Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 42 - The White Rose

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

On this episode Joe and Rich talk about one of the most badass groups of people to ever walk the earth: The White Rose. A non violent anti-war activism group that operated in Nazi Germany. A little warning: We had some recording issues during this episode. Our producer did what he could to save it. Support the show https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys buy some merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow us on twitter: @Lions_by Sources: https://whiteroseinternational.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwxtSSBhDYARIsAEn0thQiOTzyupQmYz5YP4A4FZ4XZPnZ5gb-bS7VzwKURKisxhRAcVz24g4aAsMjEALw_wcB https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/white-rose https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/sophie-scholl-and-white-rose

I'm Henry from Fortress on a Hill. We're a leftist veteran podcast that aims to expose the reality of the U.S. military's many wars abroad, the horror that it puts on the people that live in those places, and the damage that military service does to Americans. Congress has abdicated its role, giving oversight to the military. Fortress on a Hill aims to change that. Fortressonahill.com or wherever you get your podcast. Now, back to Lions Led by Donkeys. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Hello and welcome to another episode of Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. With me today is Rich.

Hi. What up? Welcome back to the guest room that serves as my studio. Thank you. It's been a while. Yeah, it has. And, you know, how have you been? It's been a long time since you've been on the show. I've been good, you know, just trucking along uh got a new job so that's nice within the confines of the military so forging the young minds of up-and-coming ncos like nick it's it's the most important job in the army i mean you thought yours was not even remotely i i hated every minute i was talking about being a dependent.

Yeah, I have been getting yelled at by angry right-wingers on Twitter and finalizing my next book, which is the worst part of writing a book. That may be an even more important job, getting yelled at by right-wingers on Twitter.

Yeah, I... Somebody posted this thing called... Alright, so it's a guy named Jack Posobiec. an even more important job getting getting yelled at by framing on twitter yeah i so somebody posted this thing called them from a all right so it's getting jack posobiec and i know you're not on the website so you have no idea who he is and you're you're a better person for for not knowing he is a right-wing grifter who is a naval reserve officer whose entire job is urinalysis like he literally just watches dudes piss in a cup for a living on his weekend of drill or whatever it is and he started this thing uh called a magaphobe which is someone who does not like trump supporters and i so i screenshot this i did not quote tweet him i screenshot it and said these motherfuckers are trying to make a stupid

red hat jim crow he found it this is he had likeuckers are trying to make a stupid red hat, Jim Crow. He found it. This is like a half million followers in like a news segment. So that means he like searched and found me. And I'm nobody at all. And tried to sic his like legions of smooth brained boomer grandpas on me. And that has been going on for the last 12 hours. So you've had a productive day i almost done i'm almost done finishing my book uh uh final notes which is nice um which brings us to our episode not a good segue um uh so what do you know about anti-war movements

um i know that there have been anti-war movements in history solid point so most people think when you talk about anti-war movements you think of Vietnam maybe Code Pink during the lead up to the Iraq war and we're not talking about either one of those today

we are going to be talking about an anti-war movement from within Nazi Germany called the White Rose. And they get my vote for being some of the biggest badasses of World War II and maybe of all time. So it's all started around 1942 at the University of Munich in

Nazi Germany. Now when you look at 1942 for Germans during World War II, it's a pretty critical time. The initial sweeping victories of the war were largely over. A German army had already attempted to take over Moscow and failed. The growing damages and the cost of the war to everyday German families were becoming increasingly apparent, and they could no longer be ignored. Like, you know the battle

of france and all their shit these are now um memories like the eastern front has turned into a fucking hellscape on earth and um germans are actually starting to feel it uh and that's where these people come from um so the white rose head they're still not even sure how many members the white rose had uh but it all boils down to a certain core who is what we're going to talk about. And that is Hans and Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willie Graff, Christoph Probst, and lastly, a professor at their university named Kurt Huber. All of them except Kurt were college students. All of them, except Kurt, were college students. And that's kind of interesting where you can almost directly equate these guys to the Vietnam War movement, anti-war movement, because they were all in college and their lives were getting fucked over by some assholes.

Not exactly equating Richard Nixon and Hitler, but, you know, do with that what you will. So the kids that would eventually make up the White Rose led normal German lives for the time. Before the Nazis came to power, there was this thing called the German Youth Movement. You kind of think of it as Boy Scouts, but more

survivalist. They hung out in the woods a lot. I don't know if there's merit badges, but it was effectively like a summer camp. Wait, there's something more survivalist than Boy hung out in the woods a lot um they i don't know if there's merit badges but it was effectively like a summer camp wait there's something more survivalist than boy scouts yeah yeah they they probably didn't even have the ascots can you even go into the woods without an ascot i don't know i did once and i'll never do it again um Pretty much all I did is hang out together in large groups. A key part of this, it actually, so I read on a few occasions that the German youth movement, especially during the Weimar Republic before the Nazis took over, was a pretty big hotbed for youthful homosexuality. Hot.

Yeah. No. But that is why when the germans took over um there's also like a huge group of like catholic youth movements as well um i guess i don't know you grew up catholic you can assume what they were like um not good the look you gave me was like no no i have no idea what you're talking about i'm just i'm just thinking about all the catholic press that's going on right now not good not good um and actually the something i never experienced because i'm a girl was not able to be an altered child you know i'm really glad nick is in here because he'd say something incredibly inappropriate right about now. And that's.

Oh, we miss you, Nick. Yeah, poor Nick is stranded out in the desert NTC again for I think the third time since we've started this podcast. I think four. Jesus Christ. Or maybe it's three NTC and like two JRTC, but yeah. Yeah, that poor bastard. Yeah, that poor bastard. So one of the first things that the Nazis did for the youth when they took over was make all of these groups legal and replace them with the Hitler Youth.

Yeah. So, but unfortunately, for the people who didn't necessarily agree with it, agree with the Hitler Youth. And there was also a woman's version that was called like the band of German german maidens or something youth is not a gender specific term why can't women be that um because well the germans wanted like so if the nazis were nothing if not consistent right i mean a brown hair guy talking about blonde haired people rule the world but um they wanted their sexes separate effectively i'm outraged by the nazis being so sexist shocking right like they literally started a baby factory at one point so it shouldn't be that surprising um but they made uh glad we can laugh about this now yeah i'll eventually be doing a whole uh episode on that uh because it's fucking nuts but there

is literally like uh a baby factory like you had to submit so like if you were in the ss uh to get in the ss you had to prove that you were not jewish and you were german going back to like your fucking great grandparents something stupid like that uh on your father and mother's side that might that that might not be entirely true but and it's hilarious when you look on realize like most of the ss late in the wars from eastern europe but um you had to prove your uh racial purity and then they would let you into these Lebensborn homes. And there, there would be women whose sole job was to get pregnant. Obviously that like a lot of them were sexual slaves from places they took over and everything,

but some of them were not, some of them legitimately volunteered for that job. And their whole job was to birth German children. Yeah. So now that that's depressing, let's get even worse. So when the Hitler Youth came thing, the Hitler Jugend or whatever, it became compulsory because at first the Scholls did not want to join. Their family was pretty religious. They're Catholic.

And at first, the Germans in the Catholic Church didn't have the Nazis in the Catholic Church I should say did not really get along that would change but at first they did not like them so they end up having to join anyway because they had no choice but they also enjoyed the things that they did there because they're still kids

they enjoyed going out and doing kid shit with other kids even though it was like half political ideology now um most people think of the hitler youth now as they ended up in uh like the end of the war like there was some of the last surrendering german soldiers were hitler youth soldiers inside berlin um This was not the case at first. It was pretty much the Boy Scouts with some political indoctrination. They also had some really shitty, embarrassing

short shorts. Just a touch of political indoctrination. Hey guys, let's go have some fun. Also, someday you'll be killing Jews. Yeah. Let's go learn how to build a bonfire. Also, let's learn about the Fuhrer and how he gives us the ability to start fires. So soon the Scholls, who were a mostly liberal upper class educated class of people, would be introduced to Nazi oppression. Hans was arrested, along with his friend Willy Graf, for their previous membership in the German youth movement.

Hans, it turned out, had been turned in for being gay, which was incredibly illegal in Germany. The ultimate thing. He was arrested in 1937 for this, for a relationship he had when he was about 16 years old. If this was only a few years later, the story would not be being told because Hans would have just been thrown into concentration camp. But he missed the line. So good for him for now. years later, the story would not be being told because Hans would have just been thrown into concentration camp. But he missed the line. So, good for him for now. So in 1941, the Scholls would come

across a Catholic sermon by an outspoken anti-Nazi priest by the name of Kleset. Now this is a long fucking German name. Clemens August Graf von Galen. Galen's sermon was decrying the Nazi euthanasia program, which is known as Aktion T4, which precluded the Holocaust. For people who do not know, T4 was the German program of murdering its own citizens, men, women, and children.

If they were found to be sick, mentally or physically disabled, or people who they dubbed life unworthy of life uh it's as horrible as that sounds i don't even want to say that um so this was one of those many horrifying ways that nazis hope to uh purify their aryan bloodlines. Um, and now at first, so the first documented case of someone being euthanized by T4, they were given to the Nazis by their family. And this was all carried out by doctors. Uh, but that was not always the case. The vast majority of people killed in the T4 program were murdered behind their family's back. In the case of children, parents were outright lied to and told their children were being taken to, quote, special sections where they would be receiving improved treatment. A couple days later, the children would be murdered, normally with an injection of fennel, and their parents would be told they simply died of pneumonia. For adults, any hospital, old age, home, and mental hospital were required to report who had been there for more than five years.

Those people would then be wiped out. It was eventually through this program the Nazis began their first use of the gas to murder people. This is where they start with the fumes from a combustion engine because they hadn't quite upgraded to Zyklon B. So would that be like carbon monoxide? Yeah.

It turns out, however, the Nazis are really bad at keeping secrets about this program. So according to the book T4, quote, in the towns where the killing centers were located, many people saw the inmates arrive in buses, saw the smoke from the crematoria chimneys, and noticed that the buses were turning empty.

In one city, ashes containing human hair rained down on the town. Despite the strict disorders, some staff at the killing centers talked about what was going on. In some cases, families could tell that the causes of death certificates were false. For example, when a patient was claimed to have died from appendicitis,

even though his appendix had been surgically removed years before. In other cases, several families in the same town received death certificates in the same day with the exact same cause listed. They were not good at keeping secrets. Do you research Nazis? They didn't even notice it. They did such a

thorough exam of research nazis yeah like they didn't even notice that they did such a thorough uh exam of the of these people that they uh condemned to death they even noticed in the penicillin scar uh and how it is kind of off subject but how they would come across like a group of ss doctors would come through and um decide if the person was life unworthy of life and they would just do with like x's and o's like a football play. And if enough SS doctors, I think it was like three or four of them came by and put three X's that

that was enough to condemn it to death. So by 1940, people were so terrified of leaving their loved ones or asylums. They just brought, started bringing them home. Soon people were sending in letters that protested the government. The Vatican itself came down with a ruling that said what the Nazis were doing was against

the rule of God and demanded they stopped. The German branch of the Catholic church however stayed oddly silent. That's where our boy Galen comes in. He wrote that pamphlet and it quickly spread across Germany. And two of the people that helped him spread it were Hans and Sophie Scholl, who printed

it and spread around the University of Munich. This should come as a surprise to nobody when I say this is incredibly fucking illegal for them to do. One member of the White Rose, George Wittgenstein, described what exactly they were dealing with at the time in Germany. Quote, the government, or rather, should I say, the party controlled everything, the news media, the arms police, and the armed forces. The judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education,

kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started very early and continued by means through the Hitler youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were extorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology. Now imagine finding yourself in a situation like that and still breaking the law. They are, to put it, to put things pretty simply, they're way more badass than i have ever been in my whole life yeah it is surprising they're able to skitter around the gestapo for as long as they did being weighed down by fucking anchors between their legs can we can we think of a more

badass word than skitter uh but when what would you describe that someone does uh to not be scamper they scampered a bit like the penguin oh that's a waddle that's definitely a waddle no scamper is a penguin from an old cartoon movie it's very cute but what movie has a scampering penguin in it a wonderful movie from my childhood that you do not remember what it's called. It's called Scamper. The movie itself was Scamper a Nazi. No. It was a penguin. I'm going to say that I'll call this Scampering then. But they were not quite the White Rose yet.

For that to happen, they would have to see the horrors of the Nazi regime with their own two eyes. Unfortunately for them, that's exactly what they were about to do. And here's something that like I get shit for from time to time. Like I wrote a whole book about like my awakening, I guess you could say, as a pacifist and anti-war activist when I had to go over there and see it myself. And people are like, how dumb do you have to be i knew this my whole life like i knew these words were wrong and shit like that and uh i don't really get that attitude like you can kind of understand things are fucky but like not as bad as people make it seem because it's like obviously these have to be lies the the place that we live in cannot simply be this nightly whiplash villain of

the world. Like people have to be lying about it. Well, and also there's like a grand scale that we're looking back in this at, like we have all of the information now and we're looking at Germany as a country, whereas the people living there at the time are living in their homes with their families and not necessarily,

I mean, obviously they're affected by the political structure, but not necessarily in their everyday life and not necessarily in a negative way. So I mean, only the people directly affected are going to really know that there's something really bad going on. And remember,

this is the 1940s. Then the radio signals you're getting, because I mean, there weren't, there was TV, I think. No, there wasn't. Was there TV? I don't know. Lots of fact check that.

Yeah, I didn't look that up because I'm a hack and a fraud. But like the radios, like, and the Nazis gave radios out to people because they knew the power of the political message. Gave them out free. That was the news that you would get. It's the news that they beamed into your radio all the media was controlled by the nazis so they're only going to let you see what they want you to see which is you know not like they're gonna they're gonna ease you into it like a frog in boiling water like they're gonna turn the temperature up slowly so that you you know by the time it's hot you don't notice and it's not like they put their atrocities in the news um like

people may have known concentration camps were a thing and if you live nearby one you definitely knew they're a thing but like you didn't think they're annihilation centers um just like the vast majority of people who had family fighting in the wars didn't think that their cousin who they grew up with being this nice friendly guy or whoever going to the eastern front wars didn't think that their cousin who they grew up with being this nice friendly guy or whoever going to the eastern front they didn't they would never imagine that you know he had a hand in killing millions of people um and the idea i mean imagine if someone you knew to be very close to you um was like accused of like a disgusting murder what's the first thing you're gonna say he wouldn't do that yeah of course and like imagine like the only fucking uh news that you're getting is from some hypothetical situation here where they're all just saying that they're innocent he's doing good things

which one are you gonna believe i mean the the white rose were the people who'd become the white rose at this point had found a dissident news source in the form of a Catholic priests, like, and Catholics, like there weren't the majority in Germany and the Germans did their, like the German government did their best to like downplay religion as much as they could and get away with it. Um,

uh, you know, it's, and it's not like they're going to Google this shit on the internet. There's no other news source. So the idea that like they had to go see it firsthand, completely understandable. Um,

and that's where I'll go back on track. Um, so much like the U S, uh, at the height of the Vietnam draft, the Nazis also had deferment for people going to college, which I guess that's nice of them. Um,

the main difference between the two is how, uh, was however, the German medical students who had temporarily... Almost everybody we're talking about are medical students, which is a weird coincidence. So if you went to school, you got your deferment to be a medical student. The Nazis expected that on your summer vacation, where most people would just get drunk and whatever in the US, you go serve in the army medical corps uh during that three months

which experience i'm sure sure uh like that or die i guess and like if you if you had nothing to give the nazis like military wise like a sophie scholl got sent to a foundry like she worked in the foundry over the summer to to build what it was like the the national labor program uh it was their version of total war before they're still like we had rosie the riveter and shit and they said and they had women go to the factories because the fear said so they didn't have a cute character they're nazis um so during the same time the scholl's father was actually arrested for insulting hitler he was turned in by his own friend at work so you can see how slowly but surely they're they're getting a very close firsthand experience what nazi oppression is not only did like one of them

get arrested for being gay or having a gay relationship. Their dad was arrested for probably saying a really shitty dad joke about Hitler. Because Hans, Alexander, Christoph, and Willy were all medical students, they were all sent off to the Eastern Front of all places in 1942, which makes me think they have some of the worst fucking luck on Earth. It was there on the Eastern Front. They not only saw the horrors of one of the most terrifying theaters of war in human history, they also saw the gross mistreatment and mass murder of the Russian Jewish population. And most of the time people, so like we were just talking about,

nobody knew about the massacres on the Eastern Front unless you're at the Eastern Front. That news did not go home. Either through the SS or their mobile death squads, which were known as the Eitzensgruppen, which, yeah, they definitely do those things. But the regular German army was heavily involved in the everyday horrible ultraviolence of the Eastern Front. Most people put that blame squarely on the SS. That's just not true. Also, another bad thing for these kids, moral compass, Alexander's book fluent Russian. So while German soldiers would never be able to communicate with the people that are oppressing

and murdering, Alexander could understand all of it. Uh, so he heard firsthand accounts of the brutality being visited upon them by the German people. Um, Willie graph wrote a letter home that said simply quote, I wish I had been spared the view of all this, which I've had to witness. Soon the feelings of horror and despair gave way to the conviction that they had to do something to stop this. At the end of the three month tour at the front, they all returned home around fall of 1942 and officially formed the White Rose. So this was just their summer break. Yeah. Wow. They're about 20 years old

they chose the name the white rose from a book as the white rose was supposed to represent purity and innocence among the face of evil the group quickly authored their first four leaflets and spread them around i guess the printed leaflet was the anti-war resistors version of a podcast in Nazi Germany. A whole bunch of white kids get together. You call it a podcast. It's like a flock. They quoted extensively from the Bible,

Aristotle and Goethe. But most importantly, they talked about the things that normal German people had no idea about, like mass murder and genocide. This is a quote from the second leaflet. Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. The German people slumber on it in adult stupid sleep and incurred these fascist criminals. Each wants to be exonerated of guilt.

Each one continues on his way in the most placid calm conscience but he cannot be exonerated he is guilty guilty guilty and it's a really i think good way to uh tell people like because you know the germans came to power the nazis came power in germany uh they had run for parliament or the reichstag a few times and they never won the popular vote like i think they had they had like 25% support. And Hitler ended up becoming chancellor because people are gutless assholes

and they gave him, they just gave him power. So the Nazis at this point, there's flags and torches and all these things everywhere. But the vast majority of the German population was not like a rabbinate nazi supporter

and they were hoping if they just kept their head down everything would be okay for them and their family and you know this would all blow over the war would be over whatever but the white rose is taking a different angle and they're like no you're fucking guilty because sitting idly by is helping them were they like the only anti-war movement um they're one of the more well-known um and they are um one of the more vocal because like they there was conspirators you could say there's conspirators within the german military uh the aristocracy um there was people who were anti-hititler and anti-Nazi but they but much like the people

didn't want to stick their fucking neck out because they knew what happened to people yeah most people are for themselves yeah most people have really strong moral convictions until they get visited by the fucking Gestapo which fair enough I'll give them that I will

freely admit making this podcast would not be possible if I was worried about fucking the local police kicking open my door and murdering me. Like, I'm not willing to go that far. Your very cute dog won't let me talk to him. Yeah, he's like that. We have two podcast guests with us today, and they're lazy-ass dogs. At least this time they're not vomiting on the floor nick brought his dog over and she was just she vomited six times what six times he needs to take her to a vet and this is before i had a producer so i couldn't get rid of it um so they uh the white rose print off thousands of these leaflets and spread around wherever they

could uh they generally targeted people like themselves upper class educated college students uh they mailed them out to professors and students and even managed to smuggle them to universities all across germany uh by january 1943 they managed to print off about 10 000 of their fifthth leaflet and this is granted this is not an automatic printing press it's a shitty hand crank thing so I'm just going to town all hours of the day

the leaflet managed to find its way all the way to the University of Berlin itself right around the same time that this leaflet the 5th leaflet started making its way around the German 6th army was surrounded and destroyed and the Battle of Stalingrad finally ended. This had a massive impact on the German national morale. One situation in the University of Munich, ground zero of the white rose leaflets.

A group of students violently rioted against the regional Nazi party leader who came to the school to shit talk the male students for being in school rather than being in the army. He also apparently like slut shamed a few of the women because like before the Nazis took over the Weimar Republic was like incredibly liberal and progressive. Like they, I think they even legalized being gay, which is huge for the 1930s.

And like women were pretty much allowed to do whatever they wanted. And then the Nazis came over and they're like thorough far right conservatives. And women had to cover up and stay in the home and have babies to further the glorious Aryan race. So like people weren't hugely cool with that. It was, you know, fear that kept them in line like most fascist regimes but uh he slushed him for the female students and he got chased out of there by angry students which is fucking awesome yeah they should have beat him to death uh so it is not exactly known how much the white roses activity really did account for the students actions that

day but it's fair to say thousands of leaflets have been flooding the area it may have been something to change the students minds i'm sure i'm sure just the fact that they knew that other people felt the same way that they did i mean there's there's power in numbers if you feel like you're you know you have these thoughts but you're alone you tend to stay quiet yeah definitely but if you know that you know one they spark a conversation you can kind of feel people out hey you see this leaflet what you know what do you think about it and if they start you know saying the anti-nazi rhetoric also then you know you've got an ally yeah and i mean like i said at the same time the german sixth army was destroyed in stalingrad

hundreds of thousands of germans are dead at this point there's a very good chance that everybody in that room had lost a brother or a cousin or someone in their family and was probably going to be there at some point very very real realistically they were all going to die in the if they didn't do something but uh so watching the beauty of an anti-nazi nazi student riot breakout uh further emboldened the members of the White Rose, leaving Kurt Huber to pen their sixth and final leaflet. And I have to say they spit fucking hot fire, quote, fellow fighters in the resistance shaken and broken. Our people behold the loss of the men of Stalingrad. the loss of the men of Stalingrad.

330,000 German men have been sensely and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the inspiring strategy of our World War I private first class. Fuhrer, we thank you. For those who are unaware, Al Taylor only ever reached the rank of Gefritter or Lance Corporal in the military.

They're also heckling. Yes. That's so great. Your mama got one big titty and one little titty we call the bitch biggie smalls as they're just cranking the little hand thing uh so yeah uh the same time they're spraying these around they began painting anti-nazi slogans all over the place at school and uh around munich i really really hope they spray painted like or like well spray paint probably wasn't a thing

back then, but like they hand painted dicks on posters of Hitler. Because I know that's what I would do. Because you know he would fucking hate it. It's a different generation. But you know he would hate like a giant set of balls painted on him somewhere. Because like

there's a rumor going around he only had one ball. And he had some really weird sexual practices. So, you know, he would fucking hate having a dick painted on him cause he was too busy fucking his cousin. Actually, I think his cousin killed herself by then,

but whatever. Uh, so in February, 1943, the Scholl siblings brought an entire suitcase of leaflets to spur on the university, which I have to say, not good for operational security. There's covered in evidence.

Before they left, Sophie noticed there's actually a few more at the bottom of the suitcase. So not wanting to go to waste, she grabbed them and flung them down from the top of the atrium. The school's maintenance person, a asshole named Jacob Schmidt, noticed it and called the cops. Which, I should remind you, when I say cops in this situation, I mean the fucking Gestapo. As had become normal for Sophie

after spreading leaflets, she would not travel back home carrying any evidence with her. For obvious reasons. Like, she would take all the risk bringing it there and like, yeah, I'm not going to do that twice, and then dump them in a ditch, throw them away, whatever. Yeah.

Hans wasn't so slick. He still had some stuff on him. So when the Gestapo finally did catch up with him while they were walking away, Hans attempted to eat the last few leaflets. Didn't work. away, Hans attempted to eat the last few leaflets. Didn't work. Oh, Hans.

I mean, that's my self-defense mechanism too, is just like try to eat stuff. I don't know. They managed to stop him. Unfortunately, they had enough of the leaflets left that he attempted to fucking eat to match the writing cells they had found in rough drafts and Hans'

apartment, which linked them directly to Christoph Probst, who was quickly arrested. Alexander Schmorell was arrested while attempting to flee to Switzerland, and Probst had given Willy Graf's name under pain of torture. When Schmorell had tried to run, they put uh like on the front of every fucking

newspaper so he was doomed um so the gestapo head investigator originally thought sophie was totally innocent uh she had given uh no evidence uh because remember like she had no evidence on her whatsoever and she was smart enough to clean up her place there was no evidence, uh, because remember like she had no evidence on her whatsoever and she was smart enough to clean up her place. There was no evidence tying her any weight whatsoever to the white rose. Um, and what's honestly more surprising is nobody gave her up under torture. Like they gave up everybody else. And you can imagine the horrible shit that Gestapo was doing.

Um, like tearing out fingernails like shooting them stabbing them cutting them beating their ass constantly these are things that happen I mean the Gestapo wasn't exactly known for their fucking gentle tactics and like I said

almost everybody gave up everybody else but nobody fucking dropped Sophie's name which is incredibly shocking which is why the next thing's going to be so terrible. But she found out while she was being interrogated, they had her brother did her rights. So she gave herself up saying that she was in charge of everything and they're only listening to orders. Just so everybody knows how badass that is. The man that was questioning Sophie was Robert Moore. Moore was the Gestapo interrogation specialist in Munich,

which just imagine how many terrible things you had to do to so many people to get that fucking title. And not only was he a Gestapo interrogation specialist, he was the commander of eitzens group in c and had a hand in the murders of thousands of people throughout ukraine and russia now imagine being a 21 year old college student facing down one of the most evil men who have ever fucking walked the earth looking him right in the eye i said yeah bitch it was me that's what she did go girl oh she wouldn't be going much anywhere else unfortunately um i know like

i'm a huge bitch like there's no way i would do that there's no fucking way i would do that i would lie my ass off i would have sold someone out under torture too i mean that's that's what torture doesn't fucking work they'll say whatever the fuck you want to say to get the pain to stop yeah that's like a lot of people were executed in the wake of the White Rose investigation because the people who are being tortured just gave up everybody they knew to hope that they'd stop being tortured. And only some of those people are actually in the White Rose because this wasn't this massive sprawling conspiracy. It was college kids. On february 22nd the shoals would have their day in court fortunately for them it would not actually be in a criminal court it was in it would be in front of

what is known as the nazi people's court the people's court was a special court set up outside even the framework of nazi law now that sounds like they can really keep a level head and be fair and make justice happen it's probably way worse than you can even imagine um so the court was actually created for these exact reasons uh so the reichstag fire which most people know about as like being the catalyst for hitler to take dictatorial power of germany um there's a criminal court there are criminal cases happen after that in the regular criminal courts of Germany. And so few people actually got found guilty. Hitler got pissed and created the People's Court, which found everybody guilty always.

The court was known for so little actual trial work. They couldn't even be called like a kangaroo court because like a kangaroo court i don't know like it was bad at least a court that wants to pretend to be an actual legitimate court will like i'm gonna let you have a lawyer uh let let you argue in your defense people's court didn't do that uh no argument no arguments for guilt or innocence were ever put forward uh it normally boiled down to judge president roland fryser screaming at someone for less than an hour or so and then immediately sentencing them to death and these weren't like screaming at them for their crimes it was screaming at them for like as a person uh they're a trigger to the

fewer the German people and they probably fuck jews weird shit like they weren't like even arguing any kind of evidence they're just like well you're in front of me so you must be guilty um if that sounds bad enough sophie shoals defense council which was a party member given to her by the court of course uh she met with her the day before and uh told her she deserved to die. Not a good start. Super fair.

So unlike pretty much anybody in the history of the Nazis people court, Sophie Scholl did not take Roland Freiser's abuse laying down. When he lit into her for being an enemy of the people and for being a traitor, she stood up and screamed back, you know, as well as I do, that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won't admit it now it should be noted um this is more than a more of a rebuttal than anybody has ever given frizer uh i bet you she's the one that wrote the line about pfd hitler oh i would hope so uh so during the 1944 trials uh of people connected to the bomb plot to kill Hitler,

and they made the movie Valkyrie about it, they were all military leaders for the most part. There were some civilians involved, but the proud military officers who led thousands of men to their death throughout World War II stood in silence while Pfizer yelled at them. Sophie Scholl said, fuck that. Death is unfortunately the same sentence that hans and sophie would be given only minutes apart from one uh and they were put to death in the same exact day as their sentence was passed while being led to the guillotine by

nazi executioner ryan sorry oh german names johann reardt, she reportedly told him, quote, How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give themselves up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine sunny day and I have to go. What does my death matter if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred into action? She was killed a few seconds later. Immediately after Sophie was killed, Hans was brought in. He walked in unaided to the chopping block, despite the fact he'd been tortured for hours. Just before the blade came down on his neck, he screamed, Eidsliebe die Freiheit, or long live freedom.

Johann Reichert executed over 2,000 people in his life, and he stated before he died, Sophie Scholl was the bravest person i've ever seen she was a badass also he wore a tux and a top hat while he was doing this if this makes this any weirder it was unnecessary tradition i uh he was an executioner before the nazis came to power and after uh he actually helped the i think his name's like john woods the uh american soldier who hung nazi war criminals he helped him with it because he'd been doing this for his professional um he'd been next like he had he wasn't a nazi he just he'd do his job unfortunately his job's a fucking monster uh and he ended up his son ended up killing himself uh because of what his dad did for a living and

then uh reichardt died poor and insane so fuck you fucking johan reichardt one by one each main member of the white rose would suit and follow shoals to the gallows one of the only survivors was a woman named and i am going to fuck this name up, Trouty LaFrenz. Trouty? It is spelled T-R-A-U-T-E. I'm saying Trouty. Trout? Trout sounds better than Trouty.

Oh, Trouty. So she was saved through a combination of luck and Roland Frazier having the day off. She managed to conceal most of her involvement in the leaflet spreading uh when in reality she had been the main white rose member in hamburg germany um she was originally slated to go to on a court docket with several other several other members of the white rose on hitler's birthday uh the docket was so crowded that fryser moved her to a different judge's docket on the same day every one of freisler's docket was executed as was per usual uh the other judge gave lafrenz a year in prison that was it uh she was released and then was once

again arrested by the gestapo because nazis are fucking assholes and don't care about their own laws and then put on trial for the same exact thing. She was moved to a different town because of allied air raids and her trial was set for April of 1945 during which time she was almost certain to be executed.

There's no way she was going to escape it twice. Instead, three days before her trial, allied forces liberated the town she was being held in and saved her life. For all their work, the SS and German press hardly paid any attention to the White Rose. After their execution, little more was said, and there was a footnote saying some, quote, degenerate rogues were executed. But that was definitely just propaganda to minimize their impact. SS Gestapo reports at the time note that the White Rose's leaflets were causing a lot of unrest in the German populace.

More importantly, among the same ages of people, they're trying to go get the fight. Their reach was so impressive that the Gestapo thought they're dealing with hundreds of people somehow involved with allied intelligence. And said they were getting rolled on by a whole bunch of fucking Catholic college kids. But the White Roses message would not die with them. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany and to the UK, where it's turned into a weapon by the Allied Air Forces. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets, more leaflets than the White Rose could have ever dreamed of printing with that

shitty crank printer were dropped on Germany titled the Manifesto of the Students of Munich. So in closing, I will say at least one thing that will make people feel better. Roland Frazier was killed when an Allied bomb landed on the People's Court building where he was working, and a big fucking piece of concrete crushed his Nazi ass to death.

When his body was brought to the nearby hospital, nobody cared, because even other Nazis thought he was an asshole. When a Nazi doctor saw that he was dead, an SS doctor who had been killing disabled people, like as part of his job on the reg now for probably six years said, quote,

this is God's judgment. It's like that horrible moment when someone you fucking hate is right about something. I'm on the concrete side here. Yeah. I'm a big stand for concrete in this episode just crushing that bitch um that's it uh so i mean the white rose is is an awesome story because the kids are like these the i say their kids are 21 but they are kids kind of especially in college like i mean there's different mentalities could you imagine doing this in fucking college no i mean but i was like i ate my way through college i was a culinary student

we were baking cakes and shit yeah now bake cakes to end hitler um you know that and like there's another point i think the russians try to use their and shit. Yeah, now bake cakes to end Hitler. You know, and like, there's another point. I think the Russians try to use, sorry, the Soviets try to use one of their leaflets as a propaganda tool against the Germans and they mislabeled it and did not give credit to the White Rose. So, fucking plagiarist

ass Soviets. Yeah, that's our episode today and I would like to thank Rich for coming on. I bribed her with a pizza to do this. Yeah, I'm so hungry. It was worth $14 so thank you. Joe's withholding food for me until I talk to you guys.

It's that important. Yep, so until next time, thanks for dropping by. Donate to our Patreon if you feel like it. You have to wear shirts. Why not make it one of ours? Follow me on Twitter. Jcast99, follow the show at lions underscore bye.

Don't follow her on anything because she's smarter than any of us and stays away from it. Especially not the tweeter. I don't get it. The tweeter machine. The twatter. All right, guys. Take it easy. Hi, this is Nate Bethea,

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