Author Topic: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943  (Read 4836 times)

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Offline LadyVirginia

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The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« on: May 01, 2012, 12:09:00 PM »


Interesting story I hadn't heard until a few years ago and was reminded of it this morning.


Quote
The date was February 22, 1943. Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, along with their best friend, Christoph Probst, were scheduled to be executed by Nazi officials that afternoon. The prison guards were so impressed with the calm and bravery of the prisoners in the face of impending death that they violated regulations by permitting them to meet together one last time. Hans, a medical student at the University of Munich, was 24. Sophie, a student, was 21. Christoph, a medical student, was 22.

This is the story of The White Rose. It is a lesson in dissent. It is a tale of courage, of principle, of honor. It is detailed in three books, The White Rose (1970) by Inge Scholl, A Noble Treason (1979) by Richard Hanser, and An Honourable Defeat (1994) by Anton Gill.

Hans and Sophie Scholl were German teenagers in the 1930s. Like other young Germans, they enthusiastically joined the Hitler Youth. They believed that Adolf Hitler was leading Germany and the German people back to greatness.

Their parents were not so enthusiastic. Their father, Robert Scholl, told his children that Hitler and the Nazis were leading Germany down a road of destruction. Later, in 1942, he would serve time in a Nazi prison for telling his secretary: “The war! It is already lost. This Hitler is God's scourge on mankind, and if the war doesn't end soon the Russians will be sitting in Berlin.” Gradually, Hans and Sophie began realizing that their father was right. They concluded that, in the name of freedom and the greater good of the German nation, Hitler and the Nazis were enslaving and destroying the German people.

They also knew that open dissent was impossible in Nazi Germany, especially after the start of World War II. Most Germans took the traditional position, that once war breaks out, it is the duty of the citizen to support the troops by supporting the government. But Hans and Sophie Scholl believed differently. They believed that it was the duty of a citizen, even in times of war, to stand up against an evil regime, especially when it is sending hundreds of thousands of its citizens to their deaths.

The Scholl siblings began sharing their feelings with a few of their friends, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, as well as with Kurt Huber, their psychology and philosophy professor.

One day in 1942, copies of a leaflet entitled “The White Rose” suddenly appeared at the University of Munich. The leaflet contained an anonymous essay that said that the Nazi system had slowly imprisoned the German people and was now destroying them. The Nazi regime had turned evil. It was time, the essay said, for Germans to rise up and resist the tyranny of their own government. At the bottom of the essay, the following request appeared: “Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.”

The leaflet caused a tremendous stir among the student body. It was the first time that internal dissent against the Nazi regime had surfaced in Germany. The essay had been secretly written and distributed by Hans Scholl and his friends.

Another leaflet appeared soon afterward. And then another. And another.

more at link
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Online Pandora

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2012, 02:17:04 PM »
Wow.

Compare them with OWS.   ::saywhat::
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

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Offline Libertas

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2012, 02:44:24 PM »
And compare Obama and the rest of the Democrat-Media Complex to Hitler & Goebbels who exploited the ignorant masses!

Saw the thing on "Valkyrie" last night, good show, might have been on history channel, anyway...more than just the Valkyrie plot, the lead up to how Germany became the diseased Nazi state...there were upwards of 6 different plots or attempts at plots that failed to knock Hitler out, each failing or aborted or never got off the ground.  It also documented how dissenters were dealt with.  How many lives could have been saved had one evil man been destroyed?  We'll never know.

But how do we know the same can never happen again...or here?  We don't!

If we do not reinvigorate Republicanism and get back to rule of law and the principles in the Declaration and Constitution our fate will be little better than mid-20th century Germans.
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.

Offline LadyVirginia

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2012, 03:11:31 PM »
The sad thing is I found an old thread at the democratic underground site from around 2004 where the commenters were casting themselves as modern day equivalents to these German students.  Their biggest fear was that the Bush adminisration was going to shut down their ability to protest the war. No doubt they've become the OWS -- fearful that Repubbies will take away their rights as they try to stomp on ours.
"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Offline radioman

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2012, 03:14:11 PM »
Well, today about 99% of all americans 'occupied' their jobs! Way to go!
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Offline BMG

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2012, 03:28:08 PM »
The sad thing is I found an old thread at the democratic underground site from around 2004 where the commenters were casting themselves as modern day equivalents to these German students.  Their biggest fear was that the Bush adminisration was going to shut down their ability to protest the war. No doubt they've become the OWS -- fearful that Repubbies will take away their rights as they try to stomp on ours.

What's even sadder is that they are either ignorant or lying about the historic link of NAZIism to leftism. They carry on thinking that (or lying about) the right side of the political spectrum did that stuff. But today's democrat party is so close to the early NAZI movement that it's scary to think what will happen in the next decade if these people are not stopped.

Joseph Goebbels:
“… it is not for nothing that we have chosen the name National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), because at heart we are Communists.” Briefing his generals before the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, Hitler told them that he wanted to bring them “real socialism.”

His declared intention was to destroy the Christian churches after victory. Only the means are different for the various socialist branches, but the principle is the same for all: The end justifies the means.

Adolf Hitler:
”We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

It is scary how similar these quotes from these two monsters from history sound to any talking head aligned with the democrat party today.     
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” 
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"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."
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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2012, 03:29:13 PM »
The sad thing is I found an old thread at the democratic underground site from around 2004 where the commenters were casting themselves as modern day equivalents to these German students.  Their biggest fear was that the Bush adminisration was going to shut down their ability to protest the war. No doubt they've become the OWS -- fearful that Repubbies will take away their rights as they try to stomp on ours.

I could never see GW doing such a thing, although I wasn't comfortable with some of the provisions in the Patriot Act and his creation of DHS.  How could he not know how these agencies grow, and that it's never good.
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Offline IronDioPriest

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2012, 03:46:09 PM »
...I could never see GW doing such a thing, although I wasn't comfortable with some of the provisions in the Patriot Act and his creation of DHS.  How could he not know how these agencies grow, and that it's never good.

The feeble and halfhearted arguments from the Right against these provisions posited exactly what we are experiencing. The argument was, "Well this may seem necessary now, but this kind of power in the hands of an unscrupulous leader could lead to tyranny."

How quickly and easily Bush's policies were turned against the American people. It's almost like the continuation of a seamless plan. My conspiratorial mind sometimes gets the better of me....
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Offline BMG

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2012, 04:14:30 PM »
How quickly and easily Bush's policies were turned against the American people. It's almost like the continuation of a seamless plan. My conspiratorial mind sometimes gets the better of me....

I don't know Priest. I see Bush as having been a a republican progressive frankly. He did some things really good and other things really bad. I think that we've been experiencing two sides of the same political coin for the last several presidents and I don't think you're terribly far off conspiratorially speaking.
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” 
- Patrick Henry

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."
- Tacitus

Offline AlanS

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2012, 06:38:14 PM »
How quickly and easily Bush's policies were turned against the American people. It's almost like the continuation of a seamless plan. My conspiratorial mind sometimes gets the better of me....

I don't know Priest. I see Bush as having been a a republican progressive frankly. He did some things really good and other things really bad. I think that we've been experiencing two sides of the same political coin for the last several presidents and I don't think you're terribly far off conspiratorially speaking.

EXACTLY! The Patriot Act, DHS, plus the No Child Left Behind..... ::gaah::
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Offline Libertas

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #10 on: May 02, 2012, 06:47:07 AM »
The sad thing is I found an old thread at the democratic underground site from around 2004 where the commenters were casting themselves as modern day equivalents to these German students.  Their biggest fear was that the Bush adminisration was going to shut down their ability to protest the war. No doubt they've become the OWS -- fearful that Repubbies will take away their rights as they try to stomp on ours.

What's even sadder is that they are either ignorant or lying about the historic link of NAZIism to leftism. They carry on thinking that (or lying about) the right side of the political spectrum did that stuff. But today's democrat party is so close to the early NAZI movement that it's scary to think what will happen in the next decade if these people are not stopped.

Joseph Goebbels:
“… it is not for nothing that we have chosen the name National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), because at heart we are Communists.” Briefing his generals before the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, Hitler told them that he wanted to bring them “real socialism.”

His declared intention was to destroy the Christian churches after victory. Only the means are different for the various socialist branches, but the principle is the same for all: The end justifies the means.

Adolf Hitler:
”We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

It is scary how similar these quotes from these two monsters from history sound to any talking head aligned with the democrat party today.     

Yup, the left has spread the big lie enough that your average curb-crawler thinks the Nazi's were right wing, when they were nationalist left to the communists totalitarian left....both were bent upon converting everyone else to their system.
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.

Offline Libertas

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #11 on: May 02, 2012, 06:56:53 AM »
How quickly and easily Bush's policies were turned against the American people. It's almost like the continuation of a seamless plan. My conspiratorial mind sometimes gets the better of me....

I don't know Priest. I see Bush as having been a a republican progressive frankly. He did some things really good and other things really bad. I think that we've been experiencing two sides of the same political coin for the last several presidents and I don't think you're terribly far off conspiratorially speaking.

EXACTLY! The Patriot Act, DHS, plus the No Child Left Behind..... ::gaah::

Like Pan summarized in that other thread, it's all gone downhill since Reagan...the only thing different from Admin to Admin is the velocity.  Bush I was a mixed bag and a net push, but even a push seems a loss when you consider he was the one who started uncoupling us from Reaganism, and it cost him a 2nd term...Clinton was one-step forward and two-steps back, and that one-step forward was only because we captured the House...Bush II was the opposite of Clinton, two-steps forward & one-step back...until the end with Tarp (which set the stage for Obama drunken dictator-level spending spree) that gives W a push when all is said and done.  W should have known leaving anything open-ended like Patriot Act Etc was asking for trouble, but we cannot leave Congress out of this, they waffle and cut deals deleterious to the nation all the damn time!  Obama is five-steps back and counting...Romney will be lucky to be a push...the trend is not a good one.
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.

Offline warpmine

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Re: The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent 1943
« Reply #12 on: June 10, 2012, 10:44:54 PM »
No, it sure doesn't. ::bashing::
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