The White Rose

By Burton Flanagan

The White Rose was a student resistance group organized in Nazi Germany, for the purpose of resisting the Hitler regime. They engaged in passive resistance by distributing anonymous pamphlets denouncing Hitler and his works. The group was organized by Hans Scholl, Sophie S

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors Press
• Release date: May 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781643148472

Burton Flanagan

Burton Flanagan is a 74-year-old, retired lawyer. He graduated from the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama School of Law. Flanagan practiced law in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, mainly with the City of Tuscaloosa Legal Department. Flanagan's wife is a retired school teacher, and later was a Christian educator, who performed several administrative functions in addition to her educational responsibilities. Flanagan and his wife now reside in Birmingham, Al.

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Copyright © 2023 by Burton Flanagan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-64314-845-8 (Paperback)

978-1-64314-846-5 (Hardback)

978-1-64314-847-2 (E-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908908

AuthorsPress

California, USA

www.authorspress.com

Contents

I BEGINNINGS

II RESISTANCE

III JUDGEMENT

IV ES LEBE DIE FREIHEIT

V RESISTANCE

Pamphlet #6

Pamphlet #1

EPILOGUE

The Pamphlets

Pamphlet #1

Pamphlet #2

Pamphlet #3 Salus publica suprema lex

Pamphlet #4 Appeal to the German People

Pamphlet #5

Pamphlet #6 The Last Pamphlet Students!

SOURCES

INTRODUCTION

The White Rose was

a student group in Germany during the Hitler years.

They were students who organized themselves and resisted Adolf Hitler by disseminating a series of pamphlets calling on the German people to resist.

John F. Kennedy defined courage as grace under pressure. The White Rose manifested extreme grace, under the most extreme pressure possible. This is their story.

I

BEGINNINGS

Berlin today is an

extraordinary city, with an abundance of parks, rivers, and lakes. It is a place of culture, art, and enormous historical significance.

With a population of approximately four million, it is a city vibrant with energy and prosperity.

At the end of the First World War, Berlin was a very different place. Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated, leaving for exile in Holland and leaving behind a struggling democracy. Germany, as a country called Germany, did not exist until 1871 at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. Wilhelm I, then King of Prussia, and his Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, had deliberately provoked a war with France in order to establish a unified Germany, and they succeeded. The resulting Prussian victory brought about the establishment of the First German Reich. Wilhelm I became the first German Kaiser, with Bismarck installed as his Chancellor. The new Germany had its own parliament, with free elections—in short, a nominal democracy, but only nominally. Real power remained with the Kaiser, exercised through his Chancellor. There were simply no democratic institutions other than Parliament, and no real functioning Parliament.

The First World War ended on an odd note. When the fighting stopped, the defeated German army still occupied much of the territory it gained at the beginning of the war, and it was still entirely on foreign soil. This circumstance prompted General John Pershing, Commander of the American forces in Europe, to remark that the Allies would have been better served had they, instead of obtaining a temporary truce, driven the German army all the way back to Berlin. History was to prove General Pershing prescient.

Prior to the outbreak of World War I, Adolph Hitler, Austrian by birth, had attempted to enlist in the German Army but was rejected as unfit for service. When the war began, he immediately volunteered for service in the Bavarian Army and was accepted, even though he was, technically, Austrian. He served mainly as a trench runner, essentially a messenger. This was a rather dangerous occupation. He was wounded and received a decoration as a result of his service.

During his time with the army, he discovered a talent for speaking, developed that talent, and became active in post-war German politics. His principal position was that Germany’s defeat in the war was a result of a betrayal of the army by politicians, and international bankers (notably Jews) and that the army had not been defeated in the field. This was the so-called dolchstoss or stab-in-the-back theory. The theory was given powerful credence by the fact that the German army remained in the field at the