Painting autumn
Perhaps more than the actual events on the Russian front, the trip home and that first week back in Munich cemented determination to resist. The golden threads of the first week in Nov-42 are lovely.
When the White Rose friends in Sosonovka, Russia awoke on Friday October 30, they had only a few hours to finish packing and say their good-byes. Willi Graf found it hard to take his leave from Sina and the children.
After lunch, everyone piled onto a bus – no horse-drawn carts for them this day! – and they set out for Vyaz'ma. Bus or not, it still took ninety minutes to traverse the twelve miles between the field hospital and departure city. The holdup appeared to be the short distance between Sosonovka and the “highway” that doubled as runway.
Vyaz'ma swarmed with soldier students preparing to return home and resume medical studies. Hans Goltermann rejoined them. “Now we are all together again,” Willi noted. “Hans, Alex, Hubert, and Hans G.” Alex may have been with them in body, but emotionally, he was worn out. He went to bed early while the others caught up on the events of the past three months.
Alex later explained the emotional exhaustion that weighed him down. A fisherman who sits far, far away in my distant homeland has cast his hook deep into my breast. And the farther I am from my homeland, from that great country, the stronger the fisherman tugs at his line, and the more pain I suffer, the more restless I become.
Live well, all you people who have become so dear to me, who are near to my heart! Live well, you birch trees, you forests, and steppes! Live well, you eternal, free wind! Live well, you – my distant, bountiful, free homeland!
It was the most beautiful, the richest time of my life, these three months. They seemed long to me, as though they were an entire lifetime. How rich they were! Now I live in my memories and wish for a soon return – forever.
My heart, my thoughts, my soul, they remained there.
One person who had been with them part of the way from Munich to the front lines, and who was not with them over the three months of clinical rotation, was conspicuously absent in Vyaz'ma: Jürgen Wittenstein. According to Wittenstein’s own testimony, he returned on a different train than the other soldier students. He landed in Ulm while the others were bound for Munich. [Note: Yes, I know that in speeches and essays, Wittenstein claimed otherwise. This is part of his Evolution of Memory. In my January 2001 interview and in subsequent correspondence, he admitted he traveled back to Germany on a completely different train.]
October 31, 1942, and the five soldier students savored every last minute of their final day in Russia. They strolled through Vyaz'ma, visiting the cloister and Begräbniskirche (Funeral Church), absorbing the view from a hilltop. This would have to last them a lifetime, unless they could manage a return trip under more peaceful circumstances.
When it came time for the delousing (a hard and fast rule for soldiers going home from the Russian front), the friends disappeared, once again mingling with the Russians they were loath to leave. They spent all their money on a samovar, knowing that meant they’d have to go without supper.
As they wandered around town, Willi Graf was astounded to run into an old friend from Saarbrücken. This time it was not Ali Mauer, but it might as well have been. Bernhard Henrich, “Bem” to his friends from New Germany days, eminent-theologian-to-be, of all the people Willi could have wished to meet up with, Bem would have been at the top of the list.
Best yet, Bem invited Willi and his friends to a “decent meal.” While the food met the immediate physical needs of the Munich-bound soldier students, Bem told them he was glad to be among good people. No one could have scripted a more perfect ending to their Russian tour of duty. “The evening ended much too quickly,” Willi wrote in his diary.
With Bem staying on the front lines, and Sina and the children in Sosonovka, they (but most especially Willi) found it difficult to deal with so many goodbyes at once. “Everyone is going off in different directions,” he said. “What will the next months in this year bring us? I am very curious. But first, we’ve got the trip home ahead of us. It is to begin tomorrow.”
All Saints Day, a Sunday like any other day of the week. Early in the morning, the soldier students were loaded into cattle cars for the long trip home. They were split up, but the two Hanses, Willi, Alex, and Hubert managed to stick together. Thankful for the samovar, they enjoyed hot black tea as well as the heat the apparatus gave off. No doubt they were the most popular soldiers on the train!
Conditions were crowded in the “nine or forty” – nine horses or forty people – and they complained about lack of room. But as Willi noted, “there are many impeccable people with us.” That may have made it easier to talk (though they would not have discussed resistance plans in front of thirty-five outsiders), yet sleeping was another matter altogether.
They passed through Smolensk in the dark, unable to see the city. When he could not sleep, Willi took a sedative, but it did not help. The boil on his neck bothered him too much to be able to relax.
By November 2, thirty-six hours after leaving Vyaz'ma, they had only reached Orsa, a town between Smolensk and Minsk. Less than 250 miles in a day and a half. To make matters worse, the train stopped in Orsa for several hours. “If it keeps going on in this fashion,” Willi said, “we will be traveling for a very long time.”
The friends had a few things going for them in addition to Alex’s reluctance to leave Russia. Their samovar kept churning out delicious tea, doubling as “furnace” for the cattle car they occupied. Plus they had their gift of music, which they put to good use at frustrating times like the layover in Orsa.
“In the evening, we sing a lot, and a large part of the cattle car joins in. One can sense a good atmosphere. Because there are several ‘good people’ among us.” There is a hint of camaraderie and playful teasing among the friends. “Alex rarely plays his balalaika,” Willi reported, and one intuits the wink, “and it’s good that way.”
The next day, the train resumed its journey, this time arriving at Baranavičy before stopping for another unexplained layover. They had covered all of 350 miles in two-and-a-half days. Again, the delay did not seem to disturb them greatly. Willi said he had been able to watch the landscape from their cattle car for a few hours, something that brought him joy (and presumably, his friends too). They were unbelievably dirty, but who cared?
“Now and then, there’s a sensible discussion,” Willi wrote in his diary. Again, it is highly unlikely that they openly spoke of plans for future work in front of strangers. Nevertheless, it’s clear that they valued being together, being around people who knew what was meant by suggestive remarks and inside jokes. And of course, it is entirely possible that every layover allowed them to disembark and go on walks away from the crowd. Without more evidence of what actually transpired, one can only speculate as to the meaning of Willi’s words, “sensible discussion.”
They reached Brest early on Wednesday November 4. Three days, 485 miles. Naturally, the train stayed at Brest’s station for hours. This time, we know for certain that the friends got off the train during the stopover, because Willi noted that there was almost a fight – a “ruckus” – when they gave Russian prisoners some cigarettes. It had not yet sunk in that their Russian experience did not resemble the Russian experience of the majority of German soldiers.
After remaining parked at the Brest station for the better part of the day, their train limped the short distance – barely 120 miles – to an outlying station of Warsaw. They camped out in that place overnight, and (at least for Willi) it was another night with little sleep.
The soldier students began to believe that their return was gaining momentum when they were shunted over to Warsaw-Praga for a compulsory shave. Praga was the district of Warsaw that Hitler had spared, leaving it as a safe harbor for Polish citizens who refused to be utilized as human shields by the Polish army in 1939. It therefore would have had a more ‘civilized’ atmosphere, especially in comparison to the Russian front and downtown Warsaw.
Perhaps it was the shave, perhaps it was the more normal surroundings, or perhaps it was the news that the rest of their journey would be on a regular passenger train – whatever the reason, the friends found themselves in uncommonly high spirits. They went into Warsaw proper to enjoy schnapps and cake at the Blue Duck. They did not attempt to revisit the Ghetto. They would not have known that the population of the Ghetto had been reduced from 350,000 to around 60,000 by deportations to extermination camps.
A soldier named Jörn Weitz joined them at the Blue Duck. He was a medical student stationed at the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Warsaw. There is no record of how he knew the friends, but apparently he was respected as one who at least shared their basic sentiments.
Because of Jörn, we know precisely what Hubert Furtwängler meant when he said they were “full of high spirits and carelessness.” Jörn’s version of the event is worth repeating in its entirety:
We sat at the first table to the left of the entrance. Hans Scholl had a good view of the room. The musicians were on the right side, i.e., the other side of the room, about in the middle.
Several tables were already taken when we arrived. Only later – in a boisterous/spirited frame of mind – did we ask the band to play a specific Russian song, so we could sing along. The musicians shook their heads, and the discussion on this topic grew livelier. The main reason for the refusal was without a question the two “gold ring-necked pheasants” [uniformed Nazi local Party bosses]. Consequently, Hans Scholl pointed his pistol all around, not pointing directly at them, just casually past us.
He had laid the pistol on the edge of the table in front of him. It finally became too unpleasant for the rest of the guests, primarily civilians, and one after another they left the restaurant. Then the band played the desired song, and the group sang along.
Willi said they were the last guests to leave the restaurant – and it was a conventional restaurant, with coat check and the works, not a bar – since they stayed to sing. They returned to Warsaw’s East Train Station, where they were to catch the passenger train headed for Germany.
Hubert and Jörn later recalled that they all sang “God Save the King” (among other things) before boarding. Although “boarding” would be a generous term for the pushing and shoving that characterized the effort to force their way onto an overcrowded train at 9 pm that Thursday. Willi ended up sitting on his rucksack. The schnapps must have been an effective sedative, because he noted that despite his uncomfortable seat, the night passed quickly.
They arrived in Berlin at 10 am on Friday, November 6 – Christoph Probst’s twenty-third birthday. After changing trains and catching what was little more than a shuttle to the Berlin-Anhalter station, they eventually got onto the train that would take them all the way to Munich. Their relief was great when they secured a compartment just for the five of them. They did not talk much, content to sleep, eat, and smoke. It was enough that they could do so in the company of people they trusted.
Unbeknownst to the five young men, Lilo Berndl nee Ramdohr had spent a little time with Falk Harnack in Chemnitz. Their time together distressed her – his giving her the Harnack signet ring the least distressing thing about her visit. Once she returned home, she could not shake her feelings. Lilo therefore had left Munich and taken up temporary residence at her lean-to in Chiemsee. She passed the time painting autumn on the Bavarian moors and tending the cows on her “landlord’s” farm. By the first week of November, she recognized she could not hide herself in the tranquil landscape much longer. She had to go back to Munich.
Friday November 6, she went for one last sunset walk through her beloved mud flats of Chiemsee. There was a sweet wildness to the landscape that day, bare trees lifting broomstick limbs, “disheveled and bristly,” to the yellow-gold sky. Day was dying as she sat down on a tree stump, spread out her things, and buried herself in her work.
She was alarmed to hear a train approaching, as she had not realized how close to the tracks she was sitting. Suddenly, “Helloooo Liloooo” rang out from above. She jumped up, spilling painting water all over her backpack.
I was just able to recognize the faces of Hans and Alex, who were hanging out of the window and waving frantically. I could not believe this coincidence. It brought me around to thinking about things we could not rationally explain.
Aware they would have duties to discharge before she could visit with them, Lilo calmly (or not so calmly) completed her painting. “I have it still today,” and she is happy to show it off to visitors. She returned to the farmhouse and announced her intention to go back to Munich. In gratitude for her help on the farm, Agnes Feuersteiner gave Lilo butter and bread for the trip home. Lilo’s first thought was of the cookies she could bake with that priceless butter.
Back in her small apartment, Lilo had mail. Falk Harnack had written her about his personal circumstances. He was unhappy and despairing. He asked her to come to Chemnitz as soon as possible. Lilo loved Falk, but she was not certain she could deal with his problems at that time.
Lilo’s instincts were partially correct. The first things on the minds of the student soldiers? Taking a bath, getting clean, and doing laundry. Hans Scholl later said, “We were filthy, full of lice and bugs.” Hans was not sure where he should go, and gladly accepted Alex’s invitation to stay at the Schmorells’ villa. He was so ecstatic about the clean and urbane surroundings that he left his dirty laundry and the letters he had received on the front at Alex’s house. He never retrieved them.
Willi Graf and Hans Goltermann checked into Munich’s Tyrol Hotel. Like Hans and Alex, they were chiefly interested in the hotel’s bathtub. “First we took a good bath,” Willi said. “That was a blessing.”
Their Saturday morning slumber was rudely interrupted by the regular police (not the Gestapo) who looked them over. Willi did not explain the grounds for the inspection, only noting that “afterward, I went back to sleep.” They slept in until 9 am, then treated themselves to a “sumptuous and plentiful breakfast” at Schottenhaml, a well-known eatery.
Hans Goltermann had a home nearby, so after breakfast, they parted ways. Willi went to the Siegfriedstraβe rooms, pleased to see friendly faces but disappointed that so few people were in town. They told him he could stay with them until he found a room of his own, something that became a mission for Willi over the next few days.
Adalbert Grundel got home late from the opera, but Willi still managed to visit his friend. Bertl was optimistic that he could help Willi locate a room. As much as that gratified Willi, he was more delighted when Bertl fished out a good red wine and tobacco. They talked into the night, exchanging stories.
While Willi enjoyed his Saturday with Hans Goltermann and friends from the Siegfriedstraβe, Lilo Berndl prepared for the inevitable “surprise” visit from Schurik. To her great satisfaction, Alex brought Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst with him. They arrived just as her cookies – baked with real butter – were coming out of the oven.
Lilo made tea while the boys entertained themselves in her living room. As she carried the tray of goodies to her visitors, Hans said he had seen the return address on a letter she had left out. Would the person in question possibly be related to Dr. Arvid Harnack?
She explained that yes, Falk was Arvid’s brother. She enlightened them about the arrests of Arvid and Mildred Harnack, and about Falk’s request that she come visit him. This would have been news to Alex too. Lilo said that she could not go to Chemnitz as Falk asked, because her classes had already started.
Hans wanted to know more about Falk Harnack. Lilo glanced at Alex, uncertain that Hans’ queries were completely innocent. Alex’s gaze assured her that he had kept everything to himself and that Hans’ interest was genuine. But before Lilo could continue her narrative about the Harnack family, Hans spontaneously asked if he could visit Falk in Chemnitz on her behalf, adding, “you would come too, wouldn’t you, Alex?”
Alex unhesitatingly agreed. They persuaded Lilo to write Falk a letter, asking permission for them to visit in her stead. When he replied, she was to advise them when and where they would meet Falk. Alex and Hans discussed the obstacles to the trip, including the fact that during this vacation, they were not to travel more than fifty kilometers (thirty miles) from Munich without obtaining a special pass. They also wondered whether they should travel as civilians or soldiers. The wheels were turning.
Away from Lilo’s apartment, Hans and Alex filled Christl in on the revised plans they had made while on the Russian front. Hans asked Christl to draft a leaflet they could use as propaganda. The proposed document should “be suitable for opening the eyes of the German people.” They had come to believe that the only way to prevent unspeakable casualties would require reconciliation with “Anglo-American” and British nations.
Hans did not explicitly tell Christl what they intended to do with whatever leaflet he drafted. But he did not have to. Christl was well acquainted with the desire to rid Germany of Hitler’s regime. Sure, there was more to be said about ‘the work’ that was ahead. It was good to have the old gang back, nearly intact. Only “the girls” were missing.
During these early November weeks, the ongoing war gave the young dissidents plenty of material to digest. General Rommel had failed in his attempt to reach the Nile Valley. When he suggested withdrawing his Afrikakorps, which had dwindled to a pitiful forty tanks, Hitler ordered him to stand his ground and fight. The British army under General Montgomery had mounted massive assaults on Rommel’s positions, forcing him back from the “Fuka Line.”
Stalin meanwhile tried to egg the United States and Great Britain into ever increasing support for the Russians fighting on the eastern front. He ridiculed the Lend-Lease program as ineffective and called on his allies to open a “second front” against fascist Germany. Stalin warned that the absence of same could end badly for all freedom-loving countries, including the Allies. He said the aim of the coalition was to save mankind from reversion to savagery and medieval brutality.
And all the while, Adolf Hitler assured his generals and top advisors that “Stalingrad is practically in German hands,” promising them that his single-minded focus on that city had nothing to do with its name.
Willi Graf was alone that Sunday morning, November 8. But this was not the sort of aloneness that had plagued him in April and May. This time, he elected to spend time by himself – not much time, to be sure. Willi had changed appreciably during the three months in Russia. He had developed trust and respect for the friends he had lived with almost every waking hour from July 22 to November 6, less time on the front lines, of course.
He went to ten o’clock Mass, read some more Stifter, and nursed a cold. He could hardly think about eating, he was so consumed with memories of Russia. Willi turned those thoughts into a comprehensive letter to a good friend named Walter Kastner. Since Walter was from Munich and had been a classmate of Schurik in secondary school, Willi’s tales of their days in Russia – including Alex’s interpreting skills – would have meant more to him than to other New Germany friends.
This letter, written a mere two days after the student soldiers landed in Munich, gives us one of the most personal views of the three months they spent on the Russian front. Willi told Walter that the experience “was unbelievably great and beautiful.” Things had happened there that Willi could not entrust to a letter. He would tell him more when they met face to face.
“It was especially important for me that I could be together with like-minded people,” Willi said. “For the first time in the army, I was with people one can live with. The outward appearance of military life hardly touched this time together, and that was worth a lot.” He explained how they had determined before they left Munich that they would try to stick together if at all possible. “We were only physically separated during the weeks each of us spent in the infantry.”
Walter must have been surprised by Willi’s description of the tour of duty as having the impression of a field trip. “I can only hint at all that has happened in the last three months. The time was extremely exciting, and we will see what purpose there was for this life together.” Obviously, those sensible and stimulating conversations had set actions in motion.
Yet Willi acknowledged that it had not been all fun and games. He alluded to the horrors of war that they had seen, horrors that have yet to be quantified and fully reported by any White Rose scholar with military historical expertise. “These weeks were also arduous, because at the same time, the most intense battles raged all around us. The dangers and horrors of war were often very near and prevented us from ever forgetting where we were and the harshness all around.”
The Wehrmacht did not let the student soldiers forget who they were, either. Monday November 9, German paratroopers landed in Tunisia to forestall an Allied invasion. Monday November 9, the student soldiers had to fall in at barracks for roll call. “Same old thing,” Willi Graf wrote in his diary. “The new C.O. made an extremely stupid speech” (no details provided).
He and the two Hanses – Scholl and Goltermann – splurged on an expensive meal at Humplmayr’s, one of the best restaurants in Munich. “Meal fit for a king,” according to Willi. Hubert Furtwängler later said that they occasionally indulged in such extravagant meals specifically on the days of Hitler’s “mandatory stews.” Those “mandatory stew” days were always Sundays, so this particular extravagance on a Monday would have simply been a happy splurge.
Hans Scholl invited Willi to inspect his new apartment on Franz Josef Str. Apparently, he also told Willi that Sophie’s old apartment with Maria Lösch was available, because Willi stopped in later that afternoon to check it out.
When they went their separate ways, Hans Scholl met up with Alex. The two of them visited Lilo to see if she had heard anything from Falk. Lilo was bewildered by Hans’ reticence. Something was bothering him, and she could not quite put her finger on it. Alex tried to cheer him up, without success.
Hans primarily wanted to know what had become of Mildred and Arvid Harnack. Lilo told him she had no news. The thought of them seemed to affect Hans deeply.
In general, however, that Monday things began to return to the “normal” they had known before July 22, with old routines as comfortable as a worn flannel shirt. Willi dropped by Bertl’s place and chatted a while. In the evening, he joined Hubert Furtwängler and other pals from the Bach Chorale – Josef Gieles, Hans Leygraf, and Regine Renner – for a marvelous concert: Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia Symphony, Opus 26, Karl Höller’s 1940 Cello Concerto Opus 26, and Beethoven’s Third Symphony in E-Flat Major. Who could ask for anything more?
Better yet, Hubert asked Josef and Willi back to his apartment for a glass (or two) of Beaujolais and late night conversation.
The clinical rotation had given these student soldiers a deeper appreciation of good food, good wine, good music, Russia – and the cords of friendship that knit them together. Come what may, those cords would not be sundered.
Next post: For paid subscribers. A multitude of questions about Russia in 1942. It’s a pity that Detlef Bald squandered his book deal with fiction. White Rose needs a true military historian who will do the hard work.
This Substack post is a summary-excerpt of Chapters 19-20 of White Rose History, Volume II — Journey to Freedom. Substack post © 2002, 2023 Exclamation! Publishers and Denise Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. Please note that everything in this post is fully documented and footnoted in WRH2.