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The White Rose

Resources

Source A
Source B
Source C
Source D
Source E
Source F
Source G
Source H
Source I

Source A

Number of unemployed in Germany 1929-1939  

Year	Absolute number (in thousands)	Index numbers
1929	1891	100
1930	3076	163
1931	4519	239
1932	5575	295
1933	4804	254
1934	2718	144
1935	2151	114
1936	1593	84
1937	912	48
1938	429	23
1939	284	15

See also: Arbeitslose 1921-1939 

Source B

Distribution of seats after the elections to the German parliament 1924 - 1933

Party	1924	1924	1928	1930	31/07 1932	06/11 1932	05/03 1933
SPD	21	26	31	25	22	20	18
ZP/BVP	17	17	16	15	16	15	14
DDP	6	6	5	4	1	1	1
DVP	9	10	9	5	1	2	1
DNVP	20	21	15	7	6	9	8
KPD	14	9	11	13	14	17	12
NSDAP	7	3	3	18	37	33	44

SPD           Social-Democratic Party of Germany
ZP/BVP      Center Party/People's party of Bavaria
DDP           German Democratic Party
DVP            German People's Party
DNVP         German National Party
KPD            Communist Party of Germany
NSDAP       National-Socialist German Workers Party

See also: Das Deutsche Reich. For more information regarding the elections in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Click Deutsches Reich and Reichstag.

Source C

A German election poster 1932

'Hitler, our last hope'

Source D

A German election poster 1932

I promise everything and I don't keep my promises

'He should not govern, vote for the Socal Democrats, List 1'

Source E
 
Control the mass
New Reichstag elections. Again Hitler travels around Germany by plain. The intelligent Goebbels introduces a sophisticated way to contro the massesl: "The huge hall was filled to the last pitch. Powerful march rhythms are hammering the mass. Everywhere red banners with slogans:" Deutschland Erwachet! (Germay wake-up!) Between the swastika flags behind the stage a large portrait of Hitler, oppressive. The center aisle of the hall is controlled by the SA.

Suddenly the the march music stops. The silence, the mass in an exciting tension. Rumor in the hall, jumping electrified the thousands, stretching their necks. Banners and standards, bronze eagles in oak leaves. The music sets in again. The thumping marches "Fahnen-Companie 'into the room. The rite has rehearsed 100 times, she always has the same mass-psychological effect.
The music is silent again. Soft whispers in the sea of people, the nerves are strained to the utmost. The individual has become the mass of atom. A spark is enough. Blaring fanfare convert the Badenweiler march-in. The crowd takes a deep breath, a scream of 10,000 mouths: "Heil Hitler!" The men raise their arms, girls and women sobbing, screaming, climbing on chairs, Heil Hitler.
Moreover, Reich Leader SS Himmler with his expressionless face, Dr. Ley with his drunken-
man's cheeks, the thick Goering, the higher SA leaders in the sparkle of uniforms and
knighthoods. And in between the Fuhrer in a plain jacket. He is the man of the people. "
By waving cheering Hitler walks to the podium. A leader leads him. First some casual remarks in general, then sarcastic allusions to international capital and suddenly the question "What is liable for the debt of our misery?"
The mob: - "The System." (From the democratic republic.)
"Who support the system?"
- "The Jews!"
"What is Adolf Hitler for us?"
- "A belief!"
"What else?"
- "A last hope!"
"And what next?"
- "Our leader!"

Trumpet Rants, storms of cheers.
Hitler speaks preferably in the evening after. Between nine and ten have shown, are the people most receptive to suggestion of the word. He stands up. A flourish of his arm and everyone is silent. The voice raw, but intrusive:
"People enjoyed it. I want you all confession. Me think I am - like you - everything in this world. The highest, however, that my God in this world has given to my people. It rests my faith. That then I my will and for the people I give my life. "
Hitler knows all the ways of misleading people: the constantly repeated, pathetic sounding phrases, hardly something new and gripping bass, just the magic of the word rolling. These people are willing to be led blindly, against all and against everything.

Source F

Behind the facade
An American journalist had a look behind the facade: "I was assigned to report on Hitler's propaganda campaign in the Rhineland and so I followed him, along with 50 to 60 other foreign correspondents. One evening we arrived at half past six in the evening in Bonn . The Führer and his entourage went to a hotel for dinner.
I went to the room where he would speak that evening. The room was chock full. An orchestra on stage was playing Der gute Kamerad (the good comrade) comrade and Heil dir im Siegerkranz (Hail to you with the victor's laurels) and other patriotic songs. After I had waited for about 45 minutes, a bald-headed Nazi climbed the podium and announced that the Führer was delayed by a thunderstorm over the Rhine region. He asked the audience a little patience and the orchestra began to play Die Wacht am Rhein to the delight of the crowd.
Then another half hour passed and the Führer didn't appear, the same Nazi climed the stage again and shouted that although the storm was worse now, Hitler just called from a village on the Rhine that he would arrive within half an hour. "He comes," cried the announcer, "through the storm. He shall never disappoint us." Again the band played the loyal comrade and the people rose.
So when finally a feeling of feverish expectation was created, The Führer, who had been talking with his friends all that time just across the street, entered, wrapped in a brown raincoat,. From head to toe splashing. The crowd became berserk and 'besiegheilde' the Führer for five minutes. A middle-aged man in the front row near the press table, rubbed the tears from his eyes and told me: "Alles tut er für das deutsche Volk" (He does everything for the German people).

Source G
Grip on the youth
In a speech in 1938, Hitler spoke about the grip of National Socialism on the German youth.
"This youth, learns nothing but German thinking, German acting and if these boys come as ten year olds into our organization  and often take a breath of fresh air for the first time, they join four years later the Hitler Youth and there we keep them again for four years. But we certainly do not back give them back into the hands of our old class parents (laughter), but take them directly into the party, in the 'Labor Front', the SA or the SS, the NSKK etc.. And if after two years or eighteen months they still haven't become comprehensive national-socialists (laughter), then they will work in the laborservice (Arbeitsdienst) for another  six or seven months, all with one symbol, the German spade. And then the Wehrmacht will take over the treatment for another two years to cure what is left after six or seven months of class consciousness (approval), and when they return after two, three or four years, we take them immediately into the  SA, the SS and so on. They won't be free forever."

Source H

"But how is it possible that in our country a thing like this could take over the government?”
“In a time of great troubles,” explained Father, “all sorts come to the surface. Just recall the bad times we had to live through: first the war, then the difficult postwar years, infiation, and great poverty. Then came unemployment. 1f a man’s bare existence is undermined and his future is nothing but a gray, impenetrable wall, he will listen to prornises and temptations and not ask who offers them.”
“But after all, Hitler did keep his promise to do away with unemployment.”
“No one denies that. But don’t ask about his methods! He started up the munitions industry, he’s building barracks. Do you know where that will lead? He could have eliminated unemployment by means of peacetime industries—in a dictatorship that can easily be managed. But surely we are not like cattle, satisfied if we have fodder for our bellies. Material security alone will never be enough to make us happy. After all, we’re human beings, with free opinions and our own beliefs. A regime which would tam- per with these things has lost every spark of respect for man. Yet that is the first thing which we must demand from it.”
This talk between Father and ourselves occurred on a long hike in the spring. Once again we had thoroughly talked out our questions and doubts.

Source I

The members of the White Rose distributed six leaflets. This was the last one. 

Fellow Fighters in the Resistance!  

Shaken and broken, our people behold the loss of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War I Private First Class. Fuhrer, we thank you! 

The German people are in ferment. Will we continue to entrust the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of German youth to the base ambitions of a Party clique? No, never!

The day of reckoning has come - the reckoning of German youth with the most abominable tyrant our people have ever been forced to endure. In the name of German youth we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler's state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way. 

We grew up in a state in which all free expression of opinion is unscrupulously suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA, the SS have tried to drug us, to revolutionize us, to regiment us in the most promising young years of our lives. "Philosophical training" is the name given to the despicable method by which our budding intellectual development is muffled in a fog of empty phrases. A system of selection of leaders at once unimaginably devilish and narrow-minded trains up its future party bigwigs in the "Castles of the Knightly Order" to become Godless, impudent, and conscienceless exploiters and executioners - blind, stupid hangers-on of the Fuhrer. We "Intellectual Workers" are the ones who should put obstacles in the path of this caste of overlords. Soldiers at the front are regimented like schoolboys by student leaders and trainees for the post of Gauleiter, and the lewd jokes of the Gauleiters insult the honor of the women students.

German women students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the besmirching of their honor, and German students have defended the women in the universities and have stood firm.... That is a beginning of the struggle for our free self- determination - without which intellectual and spiritual values cannot be created. We thank the brave comrades, both men and women, who have set us brilliant examples.

For us there is but one slogan: fight against the party! Get out of the party organization, which are used to keep our mouths sealed and hold us in political bondage! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS corporals and sergeants and the party bootlickers! We want genuine learning and real freedom of opinion. No threat can terrorize us, not even the shutting down of the institutions of higher learning. This is the struggle of each and every one of us for our future, our freedom, and our honor under a regime conscious of its moral responsibility.

Freedom and honor! For ten long years Hitler and his coadjutor have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honor. The frightful bloodbath has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German - it is a slaughter which they arranged in the name of "freedom and honor of the German nation" throughout Europe, and which they daily start anew. The name of Germany is dishonored for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, and atone, smash its tormentors, and set up a new Europe of the spirit.

Students! The German people look to us. As in 1813 the people expected us to shake off the Napoleonic yoke, so in 1943 they look to us to break the National Socialist terror through the power of the spirit. Beresina and Stalingrad are burning in the East. The dead of Stalingrad implore us to take action. "Up, up, my people, let smoke and flame be our sign!"

Our people stand ready to rebel against the Nationals Socialist enslavement of Europe in a fervent new breakthrough of freedom and honor.
 

 Die Weisse Rose

 Sophie Scholl

 Hans Scholl

Copyright:  Albert van der Kaap, 2010