alex merely said that he and Hans had buried several skulls of Russian soldiers who had died, so the souls of these soldiers could find rest. And that they had done so at night, for reasons he did not have to explain.
Fishing. Around the end of August, both Hans and Alex started fishing with a local fisherman on a regular basis.
Vera. The woman who had sung for them in the open air was named Vera. On 8/30/42, she reprised her concert, this time with others playing guitar and balalaika. Afternoon turned to evening before the performance ended. Willi told his diary that Vera “makes the songs give back the sounds that connect me to the land.”
Soldiers and singers. The last day before the four friends were split into two groups, with Hubert and Willi headed directly to the front lines, all but Alex joined a group of German soldiers and Russian “peasants” singing and dancing. That September 1 marked the first day of Alex’s bout of diphtheria, which remained undiagnosed (apparently the doctors initially thought he had a cold), but there was enough schnapps to go around for everyone to understand one another. Willi Graf’s diary entry stated, “Till midnight. We will remember this evening.”
Front-line trenches. On Friday 9/25/42, Willi “took a walk” to the front-line trenches. Everything was still wet, muddy under his feet, yet above him, nothing but clear blue skies and unspeakable autumn finery.
Afanassyevka. Sunday 9/27/42, Willi was tasked with fetching a sick soldier from the First Company. The walk would take him out of the dark forest and into brilliant sun-strewn meadows. He knew barbed wire was never too far away, but this day, he could not see it. In the distance, Willi spied a village: Afanassyevka. It looked so peaceful. The closer he got, the less beautiful the village appeared. It had been completely gutted. “Soon I saw the death and destruction,” Willi wrote in his diary. This area was site for German war crimes against the Soviet population, prosecuted in Nürnberg in 1946. It is then no wonder that Willi’s diary that night said he sat in the bunker, unable to get the images of Afanassyevka out of his head. “I thought about all the scenes I had seen.”
Kolesniki. Willi, perhaps with Hubert, walked to the town of Kolesniki the evening of Wednesday September 30. As Willi documented the evening in his diary, he noted that the settlement seemed normal compared to the front lines. Like Afanassyevka, Kolesniki had been the site of unfathomable German atrocities.
Alex’s experiences without the others. From Alex’s interrogations, we know that he ventured out into the Russian countryside, often alone. One day while Alex was out in the field, he ran across a Russian plane that had crashed. He found a photograph of the pilot on his person and took it along as a remembrance. – While fulfilling his duties at HVP Plankenhorn, a Russian POW named Andrejeff was admitted to their care. Alex talked with this prisoner often, and a friendship developed. They exchanged addresses, and Alex promised to look him up after the war. – He was also upset to hear that German successes were primarily attributable to the treason of Russian generals. More than one Russian prisoner told him this, and it pained him.
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
Rain, tobacco, and wine. On 8/16/42, all but Raimund (who had been transferred away from HVP Plankenhorn) discussed the monotony of raindrops. That conversation led to a debate over the merits of cigars versus cigarettes. After too much schnapps, the Roses argued about the difference between wine and man. “Where there’s wine, there’s culture.” Most of that night, they simply sang and told jokes; they did not record content of either.
Theologians, suicide, spiritual abyss, destruction and deliverance, the metaphor of Russia as an old man staring at his death chamber, birch trees, melancholy. This is inferred as a conversation on 8/17/42 because of Willi Graf’s diary entry the same day that Hans Scholl pontificated on these topics in his diary. Willi noted that despite being together, he felt alone. These were not subjects Willi normally chose to consider. Hans eventually brought the talk around to tobacco products, this time siding with Willi regarding preference for cigars.
Robert Scholl’s clemency petition. Also on 8/17/42, Hans Scholl walked to Werner’s TVP, where the brothers discussed Magdalena Scholl’s request for clemency petition on behalf of their father. The brothers decided against such a petition.
Nonsense and wine. Briefly covered in Willi’s 8/21/42 diary entry.
Art. Hubert argued that the function of art was to make the world a happier place. Hans Scholl, in a melancholy and (for him) overly-religious mood, spoke of running full tilt at a wall and smashing in his skull. Alex was “alive, healthy, and content.”
Nothing. Willi and Hubert met up on Sunday, 9/5/42, as they served directly on the front lines. Both men were so exhausted that they could not even bring themselves to play chess. They did nothing. It was enough to be together. Willi told his diary he only wanted to sleep.
Ernst Reden. Sometimes the silences are critical. Hans Scholl penned flowery words in his diary following the news that Ernst Reden had been killed in action. He thought about the effect this would have on his sister Inge. He did not ever mention discussing Ernst’s death with his brother Werner. (Ernst had repeatedly sexually assaulted Werner when Werner was a young teen.)
Everything imaginable. By Monday September 7, Willi and Hubert had regained their equilibrium. They ambled through the Russian countryside, able to talk freely and openly “about everything imaginable,” Willi said.
Russia. On 9/11/42, Willi called Hubert, and on Saturday 9/12/42, Hubert showed up at Willi’s bunker. Willi called it a “small party day.” In addition to swimming, drinking schnapps, and having to endure Viennese songs in the officers’ mess, Willi and Hubert were able to spend quality time together. Willi noted that it was good they were seeing Russia as guests who would not be around for long.
The upcoming school year. Hubert called Willi on Wednesday 9/23/42. Start of the winter trimester had been postponed until December. (That meant they would only get in two trimesters – hence, two short semesters – for the year.) Neither of them wanted to consider the implications for their front-line duty. It was not possible, please say it was not possible, that they would be stuck in Russia for the winter.
Simple gossip. Hubert had had the opportunity to make a quick trip back to HVP Plankenhorn. On Tuesday September 29, he paid Willi a visit to catch him up on their gossip. Neither Willi nor Hubert recorded details.
LETTERS HOME
The inauthentic historical fiction book Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi, wrongly asserts that no one on the home front knew of the atrocities or military activities on the front line. Letters from the White Rose circle of friends destroy the foundation for her fiction.
Alexander Schmorell, 8/5/42. Nearby Gzhatsk was almost completely destroyed, but the Russians shelled it mercilessly anyway. Day or night, they aimed artillery at the ruined town. “But our encampment is in the forest and is completely safe.” He also confirmed that HVP Plankenhorn was about ten km or six miles from the front – far enough away to miss the heavy fighting, but too close nevertheless.
Hans Scholl, 8/7/42. Hans wrote his parents about Werner’s surprise visit and said that Werner was “lucky” to be working as an orderly at a TVP. He told them about the brotherly late-night stroll where Werner introduced him to Russian peasants (vodka, singing Russian songs). Hans said the Russian pilots were quite busy on August 6. Werner’s TVP was overflowing with casualties from Ržev, because the Russians had broken through German lines in two places. “But they never manage to exploit their advantage,” Hans noted.
Alexander Schmorell, 8/7/42. “Beautiful, glorious Russia… It is not for nothing that the Russian people have suffered for twenty years and continue to suffer even today.”
Hans Scholl, 8/17/42. In a letter to Kurt Huber on behalf of himself, Alex, Willi, and Hubert, Hans briefly recounted their adventures over the last month: Warsaw, the involuntary idleness on the front, the Russian offensive. In addition, Hans told the professor how they mingled with Russian peasants, drinking schnapps, singing, growing familiar with the culture. He praised Alex’s assistance, calling Alex their “Russian friend,” and said he himself was trying to learn to speak Russian.
Werner Scholl, 8/18/42. Censored excerpt in Sippenhaft. “He [Hans] was leaning up against a gnarled tree trunk. Behind him was a little lake. When I had finished reading the letter, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t take that too seriously, if it is serious. It will only last for a while. We owe it to our upbringing that we must bear this easier than others would.’”
Willi Graf, 8/20/42. Willi told a mutual friend about Alois Mauer’s visit and their conversation. “The symmetry [Gleichmaβ] is overwhelming, because primitive cares come to the foreground over and over.”
Hans Scholl, 8/24/42. Hans advised his mother that he and Werner would not provide clemency petitions for their father. He said that his father would probably be starved for contact with the outside world. “But he will survive,” Hans wrote. “Being strong, he will emerge from captivity even stronger.” But Hans could not bring himself to oblige by writing a clemency petition on his father’s behalf, he advised his mother. “If I tried, I would go off the deep end.” He placated his mother by telling her that Werner had taken the news well and calmly. Hans also told his mother that he and Alex had buried a Russian that day.
Alexander Schmorell, 8/24/42. Alex wrote Lilo about burying a Russian along with several skulls of Russian soldiers who had died.
Alexander Schmorell, 8/28/42. In a letter to his parents, Alex said he was “alive, healthy, and content,” and he happily informed them that he had made quite a few friends in town. “I spend my free time in the best possible ways.” He had made contact with an old fisherman who had agreed to take him to a local fishing hole on Saturday. They could catch crawdads too, Alex declared, “as many as one wants.” He was most pleased to see that in twenty years of Bolshevism, the Russian people had not forgotten how to sing and dance. Their music reconnected him to his roots.
Willi Graf, 8/29/42. One of Willi’s most faithful penpals was a Russian scholar in Bonn named Marita Herfeldt. He dedicated a good portion of this Saturday to catching her up on the events of the past month. Details such as his work in the infectious diseases ward (dysentery, malaria, and typhus), along with description of the friends with whom he spent his time. “Good friends from Munich… you can probably guess what that means out here.” Willi described Alex as a person who had been born in Russia, left with his parents at the time of the revolution, and “almost became a German.” Willi explained to Marita how Alex’s Russian-language skills enabled them to mingle with the locals and how Alex taught him about Russian literature.
Alexander Schmorell, around end of August 1942. Alex wrote Lilo that he believed himself to be trapped between two shores, as it were. He was not unlike a swimmer halfway across the English Channel, too tired to proceed, yet unable to finish the course to one coast or the other.
Hans Scholl, 9/2/42. In a letter to his family that made the singing, dancing, conversations, long walks, friendships with Russians, and more his idea, with no credit to other friends, much less Alex, Hans Scholl ascribed immeasurable maturity to his service to that point. He claimed he had formed a “choir” among the Russians. “If you could see me now, you’d be surprised how little I am affected by all that happens here at the front. And my friends like me for being down to earth. Tackling things with a totally different attitude of mind, that’s what counts.”
Hans Scholl, 9/10/42. While in a foul mood, Hans wrote Rose Nägele. He said he wished he could ditch everything and simply head east. Note: That would be past Moscow out into the wilds of Russia, away from Germany. But, he said, he could not do so, because of Russian “all-or-nothing law.” His foul mood likely had more to do with an officer having reamed him out for a non-regulation haircut.
Hans Scholl, 9/10/42 and 9/11/42. The two back-to-back letters to Lisa Remppis either have not survived or have been censored (not published). Referred to in 9/11/42 diary entry.
Hans Scholl, 9/11/42. Letter to Josef Söhngen. “I can assure you of one thing; I love Russia more than any other land under the sun. In Russia, every homeland ceases to be. It will always have a pull on me. Russia is as boundless as love. It is like a watering hole from which one emerges clean, or drowns. … The bud of fantasy that dares not rear its head in Germany has blossomed here once again and is blooming in every hue. Nevertheless: I know that nothing is more important than returning.” – Note: One of Hans Scholl’s few accurate self-assessments can be found in his diary entry the same day. He noted that he had built a wall around himself, a wall “made of sarcasm and satire.”
Willi Graf, 9/16-9/19/42. Letter to “his girl,” Marianne. He struggled to write this letter.
Hans Scholl, 9/18/42. Hans wrote his parents that he too had nearly come down with diphtheria. He had had a high fever and a sore throat, symptoms of the disease. But it had passed in two days (which likely meant it was not diphtheria). Hans attributed his illness and Alex’s to lack of natural resistance in their bodies, since they had been giving too much blood.
Willi Graf, 9/22/42. When Willi wrote his sister Anneliese, he gave us a much clearer picture of his September existence on the front lines. “I am in a bunker close to the trenches on the front. This position is very lonely, somewhere in the middle of a forest. … At night, there’s a horrible racket, because there are only a few meters to the other [Russian] side of the front. For security, there is a strand of barbed wire running square down the middle of the terrain.” Evidently Anneliese had informed him she would not be joining him in Munich. Willi expressed his disappointment, while assuring her that he understood. “If only I could transfer to another university and choose a city, I would do whatever you wanted to do. But I cannot.”
Willi Graf, 9/24/42. Willi’s letters to Marita Herfeldt were always long, always informative. “I spend my time in the bunker, close to the barbed wire that defines the ‘front’ of the war” – then he outlined the progression of events that had altered his attitude towards Russia and its people. He described the literature he read, how shocked he was to find that Russian “peasants” and not just the educated elite read Dostoevsky. He took a nice jab at the Nazis – a jab that likely went right over the military censors’ heads – when he noted, “Here in this country, writers truly belong to the people [Volkstümlich, a Nazi byword] and are understood, and that’s how it should be.”
Inge Scholl and Scholl family have not published any correspondence between Hans Scholl and his family from 9/18-9/30/1942.
The next post covers choices made in Russia, 10/1-10/30/1942.
This Substack post ©2023, with original material in White Rose History: Volume II - Journey to Freedom © 2002, 2007. Please contact us for permission to quote. Please note that everything in this post is fully documented and footnoted in WRH2.