O o o o o o o o o.
Good evening, and thank you for joining us this evening. My name is Professor Wes Williams and professor of French, but also director of Torch.
And I'm delighted to introduce you to this evening's live event,
which is part of the Humanities Cultural Programme itself, one of the founding stones for the future.
Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities here in Oxford.
Tonight, we're delighted to host writing and resistance the White Rose pamphlets alive reading.
The White Rose Research Project is a research and public engagement initiative at the University of Oxford,
bringing the story of the white rose resistance to English speaking audiences.
It works in partnership with the Vice Hauser shift on the White Rose Foundation in Munich,
thanks to the Knowledge Exchange Fellowship Scheme here at Torch.
The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and with the award winning vocal ensemble Sankara,
whom we heard in the opening video and we'll hear again at the close of this night, this evening's event.
The project is led by Dr. Alex Loyd, followed by special election in German Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Alex has published widely on post-war Germany,
most recently in her book Childhood Memory and the Nation Young Lives Under Nazism in Contemporary German Culture, published just last year.
Alex will shortly give an introduction to the white.
Rose will then hear the pamphlets read by current and former students and also academics mirroring the membership of the original resistance group.
Our readers are and they'll come on screen, as I say, their names, I hope so because.
Eve Mason. Adam Rebeck. Elba, Salamanca.
Sam Thompson. Amy Wilkinson. And Jim Reid.
Jim's about to appear. Welcome to then to all our readers this evening.
Kim will appear in a moment I have.
Tonight is a performance, so rather than areas, rather than submitting questions for our speakers, we instead invite you to join the conversation,
which has actually been going on for at least a week now on social media using either at White Rhodes, Oxford and or the hashtag White Rose.
Real time links to these will be shared in the live chat below.
We do, of course, welcome your comments and thoughts this evening via the chat function.
If you wish to add them there.
And now, without further ado, I'd like to thank Alex and all of our speakers once again for joining us this evening and hand over to you, Alex.
Thank you very much indeed. Thanks very much indeed, once.
It's wonderful to be here doing this event this evening.
And thanks very much indeed to torture hosting its.
78 years ago today on Monday, the 22nd of February 1943, at five p.m., three students from the University of Munich were executed.
That crime had been to secretly write, print and distribute anti-Nazi pamphlets,
calling on Germans to resist Hitler and to bring about an end to the Second World War.
In the weeks and months that followed, they were further arrests and further executions.
At his broadest,
the white rose resistant circle included a wide network of individuals at its heart were five students and an academic in Munich Anshul Sophie Scholl,
Christoph Probst, Alexander Smil, Philip Graff and Professor Could Cuba.
This was, in some senses, a very diverse group with different backgrounds and formative experiences.
Yet they shared a number of common interests, views and values.
Amongst these was a love of reading of art and music of nature and a profound interest in religion and philosophy.
In the case of Kurt Huber, these things were also the subject and object of his academic teaching and research.
Just as Marxism was attempting to reduce their worldview, they found new worlds through reading and discussion.
These were individuals in search of more than the political system in which they lived was willing to give them.
These were extraordinary people, but they were not born resistance fighters or heroes.
They were perfectly normal people, perhaps even a little like you or me.
By the spring of 1942, the war was going well for Nazi Germany, with a string of military successes on both the eastern and western fronts.
At the same time, Nazi designs for the elimination of those deemed subhuman were also advancing at an accelerated pace.
Mass deportations were being perpetrated across occupied Europe.
It was at this moment that all six core members of the White Rose Circle found themselves in Munich,
the city Adolf Hitler had dubbed the capital of the Nazi movement.
Hans Scholl had begun his studies in medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in the summer semester
of 1939 after completing compulsory labour service and training in the Army Medical Corps in October 1940.
He met Alexander Shmuel, who had transferred from Hamburg to Munich and was also studying medicine.
Christoph Probst was a childhood friend of Alexander. They had met at school, and Christophe had also begun studying medicine at Munich.
Kristof, in turn, introduced Telegraph Graph to the group in June 1942 after they met at a concert.
Philip Graff had been studying medicine at the University of Bonn after his preliminary examination.
The university closed and so he transferred to Munich. Professor Kurt Huber taught musicology, philosophy and psychology in Munich.
His lectures were popular with students, including the members of the White Rose.
In May 1942, Sophie Scholl was finally able to begin her studies after enduring several months of National Labour Service.
She arrived in Munich in early May in time to celebrate her 21st birthday on the nights with her brother and his friends.
There were others in the circle, too, including Tata, loved ones you met Han Stroll through Alexander.
She was also studying medicine in Munich.
The student spent two evenings reading, discussing and exchanging views with each other and with older and more experienced individuals,
some of whom became queasy mentors to the group.
This included the writer and translator Taro Hecker, the writer publisher, Komut and Professor, Katoomba How to Love Romance recalled of this time.
One had the sense that there was a network of like minded people, widely cast and finely woven.
On the 17th of June 1942, the students met at the home of Victor Emmanuel,
mettant professor of medicine and his wife, the pianist and singer gets wood mittens.
Kurt Huber was also there in the course of the evening.
A discussion sprang up about how, in the current situation, it might be possible to preserve one's inner values.
One of those there declared that open resistance was pointless, to which Kurt Huber responded.
Something must be done. And today? The response of Hans Scholl and Alexander Morales to this call to action would become clear in the weeks to come.
The first phase of the white rose resistance was the writing and dissemination of four pamphlets in German Flook letter.
These were produced by Hansel and Alexandra Shmuel over the course of just 16 days between the 27th of June and the 12th of July 1942.
Each text begins with the heading pamphlets of the white rose and a corresponding number suggesting that from the very beginning,
the authors intended to produce a series.
Each pamphlet concluded with a variation on the same message instructions to the reader to make and distribute further copies.
They draughted the pamphlets by hand, wrote them up on a Remington portable typewriter,
made copies on a second hand duplicating machine and despite wartime shortages,
obtained paper envelopes and postage stamps in quantities small enough to be inconspicuous.
They posted copies to writers, academics, head teachers, booksellers, doctors, restaurant owners, grocers and publicans in and around Munich.
Further copies were distributed by hand. A great personal risk.
The pamphlets sought to appeal to readers self-understanding as part of a civilised or cultured nation.
They criticise those Germans that are passively allowed Nazis and take hold and ask readers to take
seriously the idea that the future of the days to come if no one takes action will be bleak indeed.
The denounce, the persecution of European Jews and the slaughter of Poles in the occupied territories.
They advocate passive resistance and sabotage as a way of stalling the war effort.
They mock and attack Adolf Hitler, calling him the Antichrist.
Their language is forceful and it is urgent.
One of the most striking things about the first four pamphlets is the inclusion of quotations from other sources.
These draw on a wide range of philosophical ideas and influences from totemic German writers such as Gerta Shila and Savalas,
as well as Aristotle the Old Testament, an ancient Chinese philosophy.
The body of thought from which the White Rose authors drew,
and which they offered in part as validation of their own position expressed as well a rich and diverse cultural interests.
The fourth pamphlet was completed and distributed in July 1942.
Later that month, Hans Scholl, Alexander Small and really gruff, left Munich for a three month tour of duty at the Russian front.
They were all conscripted medical students,
which meant they could study during the university term and would then be deployed as medical orderlies during the vacations.
These three months in Russia proved profoundly important for these three white rose students.
They spent time with Russian people drinking, singing and talking with them as they tried to learn the Russian language for Alexander Shmuel.
Born to a Russian mother and you spoke Russian fluently, this was a returned to his longed for homeland.
When Hans Alexander and Vili returned to Germany in November 1942, the group presumed the pamphlet campaign.
In December, Hounshell told Kurt Huber about the pamphlets, and at this point he became actively involved.
That same month, Christoph Probst was transferred to a student company in Innsbruck.
However, he travelled back and forth to Munich to participate in the resistance activities.
On the 13th of January, Telegraaf noted in his diary, visited Hanse still there by the evening.
We're really getting started with the work. The ball is starting to roll.
The fifth pamphlets of the White Rose appeared sometime between the 27th and 29th of January 1943.
The text was written by Hansell and edited principally by Clutterbuck.
On the 3rd of February, news arrived of the German Army's defeat at Stalingrad that same night,
Alexander hunts and volley graffitied buildings in the centre of Munich and around the university.
They painted the slogans down with Hitler and freedom.
Following the news of Stalingrad, Kurt Huber wrote the text of the sixth pamphlet at hand shows request.
He even asked him to write it in the voice of the student and indeed the heading of the pamphlet simply reads.
Fellow students. Cuba had edited Hans shows, writing in the fifth pamphlet, and now the students did the same to their academic mentor.
On the morning of the 18th of February 1943, Hanson Sophie Scholl distributed copies of the pamphlets around the atrium at
the entrance of the main university building their clandestine work completed.
They might have succeeded in their plans disappear amongst the many students coming out of their lectures,
but for a seemingly insignificant act, Sophie,
in what she later described in her Gestapo interrogation as the result of either high spirits or foolishness,
pushed one of the piles of pamphlets over the balustrade and the sheets of paper cascaded down into the empty atrium below.
This caught the attention of the university caretaker who raced up the stairs and apprehended the Ixtoc,
I called and they were taken into custody that evening.
Philip Graff and his sister were also arrested. When Hunt's role and his sister were arrested on the 18th of February,
Hants had in his pocket the handwritten draught of a pamphlet that Christoph Probst had written a month earlier.
When he was apprehended, he tried in vain to get rid of the draught that would have incriminated his friend.
But the arresting officers discovered it. As soon as he was identified as the author, Christophe Probe's fate was sealed.
He was arrested on Saturday, the 20th of February, at his barracks in Innsbruck as he was picking up a live permit.
His wife, however, was in hospital following the birth of their third child daughter, and he was planning to visit them.
Meanwhile, Alexander Sowell attempted to flee and Kurt Huber had not yet been connected with the group.
The first white rose trial began on the morning of Monday, the 22nd of February 1943, in the Palace of Justice in Munich.
It concluded after just a few hours and the three defendants received the death sentence.
They were executed that same day, Sophie Scholl at five p.m., Hans Scholl at 5:02pm, Christoph Probst at five 00 five p.m.
That evening, the chief prosecutor sent a telegram to Berlin to report that the day had proceeded without incident.
Alexandra Shmuel and Kurt Huber were subsequently arrested, and they, alongside Vili Groth and others, were tried in April 1943.
Alexandra Shmuel and Katoomba were executed on the 13th of July.
Billy Graff was executed on the 12th of October.
Two students, Hans Michael and Mary Louise Allen, made copies of the six pamphlets and distributed them in Hamburg.
They also collected money for Hoover's widow, Clara, who had been issued with a bill for wear and tear to the guillotine following his execution.
Hans Leipold, Marie-Louise Ajan and others were tried by the People's Court in October 1944.
John received a 12 year prison sentence. Leipold, who had already suffered at the hands of Nazi race laws as his mother was Jewish,
was sentenced to death and executed a straddle home prison in January 1945.
Thus, even after the six members of the core group had been imprisoned and almost all of them executed,
the pamphlet campaign continued in August 1943.
Clara Huber was called into the Gestapo offices in Munich and told that the allies had dropped thousands of pamphlets over Germany.
She was astonished. It turned out that Kurt Hoover's pamphlet had been smuggled out by Helmut James Gough from Moleskine,
a leading figure in the Kaiser's circle, a group of German dissidents working against the Nazis.
The British political warfare executive reproduced the pamphlet with a new title, a German pamphlet manifesto of the Munich students.
As the families of those who had already been executed were mourning their dead and Vili Graaff was still being held in a prison cell in Munich.
Millions of copies of the pamphlet were dropped by the RAF over northern and central Germany.
In January 1945, a friend of the White Rose, Theodore Hecker, wrote in his diary.
History teaches us that no one feels so disgustingly certain of victory or is so unteachable,
sure and immune to reason as the fanatic, and that no one is so absolutely certain of ultimate defeat.
The individuals at the heart of the White Rose had seen up close the effects of such fanaticism.
I lost friends and comrades. Witness persecution and feared was a Nazi victory might mean not only for Germany, but for Europe and the world.
Their pamphlets were designed to stir up the people confronting them with truths that the
group believed they were deliberately ignoring through fear or obstinacy or ambivalence.
They spoke of freedom, moral duty, corruption, evil and the urgent need for action.
They levelled powerful accusations that their readers. They were angry, idealistic, unwavering and uncompromising.
Even if at times the individuals in the White Rose and their actions appear remote, flawed, incomprehensible,
they are timely and hopeful reminder of the ways in which conscience and moral courage can lead to action.
The challenges injustice you are now going to hear the seven resistance pamphlets of the White Rose.
Our readers are students, former students and academics learning the membership of the original group.
The English translation will be reading was undertaken by students at the University of Oxford between October 2018 and May 2019.
Well, there have been many translations of the pamphlets into English.
The Oxford students had two aims for their new version first, that it should be the result of collaborative work.
And second that it should be undertaken by students around about the same age as the original student authors of the pamphlets.
Those engaged in courses at university working together on tax ideas and issues.
The Oxford student translators were struck by how resonant the White Roses pamphlets are today, how vividly and forcefully they speak of freedom,
injustice, oppression and personal responsibility in ways that are all too necessary in our own times.
The first pamphlet of the White Rose.
Complicity with the governance of an irresponsible clique of rulers driven by their darkest urges and complicity without resistance.
Nothing is more unworthy of a civilised people. Is it not so is it in the present day, every honourable German is ashamed of their government?
And who amongst us can foresee the extent of the infamy that will be on us and on our children when the veil is one day lifted from our eyes?
And the most horrific crimes crimes beyond all measure come to light.
If in their innermost being, the German people have been corrupted and degraded enough to betray the greatest quality,
humanity possesses that quality, which elevates them above all other creatures free will without so much as lifting a finger,
foolishly trusting the dubious notion that history follows its natural course.
If this people can betray the freedom of humankind to intervene in the course of history and to subordinate it to its rational judgement.
If the Germans so utterly devoid of any kind of individuality have already become such a weak and mindless horde,
then yes, they truly deserve their own demise. Gutter speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, much like the Jews or the Greeks.
But these days, they seem more like a shallow, spineless herd of mindless followers whose substance has been sucked out of them from within
and who robbed of their very core allow themselves to be baited into their own demise.
This seems like the truth, but it isn't a slow, deceitful, systematic violation,
has locked every single one of us into a mental cage, and it is only once shackled that we become conscious of our fate.
Very few recognise the impending calamity. And the reward for the heroic warnings was death.
Much remains to be said about the fate of these people. If every one of us waits for someone else to start.
Then the Herald's of Avenging Nemesis will draw ever closer until the last sacrificial
victim is vainly thrown into the jaws of a demon that will never be sated.
Every individual must, therefore, at the 11th hour.
Fight back as much as lies in that power with an awareness of their responsibility as
a member of Christian and Western culture must work against the scourges of humanity,
against fascism and all the systems of dictatorship that resemble it.
Wherever you may be. Mount, passive resistance.
Resistance. Obstruct the progress of this atheistic war machine before it's too late.
Before, like Cologne, the lost cities are left in ruins before the last remaining youths of this nation
bleed to death in some unknown place for the sake of the hubris of a subhuman.
Remember that every people deserves the government it is prepared to tolerate.
From Friedrich Schiller's, the legislation of life surges and solar.
Seen in the light of its chosen ends, light suggests this legislation is a masterpiece of political and human science.
He wanted a state that was powerful, founded upon itself and indestructible.
The aims he set himself were political strength and longevity.
And he achieved these aims as far as was possible under the circumstances he was facing.
But if one confronts the aims of life surges with the aims of mankind.
The admiration that a first fleeting glance sparked in us must give way to deep disapproval.
One may sacrifice everything for the best of the state without exception.
That's to which the state is only a means. The state in and of itself is never the object.
It is merely the necess-, the necessary condition under which the purpose of mankind may be fulfilled.
And this purpose is none other than the development of a person's abilities to their full extent.
That is to say progress. If a state's constitution hinders the development of all in with powers of mankind.
If it hinders the progress of the Geist. Then it is harmful and reprehensible, however well-thought out, imperfect a work of its kind it may be.
And so its longevity comes to earn it more sensitive than glory.
It becomes a prolonged curse, the longer it lasts, the more harmful it becomes.
Political merit was achieved and the ability to obtain it taught at the extent of every moral sentiment.
There was no marital love in Sparta, no mothers love, no child's love, no friendship.
They were nothing but citizens. Nothing but citizens virtue.
A state law made it a duty for Spartans to treat their slaves inhumanely.
And in these wretched victims of butchery. Humanity was violated and abused.
The sporting code of law itself preached the dangerous principle that people were to be regarded as means and not ends.
Thereby constitutionally obliterating the foundations of natural law and morality.
There is no finer state than that played out in his camp at the gates of Rome by the savage warrior Gaius Martius,
who sacrificed revenge and victory because he could not bear to see his mother's tears.
The state of light suggests, could only subsist under one condition.
Spirits of the nation would have to stand still.
And to ensure its continued existence would therefore mean to neglect the highest and the sole aim of a state.
From Gus's app, Amenities Awakes Act to scene for spirits.
What burst forth bold from the abyss could with a brazen mastery, claim victory of half the globe?
Yet now back to the void, it must. A monstrous fear already looms and all resistance will be in vain.
Ones who still cling on to it will perish with its name.
Hope. And now I'll meet my brave of heart, who gather in the midst of night to share a silence.
Keep awake. They stutter, stammer on and on that fear and chanting word freedom.
Till on our temple, steps are new, so useful and so unfamiliar, we call its name a joyful clamour.
Freedom. Freedom.
Freedom. We urge you to transcribe this pamphlet, make as many copies as you can.
And distribute them. The second pamphlet of the White Rose, National Socialism cannot be confronted intellectually because it is not intellectual.
It is wrong to speak of a national socialist worldview, because if such a thing existed,
it would need to be proven or challenged by intellectual means.
Yet in reality, we have presented with a completely different picture.
Even in its earliest embryonic form, this movement was dependent on deceiving the German people.
Even then, it was rotten to the very core and could only save itself through ceaseless deception.
Even Hitler himself wrote an early edition of his book, A Book, which,
despite having been written in the most appalling German [INAUDIBLE] I've ever read,
has been elevated to biblical status by this nation of poets and philosophers.
You would not believe the extent to which you must deceive the people in order to govern it.
If at first, this cancerous tumour on the German people had not yet made itself all too conspicuous,
this was only because there were still forces for good working effectively enough to hold it back.
Yet as it became bigger and bigger and finally came to power with one last face act of corruption,
the tumour, so to speak, ruptured contaminating the whole body.
The majority of its earlier opponents then went into hiding and the German intelligentsia sought refuge in a cold cellar,
only to gradually suffocate the like nightshade hidden away from daylight and the sun.
Now. We are approaching the end now.
Everything depends on finding one another again on one person enlightening the next always reflecting and
never resting until every last person is convinced of the iron necessity of fighting against this system.
If such a wave of uproar travels through the country, if there is something in the air,
if many people get involved, then the system can be shaken off with one final, tremendous effort.
An end with terror is still better than terror without end.
It is not our place to give a final judgement on the meaning of our history.
But if this catastrophe is to heal us, it will be solely by means of being purified,
by suffering, of yearning for the light in the very deepest darkness, by stirring ourselves.
And finally by playing our part in casting off the yoke which raced around the world.
We do not want to write about the Jewish question in this pamphlet, nor to compose a plea of defence.
No. We want only to briefly point out, by way of example, the fact that since the conquest of Poland,
three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in that country in the most bestial manner.
Here we see the most horrific crime against human dignity, a crime unparalleled in all of human history.
For Jews, a human beings, to whichever stance one might take on the Jewish question, and it is against human beings that this has been committed.
Some might say that the Jews deserve such a fate. This would be a claim of colossal arrogance.
But assuming that someone did say this,
what stance would they then take towards the fact that the entire use of Poland's aristocracy has been annihilated?
God grant that this is not yet the case. How you ask such a thing occurred?
All the male offspring of aristocratic families between the ages of 15 and 20 were carted off to Germany for forced labour in the concentration camps.
And all the girls of the same age to Norway into the brothels of the SS.
Why are we telling you all this, given that you already know about it?
Or if not about this, then about other equally serious crimes of this appalling sub humanity?
Because it touches on an issue that deeply concerns us all and must give us pause for thought.
Why the German people behave so empathetically in the face of all these most atrocious, most inhumane crimes.
Barely anyone gives it a thought. The fact has accepted as such and filed away.
And again, the German people return to that dull, stupid sleep and give these fascist criminals the courage and the opportunity to go on rampaging.
And that is precisely what they do.
Should this be taken as a sign that the Germans most primitive human emotions have been rendered so brutal that no voice within
them cries out piercingly in the face of such deeds that they have sunk into a deadly sleep from which there is no awakening?
Not ever. This is how it seems. And it certainly will be if Germany does not start up from this apathy.
If she does not protest against this clique of criminals wherever she can.
If she does not feel a collective suffering with these hundreds of thousands of victims.
She must not only feel collective suffering, know much more collective guilt.
Since through her apathetic behaviour, she gifts these dark leaders the opportunity to act in the first place.
She suffers this government, which has burdened itself with such endless guilt.
Yet it is her own fault that it was able to emerge in the first place.
Everyone wants to exonerate themselves from such a collective guilt.
Everyone does so and returns to sleeping soundly with the calmest, clearest conscience.
But no one could exonerate themselves. Everyone is guilty.
Guilty, guilty. Yet it is not too late to rid the world of this most heinous monstrosity of a government.
So we do not further yoke ourselves to guilt. Now, since our eyes have been fully opened over the last few years.
Since we know who we're dealing with, it is high time to exterminate this Brownshirts horde.
Until the outbreak of the war, the vast majority of the German people were blinded.
The National Socialists did not show their true face.
But now, since they have been seen for what they are the highest and only duty,
the most sacred duty even of every German must be to destroy these beasts.
If a regime is unobtrusive, its people are happy.
If the regime is oppressive, the people are broken. Misery, alas, is what happiness is built upon.
Happiness, alas, only Vale's misery. Where does all this lead?
The end is nowhere in sight. Order lapses into disorder, good lapses into evil, the people fall into disarray.
Has this not long been the case day in, day out? Therefore, the wise man is angular, but does not scrape.
He has edges. It does not hurt anyone. He stands strong but without being harsh.
He is bright, but he does not wish to gleam. Lots.
He who sets out to rule over the empire and to shape it as he pleases.
I do not see him achieving his aim. That's all. The Empire is a living organism.
In truth, it cannot be constructed. He who seeks to construct it, corrupts it.
He who seeks to grasps it, loses it. Therefore, some beings go on ahead.
Others follow that. Some have will breath, others cold. Some are strong.
Others weak. Some reached fulfilment. Others are overcome.
The wise man therefore refrains from exaggeration, from extremes and from excess loud say.
Please copy this document and distribute it as widely as possible.
The third pamphlet of the White Rose Seller's public, Suprema Lex.
All ideal forms of state are utopias.
A state cannot be constructed and purely theoretical terms, one must grow and mature in the same way as every individual person.
But we must not forget that an early form of the state was present at the very beginning of every culture.
The family is as old as humanity itself and from its original units of people endowed with reason,
created a state whose foundation was to be justice and whose supreme law was to be the common good.
The state should be analogous to the divine order and the greatest of all utopias.
The Tibetan stay is the ideal that it should ultimately resemble.
We do not want to pass judgement here on the various possible forms of state democracy, constitutional or absolute monarchy.
Only one thing must be made unambiguously clear.
Every single person is entitled to a viable and just government that ensures the freedom of the individual,
as well as the welfare of society as a whole. For each person, should, in accordance with God's will,
freely and independently seek to achieve their natural goal that is their earthly happiness through self-reliance and initiative,
while coexisting and cooperating within the state as a community.
What's our current state is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already.
I hear you object. And we don't need you to approach this threat yet again.
But I ask you, if you know that, then why don't you act?
Why do you tolerate these role as gradually rubbing you in public and in private of one right after another until one day?
Nothing, absolutely nothing remains but the machinery of the state under the command of criminals and drunkards.
Has this violation defeated your spirit to such an extent that you have forgotten that it is not only your right,
but also your moral duty to do away with this system?
But if a person can no longer summon the strength to demand their rights, they will certainly perish.
We deserve to be scattered across the world like just before the wind.
If we do not prepare ourselves for action now at the 11th hour and finally muster the courage which we have thus far lacked.
Do not conceal your cowardice under the cloak of expediency.
But with every day that you continue to hesitate that you do not resist the spawn of [INAUDIBLE], your guilt grows exponentially greater.
Many, perhaps even the majority of those reading these pamphlets have no idea how they should mount resistance.
They cannot see how it is possible.
We aim to show them that each and every one of them is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of this system.
It will not be possible to lay the foundations for the swift downfall of this government or
even to bring about its downfall through individualistic opposition like an embittered hermit.
It is only through the conviction and energy of people acting together, people who are agreed on the means that can be used to achieve that goal.
We do not have a vast range of means at our disposal. We have only one.
Passive resistance. The meaning and purpose of passive resistance is to bring down national socialism and in the struggle,
there is no course, no action that we should fear to take whatever it may be.
National socialism must be a tax at every week point, at every [INAUDIBLE] in its armour.
This false states must be brought to an end as soon as possible.
In this war, a victory for fascist Germany would have dreadful, unimaginable consequences.
The Germans most immediate concern should not be military victory over Bolshevism, but defeating the National Socialists.
This must be our most urgent priority. We will illustrate how pressing this is in one of our next pamphlets.
And now every staunch adversary of National Socialism must ask themselves the question.
How can they fight back against the current government most effectively? How can they inflict the most stinging wounds?
The answer is, without a doubt. Passive resistance.
It is clearly impossible for us to provide every individual with direct instructions.
We can only give general suggestions. Each person must find their own way to put them into practise.
Sabotage of arms factories and other strategic operations, sabotage of all meetings, rallies,
festivities, organisations, everything that the National Socialist Party brought into being.
Any and all hindrance to the smooth operation of the war machine, a machine that is engineered only for war,
a war with the sole purpose of saving and preserving the National Socialist Party and its dictatorship.
Sabotage of all academic and intellectual groups that actively support the continuation of war,
whether they are universities, colleges, laboratories, research institutes or technical firms.
Sabotage of all cultural events that might raise the fascist prestige with the people.
Sabotage of all branches of the arts that have the slightest connexion to national socialism or stand in its service.
Sabotage of all publications, all newspapers that are in pay of the government that propagate its ideas and spreads the brown lie.
Do you not give a single penny to street collections, even if they are carried out some of the pretence of a charitable cause?
This is only a cover. In reality, the Sun will not benefit the Red Cross or the needy.
The government does not need this money. It is not financially dependent on these collections.
The printing presses are running day and nights and can produce all the money they need,
but they have to keep the people in a state of tension held on a tight rein that must never be loosened.
Do not donate any scrap metal, any fabric or anything else.
Do your utmost to convince all your acquaintances from the lower classes to of the senselessness and futility of
continuing this war of the spiritual and economic enslavement of the destruction of all moral and religious values,
which has been brought about by National Socialism and to encourage passive resistance.
Aristotle's politics. A further essential aspect of tyranny is seeking to ensure that nothing any subject says or does remains hidden.
But rather to spy and eavesdrop on him at every turn.
And moreover, to fill the whole world with hatred and to turn friend against friend,
the people against the aristocracy and the wealthy against one another.
Thus, an aspect of tyrannical discipline is making the subjects poor so that the guards can be paid.
And so that they are so concerned about their daily earnings that they have no time or energy to prosecute at all.
Another aspect of tyranny is the plantation of high income taxes,
such as were imposed on Syracuse for after five years and a diagnosis rule, the citizens had happily given up all their wealth in taxes.
And the tyrant also has a constant inclination to provoke war.
Please reproduce this and pass it on. The fourth pamphlets of the White Rose.
There is an old and wise saying which we preach to children. Time and again that he who will not listen.
Must feel. However, clever children will burn their fingers on a hot stove only once.
In the past few weeks, Hitler has claimed successes both in Africa and in Russia.
The consequence of this is that optimism on the one hand and dismay and pessimism on the other
have risen amongst the people with a speed which is wholly unlike the usual German complacency.
Everywhere amongst the opponents of Hitler, that is amongst the better part of the people.
We hear lamentations, words of disappointment and discouragement ending not infrequently with the interjection.
What if Hitler, after all? Meanwhile, the German offensive against Egypt has ground to a halt,
Rahul must remain in a dangerously exposed position, but the advance in the East still precedes.
This apparent success comes at the most hideous cost to human life.
So much so that already it can no longer be claimed as advantageous.
We therefore warn against optimism in any form. Who has counted the days, Hitler or Goebbels?
Neither of them. In truth, thousands fall in Russia every day.
It is harvest time and the Reaper cuts into the right crop with broad strokes.
Grief settles into the country's cottages, and no one is there to drive the mother's tears.
Hitler, however, lies to those whom he is robbed of their most precious possessions and driven to a meaningless death.
Every word that comes out of Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war.
And when he blasphemous, he invokes the name of the almighty, he means the power of the evil one of the fallen angel of Satan.
His mouth is the stinking more of [INAUDIBLE]. And his power is at its very essence, corrupt.
We must undoubtedly lead a struggle against the national socialist terrorist state by rational means.
But however, today still doubts the genuine existence of demonic powers has woefully failed to grasp the metaphysical background of this war.
Behind the concrete behind that, which is discernible to the sensors behind all factual, logical considerations,
there lies the irrational i.e. the fight against the team, against the messenger of the Antichrist.
Everywhere and always demons have lurked in the darkness, waiting for the day on which mine would become weak.
The day on which he would forsake his position in the divine order, freely ordained for him by God.
The day on which he would surrender to the forces of the evil one,
unbind themselves from the powers of a higher order and having taken the first step of his own volition,
he then driven forcibly towards taking the second and third steps at an ever more furious pace.
In all places and at all times when man has found himself most in need, men have taken a stand.
Prophets and saints who are innocent getting their freedom have pointed towards
the one and only God and with his help beseech the people to reverse their course.
Mine is undoubtedly free, but he is defenceless in the face of evil without the one true God.
He is like a ship without a rudder abandoned to the storm, like a nursing child, without a mother, like a cloud that disperses.
And so I ask you, you who proclaim yourself, Christian, do you waver in this struggle for the preservation of your highest goods?
Is there a calculation deferring your decision in the hope that someone else will raise their weapons to defend you?
Did not God himself endow you with the strength and courage to fight.
We must make an assault upon evil where it is strongest and it is strongest in the hands of Hitler.
So I returned and considered all the impressions that I'd done under the sun and behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter.
And on the side of their oppressors, there was power, but they had no comfort to.
Therefore, I praise the dead, which are already dead more than the living who are yet alive.
Ecclesiastes. Nevertheless, true anarchy is the generated element of religion.
Out of the annihilation of all that is positive, she raises her glorious head aloft as the new foundries of the world.
Oh, if Europe would you reawaken and the state of states a theory of political science which confront us?
Should hierarchy then be the principal of the Union of States?
Blood will flow over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles.
Until struck by celestial music and pacified, they approach their former altars as a colourful collective,
compose works of peace and hold a great festival of peace, hot tears falling upon the smouldering battlefields.
Only religion can reawaken Europe, protect the rights of the peoples and swear Christendom into its peacemaking office.
Its new splendour visible on Earth. We want to make clear that the actions of the White Rose are not being done in the service of some foreign power.
Although we know that National Socialism is hold on, power can only be broken through military force.
We are attempting to reawaken the gravely wounded German spirit from within.
This rebirth must, however, be preceded by full recognition of the guilt with which the German people have burdened
themselves by a ruthless battle against Hitler and is all too numerous accomplices,
party members, quislings and so on. The gulf between the better part of society and those who choose to associate
with national socialism must be torn apart with uncompromising brutality.
There is no punishment on this Earth that would do justice to the crimes of Hitler and his inner circle.
But out of love for the coming generations,
an example must be set after the end of the war so that no one will ever feel even the slightest inclination to commit such acts again.
Do not forget the petty villains of this regime, remember their names so that not a single one goes free.
After these atrocities, they should not be allowed to get away with switching sides at the last minute and acting as though nothing had happened.
We would like to add the reassurance that the addresses of white rose readers are nowhere recorded in writing,
the addresses are taken at random from directories. We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience. The white rose will never leave you in peace.
Please duplicate and redistribute. Pamphlets of the resistance movement in Germany, an appeal to all Germans.
The war is heading towards its sudden end.
Just as in 1918, the German government is trying to channel all attention towards the growing threat of submarines while in the east,
the armies are constantly falling back. And in the West, the invasion is expected.
America's armament has not yet reached its full potential, but even now, it exceeds anything ever seen before in history.
With mathematical certainty, Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss.
Hitler cannot win the war. He can only prolong it.
His guilt and the guilt of his followers continually exceeds all boundaries.
Just punishment is nigh. But what are the Germans doing about it?
They refused to see and they refused to hear blindly, they follow their corruptors into ruin.
Victory at all costs. They wrote on their banner. I will fight until the last man hit, Hitler says meanwhile, the war is already lost.
Germans, do you and your children want to suffer the same fate that befell the Jews?
Do you want to be judged by the same measures as those who have corrupted you?
Shall we be as a hated and shunned by the whole world? No.
So separate yourselves from the subhuman nature of National Socialism Act.
Prove that you think differently. A new fight for liberation is at hand.
The better part of the people is fighting on our side, tear off the cloak of indifference that shrouds your heart, decide before it's too late.
Don't believe the national socialist propaganda that has injected the fear of Bolshevism into your every limb.
Don't believe that Germany's salvation is bound to the victory of National Socialism for better or for worse.
A band of criminals cannot bring about German victory. Break away from everything associated with national socialism before it's too late.
A terrible but a righteous judgement is coming to those who hold themselves up in such a cowardly and passive way.
What does the outcome of this war teach us a war in which it was never our nation that was at stake?
The imperial concept of power, regardless of which side it might come from, needs to be neutralised for all time.
A one sided Prussian militarism should never be allowed to come into power again.
Only through the generous collaboration of the European nations can the foundation be built on which a new development will be possible.
Every centralising force, like the one the Prussian state has tried to exercise in Germany and in Europe, must be nipped in the bud.
The Germany to come. Can only be Federalist. Only a healthy federalism can bring new life to a weakened Europe.
The workers need to be freed from their condition of abject slavery through a level headed socialism.
This delusion of a self-sufficient economy must disappear from Europe.
Every nation, every person has a right to the good of the world.
Freedom of speech, freedom of faith. Protection of the individual citizen from the despotism of criminal and violent states.
These are the foundations of the new Europe. Support the resistance movement, distribute the pamphlets.
Fellow students. People look on deeply shaken at the defeat of our men at Stalingrad.
The ingenious strategy of our Great War corporal has hounded 300000 German men senselessly and irresponsibly to death and ruin.
True. We thank you. Turmoil is fermenting amongst the German people, are we to further entrust the fate of armies to a dilettante?
While we just sacrifice what is left of our German youth to the basest, power grabbing instincts of a party clique?
No more. The day of reckoning has come the reckoning of Germany's youth with the most heinous
tyranny of the top people has ever endured in the name of old German youth.
We demand from Adolf Hitler state the return of our personal freedom that treasure which Germans hold most dear,
which he has cheated us of in the most wretched of ways. We have grown up in a state which ruthlessly gags all freedom of expression.
The Hitler Youth, the essay and the SS have tried to homogenised radicalise and anaesthetise us in the most fruitful of our formative years.
Ideological education is a term they use for their contemptible method of suffocating,
burgeoning, independent thought and self-esteem with a fog of empty rhetoric.
Nazi elite, who would not be any more diabolical or narrow minded groom their future party
bigwigs in the elite schools open all these broken schools to become godless,
shameless, unscrupulous, exploitative, murderous scoundrels, the blind and brainless entourage of the future.
We workers of the mind of the right people to smash this new ruling class.
Student leaders and aspiring go lighters represent front line Scots soldiers like
schoolboys go lighters insult the honour of our female students with lewd jokes.
Women studying at Munich University have given a dignified response to the assault on their honour,
and their male counterparts have come out in support of them and are standing firm.
This is a first step in the fight for free self-determination without which spiritual values cannot be forged.
We are grateful to the brave students who are lighting the way.
For us, there is only one slogan fight against the party. Get out of the party structures which stifle our political expression.
Get out of the lecture halls of the essence senior leaders and party sycophants.
Our goal is true scholarship and real freedom of the mind.
There is no threat that can deter us, not even the closure of our universities.
It is the duty of each and every one of us to fight for our future,
our freedom and honour in a political system conscious of its own moral responsibility.
Freedom and honour. For 10 long years, Hitler and his cronies have trivialised, distorted and bled dry.
These two glorious German words to the point of disgust as only dilettantes know how costing a nation's highest ideals before swine.
They have shown well enough what freedom and Armour mean to them during the 10 years in which they have destroyed all material and spiritual freedom,
all moral substance of the German people. Even the most dull,
which a German has had his eyes open by the terrible bloodshed which in the name of the freedom
and honour of the German nation they have unleashed upon Europe and unleash a new every day.
The German name will remain forever tarnished unless finally the youth of Germany stands up,
pursues both revenge and atonement, smite our tormentors and founds a new intellectual Europe.
Students, the German people look to us, the responsibility is ours, just as the power of the spirit wrote the Napoleonic Terror in 1813.
So too will it break the terror of the National Socialists in 1943 to the East.
But it is enough, and Stalin could have gone up in flames.
The dead of Stalin beseech us, Rise up my people. The beacons are aflame.
People are on the verge of breaking free from national socialism enslavement of Europe in this new spiritual dawn of freedom and.
Stalingrad 200000 German brothers were sacrificed for the prestige of a military fraudster.
The humane terms of surrender offered by the Russians were concealed from the sacrificed soldiers.
General Powerless was awarded the Knights cross with oak leaves for this mass murder.
High ranking officers fled the battle of Stalingrad by plane. Hitler for Babe, the surrounded men from retreating to the rear troops.
Now the blood of 200000 soldiers doomed to die indicts the murderer Hitler Tripoli.
It surrendered unconditionally to the English Eighth Army. And what did the English do?
They left the citizens to continue their lives along the usual tracks.
They even let the police and civil servants keep their posts.
The one thing they did do thoroughly was to purge the largest Italian colonial city of all false ringleaders and subhumans.
With deadly certainty, the annihilating overwhelming superior power is pressing in from all sides.
If Palace was not willing to surrender, then Hitler is hardly likely to, even if there's no escape left for him.
And will you allow yourselves to be deceived like the 200000 men at Stalingrad who
defended their posts in vain to be massacred or sterilised or robbed of your children?
Roosevelt, the most powerful man in the world, said on 26th January 1943 in Casablanca.
We are waging this war of annihilation, not against peoples, but against political systems.
We are fighting until an unconditional surrender is reached.
Do you really need to give it any more thought before you make up your mind?
The lives of millions are now at stake. Must Germany share the same fate as Tripoli?
All of Germany is now surrounded, just as Stalingrad was.
Must every German be sacrificed to the harbinger of hatred and wanton destruction, to the one who tortured the Jews to death,
who exterminated half of Poland and who tried to destroy Russia to the one who took from you your freedom.
Peace, domestic happiness, hope and joy.
And gave you inflated currency in return. That must not that cannot be.
Hitler and his regime must fall so that Germany may live on.
The choice is yours. Stalingrad and ruin or Tripoli and hope for the future.
And once you have chosen. Act. I would like to thank our readers very much indeed.
I'd also like to thank the student translators who worked so hard to produce these wonderful versions of what incredible text?
I'm sure you'll agree. I'd also like to thank our partner organisation.
The visor was often White Rose Foundation in Munich and the incredible team at Torch, who have worked so hard behind the scenes to host this event.
We're going to leave you this evening with a piece performed by the award winning vocal ensemble Samsara, directed by Tom Herring.
This recording was made a year ago today at a concert we organised together.
We called it. Voices of the German Resistance. Sophie Scholl once wrote that music softens the heart, and together with samsara,
we're exploring ways to tell this incredible story through words and music.
This piece by Max Rager is called Natalie Nights On.
Thank you for joining us. Oh.
So. Oh, than.
I. Is.