Evaluating testimony

Gestapo interrogation transcripts, together with trial transcripts and crime lab reports, comprise the Protokolle so valuable to White Rose research. Evaluating them is critical to good scholarship.

Copy of page from Gisela Schertling’s April 2, 1943 interrogation. © 2023 Denise Heap.

Anyone who wants to research White Rose resistance will eventually – if not immediately – find their way to the Protokolle, that collection of Gestapo interrogation transcripts and trial transcripts, plus evidence, that is archived with the Bundesarchiv. If you’re persistent and diligent, you will also find documents in Ludwigsburg, Munich, and other cities. And if you’re genuinely serious, you will look in places others haven’t looked yet.

These Protokolle provide unedited insight not only into the interrogations and trials, but also into the lives of the students and adults in the circle of friends we call White Rose. [Note: The annotations in our English translations of the Protokolle merely explain words, concepts, or context specific to that era. We do not try to explain why they responded as they did.]

The Protokolle are not very flattering to either Hans or Sophie Scholl. Contrary to legend, they unnecessarily betrayed close friends. Contrary to legend, they were not tortured. Contrary to legend, they did not take all the blame upon themselves. Contrary to legend, Else Gebel was no heroine. And absolutely contrary to legend, Christoph Probst was not the weak one. That would have been Hans Scholl.

Likely for this reason, the Protokolle tend to be ignored or minimized by not-scholars who hew to the version of events as related by Inge Scholl and Jürgen Wittenstein. Visible example: When Fred Breinersdorfer published Sophie Scholl’s Protokolle as part of his book about the movie, he censored the parts that painted her in a negative light, letting his readers read cherry-picked text that “supported” his storybook.

While working on our White Rose Histories, the Protokolle were input into our database without worrying about who told the truth and who did not. Followed the same “rules” for all of it, especially regarding dates. Databases are agnostic. They don’t care who had Inge’s seal of approval and who did not. The database connected and sorted diary entries, letters, interviews, newspaper articles from the era, and the Protokolle.

Worth re-emphasizing: The Protokolle as we know them are the prosecutors’ files only. The Gestapo version – which was stored in Starnberg at least from 1945-1946 or 1947, per Wittenstein’s account – has yet to resurface. Susanne Hirzel noted that the Leitz binders, similar to three-ring binders, filled up five bookcases in March 1943 when she was processed at the Wittelsbacher Palais, Gestapo headquarters. The Protokolle from the Bundesarchiv don’t even fill one. Clearly documents are missing.

Our data dump then provided us material to evaluate each individual’s files. From that analysis, before writing those Histories, we evaluated the veracity of each person’s testimony. You can read those notes on our Web site.

Paywall past this point, because it’s nitty gritty for scholars who follow our work and who are involved in research.