White Rose Leaflets [Archive]

Havet

18th June 2010, 17:17

It is certain that every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?

Since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals … Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!

All main members of White Rose where sentenced to death within a month of the last leaflet.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/White_Rose_Leaflets_1-6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rose

Powerful reading. Please share your thoughts regarding these leaflets.

Personally, I am both glad and sad. Glad that there was a resistance during those times, sad that it never achieved its goals.

JazzRemington

18th June 2010, 23:33

It was admirable what they did, but in reality they didn't accomplish much. I believe they inspired a copy-cat group in Berlin, but that was about it. It's unknown whether or not people actually read or took the pamphlets seriously. Hell, a janitor was the one who caught them while they were distributing their last pamphlet.

Dimentio

19th June 2010, 00:21

I think their conduct shows that Germans in general did not fear the regime as much as they should have, given that the regime targeted minorities and political dissidents and did not seek to impose fear on the general population. Recently, it has been proven that the Gestapo did not rely so much on professional informants but rather on ordinary Germans who without prior knowledge took the initiative to contact them with information.

What the White Rose did was not what you would expect that dissidents in a one-party dictatorship would do. Rather, their action would be more in tune with what youth who protest against the war in Iraq in modern UK would do. It was very amateurish, albeit brave.

The scary thing though is that most Germans, till the bitter end, solidarised themselves with a regime which did not only consist of a party with the most destructive ideology ever, but also a regime which consistently narrowed its ruling clique down to a small circle of proven nutcases.

Bud Struggle

19th June 2010, 00:54

Dean

19th June 2010, 20:16

The scary thing though is that most Germans, till the bitter end, solidarised themselves with a regime which did not only consist of a party with the most destructive ideology ever, but also a regime which consistently narrowed its ruling clique down to a small circle of proven nutcases.

Given enough time and under the right conditions they could have made good Nazis out of us all.

You're both right, and there's a reason for it - again, economic in nature.

After WWI, Germany was ostracised in the European community, and hit with reparations to the tune of 393Bn of todays US dollars. In addition, there was a ban on military development - which shut down a significant portion of the running German economy.

Interestingly, Keynes/wikipedia remark that:

The British economist John Maynard Keynes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes) in his best-selling 1919 book The Economic Consequences of the Peace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace) argued that reparations threatened to destabilize the German economy, and hence German politics. The majority of historians, such as the Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_MacMillan) in her 2001 book Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacemakers:_The_Paris_Peace_Conference_of_1919_an d_Its_Attempt_to_End_War), have since disagreed with this assertion. The French economist Étienne Mantoux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Mantoux) in his 1946 book The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes established that Germany could have paid all of the reparations had they wanted to, and that the problem was not the Germans were unable to pay, but rather that they were unwilling to pay[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations#cite_note-8) The American historian Sally Marks commented that Keynes had fallen in love with Carl Melchior (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Melchior), a member of the German delegation, and that views on reparations "...were shaped by his passion for Carl Melchior, the German financier and reparations expert whom he met during negotiations at Spa shortly after the armistice"[10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations#cite_note-9)

(my emphasis). Here we have a real materialist analysis citing the relationship between politics and economics, and an absurd (moralist) notion that "unwillingness to pay" negates the real impact of reparations on the German economy.

Clearly, anti-German sentiment has had a direct impact on the historical analysis of the Wiemar Republic and its fall (one wonders why similar condemnation and historical revisionism never befell the Belgian (fixed) regime, responsible for the Congo Free State genocide).

The German people, in desperate economic conditions, were driven to whichever leader promised to freeze reparations payments which was an obvious response to their crippling effect on the economy. This is a decidedly nationalist position, and as such both propelled nationalism, aligned itself with nationalist positions, and served to justify nationalist positions which people might otherwise reject.

Hitler's subsequent activity was a direct response to his own totalitarian ambitions as well as the hyper-nationalism engendered in the German nation. When the Wiemar state was delegitimized, a new regime representing the above hyper-nationalism was bound to rise to power. It was Hitler's own sickness, as well as his harnessing of historical anti-semitism which gave Germany the unique trait of attacking Jews (the single largest ethnic group to fight on the German side in WWI!). Even Hindenburg slyly agreed with one of Hitler's edicts, to kick out Jews from the government, by adding the stipulation that only those Jews who hadn't fought for Germany in WWI would lose their jobs - Hitler was shocked at how many Jews remained after the legislation was executed.

Dimentio

19th June 2010, 21:28

You're both right, and there's a reason for it - again, economic in nature.

After WWI, Germany was ostracised in the European community, and hit with reparations to the tune of 393Bn of todays US dollars. In addition, there was a ban on military development - which shut down a significant portion of the running German economy.

Interestingly, Keynes/wikipedia remark that:

(my emphasis). Here we have a real materialist analysis citing the relationship between politics and economics, and an absurd (moralist) notion that "unwillingness to pay" negates the real impact of reparations on the German economy.

Clearly, anti-German sentiment has had a direct impact on the historical analysis of the Wiemar Republic and its fall (one wonders why similar condemnation and historical revisionism never befell the Danish regime, responsible for the Congo Free State genocide).

The German people, in desperate economic conditions, were driven to whichever leader promised to freeze reparations payments which was an obvious response to their crippling effect on the economy. This is a decidedly nationalist position, and as such both propelled nationalism, aligned itself with nationalist positions, and served to justify nationalist positions which people might otherwise reject.

Hitler's subsequent activity was a direct response to his own totalitarian ambitions as well as the hyper-nationalism engendered in the German nation. When the Wiemar state was delegitimized, a new regime representing the above hyper-nationalism was bound to rise to power. It was Hitler's own sickness, as well as his harnessing of historical anti-semitism which gave Germany the unique trait of attacking Jews (the single largest ethnic group to fight on the German side in WWI!). Even Bismark slyly agreed with one of Hitler's edicts, to kick out Jews from the government, by adding the stipulation that only those Jews who hadn't fought for Germany in WWI would lose their jobs - Hitler was shocked at how many Jews remained after the legislation was executed.

Excellent post, though it have some minor errors.

Bismarck had been dead since a long time. The guy you must refer to is Hindenburg.

Neither had Denmark anything to do with the Congo Free-state.

The Congo Free-state 1880-1908 was a project initiated by the Belgian king Leopold II and the adventurer Henry Morton Stanley, which even was independent from the Belgian state, which inherited the mess after international pressure forced Leopold II to sell it to Belgium. Under its existence, about 5-10 million people had been murdered, but it wasn't a specifically Belgian project.

The CFS was what we today would define as a multinational corporation where the king was in charge as CEO and prime owner, owning 51% of the shares, while European and American corporations and individuals owned the rest. Its army, the Force Publique, was consisting of European officers and native soldiers who were recruited by force, under threat that if they defected, their families would be killed.

Leopold could not even apologise for the manner in which he governed the Congo Free State by the merit of his racism, since no signs show that he personally held racist opinions. Rather, he was most likely a psychopath and a total misanthropist who only was motivated by personal greed.

People use to say that Joseph Conrad's novel "The Heart of Darkness" is a story about man's struggle with himself on some metaphysical level. It would be like claiming that Anne Frank's diary is about existentialist philosophy. "The Heart of Darkness" is based on true stories from the Congo Free State.

It is very telling that the man responsible for bringing the world's attention to this genocide later on was hanged for treason in a British jail. His name was Roger Casement.