Things are not as they appear

Next time you work on a project, whether connected to White Rose resistance or something entirely unrelated, remember this post. Dig to ensure you have correct context and all the facts.

Aug 09, 2025

There’s a photograph that occasionally pops up as wallpaper on my iPad. Every time it does, it makes me smile. It reminds me of a pleasant day on the mountain, bumping into people I liked. Sunshine everywhere. Geraniums in full bloom. Fir trees lifting branches skyward.

This photograph.

Where do you think I took this picture? In Oberbayern, on the back side of Stallauereck? Maybe down by Füssen, where the mountains are a bit craggier? Or what about the limestone-riddled parts of Schwaben, where Germany’s oil and gas (mostly natural gas) industry finds the same favorable geology as Texans do?

Nope. Not Oberbayern. Not Schwaben.

Maybe Austria, south of Salzburg, around the Anif area, where jagged peaks dominate the landscape? Looks a lot like Anif. But nope, not Austria.

How about the rockier parts of the French Riviera, where spaghetti westerns were filmed? Could be there. Except the French are not quite as wild about geraniums. Nope. Not France.

How about Colorado? Maybe down by Ouray? Looking up at the Rockies from that valley can evoke a sense of Austrian-ness. Nope. Not Colorado. Not Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Not San Francisco Mountain of Flagstaff, Arizona (which looks a lot like Anif!). Not the San Gabriel, or Santa Monica, or San Bernadino, or Verdugo Mountains near Los Angeles, nor Mount San Antonio.

This lovely photograph was taken on September 5, 2016 — on Mount Charleston, in the middle of the southern Nevadan desert, 45 minutes west of Las Vegas. The lodge itself burned down in 2021. Only its cabins remain. A pity, because it was a wonderful place to sit on a Bavarian-style deck, eating fish and chips, drinking a Corona, listening to a Simon & Garfunkel cover band. Only in America.

Every time I made that trek to the lodge, I was transported from the brownness of Vegas to a mountain landscape that felt like it should be near “my” Bavarian town of Bad Heilbrunn. It was always an eerie sensation.

Last week when the photo popped up again, I was reminded of an article I found while researching a specific part of my great-grandfather Sachs’ life in Houston. His 1951 obituary said that he was “a man of scholarly tastes.” After mentioning his interests in history and literary classics, the Houston Chronicle reporter noted, “He was also a student of the Bible and read extensively in various religions. He studied the Moslem religion among others.”

Another tribute read, He was equally versed in the Bible, Torah, and Koran. For a man who had hung out with one of the drafters of the League of Nations charter in his youth, he would have been proud of those comments.

But it sent me down a rabbit hole. Who in Houston, Texas was studying the holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the first half of the twentieth century?

Turns out, more people than you would think. Texas was not always home to its current brand of politics. Texans had a deep well of religious tolerance that seems to have disappeared in the last half century.

While digging up all those ecumenical notices and articles and essays, I ran across one that made me do a double-take. Tell me what you think when you see the border of the announcement, with content removed.

I will give you a hint. The date of the appeal was August 26, 1911. That helps a lot, right?

Which of the following do you think this border framed?

The founding of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) in Houston, Texas, with all twenty-five planks of that party’s platform translated into English with slight modifications to accommodate American political sensibilities. For example, the fourth plank had been edited to read, “Only a fellow American can have right of citizenship. A fellow American can only be so if he is of American parentage. Therefore no Jew or ‘Moslem’ can be considered to be a fellow American.”
An appeal by the Jewish Herald for the Jewish community to support the survivors of a natural disaster in Turkey by sending funds to general aid and not merely to the Jewish population of Istanbul. The writer urged Jews in Houston to join with “Moslems” to amplify the effectiveness of their contributions.
A fundraising event for the aviator Matilde Moisant whose plane had crashed near a “Moslem” farm as she was attempting to become the first female pilot to perform a triple loop near Wichita Falls, Texas.

To my own shock and surprise, this border belonged to a full-page article and appeal in the Jewish Herald, a Houston-based newspaper. Which in and of itself is sort of amazing. Houston had a Jewish newspaper in 1911?! [Turns out it was founded in 1908.]

Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt wrote the longer article asking whether Judaism could be the basis for a universal religion, defining a universal religion as one that would “recognize the unity of the universe, the unity of mankind, the supremacy of the moral ideal, democracy, and the intrinsic value of life. It must give free scope to the search after truth and harmony with cosmic law, allow the broadest fellowship, and permit the fullest liberty and highest development of worship.”

Which gave me a new rabbit hole to duck into. Nathaniel Schmidt was a Swedish Baptist (!) minister who studied under Adolf von Harnack, uncle to our White Rose friend Falk and his noble brother Arvid. Schmidt so strongly believed in the thesis he advocated in 1911, that in 1931 he obtained a “doctorate of Hebrew letters” from a Jewish seminary.

In addition to his work in Christian theology and Judaism, Schmidt further studied “Ethiopic and Arabic” literature in Berlin. If he was opposed to the triumphalism of early twentieth-century Christianity, I can only imagine what he would think were he alive today.

Back to 1911.

Schmidt’s article worked through the reasons that most world religions fail miserably as “universal” religions. Generally, it was that triumphalism, that insistence that “we’re the best” or “we’re the only” that he took umbrage with.

The good professor tied his discussion about a wished-for universal religion to the appeal for help for Turkish citizens wiped out by a vast fire in Constantinople. For context, this was all taking place while war threatened to erupt in Turkey, with civil war a possibility, as well as war with Italy. Things in Turkey were a mess.

And along came a fire that wiped out both the Jewish quarter of Balat and the Muslim quarter of Stamboul.

Despite the possibility of war, relief efforts were swift and generous. And divided.

Nathaniel Schmidt argued that true morality demanded that aid should not be given to those who lived or thought or believed like themselves, but should instead go to a general fund that assisted anyone who lost their homes and property in that fire of 1911. After listing fundraising efforts from Germany, Turkey itself, and the United Kingdom, Schmidt noted:

It is the opinion of the Chief Rabbi that Jews should not have a separate committee, but that all the monies should be sent to the general committee, which has already several Jewish members. An excellent impression was made at the meeting of ministers of the empire when it was announced that the first donation to arrive, immediately after that of the Sultan, was 200 pounds from the Chief Rabbinate. The largest donation thus far received was from Sir Ernest Cassel who sent 4,000 pounds sterling on his account and 2,000 on account of the bank which he represents. [Cassel was a Jewish banker in Liverpool.]

£4,000 in 1911 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £602,115.23 today, or $750,000. So Cassel’s combined donation was around $1.2 million.

Jewish citizens of Houston took heed. On October 11, 1911, the annual Simchas Torah ball held at Houston’s “Turner Hall” — the ballroom of the German Turnverein located at 5502 Almeda Road — announced that 25% of proceeds from that event would be donated to the general relief fund for victims of the Constantinople fire.

Back to the question: Why the swastikas?

In 1911, those symbols that now are directly associated with a dark time in world history, with death, with hate, had a different meaning altogether. For readers of the Jewish Herald in August 1911, that border would have been associated with good luck and peace.

Matilde Moisant, the third choice above, was indeed a female pilot, only the second woman to receive her pilot’s license. And she did crash near Wichita Falls, but in 1912, not 1911. And not near a Muslim farm. But: She wore a swastika for good luck. Which apparently ran out in 1912.

In 1906, an Irish New Yorker named Ruth St. Dennis appropriated the Hindu (Houston Post, “Hindoo”) lore of Rhoda, wife of Krishna. She created a series of “Hindu” dances celebrating Rhoda-legends. “A musician constructed some especial music to go with the dances, local Hindoo color—besides the ochre and the black—was added in the shape of jewels, ornaments, tapestries, turbans, swamia, mahatmas, baharajas, swastikas and the rest, and a public performance was given at the Hudson theater.” (Houston Post, April 29, 1906) Mark Twain was a fan.

And with that, the lowly swastika was immediately elevated to a good luck charm, a fad that no young woman could escape. Practically every jewelry store sold swastikas in gold and silver, promising their customers good luck and peace. Some drew on “Indian” (Native American) culture, but most linked their hat pins and necklaces to the “Hindu” swastikas worn by Miss Ruth St. Dennis. Even brand new oil and gas companies in Texas incorporated the word Swastika into their corporate name, branding themselves with swastikas as logos.

These days, some claim a distinction between Native American or Hindu swastikas, and those of Nazi Germany. They point to the “fact” that Nazi swastikas were flat-bottomed, while earlier swastikas rested on their points. Look again at the border above. Flat-bottomed.

When we “do” history, we must be oh so careful. Things are not as they appear. That fir-covered mountain with beautiful geraniums is not in Bad Heilbrunn or Colorado. It’s in the desert of southern Nevada. Those swastikas bordering an appeal to Houston’s Jewish community to give to both Jewish and Muslim survivors of the fire in Constantinople wished luck and peace, not bodily harm.

So too when we read, for example, Kurt Huber’s beautiful words in Leaflet VI, we must take care to understand his context, his mindset when he wrote of freedom and honor.

Over and over in his interrogations and in his written political statement, Huber made it clear that he agreed with the original NSDAP platform, including its antisemitic planks, but felt that Hitler had moved too far “left.” Huber had no problem with dismissal of Jewish professors from university life. But Germans — Aryans — should be allowed complete academic freedom.

He made these strong pro-NSDAP, pro-freedom statements after his arrest because he hoped that his arrest would attract the attention of the highest members of the National Socialist Party. He believed that if only he could talk directly with the Führer, he could convince Hitler of the error of his ways. “If I could personally make but one request of the Führer, it would be to spare my poor family and at the last hour to grant me a personal audience.” (March 8, 1943)

Additionally, Huber was frustrated that Hitler’s lack of military experience was causing Germany to lose the war. The NSDAP was not supposed to lose. They were supposed to win. Huber repeatedly stated that because of Hitler’s “leftward” shift towards Bolshevism, he had so weakened the party to the point that its military might had been compromised.

If only Hitler had allied with England against the USSR, Huber said.

I once again emphasize that I could concur with a pure National Socialist claim only with joy and with fullest understanding. In the development of the current Reich during the four years of war, I only see the drift from the just claims that the Party once made.

I know that my conduct is illegitimate. But it is precisely as illegitimate as the conduct of a long line of brave National Socialists who brought about the overthrow of the democratic government through their courage. (March 1, 1943)

I am firmly convinced that since the Führer assumed the high command and dismissed our most competent generals, the striking power of the German army has been catastrophically weakened. The entire developments of the past 14 days confirm my previous impressions. My suffering under this catastrophe has been unequalled. (February 27, 1943)

Along similar lines, when we read of Hans Scholl’s final loving words before his execution, we must understand that those words were not for Rose Nägele or Gisela Schertling or Traute Lafrenz. They were for Josef Söhngen. That fact is not disputed, as it is corroborated by Söhngen, and by Magdalena Scholl, Hans’ mother. And documented (surprisingly) in Inge Aicher-Scholl’s Sippenhaft. Not sure that Inge realized her Sippenhaft book contradicted her White Rose book.

We must therefore re-read documents about Hans Scholl’s last few days before the arrest with that knowledge in mind. It should color how we see his long wine-soaked evening with Söhngen before the February 18 leaflet scattering. It should color how we see him at the February 22 trial. And it should color how we see Hans Scholl sitting with his parents the afternoon he was executed. Especially since we also know that his interrogator had used Hans’ Section 175(2) conviction — sexual assault of a young preteen boy under his command in Hitler Youth — to coerce him into betraying Christoph Probst.

On a touchier subject, to be addressed in a later nailed-down post, we must also keep this mind when we read Shoah histories — especially histories of resistance — sponsored by those who have agendas other than the correct telling of the historical record.

History can be tricky. The pitfalls are many. Sources must be verified. Transcriptions must be double- and triple-checked. Source A versus Source B versus Source Z must be analyzed.

I would argue that “agendas” drive most falsification of the historical record.

Next time you work on a project, whether connected to White Rose resistance or something entirely unrelated, remember the pretty picture of Mount Charleston. Remember the 1911 swastikas. Tack them up on your wall or bulletin board as a visual reminder.

Things are not always as they appear.

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